‘I would have thought she’d be more interested in the accident that blinded Franz,’ said Charles.

‘She was,’ said the doctor. ‘Eric Franz was blinded in an accident three years ago. The settlement was in seven figures. There was no apparent restoration of sight immediately following the corrective surgery, and he changed doctors before the next exam was scheduled. I have no idea who the new doctor was. His records were never forwarded.’

‘Is it possible that his sight was restored at some later date?’

‘The surgeon gave an 80/20 possibility, but it wasn’t in Eric Franz’s favor.’

‘There wouldn’t be much point in faking it,’ said Robin. ‘He was definitely blind when the court awarded the settlement. Even if the surgery had restored his sight, he would’ve kept the court award. And his wife’s life insurance benefit was donated to charity. I’d say the guy is squeaky clean. I don’t know where Kathy thinks she’s going with this one.’

‘So, Charles,’ said Edward, ‘do you know why Kathy didn’t drop by to pick up her own dirt?’

‘She said she couldn’t come tonight because she was barred from the poker game.’

Edward smiled. ‘Is that the story she gave you? She’s not here tonight because she wants to be legally one person removed from these records.’

‘Smart kid,’ said Robin, with some amount of paternal pride. ‘She learned that trick from Markowitz. No time lost with warrants, no paper trail for opposing counsel to follow.’

‘But she was barred from the poker game, wasn’t she?’

The other three players stared down at their cards. There were no volunteers.

‘Why was she barred from the game?’

Robin raised his head. ‘I’m still holding a grudge from her kiddy days. Markowitz used to bring her along if Helen was going out for the evening. The kid used to win so big, Markowitz had to buy her a little red wagon to carry home all the loot.’

The rabbi turned to Charles. ‘Her biggest win was thirty dollars in a penny-ante game. The legend grows.’

Charles shuffled the deck and dealt the first card to Rabbi Kaplan. ‘What was the real reason, Rabbi?’

‘Charles, such suspicions.’

The second card was dealt to the doctor.

‘I knew Mallory would be a bad influence on him.’

And the third to the lawyer.

‘She can’t play. It’s not fair. The little brat was born with a poker face.’

Charles sat in polite silence, holding on to the rest of the cards and waiting on a better answer.

‘Okay,’ said Robin. ‘Kathy was attending a private school, a girls’ school with young ladies who had never played poker. Kathy taught them the game.’

Charles dealt out the second round of cards.

‘She was bringing home three bills a week when Helen and Lou were called in for a little chat with the principal,’ said Edward.

And now all the cards were in play.

‘We thought it was great.’ Robin rearranged his hand. ‘The kid was champion poker material, and we took a lot of pride in that. But it upset Helen.’

‘And worse,’ said the rabbi, hardly looking at his cards.

Edward folded his hand and pushed the cards to one side of the table. ‘Lou didn’t want Kathy thrown out of school, so he took the fall for her. He told the principal it was a bad joke that had gotten out of hand, and Kathy couldn’t be expected to understand that what she was doing was wrong after he’d put the idea in her head.’

‘Louis was a gifted liar,’ said Robin. ‘He was so good that Helen bought the lie. It was the only rift between Helen and Lou, ever. Kathy knew it was her fault, but she didn’t understand why. And you know, it was a semi-honest racket. It wasn’t like she marked the cards or anything.’

‘She was just light years ahead of every child she fleeced,’ said Edward. ‘You never knew Helen. You don’t understand how it was between her and Lou. They held hands under the dinner table. They sat up and talked until two in the morning.’

‘So suddenly,’ said the rabbi, ‘there’s silence in the house. Helen believes that Louis has damaged Kathy. Louis was devastated, but he went on taking the blame for Kathy’s racketeering. Kathy felt the rift between them, the terrible silence. She came so close to understanding the difference between right and wrong.’

‘But then it slipped away from her,’ said Edward.

‘But she wouldn’t play poker again,’ said the rabbi. ‘Kathy barred herself from the game. It was her version of penance.’

‘You credit her too much. She’s a heartless little monster. She corrupts every – ’ Edward was interrupted by the loud jangle of the telephone.

Robin answered it and handed the receiver to Edward. When the doctor put down the phone, he turned to Charles. ‘My wife says Kathy left a message on our answering machine. She’ll pick up the folder herself.’

‘Kathy’s coming here?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Eight-thirty.’

‘It’s five past that now,’ said Charles. ‘Odd, she’s never late by even one minute.’

‘Oh, God, the lights!’ said Robin. ‘Kathy doesn’t know about the lights.’

And she was never, never late. They turned in concert to the window. Mallory’s small tan car was parked at the curb.

It was Edward Slope, her greatest detractor, who flew out the door, without his coat, to fetch her. He was down the flagstone path before the others could rise from the table.

Now three men congregated in the open doorway, unmindful of the chill night air. Charles stared at the back of the man running across the street.

Later it would hurt him to remember this small event with such great clarity. But there was a crystalline quality to a cold winter night. Even from the distance of a road’s width, no detail was lost to him, not the line of her cheek, nor the lamplight on her hair, nor the terrible stillness, the eerie quiet only broken by the footfalls of the doctor. There was Mallory, alone on a small field of new snow. But for the frost of her breath on the air, she was a statue in blue jeans, standing in the yard of the old house across the street. She was staring in the window at the Christmas tree and the menorah. And now her face turned upward as a window came to life on the second floor where Louis’s den was.

Slope came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was low, near a whisper. She never moved nor spoke to him, but only stared at the second-floor window, so entranced was she by the light.

An ex-partner was like an ex-wife, even if the partner had been a man – which Peggy was not, most definitely not.

He missed her sorely since her early retirement via a bullet in the lung. He missed her, though he saw her at least once a week, as though a night in the bar were a sacrament.

Riker’s eyes were on Peggy as she left him to run her white rag over the wet ring on the mahogany and pocket the change left by the last customer.

Age had hardly touched her, but only because she fought it off. Her hair was dyed a honey blonde to cover the gray, and her figure was only a little fuller at the hip and thigh. In the dim light and from the distance of the other end of the bar, she had changed not at all.

Oh, all those years ago when she was young, and he was younger, when he was still sober most of the day, when Peggy packed a gun and a shield. Now that was a time.

The matron draped on the stool next to his might be the only civilian in the bar tonight. The woman had that soft look, and she was staring at him with the disapproving eye of a taxpayer. Even in peripheral vision, the civilian was annoying him with her waving arms. The woman was making a damn point of waving the smoke away from her, and she had to reach into Riker’s own personal piece of the bar to do that.

‘Did you know that secondhand smoke kills non-smokers?’

‘Good,’ said Riker.

The woman picked up her purse and moved to the other end of the bar, and Peggy came back to him with a broad smile and a fresh beer.