14 Webster’s Third did in fact have entries for unlove, both as a verb (‘to cease to love’) and as a noun (‘absence of love,’ ‘hate’). The static definition of the noun didn’t square, in Betty’s mind, with that of the verb. She would, she decided, use it in a dynamic sense, that of désamour, whenever she needed it. She returned to her desk, turned on the computer, opened the folder DW/Articles/Drafts, and began to read the file titled 1998-10-10 (last modified October 12) after she had attached it to the e-mail message that she sent to Claudia Quintero. She felt her heart trembling, knowing that it was her brother’s last preserved piece of writing. As usual, there was no heading. Yesterday I met Miss Sarajevo. Not the Miss Sarajevo, [look up name], who won the title in 1993 and was on the cover of the Passengers’ vinyl record. The one I met is just as pretty, and of the right age (she just turned nineteen) to have won the title this year. Except that she doesn’t live in Sarajevo any longer. For the past three years she has lived in New York, with her parents and two brothers. Her older sister did, however, remain in Sarajevo, and she was in fact a contestant in that famous 1993 competition. I actually met her two days ago, last Saturday, in Greenwich Village, in the company of two girlfriends, fellow students at Bronx Community College. After we had met and introduced ourselves, and I had told them that I am a journalist, they asked me not to use their real names if I were to write about them. And so I will call her Nina. Of her friends, one is Croatian (I will call her Milena) and the other is Albanian from Kosovo (I will call her Rita). A decade ago, all three would have been Yugoslavian, and, had they met, talked in Serbocroat. But Rita, while she had learned the language in school, refuses to the speak it, and the three friends are quite content to converse in English. Milena has been in this country the longest, eight years, speaks English like a native, and knows her way around New York. She also smokes, and it was through her smoking that we met. I was sitting at a table in the nonsmoking section of Caffé Reggio, sipping my Cappuccino while absorbed in reading the latest of Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus novels, when the telltale whiff of tobacco smoke reached me. I looked up and saw the three young women at the table next to mine, and said to the smoker, “Did you happen to notice that this is the nonsmoking section?” “I’m sorry,” she said, and immediately put her cigarette out. The other two giggled, and then the prettiest one (Nina) asked if I would like to sit with them. My attention to the book had already been broken, so I agreed. Somehow, in the course of the conversation that followed, Nina managed to suggest to me privately that we meet alone, the following day, and passed me a slip of paper with her cell-phone number. And so it was that yesterday I actually met Miss Sarajevo. That was all. Where are the juicy parts? He probably “met” her in bed, Betty said to herself. And would this be of any interest to the New York detectives? ”So there was an Albanian girl involved,” Claudia said to Tom. “From Kosovo. Too bad there are no clues as to who she might be.” “Except that I think I know who Milena is,” Tom said. “Lejla’s mother told us about a Croatian friend of Lejla’s named Alida. She’s the one who tracked Lejla’s brothers to the mosque in Brooklyn. I’ll bet the Five-One has tracked her down by now.” “Let’s get the info,” Claudia said. He says the Five-One, she thought, just like cops on television. True, she had heard real-life cops say it, but to her it always seemed like an affectation. It’s one thing to refer to the subareas of a precinct, like 40D, as Four-Oh-David over the radio, just as 145th Street might be called One-Four-Five Street, but in ordinary conversation... “Hold on,” Tom said. “So she had a cell phone! I don’t think they ever found one on her! That’s something I should tell Orsini. Let me call him.” And, without waiting, he clicked on the number stored in his cell phone. He got an answer right away. “Listen,” he said, “you wouldn’t believe this, but we’ve found a connection between Lejla Begović and Daniel Wilner.” He smiled at Claudia as he paused to let Orsini express his amazement, or incredulity, or whatever. “Well,” he went on, “she was probably his last date. We found pictures that he took of her the weekend before he got killed, and the draft of an article he was going to write about her. There are two reasons I’m calling you.” He waited for the response. “Number one, from your point of view, is that she had a cell phone, at least back in October. You might want to look into that. Number two is that Wilner wrote in the draft that when he met her she was with two girlfriends, one Albanian and one Croatian, and I’m pretty sure the Croatian one is Alida Lovrin. Do you have her phone number and address handy?” He listened while Orsini gave him the information, wrote it down