12

He had slept fitfully, and there had been several erotic dreams, but the one whose details he could remember when the radio finally woke him featured not Megan Kenner but Yasmina from Citibank. He felt sexually sated by his nights with Julia and Betty, but what had stimulated him this time was what had begun as a routine good-night kiss – if any kiss between former lovers can be considered routine – with Claudia while they were still seated in her car. It stretched into something longer and deeper – it seemed that Claudia was tempted – until the spell of temptation was broken when he whispered her name and realized too late that the way he pronounced it, Clawed-ya, would turn her off. It was just as well: sex with a working partner was risky. And there was no shortage of fish in the sea.

Well, what about this Yasmina? He had told the branch manager that he would come by that afternoon with a copy of Wilner’s death certificate, so that the bank could close out the safe-deposit-box account. He could do it at the end of his shift, just before the bank’s closing time, and ask her out for a drink. Would she have a drink with him? Was she Muslim? Nothing about her appearance indicated it – her hair was bare, as were her sturdy calves over her stylish high-heeled pumps – so that even if she was, it was only nominally. And there was a good chance, if she had already been working at this branch the year before, that she had known Wilner, who seemed to visit his box quite often. He would ask her about him, and if she had known him, they could continue the conversation outside the bank.

Given the short time that Rick had given them to work on the Wilner case, it was important to tell him of the latest plot twist, and to seek out the Gremnik Boys again in order to find out who might have known about their excursion to Old Nick’s on the preceding 15th of October. True, the NYPD had lost much of its leverage over them when they were taken out of the Lejla Begović case. He supposed that Orsini or someone in his precinct had already informed the Murovas about Lejla’s condition.

On the front page of the Times, about half the stories were headed CRISIS IN THE BALKANS. Over breakfast, Tom scanned the article titled Kosovo Rebels Savor New Role as Serb Troops Leave.

The concluding paragraph quoted a KLA warrior – a former French teacher – as saying, “When we came here the people were very happy. They think they are safe now from the Serbs.” Well, Tom thought, here’s one Serb that some of these people may not be safe from.



She imagined Tom Radnovich’s long, slender hands on her skin as she spread shower gel across her torso. But by and by she noticed something: she felt slimmer in her hips and midriff than she had before coming to New York. She got out of the shower and, realizing that there was no full-length mirror in the bathroom, climbed onto the toilet-seat cover in order to see herself in the vanity mirror, and what she saw confirmed what her hands had told her: her figure was almost back to its May Green self, except for her breasts, and something could be done about them. Would be done. As soon as she could get Dr. Cox to do it, hopefully before Tom’s visit.

Only then did she remember that she hadn’t yet accepted Tom’s proposition. Of course she would do so, she now knew. No way would she pass up a chance for a few nights with a man like that. What about Sam? Well, her son would just have to learn that his mommy was a woman who likes men. The sooner the better. She had liked his daddy better than any other man, she would tell him at some time in the future, but daddy was gone, and...

She heard Betty and Sam giggling together. Sam obviously liked Betty a lot. She would tell him, when he was old enough to understand, that when he gets big he will probably like women, just like daddy.

She brushed her teeth with the hotel’s toothbrush and toothpaste, wrapped herself in a towel – her robe and toiletry kit were already packed away – and stepped into the room. Betty and Sam, both fully dressed, were sitting on the carpet, rolling his ball back and forth to each other. “You guys are having a ball!” Megan said.

“Ball!” Sam said.

They had decided that they would have breakfast at the airport. At this time of day, the desk clerk had told Megan when she paid the bill the night before, the ride to LaGuardia could easily take more than twice the twenty minutes that it had taken to get to the hotel from the airport at midday on a Sunday. She had arranged for a taxi to come and get them at eight o’clock. That way they would be at the airport before nine, plenty of time to check in for the 10:30 Air Canada flight and then have a relaxed breakfast before going to the gate. Because Sam belonged to the category of Small Children, they would get to board ahead of other passengers, or “preboard” as the airline people called it.

Megan’s clothes – undergarments, blouse, skirt – were stretched out on her bed, ready to put on. But she felt so good about her figure that she opened her suitcase and, before stashing the blouse and skirt in it, pulled out the tight-fitting blue dress that she would have worn on her date with Tom Radnovich. She might as well let the world see her as she liked to be seen.

There was a full-length mirror on the back of the closet door, she remembered. She looked at her reflection and liked what she saw. “Time to go down,” she announced.



