Then he thought of his brother, dead in a dingy alley. He nodded to Marshall, who stretched the arm out and locked it in place at the elbow. Jack took a breath, then raised his right foot and stomped down as hard as he could. The heel of his dress shoe slammed into the guy’s fingers. The kid jerked rigid, veins on his neck straining as he screamed against the tape. Jack brought his foot up again. Down again. Howls incoherent and wishbone cracks. With each blow the rigid heel tore skin and muscle, shredded slippery tendons. The boy fought to move, but Marshall held him like a vise. Up again. Down again. Up again. The fingers twitching like worms after a rainstorm, the flesh popping, white bone fragments jutting at odd angles.

When it looked like one of them might be about to come off, Jack stopped. Panting, he ran his hands through his hair and dropped to a squat. The guy was still awake, still screaming his lungs out against the tape, eyes wide and bloodshot, ropes of snot streaming from his nose.

“Hi, Ray,” Jack said. “We’re friends of your uncle Will’s. And we’d really like to know where to find him.”

HE FLOATED ON THE EDGE OF DREAM, the world blurry, as something rubbed against him. Drifting, body here, consciousness there, sensations rolling through him. Skin against his own in a slow wriggle, neck to ankles. He could smell Anna, the faint homey hint of musk. The night air was pleasant, and he’d kicked the blanket off hours before. The sheet was soft as bathwater.

Tom mumbled sleep moans, thought about opening his eyes, didn’t. He felt her back against his chest, a gentle dancing touch, warm and complete where she moved, cool and wanting where she pulled away. The press and arc of her bottom. A heat growing inside, familiar and forgotten. He didn’t know what time it was, hadn’t opened his eyes to check, but it seemed late, somewhere in the lonely hours of the night when the world disappeared. She moved again, arched against him, and this time his moan wasn’t from sleep. He felt himself taut in his briefs, rigid against the curve of her.

Tom opened his eyes.

Anna’s head was turned to the ceiling, her features faint against the dark, eyes just a glimmer of reflected light. He saw her smile; then she pressed backward again, the cleft of her ass grinding against him.

He reacted automatically, wrapping an arm around her, cupping her breast in his hand, warm through the thin T-shirt she slept in, the nipple hard against the roughness of his thumb, and heard her gasp, and it was enough to pull his head all the way back to reality. Habit kicked in, a calendar check. If they managed to conceive tonight, a star would lead wise men to their apartment.

He blinked, groaned as she moved against him, then said, “Baby, it’s not time, it won’t work.” His voice thick and heavy with sleep.

In the dark of the room he saw her flash those teeth again, perfect white teeth, and then she said, “Shhh.” Spun against the mattress, his arm still draping her, her lips coming to his neck, his chin, his cheek, her breath sticky in his ear as she said, “I know,” and then she was pushing him back, sliding one slim thigh over his hips, ghostly in the dim light, body arching, the T-shirt riding up to reveal pale skin and a dark tangle of pubic hair, her fingers tugging at his briefs, her hand electric, the best thing he could imagine until he felt the wetness of her and slipped inside.

He moaned and thrust upward, resting his hands on the curve of her hips and forgetting about calendars, about rhythms and schedules and optimal ovulation windows.

When at last they were both spent, when she’d collapsed against his sweat-drenched chest and he could feel the pounding of her heart like some trapped and delicate bird, he said, “Wow.”

She laughed through her nose and said, “Yeah.”

“I mean, wow.” He shut his eyes tight, then opened them, blinking.“Jesus.” His head felt light, his arms strong. The edges of the curtain were drawn in white light. Dawn must have come while they were making love. “It’s been a long time.”

“Are you kidding?” Anna nuzzled against him, leaving little kisses on his shoulder. “We’ve had more sex in the last year than since we were, like, twenty-two.”

“Yeah. But. You know what I mean.”

She hesitated, and for a second he was afraid that he’d hurt her, that she’d taken it as a rejection. Then she smiled, a wry sort of thing, and said, “Yeah.” She put her head on his shoulder, yawned. “Nice.”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.” With his arm wrapped around her shoulders he collapsed into sleep.

HE WOKE WITH ONE forearm flung across his eyes to block the light. Before anything else came the memory of her atop him, and he smiled. Yawned, stretched, shoulders popping. Looked at her side of the bed. The pillow was empty, the sheets in disarray.

Tom rose, snapped off the rain machine on the night table, sat on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. Eleven A.M. He didn’t sleep that late often. But then, he’d happily trade a couple hours of daylight for her to awaken him like that. Plus, it wasn’t every night you found $370,000 and a dead body.

The thought sideswiped him, and his eyes came the rest of the way open. Jesus. Had everything last night been real? He stood, pulled on yesterday’s jeans. Opened the bedroom door and started down the hall.

Most weekend mornings he found her in the living room with a cup of coffee and a stack of envelopes, a pen behind her ear. They had an arrangement: He cleaned the bathrooms, she handled the bills. But the couch was bare.

“Babe?”

They’d planned to turn the spare bedroom into a nursery, but all the books said not to do things like that in advance, that it would only add pressure, remind you of the thing you most wanted but did not have. Good advice, except that all they ended up using the room for was scattered storage, a kind of dump for boxes and photo albums that only telegraphed that the room was in transition, served to remind them anyway. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t at the stove, either, or at their kitchen table. Maybe she went to get bagels.

He opened the drawer, rummaged through it. The spare keys were gone. He went out the front and down the stairs. The door to the bottom unit was unlocked, and the air still had an acrid undercurrent of smoke. “Anna?”

Quiet, from the other room. “In here.”

She sat on the dresser, wearing a Columbia College T-shirt and a pair of his boxer briefs, one leg tucked beneath. Her hair was loose, and she played with a lock of it, twisting it in her fingers as she flashed an unconvincing smile. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He crossed his arms, leaned against the door frame. “What’s up?”

She hesitated. “I was just thinking about him.”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know. Not him, really. More that he died. That someone died, right there.” She gestured toward the bed. “It’s weird, you know?”

He nodded. Waited.

“I mean, we never knew him. And now he’s gone. Yesterday he was alive, and now he’s just… gone.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Maybe he was a really good guy, and we never knew.”

“Maybe he was a complete bastard,” he said. She glared, but he shrugged. “He certainly didn’t go out of his way to be friendly.”

“I guess not. I’m just feeling strange about it.” Her expression suggested she was referring to more than Bill’s death. He looked at the bed, the sheets rumpled. Last night he’d asked the police if they were taking the sheets, and one of them laughed, said no, he didn’t figure Bill would need them anymore. “Yeah.”

Taking the money, he’d been buoyed by the insanity of it. By the way it could be set against years, against dreams, like time and hope had been transmuted to paper. It wasn’t money they were claiming; it was life. Who didn’t want more? Now, though, standing in the abandoned bedroom, he found everything seemed less clear.