and listened some more. “Yes,” he said, “I’ll let you as soon as we find out anything.” He clicked off and turned to Claudia. “Would you like to talk to her?” he asked her. “Why me? You know more about the case.” “Well, let’s call her on the desk phone and use the speakerphone.” And he punched in the digits. “You have reached the Sprint PCS voicemail box of...” a mechanical quasi-female voice intoned. “Alida Lovrin,” a perky young female voice chimed in, saying the name in a fully Americanized way. Claudia wished that it had sounded more Croatian. Tom pressed 1 and, after the appropriate beep, said, “Hi, Alida, this is Detective Radnovich of the NYPD fortieth precinct. We have a few questions to ask you in connection with your late friend Lejla Begović. Please call me back as soon as possible.” After leaving his cell-phone number he clicked off. “We’ll just have to wait,” Claudia said. “You’re the first person I’ve phoned about it,” Betty said to Megan after telling her that she had left Paul, including the incident – which Megan had called love thy neighbor – that led up to it. “Of course I’ve told my mother, in person, and Harvey knows because he talked to Paul.” “So you’re starting the phone calls with me?” Megan said. Betty’s timing had been good: her call came half an hour after Sam had fallen asleep. “Starting and maybe finishing. I think that with my friends I’ll just send them e-mail. ‘Dear so-and-so, I just want you know that I am no longer living with Paul in the Plateau but am staying at my mother’s in Saint-Laurent. You can reach me by e-mail or on my cell phone, number below.’ And of course the same thing in French.” “You’re going to send a bilingual message to every one of your friends?” “That’s me, Bilingual Betty. Betty Bilingue.” Megan noticed that Betty had pronounced her name, in French, in the Quebec way, like Betsee. As far as Megan remembered this was not how Betty spoke French. “Does this group of friends include men?” “Well, yes, of course I have male friends, mainly from McGill.” “You realize that they will be calling you for dates, now that you’re single.” “What? That’s preposterous! They’re friends!” “You’ll have them coming out of the woodwork! You don’t know the effect you have on men, do you?” “That’s not true! I told you about that incident on the bus in Toronto, when I had this stupid feeling that I could get the guy away from his girlfriend, if that’s who she was.” “Let someone older and wiser tell you...” “Two years older, and twenty years wiser...” “In the ways of men, yes. There are no stupid feelings, only stupid words and stupid actions.” Whatever Betty’s response was, it was not voiced. “So, what’s new with you?” she asked after a pause. “I’ve got another date with Tom Radnovich,” Megan said and burst into laughter. “Really, I’m not joking. He’s going to come to Toronto in two and a half weeks, when he has a three-day weekend. It’s the American Fourth of July.” “Did he propose it?” “Yes, he did. And I didn’t say yes right away.” “Is that some of that wisdom in the ways of men that I need to learn? I mean it, Megan, especially if I am going to be assailed with calls for dates.” “I see you’re getting it already.” It didn’t take Alida very long to get back to Tom. “Radnovich,” he said, and Alida said, “Hello, Detective Radnović,” pronouncing the name as though in Serbocroat. “This is Alida.” Claudia was out of the station, but he didn’t want to wait for her and decided to question the girl right away. “Hi, Alida,” he said. “As you know, this is not the precinct that’s handling the case of Lejla Begović, though I was involved in the case until a few days ago. But we’re looking into a different case, that of Daniel Wilner. Does that name mean anything to you?” Alida was silent for a few seconds, as though searching her memory. “I don’t think so,” she finally said. “Do you remember going to Greenwich Village last Columbus Day weekend with Lejla and another friend?” “Oh, yeah! I do remember! We met a guy named Daniel at a caf... coffeehouse! It’s just that I don’t think he, like, told us his last name. We didn’t tell him ours either,” she said with a giggle. “What about him?” “Well, he was killed a few days after that.” “Oh, no! He was so nice! Lejla thought he was hot!” “Did she? Well, do you know if she got together with him again?” “Yeah, she did.” Alida giggled again. “She told me about it the next week. But you say he got, like, killed...” “Yes.” Not like killed, but killed, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “He said that he was going away in a few days, to the Balkans in fact, and that it was, like, interesting to meet three girls from the Balkans. The Balkan Babes, he called us.” “And who was the third girl?” “It was Flora.” “Flora?” “Actually it’s Vlora, with a V, but she calls herself Flora.” “And her last name?” “Uh... Karimaj. That’s K-A...” “I know how to spell it,” Tom said, trying not to let his voice show how the revelation had affected him. “Have you seen her recently?” “Not since finals, three weeks ago. We’re not, like, really friends outside of school, you know.” “I understand. So you don’t know much about her, do you?” “Well, I know she came from Kosovo, like, a year ago. She’s got a brother here.” “Do you know the brother’s name?” “No, she always just said ‘my brother.’ But he’s got a girlfriend that’s, like, British.” “I see,” Tom said. Like British, indeed. “You’ve been very helpful, Alida. Thank you.” “No problem, uh, Detective Radnović.” He couldn’t wait to tell Claudia that, of all people, Haris Karimaj’s sister had been present at Lejla Begović’s initial meeting with Daniel Wilner. What a tangled knot! Was it perhaps through Flora and not, as they had previously surmised, through one or both of the Begović brothers that Omar Murova had met Lejla? And was this Vlora or Flora still around, or had she gone back to Kosovo with her brother? Sheila would know, wouldn’t she? Claudia still wasn’t at her desk. Tom walked into DePalma’s office, the door of which was ajar. “Just the man I wanted to see,” DePalma said. “I got the information you asked for. Sheila’s last name is Holt, she’s legal, and her occupation is waitress slash bartender.” “That almost sounds like a headline in the Post,” Tom said. “But thanks, that’ll be very useful. Do you, by any chance, know where Claudia is?” he asked. “I do, but it’s not by any chance, but by design. There was a homicide report that needed some looking into, and everyone else was tied up, so I sent her out. I’ll let you know when I hear from her.” “Do you think I’ll need to join her?” “I won’t know until she calls.” “It’s just that there’s been a huge breakthrough in the Wilner case, and it may even be connected to the Begović case. You see, we have evidence that Wilner and Lejla met the weekend before he got killed, and they had a date. And the sister of the leader of the Gremnik Boys was there when they met. So there’s all kinds of possibilities.” “There sure is... are. I’m impressed. Now, you said ‘evidence.’ What do you have?” “Photos that Wilner had taken of Lejla, that were on a memory card in his safe-deposit box. Ditto an article that he was writing about meeting her. And a third girl who was there when they met, a Croatian girl that I just talked to. She’s the one who gave me the name of the Albanian girl.” “Well, if you have hot leads to follow before they evaporate, go to it. I’ll tell Claudia about it when she checks in.” Tom thought for a moment. “They’re not that hot. We need to map out our strategy, about where to go next, and I’d rather do it with her. I’ll call her and see what’s going on.” Rather than read any more of Daniel’s articles, Betty went back to MW and opened Life. Here the files had names befitting the chapters of a book: Intro, Ch01, Ch02 and so on. So the book that, according to Megan, Daniel had been working on was about their father! She opened Intro. Michael Wilner (1935–1973), known to all who knew him as Miki, was, first and foremost, a journalist. His book The Long Seventh Day, dealing with the Six-Day War and its aftermath and based on first-hand reporting, was an international bestseller (in German, English, French and Hebrew) and is still cited by Middle East analysts for the accuracy of its predictions about developments in the region. His journalistic writings in German, however, covered a great many areas (he was what is known there as Publizist), in culture and politics. I will include samples of his writings, in my translation, in this book. But Michael Wilner was many other things, some of them contradictory. He was a Polish Jew (by birth), and he was a German (by choice). He was a Zionist, and he was an anti-Zionist. He was a public figure, and he was a very private person. He was my father, and he was not. This is not the place to elaborate on what I mean by the last statement. Suffice it to say that my earliest memory connected with him is that of his funeral, when I was just two, after his body had been sent from Israel to Montreal for burial after the Yom Kippur War. My quest for my father began in earnest a little over a decade ago, when I was fourteen. This book is about that quest. I gained knowledge about my father from his writings and from four women who held important places in his life and in mine. There is my mother, Mireille Bouchard, who was Miki’s wife during the last three years of his life. There was my late great-aunt Fela Rozowski, the widow of his maternal uncle Leon Rozowski. There is Brigitte Wilner, the famous German actress, who was Miki’s companion during a period of twenty years (his wife for fourteen), and who took his surname as her stage name long before they were married. And there is Nili Rozen, his oldest friend, from his time at Kibbutz Refadim in Israel as a teenager. Other people helped my along on my quest, and I will mention them in appropriate places. I would like to dedicate this book to my beloved sister and Miki’s posthumous daughter, Betty Wilner, in the hope that she