Rick DePalma had found Claudia and Tom’s new line of investigation intriguing, and agreed that that the search for whoever had put together the plot that resulted in Daniel Wilner’s supposedly accidental shooting death – Tom was sure that this was an Albanian with the initial RS, SR in Daniel’s code – should take up most of their energy. Tom would try to track him down through the Gremnik Boys, and he would do this on his own.

She had felt nervous when she met Tom just before entering their boss’s office. She knew that he was too much of a gentleman to allude in any way to the previous night’s misguided kiss, but a girl can never be too sure of what a man will do, and she felt some anxiety when they met just before entering Rick DePalma’s office for the agreed-upon progress report on the Wilner case. “Hi, Claudia,” Tom had said simply, pronouncing her name in his usual way, just as he had the night before. Had he made the effort to say it in the right way, she would in all likelihood have gone up to his place. She would not have spent the night with him, but something would have happened. And, she was thinking, she would probably be feeling less embarrassed than she was this morning, after that inconclusive ending to their evening’s work.

It was now a little past nine o’clock. She went back to her desk and decided that this would be a good time to try to call Dr. Cynthia C. Bloom.

”Doctor Bloom’s office,” a young female voice said in an accent that might have been Haitian. “Can you hold?”

“Not really,” Claudia said. “This is Detective Claudia Quintero of the New York Police Department, and I need to speak to Doctor Bloom urgently. You can tell her that it’s about Daniel Wilner.” And she gave the woman her cell-phone number.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the woman said. “I will tell her.”

The phone rang less than ten minutes later. “Detective Quintero? This is Cici Bloom.” The name by which the psychologist identified herself sounded much more like a Spanish nickname than the English initials C. C.

“Yes, Doctor Bloom...”

“Call me Cici. What’s this about Daniel? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“Well, he was, and I’m afraid to say that he didn’t survive.” It seemed silly, Claudia thought, to say I’m afraid to say when she was in fact saying it, afraid or not.

“When did it happen?” Cici Bloom asked in a trembling voice after a pause.

“Last October.”

There was a long pause and a sigh. “Now I understand why I didn’t get a birthday card from him. My birthday’s in November, and he always sends... sent me a card. Then when I was in New York in April and I tried to call him his phone was disconnected. I thought that maybe he’d moved away...” There was another pause. “What happened to him?”

“He was in a bar in the Bronx, and he was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout. It was ruled accidental, except we are now suspecting that he may have been set up. We’re reviewing the evidence, and we found your Christmas card in his pile of mail. Were you close?”

“Well,” Cici said with another sigh, “we were very close when we were undergraduates at Columbia. We were a couple for a year, and we remained friends. Of course once I moved to Florida we only saw each other rarely, when I happened to go to New York for some reason or other, and he wasn’t always there. By now it’s been well over a year since we last saw each other.”

“Did you know that he had a child?” Claudia wasn’t sure why she was asking any more questions, but something in the back of her mind told her to keep going.

“Yes, I do remember him saying something about a baby with an old Canadian girlfriend of his. He just mentioned it casually, didn’t show me any pictures or anything like that.” Pause. “I still can’t believe that he’s gone. His father also died young, killed while covering a war, I think, when Daniel was a baby. And his father had survived the Holocaust...”

“Is that right?” Here was a biographical detail that was not in the file. Was it significant? Time would tell. But there was no point in detaining the undoubtedly very busy Dr. Bloom any longer. “Well,” Claudia said, “it’s been interesting talking to you, I would have said a pleasure if the subject wasn’t a painful one.”

“Likewise, Detective.”

“Call me Claudia. I’d like to talk to you again, on other matters, if you don’t mind. Tal vez en español.”

Sí, cómo no, entre latinas.” Cici laughed. “ Con mucho gusto,” she added.

Adiós, pues.”

Hasta luego.”



The stroller was the last piece to arrive on the carousel, long after Megan’s suitcase, which was now standing upright with Megan trying to balance a restlessly squirming Sam on top of it. Betty was grateful that Megan refrained from giving her assembly instructions as she was struggling to unfold the stroller, which bore the brand name MACLAREN. Finally, with a painful pinch on her thumb, she had the contraption set up, and Megan put Sam in it with a swoop. Betty put her carry-on in the stroller’s basket and began to push it in a running, zigzagging motion. But Sam was not his cheerful self.

