“You drank three bottles?”

“Once in a while we’d finish them off. The first time we went out together he said he came to Detroit six times a year for meetings at GM.”

“How’d you get together?”

“We started talking. A young woman from Grosse Pointe, I’ll call her, very tailored, brought him along while she tried on dresses. We talked for maybe fifteen minutes and he asked me out. I said, ‘What about your girlfriend?’ He said, ‘She’s my mother,’ deadpan, and we went out.”

“Did he buy her a dress?”

“She had two that she liked. I thought he’d show off and tell her she could have both. No, he said he didn’t care for either of the dresses. The tailored young woman handled it. She said, ‘Okay,’ and was just a little bit cold.”

“And he never saw her again.”

“I don’t know, I never asked about her, or what he was doing at General Motors.”

“He told you he came to Detroit six times a year.”

“Never stayed more than a week, and wanted to see me each time he came. I said, ‘You’re asking me to sit and wait for the phone to ring?’ He called me every day from Buenos Aires.” She sipped her drink. “We worked it out. I liked him, he was fun, he was thoughtful. He came every month for five days whether he had a meeting at GM or not. I thought that was sweet.”

“Did he want to marry you ’cause his wife didn’t understand him?”

“I think he was married and had kids, but it never came up. He was Latin and fun at the same time. I called him Art. Or I’d call him a Latin from Manhattan and he’d say ‘You can tell by my banana.’ He was a terrific dancer.” She was quiet a few moments. “He had something to do with auto racing. He took me to the Indy 500 the year we were seeing each other. Walk along Gasoline Alley, he knew just about everybody, and you could tell they liked him. Mauri Rose won that year, qualified at a hundred and twenty-one miles an hour and led thirty-nine laps out of two hundred.” She said, “After Pearl Harbor, December of that year, I never heard from him again.”

She told him she was going to change, get out of the suit she’d been wearing all day picking up lint and put on a dress. “The paper’s right there.” She said, “Decide when we should have dinner,” giving him a look. Or maybe not, he wasn’t sure. She said, “I’ll be, oh, fifteen minutes or so.”

It made him think of Crystal Davidson eighteen years ago going into her bedroom while he was waiting for Emmett Long. Crystal telling him, “Don’t get nosy,” but left the door open. It wasn’t a minute later she stepped into plain sight wearing a pink-colored teddy, the crotch sagging between her white thighs. She thought he was from a newspaper. He told her, “Miss, I’m a deputy United States marshal. I’m here to place Emmett Long under arrest or put him in the ground, one.” A line he’d prepared for the occasion.

Now he was looking through the front section of the Free Press. He remembered saying to Crystal, “What you want to do when Emmett comes is pay close attention. Then later on you can tell what happened here as the star witness and get your name in the paper. I bet even your picture.” Crystal said, “Really?”

Carl looked at the paper again and read a couple of stories he thought were funny. He got up from the sofa and began reading aloud from the paper as he approached the hall, Honey’s bedroom on the left, the bathroom on the right. “‘A woman was shot in her fashionable eastside home by a jealous suitor. The suspect said he did it because she had trifled with his affection.’ You think those were his words?” Carl said, looking up now at the bedroom door standing open.

Honey still had on the skirt to her suit but was bare otherwise, her breasts pointing directly at Carl. She said, “I can’t imagine anyone saying that.”

Carl looked at the paper again-Jesus Christ-and read another news item. “‘Barbara Ann Baylis was bludgeoned to death with an iron frying pan in her home in Redford Township. After several days of grilling, her sixteen-year-old son, Elvin, admitted he had slain his mother in reprisal for a scolding.’” Carl looked up.

Honey hadn’t moved.

She said, “Don’t you love the way they write? The boy goes insane, screams at his mom and beats her to death with a skillet. ’Cause she scolded him?”

Carl said, “I can imagine the scene”-closing the paper-“the boy going into a rage.”

Honey said, “Have you decided what you want to do?”

Carl said, “I was thinking we could have supper then drive by Vera Mezwa’s. Check on the cars there for the meeting and get the license numbers.”

Honey still hadn’t moved to cover her breasts.

She said, “That’s what you want to do, check license numbers?”

Bohdan came in the kitchen with Dr. Taylor’s glass, empty but with dregs, a maraschino cherry, orange rind and bits of melted ice Bo dumped in the sink. He said to Vera fixing a cheese tray, “The doctor’s turning into a chatterbox. He said the most I’ve ever heard come out of him at one time. All by himself in the parlor reading Collier’s, he licks his thumb getting ready to turn a page, very deliberate about it. He hands me his empty glass, he says, ‘I’ve told Vera a hundred times sweet cherries simply don’t agree with me.’”

“I forgot,” Vera said. “I forget everything he tells me almost instantly.” She repeated, “‘I’ve told Vera sweet cherries simply don’t agree with me.’ What’s that, ten words? It’s about average for him. Unless he’s telling us what the Jews are cooking up.”

“You left out he’s told you a hundred times, that makes thirteen words, but I haven’t come to the good part. Really, he couldn’t seem to shut up. I took the glass and said, ‘Doctor, it will be my pleasure to fix this one myself.’ He looked up and did a doubletake. I turned to walk away and he said, ‘Bohdan?’ with that sort of British accent he puts on, though not all the time. He waited for me to turn to him and said, ‘You look very handsome this evening. You’re doing something different with your hair?’ I said no, it’s the same, and shook my head so my hair would bounce around. I said, ‘How do you like this outfit on me? It’s pure cashmere.’ He said, ‘Oh, you’re wearing a skirt,’ as if he’d just noticed. I said, ‘Do you like it?’ He said, ‘It’s very chic, I like it with the sandals.’ He asked me to turn around, but didn’t say anything about my fanny.”

“His drug must be kicking in,” Vera said. “I told you he takes Dilaudid. That druggist, the one who flirts with me, said it’s more potent than morphine. The doctor prescribes it for a physical infirmity, his gallstones.” Vera was cutting wedges of hard and soft cheese for the tray, with soda crackers. “Walter will pout because there’s no King Ludwig beer cheese, or Tilsit.”

“There’s Tilsit in the fridge.”

“That’s mine, I’m not putting it out.” She said to Bo, “You decided against the black dress.”

“I love it, but it’s not me. The shoulder pads. I look like a footballer in drag.”

“This way you’re a little boy in drag. The pearls would look nice.”

“I’m easing the group into what I might do more often. Oh, Jurgen came down. He’s wearing his sports coat but no tie in sight. He could use a scarf, or one of my bandanas. I introduced him to Taylor. The doctor rose to his feet and saluted.”

“The Nazi salute?”

“The snappy one. But then looked embarrassed, sorry he’d tried it. Jurgen gave him a rather pleasant nod. He’ll have a whiskey with ice, no ginger ale. I’ll take care of the doctor.”

“I’m waiting for Joe Aubrey to see you,” Vera said. “Walter called. Joe took the train this time. Walter, his faithful comrade, met him at the station. I don’t understand their friendship, Joe is so crude.”