will let herself be inspired by our father as I was. The last sentence was too much for her. She began bawling as she had never remembered doing, with tears pouring down on the keyboard, and made no effort to stop. She was hearing Daniel’s voice from the beyond, sa voix de l’au-delà, talking to her as she hadn’t heard it since they were children. Getting Daniel’s book published, with whatever editing might be needed, would be her next project, as soon as her thesis was done. Maybe she would even translate it into French. Why not? Miki had spoken French with Mireille. Why shouldn’t francophones learn about him? When her crying had subsided she lifted her head to look at her clock, and it came to her that her clock hadn’t been on the wall above her window in seven years, since she took it with her when she moved in with Paul. She looked at her watch, and calculated that it had been twenty-two hours since she last spoke with Paul. Might as well make it twenty-four, she said to herself. She would call him at five-thirty. No, by then maman would be coming home. Five o’clock, then. When Claudia told him that she would be tied up in the current case for several hours, Tom Radnovich thought of asking Orsini if he would be interested in joining him, but decided against it. The Lejla Begović case was currently on hold at the 51st while Brooklyn detectives were investigating the mosque, and Orsini probably had other fish to fry. Whatever could be done at the moment, Tom thought, he could do it solo. Like filling in a crossword puzzle. His colleagues sometimes called him a puzzle-solver, and it wasn’t always meant as a compliment, especially when it came from Claudia, who liked to contrast his “so-called left-brained” personality with her own “so-called right-brained” nature. She emphasized so-called because, having studied psychology, she knew – and admitted – that the lateralization common in pop psych was pseudoscientific at best. But the fact remained that her method was intuitive while his was deductive, and that was perhaps why they worked together so well. They had managed to solve a number of cases by combining their approaches. Now he felt as if he were working on one of those theme puzzles, like the Sunday Times crossword, in which he had managed to locate the theme clues (the ones that in a less sophisticated puzzle would be set off with question marks) but had not yet figured out the theme. He tried to trace some connections, and so, on a yellow pad, wrote out a list of names. Daniel Wilner. Betty Wilner. Paul Berman. Rexhep Shkodra. Haris Karimaj. Vlora Karimaj. Lejla Begović. Omar Murova. Safet Murova. Nothing clicked. There were other names, but they didn’t fit: Steve Lusha. Julia Lusha. Alida Lovrin. Emrush Thelu. Finding out the whereabouts of Vlora Karimaj turned out to be simple. All it took was a call to her brother’s home phone, which was answered by Sheila. She expressed no surprise when Tom addressed her as Miss Holt, probably because in England, where all law enforcement is under the Home Office, even a village constable would be able to get such information. She confirmed that her boyfriend’s sister had gone back to Kosovo with him, and while she had every expectation that Haris would come back – “He’d better come back,” she said, “I’m pregnant, you know” – she was not so sure about Flora. Great, Tom thought. What to do next? He remembered something that Brian Lin had said earlier: that the photos of Lejla were the last personal pictures that Wilner took. They had probably been taken on Sunday, October 11, when the date with Lejla had taken place. But Yasmina had reported that Daniel had told her about an “exhausting weekend,” so that he and Lejla may have met again on the following day, Columbus Day. What other pictures were there from that weekend? And the Miss Sarajevo article: it was dated 10/12, and the time references in it (“yesterday,” “two days ago”) were consistent with that date, but didn’t go beyond an account of the initial meeting on Saturday. What time on Monday was it last modified? Why was there no account of what had happened on Sunday? Maybe nothing had happened besides sex, and Wilner didn’t seem to be the type that would brag about his conquests. Maybe he began to write the article and decided not to continue, at least for the time being, because he put the file on a diskette and deleted it from his hard drive. It was something that, apparently, he had done every so often, probably whenever he was on the verge of going away, as he had done in the preceding May and was about to do again, according to Alida, maybe back to Kosovo, just as NATO was threatening a bombing campaign, though the threat was soon rescinded. “Brian,” Tom said as Lin happened to be passing his desk on his way back from the john, “were there any other pictures from that last weekend?” “Yes,” Lin said, “of the Columbus Day parade.” “Can you tell where they were taken?” “Easily. From the steps of the Met.” “Museum or opera?” “Museum.” The