Nor was Betty’s mind mainly on amusing Sam. When they were passing the domestic gates on the way to baggage claim, she had noticed that one of them announced an Air Canada flight to Montreal departing at 3 PM. I’d like to be on the flight, she had thought at the time, but there was no staff at the gate, and she let it go. Now she knew that she wanted to be on that flight.

She told Megan that she needed to go to the toilet, and while there she called Air Canada on her cell phone. She pressed 2 for French and asked if there were any seats on that flight. “Techniquement le vol est complet,” the agent told her, but before Betty had a chance to ask what was meant by a technically full flight the agent said that if Madame could be at the gate by two o’clock she was practically sure of getting a seat.

Yes, Betty thought as she walked back to meet the waiting Megan and Sam, it was time to go home.

If she were to get on that three-o’clock flight, and if the flight was not delayed, she should be at home by five-fifteen if she took the Aérobus and then a taxi from the bus station. Paul would most probably not be home yet. One some occasions he would surprise her by coming home early – around four-thirty – but this was unlikely. This time she would be the one to surprise him, since she had told him the previous day that she probably wouldn’t be home before Wednesday. And she wanted to be with Paul, more than anything else. All feeling of désamour was forgotten. Perhaps there would even be some pre-dinner lovemaking. Or at least kissing. She missed Paul’s warm lips. She had not been able to bring herself to kiss Tom Radnovich on the lips. At least in that way she had been faithful to Paul. The unexpressed flirtation with Cary Seligman was also buried under a deep layer of memory.

And then there was Megan. She loved Megan, and she loved Sam. But by this time they had spent enough time together. Especially in view of Megan’s two frustrated dates with Tom Radnovich, while Betty’s casual outing with him had turned into a hot night of sex. And Betty felt bothered by Megan’s assertion that she was not in her league (not in [Betty’s] league, as she might have written it in her thesis). Megan, May Green, the porn star whom millions, or at least tens of thousands, of red-blooded Canadian men lusted after? And Betty’s intuition had told her that Tom would have rather been with Megan than with her, and that it had been very disappointing for him to have to cancel the date because of work.

“That’s great,” Megan said when Betty told her of her plan. “Let’s go home and have lunch, and then I’ll drive you to the airport.”

“Thanks,” Betty said, “but wouldn’t that cut into Sam’s nap time? I can take a taxi.”

“Okay, I’ll call you one.”



Tracy Schiller called him back a little after eleven and told him that the case against Lejla’s brothers was looking stronger by the hour, and was turning into something much bigger: a conspiracy case. By collating Lejla’s killing with some that had happened in Brooklyn, a pattern had emerged that pointed to a kind of honor-killing exchange, on the principle of I’ll kill your sister if you kill mine, operating at the Brooklyn mosque. The imams, of course, pretended to be appalled, and promised to cooperate with the investigation, but Tracy took the promise with a big grain of salt.

The upshot was that the Murovas were off the hook as far as Lejla was concerned. What this meant was that they, and some of the other Gremlins (as Claudia liked to call them), would have to be approached as potential informants and not suspects. And it would be by Tom and Claudia, not Radnovich and Orsini. Right after lunch.

When Safet saw them approaching, he dropped the tire he was carrying and rolled it along the ground toward them, propelling it with a tire iron, as a little boy might roll a hoop. He dramatically stopped it when it was within five feet of the detectives. “Hello, Detective Radnovich,” he said with a grin. “Who is pretty lady?”

“My name is Claudia,” the pretty lady said, pronouncing her name in the Spanish way, as she reached her hand out to Safet, who kissed it in the European style. “I am Detective Radnovich’s partner.”

“Not Orsini?” Safet said.

“That was for the case of Lejla,” Tom said. “We’re here to get some information from you, and maybe your brother if he’s here, about what happened at Old Nick’s last October fifteenth.”

“Last October fifteen? Accident shooting journalist Wilner? We tell you everything already. Friends get together, take drinks, somebody shoot. Accident.” Safet shrugged his shoulders. “Lejla Begović, no accident.”

“But there’s something that’s bothering us,” Claudia said. “Someone telephoned Steve Lusha, the owner of Old Nick’s, to tell him that you were coming and that you were armed.”

“Armed?” Safet asked.

“Guns,” Tom clarified.

“Guns? Maybe somebody have gun for protection. Steve and his friends, they got armed.”

“Maybe because they were protecting themselves from you guys,” Tom said. “So who knew about you and your friends going to Old Nick’s? Whose idea was it? It’s not exactly in your neighborhood.”

