“I have nothing else to say.”

“Discretion is good, Victor. I like that. I need to be discreet too. But even so, Jimmy and I used to be buddies. A drink or two together now and then. But after what happened to Nadine he wrote me off. The wrong side, or some nonsense like that. She was a good kid too, Nadine. Her biggest problem was her father. Jimmy thinks he’s a new man, that what’s past is prologue. ‘But love is blind, and lovers cannot see.’ Merchant of Venice, Victor.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, and I didn’t. All I could catch was that he was trying to threaten Jimmy through me and I didn’t like it. I had received enough threats in this case to last me a lifetime.

“I can’t say anything more at the moment. Discretion, right? Just tell him what I said. And if he wants to call me, he can.”

“Sure,” I said, but I didn’t feel very messenger-boyish just then, especially not for fat Tony Baloney. I figured I would let him threaten the councilman on his own.

So it was back to the mail, reviewing letters, dictating missives of my own into the little tape machine for Ellie to butcher on the typewriter the next day, marking it all down on my time sheets in six-minute increments to be billed. That’s what I was doing when Morris called.

“Vey is mir, Victor. It pains me to have to call you this evening, I hope you appreciate that. During the short time we have worked together, Victor, and I mean this with all sincerity, you have become like mishpocheh to me. I wouldn’t say like a son because, frankly, we haven’t become that close, but a nephew, maybe, a distant nephew, a nephew from a foreign country, a Czechoslovakian nephew, yes? And so, being that you have become as dear to me as a Czechoslovakian nephew, it pains me to tell you what I have to tell you.”

“What is it you have to tell me, Morris?”

“First I want you to know that we left, mine son and I, not a single stone but that we turned it and not a single path but that we followed it to nowhere.”

“Just tell me, Morris.”

“Your Mr. Stocker, your thief, I know he is somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, I know it, I can taste it, he is so trayf you wouldn’t believe, but still I can taste him on his boat, floating happily, bobbing up and down, as happy as a Cossack on a sea of vodka, that happy, Victor. He is there, I know it, but where I can’t tell you. If I could tell you where he was then I’d be a happy man, but such is life that we are not to know such happiness until we find ha’olum haba’ah. Do you know what such is that, Victor? Ha’olum haba’ah?”

“No.”

“How will you get there if you don’t know what it is?”

“What is it?”

“The world to come.”

“Heaven?”

“Of a sort, but better. No angels with wings, no annoying harp music, and the food, Victor, all the food is kosher.”

“I assume they have pastrami there.”

“What, you think you go all that way for egg salad?”

“So what you are telling me, Morris, is that you can’t find Stocker.”

“I’m calling tonight because you gave me three weeks and tomorrow is exactly three weeks to a day from when you hired me and so mine time is up. I would spend the extra day and call you tomorrow but it’s Friday and preparing for the Shabbos I wanted not to forget.”

“Don’t worry about it, Morris, you got farther than I ever expected, you even got farther than the FBI in finding the guy.”

“So that’s such a challenge? Being as mine investigation has come to a close, I will be sending along a tzatel with my charges, sending it tomorrow, in fact. Now, just as a point of curiosity, to who should I send mine tzatel, to you or to mine friend Benny Lefkowitz who told me to see you?”

“You should send it to Mr. Lefkowitz, Morris. He’ll ship it over to me, but he and the other clients are paying it.”

“Perfect, I just thought I should know. So, Victor, that is that. Do you have anything else you need investigating? Anything you want Morris Kapustin to look into?”

“Nothing right now, Morris.”

“You keep me in mind, Victor, and I would be very appreciative. I feel very bad about this, Victor. Anything you need, any help at all, you give Morris a call.”

“Sure.”

“A gezunt ahf dein kopf, mein freint. And don’t be a shmendrick, call me sometime. We’ll do lunch.”

“We’ll do lunch?”

“A guy like me, I could have been in Hollywood, why not? John Garfield, Jewish. Goldwyn and Mayer and Fox, all Jewish. So why not Morris Kapustin?”

“No reason, Morris. No reason at all.”

I wasn’t feeling the same pain as Morris over his news. What it meant was that the deadline for finding Stocker had passed without a positive result and I could now settle the Saltz case for the $120,000 offered by Prescott, from which I would immediately deduct my one-third share, forty thousand dollars, forty thousand sweet smelling, crisply crinkling, beautifully off-green, satisfyingly stiff new dollar bills. I could feel the rough texture between my fingers already. In anticipation of Morris’s failure I had sent out release forms to the clients with self-addressed, stamped return envelopes. One by one the envelopes had come back and I opened them gleefully, like a child receiving birthday cards. Eight releases, each of them duly executed and ready for turning over to Prescott in exchange for a sweet little check made out for one hundred and twenty thou. With Morris throwing in the tallis, I was ready to settle.

And the man with whom I had to settle was ready for me.

“Good morning, Victor,” said Prescott as he strolled into court the morning after Morris’s final call. As always, he was followed by his legion of natty and intense Talbott, Kittredge lawyers. “This morning I’ll carry the cross-examination of the crime scene search officer. I’ve gone over the reports with my own experts and I think I’m best qualified to minimize his effectiveness.”

“That’s fine, sir.” I said.

“Splendid,” he said as he looked through a sheaf of documents handed him by Brett with two t’s.

“By the way, sir,” I said. “I have those releases for the Saltz settlement. I’m sorry it was so late but I had a hard time getting them back from all my clients, vacations and such.”

“The Saltz settlement?”

“Madeline sent us over the final settlement agreement and we’ve signed that too.”

“Did my clients sign?” he said, still looking through his documents.

“Not yet.”

“Hmmm. Well, Victor, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that deal is still operative.”

A sickening fear rose from my groin and grabbed my throat. “What are you talking about?” I said. “We had a deal.”

“We reached an agreement, yes, but that was with the expectation of an immediate settlement. When you hadn’t gotten back to us we thought the deal was off and proceeded accordingly.”

“Accordingly?”

He lifted his head out of his papers and stared straight at me. “We’ve been preparing for trial, Victor. Haven’t you?”

“I’ll enforce the settlement,” I said. “Judge Tifaro likes his calender clean, he won’t let you yank the offer back.”

“Oh, he’ll holler and shake,” he said, his gaze again upon his papers, as if I were no more consequential then a buzzing fly. “But it’s been over three weeks, Victor. You can’t expect my clients to wait forever. That offer has expired, it is gone, disappeared. It is as dead as Bissonette.” Then he looked at me again and one of his sly, diplomatic smiles spread onto his face. “However, Victor, I’m sure my clients would be willing to rethink the settlement and to pay what had been previously agreed under certain conditions.”

Here it was, I thought. Whatever the conditions, Prescott had been waiting to lower them upon me for a while, waiting as patiently as a spider having already woven his web.