Eighties. That was just a straight walk across Central Park from Wilner’s apartment. Probably with Lejla. In that case, Wilner might have been seen in public with Lejla. But by whom? Who, of the people on his list, might have gone to watch the parade, of interest mainly to Italian-Americans? He looked at the list again. Who would be the next person to put after Safet Murova? Of course. Silvana DiMaggio. An Albanian-Italian, but still Italian. A scenario began to write itself in Tom Radnovich’s mind. Vlora Karimaj, recently arrived from Kosovo, enrolls at BCC at the end of August, and in the course of September befriends Alida and Lejla who are also former Yugoslavians (of different nationalities, but all of them hating the Serbs). Meanwhile Safet Murova and Haris Karimaj are trying to get Omar, the youngest of the Gremnik Boys, to find himself a girlfriend, but for the somewhat pious Omar it has to be a Muslim girl. Vlora tells them about Lejla, whom Omar may already have seen at the mosque but was too shy to approach. Then Safet and Silvana, watching the Columbus Day parade, see Lejla holding hands with Daniel Wilner. How do they know who he is? Vlora would know: she had met him at the same time as Lejla, and knew that he was a journalist named Daniel. Not a famous journalist, to be sure, but probably known among Kosovo Albanians, especially those connected with the KLA, and not very favorably at that. So Safet must have told Karimaj, who checked with his sister. And the visiting Rexhep Shkodra must have been involved as well. And so a plot to eliminate Wilner must have been concocted between Karimaj and Shkodra. But was Safet involved? Was Omar? Experience showed that when criminals arrange such an intricate plot, only the leaders know its details, while the underlings just do their assigned jobs, and may not even know that a plot is afoot. Of course, if it was Safet who had fingered Wilner, then he was at least an accessory. It now seemed imperative to determine the chronology of Omar Murova’s liaison with Lejla Begović. When did they meet? And what was the status of their relationship on October 12, 1998? Did he still, at the time, believe in her purity? It would only be necessary to ask him some simple, factual questions. And ask Safet similar questions separately. But also ask him if he had watched last year’s Columbus Day parade, his wife being Italian. Back to the tire shop. Once he had some facts he would present the case to Rick. Probably the next morning. It wasn’t quite five yet, but it felt like time to call Paul. He had probably just gotten home. Betty felt her insides churning as she pressed the keys on her cell phone – the seven digits that, for six years now, had meant calling home – and waited for the ring. Paul picked up even before the first ring was complete. “Hello!” he said in an uncertain voice, probably guessing that it might be his wife. “Hi, Paul.” She paused, took a deep breath, and said, as calmly as she could, what she had been meaning to say. “I just want to tell you that I don’t love you anymore.” “I can’t blame you...” “I mean it. It’s not just about what happened yesterday. I started to feel it last week. Just as I knew that I loved you eight years ago.” “I understand.” What about your feelings? she wanted to ask him. Can’t blame, understand... She wished that he would say I still love you or I don’t love you either; either one would be okay, or even an English version of Je t’aime... moi non plus. “I’m glad you understand,” she finally said. “I’ll be getting my stuff over the next couple of days.” “What about our stuff?” She laughed. “Okay, I’ll take the left half of the bed and...” No, she thought, better not joke with him now. “Let’s not worry about that for a while.” Were there really any of their joint possessions that she wanted for herself? Well, under partnership of acquests everything acquired after marriage was joint, but she had been the one to get all the artwork on their walls and the knickknacks on their shelves, and she thought of them as hers. “I’ll miss you,” he said. “Oh, I’ll miss you too. At least I’ll miss the Paul that I loved. But I think he’s gone.” He said nothing. “Bye, Paul,” she said. “Would you like to do an uncontested divorce?” “Sure,” she said. “Whatever,” she added, in an effort to appear nonchalant. “Bye, Betty,” he said, and hung up. Well, that’s done, Betty said to herself. Now she just had to wait – impatiently – for her mother to come home so that she could tell her of her discoveries about Daniel. Tom was not at the station when Claudia Quintero came back. The case had been a simple one: two Hispanic guys (one Dominican, one Puerto Rican) in their twenties had gotten into a fight that got out of hand, with the loser’s head knocked repeatedly into a concrete wall. There were eyewitnesses aplenty. The loser was DOA at Lincoln, the winner was taken to Riker’s, and arraignment would be the next morning. It seemed like a classic Man One. “Where’s Radnovich?” she asked DePalma. “Back to the tire shop,” the lieutenant said. “He took the subway there a little while ago. Maybe you’d like to join him.” “Sure,” she said. She called Tom’s cell phone and he said that, yes, he would love her to join him. He had plenty to tell her. He was talking to Safet Murova when she got there. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said to Safet when he saw her. “Pretty lady detective,” Safet said. “I excuse you.” He summarized his scenario for her in five minutes. “Omar was very hesitant about confirming our hypothetical timeline with Lejla, though he didn’t deny it. He says that the memory is too painful. But Safet confirmed it. He thinks that they met in September, claims he doesn’t know how, though I have my doubts; they began dating in October, chaperoned dates until November, then unchaperoned, finally sex in January, and the discovery that she wasn’t a virgin.” “What about Columbus Day?” “I was just getting to that. Waiting for you, actually.” “I mean, in regard to the timeline. It seems to have been right around the time that Lejla and Omar started dating, and maybe she just allowed herself a fling with a guy who was about to go away.” “That makes sense. What I meant was to find out if Safet and his wife had been at the parade.” “Let’s go,” she said. Back in the chair facing Safet, she began, “You are married, Mister Murova?” “Yes,” he said. “Detective Radnovich, he know my wife. Silvana.” “Silvana?” Claudia asked. “Like Silvana Mangano? Is she Italian?” “Albanian-Italian, from Sicilia.” “So, do you do Italian things, like Columbus Day?” “Sure. Every year we go to Eastchester parade. Parents of Silvana live in Westchester. Is funny, no, Eastchester is in Westchester?” “Very funny,” Tom broke in. “So you went there last year?” “Sure. Every year we go, since before married.” “Does Omar go with you?” Claudia asked. “Omar, no. Omar, Silvana...” Safet clenched his fists and stretched his index fingers, pointing them at each other like guns. “Let me ask you a different question,” Claudia said. “Do you know Flora Karimaj?” “Vlora? Sure I know her. Haris is my friend.” “Do you know anything about her friends?” He shrugged his shoulders. “ Lejla Begović was one friend.” “Any boyfriends?” Tom asked. “Not sure if real boyfriend, maybe Haris don’t allow that, but, yes, there was one American boy.” “Could he have been Italian-American?” “Could be. Sure.” “Thanks, Safet,” Claudia said. “We’ll be in touch.” “A pleasure, my lady.” The partners were silent until they were well out of Safet’s earshot. “A little hole in your scenario,” Claudia said with a smile as she unlocked her car. “Yeah. I don’t mind, though. It means Safet is not directly implicated, and it makes it simpler.” “You kind of like Safet, don’t you?” “Yes, Pretty Lady Detective.” Claudia laughed, but not altogether mirthfully. “So I figure,” Tom went on, “it was Vlora who fingered Wilner, whether or not she had an Italian boyfriend. She may even have been set to spy on Lejla. And Karimaj and Shkodra organized the killing.” “And those three are in Kosovo, so no one’s getting arrested. Don’t you care?” “Look, Claudia,” Tom said after clearing his throat, “we’ve talked about this before. I know my reputation: I’m a puzzle solver. I care more about solving a case neatly than putting some bad guys behind bars. The truth is that I want them to be the right bad guys.” “And the wrong bad guys walk free,” Claudia said with a smile that Tom probably didn’t see. “If they’re the wrong guys for the case at hand, yes.” “I’m with you on that, Tom. I guess we’re both just liberals, as my latest ex would say. His world, and probably the FBI’s world in general, is divided into good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys belong behind bars or in the chair, regardless of how you get them there.” “Except when the bad guys rat on badder guys,” Tom said, laughing. “In which case they become good guys.” Tom laughed again. “But in this case,” he said, serious again, “the right bad guys may well end up behind bars. Because as of this week Kosovo will be governed by the UN, so there should be the possibility of extradition. Now what we’ll have to do is build a case. We’ve got a pretty good circumstantial one, but I want to do better than that.” “Maybe Sheila knows something about Flora,” Claudia said. “Her baby’s aunt.” “Yeah, we should question Miss Holt again.” “Did you say Holt?” Claudia said. The resemblance of the surname to that of her ex-husband, a name that had once been hers, startled her. “Yeah, I forgot to tell you. Rick got us some info on her from his buddy in INS.” “Okay,” Claudia said after a pause, “but tomorrow. It’s been a long day, and I’m exhausted.” “Would you like to stop for a drink?” “Well... somehow putting liquid in me doesn’t sound as inviting as putting me in liquid. A nice warm bath...” They had arrived at the station, each of them ready to call it a day. Tom, Claudia surmised, would go to his gym before his evening would begin.