Safet laughed. “We don’t go drink in our neighborhood. Too close wife. Too close mosque.” He laughed again. “My wife Christian, so okay, but other wifes Muslim, not okay. Understand?”

“Yes,” Claudia said with a chuckle of her own, “we understand. But why specifically Old Nick’s on that night? Who proposed it?”

“Don’t remember,” Safet lied transparently.

“I think you do,” Tom said with a deliberate note of impatience, “and you’re wasting our time by not telling us. Somebody will tell us, you know.”

“I mean,” Safet said, “I don’t remember name. Friend of Haris Karimaj. Come from Kosovo. UÇK.”

“That’s the KLA,” Tom said in an aside to Claudia, and then, to Safet, “Could his initials be RS?”

Safet’s face turned red. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe no. Don’t remember. Must go back to work.”

As they walked away, Tom pointed out Safet’s brother Omar, bringing some tools to yet another worker, to Claudia. “Shouldn’t we question him too?” she asked. “Wasn’t he also there?”

“That isn’t quite clear. They haven’t been consistent about that. He’s supposed to be a good Muslim boy so he’s not supposed to be in a bar. But he’s pretty simple-minded. I think Karimaj is the guy to question next. Let’s do that tomorrow morning. He really was in the KLA, he was injured fighting, and he’s pretty much the leader of the gang. He’s the one who’s actually from Gremnik.”

“Hmmm,” Claudia said.



Betty’s planning had been optimistic but successful. The driver of the 4:30 Aérobus had already closed the door but opened it again when he saw Betty approaching (because of Betty’s looks, Megan would have said), and there was no shortage of taxis outside the Central Bus Station. It was only a little after five when she was walking up the stairs of her apartment house.

As she passed the apartment of their next-door neighbors, Catherine and Patrick Langlois, she heard some strange noises coming from behind the door. She stopped to listen, and soon realized that they were human grunts. Catherine and Patrick, a couple in their mid to late thirties, were engaged in some late-afternoon sex, as she was hoping to do with Paul. But the sounds were too loud to be coming from the bedroom; they must have been doing it on the living-room sofa, not far from the entry door. And Patrick’s grunting voice was about an octave higher than his very low speaking voice. But Betty had always thought that that low voice was an affectation, for Patrick’s build was more like that of a tenor than of a traditional basso profundo.

The grunts seemed to be subsiding, and she went on to open her door. As she had expected, Paul was not home yet.

She went into the living room, pulling her carry-on behind her, sat down on the sofa and flipped her sandals off. There was so much on her mind that it went blank for a few minutes. She found itself in a kind of fast-forward daydream, with scenes from the last few days hurtling past one another. She was brought out of it by the slamming sound of the Langlois’ door. It would seem strange that one of them would be leaving, or that anyone would be entering, so soon after what they had been doing. Then she heard Paul’s key opening the door. And she understood.

She turned her head to the left so that she could see Paul through the opening from the hallway to the living room, as he was passing on the way to the bathroom. His jacket was over his arm, his tie was loose and askew, the four top buttons of his shirt were open, and his belt was unbuckled. He had not noticed her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Betty? I...” For once Paul was speechless, and Betty was glad.

“I know what you were doing.”

“I... I can explain,” he said as he walked into the living room, his belt buckled again.

“I know you can. You’re very good at explaining. But you don’t have to.”

He sat down in an armchair across from the sofa. “No, really. I went to the office really early this morning – I was in the middle of a case – and I finished it, so I came home, and Catherine was coming home at the same time. She asked me when you were coming back and I said I didn’t know, but probably tomorrow. Then she asked me to come in for a moment, she had something to show me. And she did. Her twat. She just pulled down her skirt, and said that she’d been waiting for that moment ever since they moved here.”

“And of course you couldn’t say no thanks.”

“I... It’s been a week since you and I... I just...”

Betty’s feelings about Paul’s stammering caromed between amusement, satisfaction and pity. “It’s okay,” she said, “I also fucked a guy in New York.” The words rushed out of her like the air from a popped balloon. On the Aérobus she had been pondering over which verb to use – had sex with, slept with, spent the night with, screwed, fucked and even, if the mood were lighthearted enough, shagged – but in the rush of words only fucked felt right. Paul had just fucked Catherine Langlois.

Paul’s face looked strained, a visible sign of his effort to find something to say. Betty didn’t care. Suddenly she knew what she had to say.

