“Funny seeing you under the highway talking to that homicide dick,” continued Dante. “Funny as hell but for some reason I’m not laughing.”

Dante nodded at whoever it was who was holding me from behind. The arm around my chest loosened and the hand released its hold on my crotch. My knees sagged again but I stopped myself from falling, stood straight as I could and shucked my shoulders. The mere gesture made me feel a little harder until the reality of the situation impressed itself once again upon my nerves. I looked behind me. It was the weightlifting lug who always seemed to be around when Dante appeared. The lug nodded at me and then looked away, as if there was something more important to look at down the street.

“What were you and the dick talking about like such buddy-buddies under the highway?” said Dante.

“The weather,” I said.

“I hear there was a body in the trunk. It’s a shame to go like that. A tragedy.”

“You talking about the body or the car,” I said, “’cause if you ask me, it might be a bigger shame about the car.”

The lug behind me chuckled and even Dante smiled. Over Dante’s head I could see McDeiss making his way out from under the highway, walking toward us. The sight of him approaching gave me a shot of courage.

“Tell me something, Earl,” I said. “Who’s paying you to kill Reddmans?”

The smile disappeared and his composed mortician’s face startled for an instant. Then the smile returned, but there was an ugly darkness to it now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, Earl. Is it a Poole? Did a person named Poole pay for the hits?”

“Ahh, now I get it. You dumb shit, you think I flamed that bastard over there?”

“That’s exactly what I think. And I think you killed his sister in the luxury apartment and left her hanging like a coat on a rack, which is why you convinced that freak Peckworth to change his story for the cops.”

“You talked to Peckworth?”

“You bet I did.”

“You’re a dumb shit, you know that, Carl? I would have thought your little misadventure on the expressway would have wised you up enough to keep you out of the business, but no. If you weren’t such a dumb shit you wouldn’t think what you’re thinking.”

“You mean the fact that Eddie Shaw owed you a quarter of a million dollars and it looks now like he won’t ever pay?” I shook my head and looked up again. McDeiss was now in the middle of the road, about twenty yards away. “I figure you got that covered. His wife told me she had to sign something before he could get his little three-point-a-week loan from you. I figure you have a note in the full amount, for a legal rate of interest, signed by the dead man and his widow. With Eddie being the fuck-up he was, you have a better shot now at getting paid from the wife with her insurance money than you ever did from Eddie.”

“You’re a smart guy, Victor, oh yes you are,” said Dante. “You’d think a guy as smart as you wouldn’t be a lowlife shyster trying to hustle an angle into someone else’s game. You would think a guy as smart as you would be rich already.”

“I’m working on it.”

“The cop,” said the lug behind me. “He’s coming right this way, chief.”

“There’s going to be a meeting,” said Dante, talking low now, suddenly in a hurry, his words hissing out. “You’ve gotten the word already. Play it straight, Victor, all the way. Pretend for once you’re not a dumb shit and play it straight. You try to smart it out and play it on an angle and you’ll end up playing it dead.”

He put his hand up to my cheek and squeezed it between his fingers, like a dowager aunt showing affection to her nephew, before he spun to his right and walked off, his bodyguard in tow. He left just as McDeiss made his way through the crowd to get to me.

“Who are your friends?” said McDeiss, nodding at the two men walking away from us.

“One’s a pawnbroker I know from up on Two Street.”

“Anybody I should worry about?”

“Not really,” I said. “He’s just a guy that the dead man owed a quarter of a million dollars.”

McDeiss looked at me and then turned his head to look back at Dante, but the little man and his musclebound shadow had by now turned a corner and disappeared.

“What else do you know about this case?”

“You buying me lunch?”

“I’m buying if you’re talking.”

“Well then,” I said as we turned in the opposite direction and started walking together up the block to La Vigna, “let me ask you. Ever hear of a man named Poole?”

I DIDN’T RUSH RIGHT FROM THE LUNCH with McDeiss to tell Caroline about her brother. You can’t just tell a girl her brother is dead and then leave to grab a super-sized extra-value meal at McDonald’s. You have to hug her tightly when you tell her and let her cry on you and stroke her hair and feed her soup and rub her leg as she keens, bending forward and back, arms crossed at the waist. You tell a girl her brother is dead you better be ready to stick around and comfort her through the long sleepless night as she shivers and sobs in bed. The whole rigmarole could chew up a lot of time and there was still something I had to do that day. So I didn’t tell Caroline about her dead brother right off. What I did was ask McDeiss to refrain from announcing the name of the victim to the press and instead drove back out of the city, up from the river, into the deep dark depths of the Main Line. Along the narrow road with the bending archway of trees, down to the bridge that forded the stream, up through the gate and across the wide-open field on the long winding drive that rose to Veritas.

I parked on the part of the drive that circled the front portico. Nat was working on the hedges in front of the house, pruning off defiant shoots of green. He stood on a small stepladder. He was wearing overalls, his wide straw hat, long yellow rubber gloves that gripped a set of giant silver clippers shining in the sun. When I climbed out of the car he watched me for a moment and then stepped down the ladder. The sun was bright and the air was surprisingly clear. I imagined it was always fogged or rainy or wet at Veritas, but this was a brassy spring day.

“Howdy, Mr. Carl,” said Nat. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Up close I could see the sweat dripping from his temples. The red ring around his eye was bright and proud in the sun. “Miss Caroline’s not here. We don’t know where she is.”

“I’m not here for Caroline,” I said. “I’m here to see her mother.”

“Also not here, I’m afraid. Still out of the country.”

“Then I’ll talk to Caroline’s father.”

He looked at me and then turned his head to stare up at the second floor and its shuttered windows. “Not a good day for a visit, I would guess. You’ve heard about Master Edward?”

“I heard.”

“We reached Master Robert in Mexico with the news, but we can’t find Miss Caroline. Any idea where she might be, Mr. Carl?”

“I’ll tell her what happened,” I said, “just as soon as I talk to her father.”

He lifted the long shiny shears and laid their pointed tips on his shoulder. “Like I said, not a good day for a visit.”

“We all have work to do,” I said, “just like you and your pruning.”

He nodded at the hedges. “Mrs. Shaw wants the grounds in shape for the guests. She’s arriving from Greece tonight, cutting short her vacation. It seems the brightest social occasions we have around here now are funerals.”

“That’s about to end.”

He raised his eyebrows when I said that and smiled. There was something charismatic in Nat’s smile. He didn’t smile often or easily, but when he did it was bright and inviting. It bespoke something shared instead of something hostile.

“Sit down a spell with me,” he said. He walked over to one of the stone benches that flanked the steps leading to the front door. I sat beside him. His head was turned to the left while he talked, as if examining the uneven hedges still to be pruned on that side of the house. I looked down the long wide expanse of green, large enough to plop in an entire housing development, and wondered, silently, at the price of real estate in that part of the Main Line.