"I'm on the job," I told her. "It got more complicated than I thought it would."

"Oh."

If we were new lovers, or even just five years into the marriage, that conversation would have spanned half an hour.

"Be careful," she said.

"Good night."

"I guess it's just you and me," Lucy said as I disengaged the call.

I looked around and saw that the bar was empty.

"Business is bad, huh?"

"It's a lull."

"Before the storm?"

Lucy was looking right at me. It had been a long time but I still remembered that look.

A bear growled restlessly.

"Hello?" I said into the cell phone.

Lucy was walking away. She was skinny but she had nice hips.

"Have you spoken to the woman in question?" Sam Strange asked.

"No."

"And?"

"There was a complication."

"What kind of complication?"

"Murder."

"Tara?"

"Maybe."

"This is no time to be coy, Mr. McGill. He's called me three times for an update."

I was watching Lucy clean up at the bar sink, remembering the lyric Where did our love go?

"The dead girl was named Wanda Soa, I'm told. Somebody shot her in the face. The probable killer was six feet away, stabbed in the chest. No gun was found."

"Do the police know?"

"Indeed they do."

"Did they, did they speak to you?"

"At length."

"And why haven't you called in to report?"

Giving no answer worked better than words on that question.

"I'll report to him and get back to you if there's anything else," Sam Strange said.

He hung up and I turned off my phone, preferring the slightly addled silence that three shots of good liquor provided.

"Walk me home," Lucy said. She wasn't giving me a choice.

Lucy took my arm half a block from the bar and we walked in silence. I made no comment when we passed Gert's building. Four blocks later, on a quiet, not to say desolate, block, she stopped.

"This is me," she said, nodding her head toward the door.

Extricating herself from the crook of my arm, she took out a single, imposing-looking key. This she used on the lock.

"You're very quiet," she said, building on the unspoken intimacy between us.

"Just thinking."

"Yes?"

"When I was a younger man I would have thrown a fine young thing like you over my shoulder and carried you up those stairs."

"I don't know about that. I live on the fifth floor."

I shrugged. It was the same dismissal I had for those who had threatened me with violence over the decades.

"If you can carry me to my door you can do whatever else you want."

I was already breathing hard. Lucy yelped and giggled when I slung her over my shoulder and started walking, two steps at a time. When I got to the third floor I felt her rise up to look at me.

When I was half a flight from her floor she said, "You're really going to do it."

THE APARTMENT WAS SMALL and neat, nothing like Wanda Soa's place. There was a window that looked out on a brick wall, and vintage furniture with dark-green coverings.

"I don't have any liquor in the house," she said.

Her coffee table was an old wooden trunk.

"Bartenders shouldn't drink," I said.

She smiled and asked, "What are you going to do with me now?"

She sat down on the short sofa and gestured for me to sit next to her.

"When I first meet a woman I like to talk a little bit."

She nodded, leaned over, and then kissed me like she meant it. We went at that for a very long time, at least an hour and a half. Our hands explored a little bit but mostly we just massaged each other's tonsils with our tongues. Now and then she reached down to squeeze my erection. Once or twice I ran my fingers between her thighs. But for the most part it was the kissing that mattered.

That was the first time that I'd been frisky so soon after seeing a death. I realized that I needed someone to hold me and kiss me, to tease me with a little squeeze now and then.

"Let's go to bed," she whispered after sticking her tongue in my ear.

We kissed for a few minutes more.

"I'm married," I said, a timid bookkeeper on holiday in Atlantic City.

"So? I am, too."

"Where's your husband?"

"Not here."

The kissing got passionate there for a bit and then I leaned away.

"I don't want to do this," I said. "Not right now."

In a brazen gesture she laid a hand on my pants where the erection strained.

"It sure feels like you want to."

I stared into her eyes and she increased the pressure.

I barely moved.

"You know, I never bring men home from work."

"Uh-huh."

"I like you."

"I like you, too. I just need a little while to get over a couple'a things. Can you give me that?"

The question made her smile. She lifted the hand from my pants and caressed the side of my neck.

"I like it when a big strong man asks so sweetly," she said. "But I need some more of those lips before you can go."

I DIDN'T GET HOME until two-thirty in the morning, my virtue still pretty much intact.

By then Katrina should have been in bed, lulled by the chatter on one of her favorite TV channels. At that hour there would probably be some kind of health or exercise infomercial playing, but Katrina wouldn't know; she just needed the background noise to comfort her natural restlessness.

My wife was not in bed, however. She was sitting at the dining room table in her pink pajamas and turquoise robe.

"Where have you been?" she asked when I walked into the room. There was no friendliness in her voice.

"I told you. The job got more involved than I thought."

"I tried calling you twelve times."

"I was being sly, honey," I said. "I had to turn the cell off."

I was trying to figure out what was wrong. Katrina hadn't been jealous of me in twenty years. Both of us were having multiple affairs in the heyday of our marriage. The term "jealousy" wasn't one of our ten thousand words.

She fell against the backrest of her chair and began to cry.

"What's wrong?" I asked, wondering about the smell of Lucy's perfume on my clothes.

"Dimitri," she said, "and, and Twill. They went out and haven't come back. I tried to call but both their phones are off, too."

Every now and then young Twilliam took pity on his shy, morose brother and introduced him to a particular kind of girl or woman he came upon in his barely legal activities. I'd seen a few e-mails between them when Twill had come across someone he thought D might like. It's supposed to be the other way around-the older brother is supposed to teach his younger sibling the ropes, but that wasn't the case in our home. Twill was the reincarnation of an old soul that had spent one lifetime after another in prison or on the run.

Lately my youngest, and favorite, son had been running an online fence. He never saw or spoke to anyone, just had his e-wallet fat with transfers from a dozen different buyers and providers.

I was looking into how to short-circuit his illegal enterprise but thus far the weak link eluded me.

I couldn't see how that particular endeavor would get both kids in trouble.

"It's okay, baby," I said to my wife.

She sniffed and I wondered if she got a whiff of my make-out session.

"I'm worried, Leonid."

"You know Twill. He probably met some girl wants a college man for a night or two. That's the one thing would keep Dimitri away from here."

"You think so?"

"I'm sure of it. They'll call in the morning. Probably call me, 'cause they're so afraid of you."

I could see the tension release in her shoulders and face.

"Why're you so worried?" I asked.

"I don't know. Maybe I just feel guilty."