“Paul,” she began, as calmly as she could, though inside her she felt the words rushing to come out, just like the earlier ones, “I don’t want to live with you anymore.”

Paul now looked petrified. “You mean you want a divorce?”

Why did he have to rephrase things in legal terms? Maybe he was scared, and he felt safer amid legalities than emotions.

“Not necessarily,” Betty said. “Maybe eventually. Or maybe we’ll get back together. I’m just talking – and I know you hate the expression – about the here and now.”

Paul took a deep breath that was almost, but not quite, a sigh. “All right,” he said, “I’ll move out.”

“No,” Betty said quickly, “I’ll move out. I still have my old room at maman’s house. I spent a night there last week, and it felt very comfortable. Where would you go? Since your parents moved to Westmount you don’t have your room anymore.”

She felt grateful to Paul for not questioning her about her reasons for wanting out. Not that he was deliberately refraining from asking; it was probably the combination of guilt over his action and shock over her revelation that kept him temporarily tongue-tied.

If he had asked her, what would she have told him? That she wanted some freedom? That she was tired of him? That she wanted to fuck other guys? And would he, perhaps, have suggested an “open marriage”? Better to leave these things unsaid, at least for the time being.

“I haven’t unpacked yet,” she said, “so for now I’ll just take my little suitcase.” She would wash her dirty clothes at her mother’s house, just as she did when she was a teenager. “I’ll come back tomorrow to get more stuff.” While Paul was at the office. She suddenly remembered that she was due to start her course of birth-control pills the next morning, and while Dr. Bouchard was sure to have plentiful supply of them at her office, there might not be any at home. “I just need a few things out of my drawers in the bedroom.”



He was met by a somber-looking Yasmina when he entered the bank at ten to six, the death certificate in his attaché case. She didn’t greet him but said simply, “Daniel Wilner is dead? I can’t believe it.”

It had surprised him that no one at that branch had learned of the killing, which after all had been covered (though briefly) in the press and on the television news, at the time that it happened. Maybe because, at a bank, the big news on that day had been – Tom remembered it well – the cut in interest rates that led to a big surge in stock prices.

“Did you know Daniel well?” Tom asked. He already knew that Wilner had last been at the bank, to access his safe-deposit box, on the day after Columbus Day, two days before Old Nick’s.

“Yes!” she said enthusiastically and then blushed. “Maybe not so well,” she corrected herself, “but he used to come in quite often, at least at first. Then he would go away for long periods of time, and suddenly he would show up again. I was always the one who showed him to his box.” And maybe showed him her box, he thought lasciviously. Yasmina might well have been one of the “lot of young ladies” that, according to Eddie the super, Daniel had brought to his apartment.

“Well,” Tom said, “we’re still investigating, or rather reinvestigating, his killing, and if you don’t mind I would like to find out more about him from you.”

“I don’t mind, Detective,” Yasmina said softly.

“Call me Tom. Now, it’s almost closing time, isn’t it?” Yasmina nodded. “Well, I have to give the death certificate to your manager...”

“You can give it to me. I’ll give it to him, and then I’ll be done.”

“Would you like to have something to drink? Coffee, soda...”

Yasmina laughed, for the first time. She had a lovely laugh. “You’re asking because you think I’m Muslim? I’m not. I’m Assyrian, Christian from Iraq. You probably know that things got bad for us after the Gulf War, so we got out.” She paused and smiled. “I wouldn’t mind a nice glass of wine,” she said.

“That sounds nice. Do you know any places around here?”

“I know a lot of places. I live near here,” she said with a smile. “And there’s my place,” she added matter-of-factly, with no hint of flirtation.

“Any place would be nice,” Tom said, trying to sound matter-of-fact for his part.



Her cell phone was in the pocket of her apron while she was drying the dinner dishes when it rang. Betty dried her hands in order to pick it up and saw that the screen, instead of displaying the caller’s number, read Private number / Numéro privé. What did that mean? No matter. “Hello,” Betty said after pressing Talk.

“Hi, Betsee.” It was Harvey, of course. He was the only one, or at least the only non-francophone, who, after all these years, still said her name in the Quebec French way that she herself had pronounced it when they were children. She had stopped affricating her dental stops (she had learned the terminology in a linguistics class at McGill) during a trip to France when she was twelve. It was also the time when she decided to be anglophone and to call herself Zoë. When, two years later, she became Betty again, it was of course pronounced as in English, by everyone except Harvey.

