"What tree?" I asked.

"All trees," Tolstoy McGill proclaimed. "Because the truth of the tree is its roots in the ground, and the wind blowing, and the rain falling. The sun is a tree's truth, and even if he's cut down his seed will scatter and those roots will once again take hold."

"DO YOU BELIEVE THAT a man can change, Lieutenant?" I asked Bethann Bonilla.

"What does that have to do with my question?"

"That order to arrest me refers to another man," I said. "The man I used to be. I can't deny my history and I won't admit to a thing. All I can tell you is that you will never catch me doing the things your department thinks I'm doing. I'm not that man anymore."

The detective felt my confession more than she understood it. She wondered about me-it wouldn't be the last time.

"Do you know anything about what happened here tonight?" she asked.

"Is the dead girl Laura Brown?"

After a moment's hesitation the policewoman said, "No. I don't think so."

"And what is her name?"

"You'll find out in the morning news anyway, I guess. It's Wanda Soa. At least we're pretty sure. A few neighbors gave us descriptions. One outstanding detail is a tiger tattoo on her left ankle."

"I don't know a thing about it, then. She might have been using the name Brown. She might have called me. The caller ID said unknown. You're welcome to check my home phone records. But I've already told you all that I know."

Often-in books and movies and TV shows-private detectives mouth off to the police. They claim civil rights or just run on bravado. But in the real world you have to lie so seamlessly that even you are unsure of the truth.

My father didn't teach me that. He was an idealist who probably died fighting the good fight. I'm just a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world.

"You can go home, Leonid," Bonilla said. "But you haven't heard the last of this."

"Don't I know it. I'm still trying to figure out the finger-trap my father bought me when I was five."

On the street again, I was loath to go home. I didn't know what Katrina wanted to talk about but another loss right then would have thrown me off balance in the middle of a tightrope act with no net.

So I went down to a bar called the Naked Ear on East Houston. It was once a literary bar where striving young writers came to read their poetry and prose to each other. Then for a long time it was a haven where NOLITA (that's the real estate acronym for North of Little Italy) stock traders met to flirt and brag. Since the current reversals on Wall Street the bar was floundering, looking for a new identity.

I was told by the owner that they didn't change the name because the word "naked" seemed to bring in curious newcomers every day.

I didn't care what they called themselves or who sat at the mahogany bar. I only went to the Ear for two reasons. One was to think, and drink, when I was in trouble; the other was to pay my respects to Gert Longman.

I HOOKED UP WITH Gert back when I was more crooked than not. She identified criminal losers who had not yet been caught at their scams and perversions. I framed these lowlifes for crimes that other crooks needed to get out from under-all for a fee, of course.

As is so often the case with deep passion, I didn't understand the kind of woman Gert was. Because she did work for me, I figured that she was bent, too.

She had a great smile and a fine derriere.

When we became lovers I neglected to tell her that I was married, not because I was ashamed but because I didn't think it mattered. How was I to know that she had dreams of two- point-five children and a picket fence?

We broke up but still worked together from time to time. I offered to leave Katrina, but Gert told me that it was over, completely.

And then one day the daughter of a man I'd caused to go to prison had someone kill Gert, just to see me cry.

I toasted her loss with three cognacs at least once a month. I never liked going to cemeteries.

LUCY, THE SKINNY BRUNETTE bartender, smiled when I mounted a stool in front of her.

"Hello, Mr. McGill."

"You remember my name."

"That's a bartender's job, isn't it?" Lucy had very nice teeth.

"It used to be that Republicans believed in less government, and people all over the world saw America as the land of opportunity. Things change."

"I guess I'm a throwback, then. Three Hennesseys straight up?"

"You're a relic."

While the thirtyish bartender went to fetch the brandy I turned my mind toward yet another reason I came to that bar: whenever I find myself in serious trouble, I take a time-out and try to fill in the shady areas with reason.

It wasn't the murder that bothered me. I didn't know the dead woman and I hadn't had anything to do with her, or her apparent killer's, death. Alphonse Rinaldo most certainly didn't know that she was dead. He might have been worried about her but he didn't kill her. And even if I gave the police the name and office address of my client they would have never even seen his face. They would get a call from the chief of police to lay off that avenue of inquiry and that would be that.

I didn't know, for a fact, who the dead woman was, but that didn't bother me either. I had done my job.

No, I hadn't done anything wrong as far as the deaths or my responsibility to the NYPD was concerned. Legally I was covered.

"Here you go, Mr. McGill," Lucy said.

She placed three amber-filled and extremely fragile cylinders of glass before me. I picked up one and tilted it at the sky beyond the ceiling.

A siren passed by outside.

"Was it a good friend?"

"You are old school," I said to Lucy.

"I don't know," she said. "I think anybody could see that you're going through a ritual with these drinks. You don't come here to meet people or to pick up girls. I pay attention, because you're the sweetest drunk I've ever had in here."

"You're gonna make me blush, child."

"I'm not that young."

"Maybe not," I said. "But I sure am that old."

Lucy gave me a very nice, almost speculative, smile and strolled off to a couple sitting a few stools away.

LEGALLY I WAS COVERED but the job wasn't over and it had turned from seeing that the subject, Tara Lear, was all right to maybe dodging guns with silencers on them and spending long nights under the bright lights of police curiosity.

This was a job that I couldn't walk away from. I could turn down loan sharks and godfather wannabes if they asked for my services. They could get angry and come after me if they wanted to try. I might have to do some fancy footwork but I could hold my own even against real-life mafiosi.

But Alphonse Rinaldo was no street hood or thug. He was the real thing, the thing itself.

At the end of my first drink I was pretty sure that Sam Strange was being up front with me. He was less likely to cross his boss than I was. He liked his job, and the protection of Rinaldo's office.

By the end of my second brandy I was confident that even the Big Man hadn't expected the crime I stumbled across. If there was impending danger Rinaldo would have told me, not for my safety but for his own interests. Why would he drag his name, albeit unspoken, into the crime scene at all?

No, it wasn't a setup. The situation had simply escalated faster than Alphonse had anticipated.

I'd taken the first sip of the third brandy when my cell phone made the sound of a far-off migrating flock of geese.

"Yes, Katrina?"

"You hadn't called," she said.

After so many years together a whole chapter of life can be reduced to three or four words. We could have discussed her new habit of waiting up for me since coming back and passing the half-century mark. She was no longer looking for a new man, she said. But even if she was-while she was there she was going to act like my wife.