BRUCE AND EDDIE'S DAY OUT.(The Talk of the Town)

Last Friday, Counsellor Bruce Cutler needed to talk to Counsellor Edward Hayes. Never mind that Cutler had eaten dinner--osso buco and a couple of vodka shots--the night before at Hayes's house. It had been hard to get any privacy, Cutler said, what with the distracting company: Haye's wife, Susie, "a beautiful redhead named C.C., a couple of real top-shelf European men." Cutler (substantial, avuncular) needed to talk to Hayes (fidgety, health freak) because Monday was going to be an important day, with a courtroom check-in for their clients, "Mafia Cops" Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, another beefy/wiry, dead-calm/hyper pair of friends, whose trial, on charges of murder and conspiracy, is to begin on March 6th. Hayes and Cutler decided to spend the afternoon together, like football players carb-loading before the big game. "We like to exercise, read, shop, and talk," Cutler said, in a cutthroat rasp. (He neglected to mention performing high-roughneck street theatre.) "We talk about life, the world, politics. People that we respect and people that we don't."

Their first stop was H. Herzfeld, a haberdashery on East Fifty-seventh Street. Cutler was wearing a houndstooth suit over a midnight blue polo, collar up. Hayes, whose memoir, "Mouthpiece," just came out, had a sharper look: worsted navy suit ("made by a wonderful young guy in England"), blue self-striped shirt ("E.W.H." above the rib), suspenders (embellished with chess pieces), peach tie. He looked as if he hadn't been sleeping well.

"I just have the blues and grays," Cutler said. "Eddie has the flash and dash."

"Eddie, do you like this for St. Patrick's Day?" Cutler said, fingering a green tie with a hunting motif. "It's something Teddy Roosevelt might wear."

"Sure," Hayes said. "I like the idea of a guy from Brooklyn wearing those Waspy ties." A salesman boxed up the purchases. Cutler took his parcel, but Hayes said he'd send a boy to get his. A town car was idling outside, and Hayes got in. Cutler stood there.

"May I get in the car?" he said to the driver, a retired N.Y.P.D. detective who was doing a favor for Hayes. "I don't like to take liberties, Eddie. You don't introduce anybody to anybody."

As Cutler, a decline-of-civilization man, made conversation with the driver, Hayes, fulminating intermittenly about the "totally out-of-control Justice Department," made and ...