“Hi, Harvey,” she said. “How did it go with Audrey?”

“Fine. It was fun. She went back to New York Friday night, and got there Saturday morning.”

“I saw her brother Cary yesterday morning, with Megan. He didn’t say anything about her being back. In fact, he didn’t say anything about her at all.” Betty giggled.

“Well, as you well know, siblings don’t always know about one another’s comings and goings.”

“That’s true,” Betty conceded with another giggle.

“Speaking of siblings,” Harvey said after a pause, “I just heard from mine.” He paused again. “I understand you’ve moved out.”

“For now,” Betty said. “Did he tell you any more?”

“Well, he told me what happened when you came home. He feels shitty.”

“About what? Having been caught?”

“That too.” Harvey chuckled. “The whole thing, you leaving him.” Another pause. “I guess I can now talk to you freely. I’m no longer obligated under D. T. Bist.”

“Under what?”

He chuckled again. “That’s my code for what Paul would sometimes say after he told me things that he didn’t want you to know about. Don’t tell Betty I said that.”

She felt speechless for a good fifteen seconds. “What kinds of things?” she finally managed to ask after taking a deep breath. “Like cheating on me?” she asked lightheartedly, sure that the answer would be of course not.

“Well, by his definition it wasn’t cheating, because it only happened out of town, when you weren’t with him. We had some arguments about that, as you can imagine. This time it was you who was out of town, so he used the same argument.”

“Paul has been fucking other women?” she asked slowly, incredulously. “So this time with Catherine wasn’t the first?”

“The first in Montreal, I think, whatever that’s worth.”

“So what places did it happen in?”

“Toronto, Québec, Ottawa... When he would be away on legal business, or visit our cousins in Toronto. Not that he particularly tried, but he’s good-looking, and women go for him.”

“Did he tell you that I fucked a guy in New York?”

“Yes.”

“But I told him, and I was going to tell him anyway. I thought that maybe we were ready for an open marriage, but really open, no hiding. Now I see that it’s been half open all along.”

“Yeah,” Harvey said with a laugh, “a one-way opening.”

“But anyway,” Betty went on, “what other things did he tell you that you weren’t supposed to tell me about?”

“Mostly things he said about Daniel, negative things. As if my feelings for Daniel didn’t count. You know how much I loved your brother.”

“Of course, Harvey. Did you know that I saw your mother in Toronto?”

“Yes, she told me.”

“She said that Paul resented Daniel for becoming your best friend. When Paul was little he said that he hated Daniel.”

“Yeah, I think he did, maybe still does. Last year he told me something, under D. T. Bist. He had this pro bono client, a Kosovo Albanian...”

“I remember. He was called Dick.”

“Some time before you were married, but Dick thought that you already were, he said something about Missis Berman, and Paul told him that you were Miz Wilner and always would be.”

“Paul told me about that.”

“But Dick then asked if you were related to Daniel Wilner – ‘relationship of journalist Daniel Wilner?’ is how he put the question – and Paul told him, and then said that this was a relationship he could dispense with. I’ll bet he didn’t tell you this part.”

Betty felt stunned, and it took her a while to respond.

“You’re right,” she said. “He didn’t. I remember thinking that there was something incomplete about the way Paul told me that story, but I thought he might have skipped something that Dick had said, not Paul. By the way, I just happened to be thinking about this Dick yesterday, when I was reading in the paper about Albanians in Kosovo. None of them had names that were remotely like Dick. Do you happen to know his real name?”

“Not exactly. It was something that sounded a little like Richard, but not really Richard. Maybe Richep, or something like that. But I can find out, if you’re really interested.”

“Not really, just curious.”

“Well, you got me curious too. I’ll let you know when I find out. How’s the thesis coming?”

“Fine. I put it all on a CD, so I could work on it on Megan’s computer. Now I can do it on my mother’s, though at some point I’ll get mine out of the apartment, when I feel really ready to make the move.”

“So you don’t feel ready yet?”

“I don’t know, Harvey. I feel readier now than I did ten minutes ago. You know, my mother didn’t seem at all surprised to see me with my suitcase. And later, after we’d talked, she said, ‘When you’re ready you’ll know.’ Quand tu sera prête tu le sauras, she said.” She suddenly remembered something. “Speaking of computer, the detectives in New York gave me a CD that’s supposed to have Daniel’s writings on it. They found it in a safe-deposit box that no one knew about.”

“Wow! That should be interesting,” Harvey said.

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