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“Uh-uh,” she uttered, but there was a look of hesitation in her eye.

“What?”

“The files are on the cloud. I usually download the work to my computer once a week to catch up on things I might not have finished. Is there anything wrong with that?”

I love my daughter. If I had to spend the rest of my life in a moldy coffin buried under ten feet of concrete with only polka music to listen to, I would have done that for her.

“Is something wrong, Daddy?”

“No, honey. It’s kinda late. I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Okay. Are you going to take the Man case?” she asked as we stood.

“Please don’t ever mention that name again. Not to your mother. Not to anyone.”

“Okay.” She looked at me pleadingly to underscore the promise.

I was parked right off Montague, but before we got very far someone called to us.

“Excuse me,” he said. He approached us from the front of Le Sauvage.

I wondered if I had forgotten something.

It was the man who had been giving us glances: a white guy standing at about five nine, wearing a green-and-yellow sports jacket with black shirt and trousers.

“Excuse me,” he said again as he reached us.

His shoes looked as if they had been woven from straw.

“You don’t have to go with him,” he said to my daughter.

“Huh?” was her reply.

I didn’t know whether to give him an uppercut or a kiss on the lips.

“You got it wrong, man,” I said. “This is my daughter.”

He blinked and then took a closer look. The resemblance is there if you look past the optimism and the pain.

“Oh. I’m so sorry. Excuse me. I thought…”

“Look,” I added. “I appreciate you looking out for a young woman, but there’s no trouble here.”

“You thought he was my boyfriend?” my innocent daughter proclaimed incredulously.

“I lost my youngest to the street,” he said, addressing me.

“Next time you should take a cell phone picture and call the cops,” I suggested. “Safer all the way around.”

The ride out to Plumb Beach was fun. Aja loved listening to Sidney Bechet because “his horn sounded like somebody talking.”

I told her the story about how Bechet got involved in a duel with another musician in Paris because the guy had told him he played the wrong notes.

“Really?” she said. “Did he shoot the other guy?”

“They were better jazzmen than they were marksmen. Some bystander got shot. I think it was a woman.”

“Like me if I talk about your cases,” she said.