“Yeah, same guy, I guess. So I go see him, and he hands me Stefanie’s purse.”

“What was he doing with Stefanie’s purse?”

Stretched out on the plywood floor, my head tucked low, I thought, Man, this is confusing.

“Said he’d found it, was trying to give it back. So I dumped it out, right, but there’s no ledger there. It’s too big to fit in it, I think. But you know what was in there?”

Greenway shook his head.

“Money. Two envelopes, stuffed with fifties. Tons of them. Looked like the stuff we make up on the photocopier sometimes, to pay off inspectors and stuff. But these bills, they didn’t look like they’d been weathered at all like we usually do them. It’s like she’d just made them.”

Greenway took this in. “She must have been doing a lot of photocopying. It’s like she was planning to make a run for it. Grab the ledger, print up some cash, head for the hills. Something spooked her.”

“She was talking to me yesterday,” Carpington offered, “about going away someplace. She was mentioning lots of different places, like she hadn’t decided where to go, but she was going to go someplace.”

“Did you notice anything else in the purse?” Greenway asked Rick.

He tried to think. “Now that you mention it, I think there was one of those little film things.”

“Stefanie was supposed to have brought that in to me a couple of days ago,” Greenway said. “Makes you wonder whether she was ever planning to do it.”

“So she was in on it,” Carpington said. “She let you take pictures of her with me.”

“Roger, Roger, Roger, what am I going to do with you? Yes, I had those pictures taken. Just a little extra insurance for our relationship. It wouldn’t be a good thing for you to suddenly get a conscience. That could be a very bad thing for all of us, but especially for you.”

Carpington was quiet.

“You see, Roger, you don’t work for the town of Oakwood. You don’t represent all those people in your ward. You work for me. You represent me. You only have one constituent, Roger. I’m your constituent. I pay taxes, and I want to be represented well. You’re my guy, and I want you to be doing your very best. You just might be mayor of Oakwood someday, once that blue-haired bitch decides to step down, and we might even have some ways of persuading her to do just that. We have things on you, Roger. Things that could send you away for a very long time. We go down, you go down, but you go down a lot harder. Our lawyers have bigger dicks than yours, Roger. If things ever came crashing down, and I don’t see any reason to think that they ever would, but if they did, you can be sure that the only person who’s ever going to go away is you.” Greenway paused. “If you were even lucky enough to make it to prison.”

Carpington seemed to understand. Rick smiled at him and patted the trunk of his car loudly.

“It’s very important to Mr. Benedetto that you keep doing the fine job you’ve been doing on the council. You’ve been speaking up for us at every opportunity, and we appreciate it. He and I were talking just the other day, and he said to me, ‘Do you think Roger would like an addition built on his house?’”

“An addition?”

“A deck maybe. Or a family room? Someplace to put in a home theater? You’ve got kids. I’m sure they like to watch a lot of movies.”

“It’s true,” Carpington said quietly. “They do like to watch movies. Especially those ones with that Adam Sandler guy.”

“I like him, too,” said Rick. “You know that one, where he’s the water boy?”

“Yeah?” said Carpington.

“What’s that one called?”

“The Waterboy.”

“I know, that’s the one I mean. Where he plays the water boy.”

“That’s what it’s called,” said Carpington. “It’s called The Waterboy.”

“Oh yeah, I think you’re right.”

Greenway cut in. “I wish we had time to continue this conversation all night, gentlemen. But we have other matters to attend to. Roger, I’ll talk to Mr. Benedetto about that tomorrow, see if we can’t get something going on those home improvements for you.”

“That would be very nice,” Carpington said. “I’m sorry if I came on a bit strong tonight. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

“Of course. Haven’t we all. The important thing, Roger, is that you remember whose side you’re on. And don’t you worry about this Walker fellow. We’ll take care of him for you. You won’t be bothered with him anymore.”

“If you say so,” Carpington said, much calmer now than he’d been when he first got out of the trunk. “But I have to know. What happened to Stefanie? If anyone ever sees those pictures of us together, they’re going to think I had some reason to kill her.”

“Yes, I suppose they would,” Greenway said. “I guess we need to get those negatives back, don’t we?”

“Leave that to me,” Rick said.

That seemed to settle it. Then, suddenly, all three of them stopped talking and froze. They’d heard some kind of noise. They waited, no one breathing, to see whether they’d hear it again.

They did, and turned and looked in my direction.

The noise was coming from inside my jacket.

I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS SHOPPING for a new cell phone, the salesman was very eager to sign me up for extra features. Call display, call forwarding, three-way calling, detailed billing, even video games I could play on the screen. Maybe, instead of a standard ring, I’d like to hear one of my favorite tunes when someone called me. And of course, there was the extended-warranty plan, for only seventy dollars. What the salesman seemed to be implying was, This is a great phone, the best on the market, but you better buy this added warranty, because, just between you and me, it’s a piece of shit. And then, finally: “Would you like a phone that has the optional vibration feature, so that when you’re in a theater you can tell someone’s trying to phone you, but there’s no ring to disturb everyone around you? It’s a very good thing to have.”

No, I said. I don’t care about call display, call forwarding, three-way calling, detailed billing, or video games. I do not want to hear the theme from Titanic when someone calls me. I do not want an extended warranty. And I do not want a phone that vibrates. I turn my phone off when I go into a theater. I am not the guy who accompanies the President, who carries the briefcase with the codes. No one cares whether they can reach me immediately. I just want a phone that I can take with me. That’s all.

But would it have killed the salesman to point out other possible scenarios where a vibrating phone might be an advantage? “What if, one night, you’re hiding in a house under construction, eavesdropping on three guys as they discuss their murder plans and their wishes to kill you the next time they run into you, and your phone starts ringing, revealing to them your hiding spot? Wouldn’t you want a vibrating phone then?”

And of course, I would have said yes.

It would have been very nice, at that moment, to have a phone that jiggled instead of ringing. But since I didn’t, Don Greenway, Roger Carpington, and the psychopath I knew only as Rick were all looking in my direction.

“D’ya hear that?” Rick said.

“Sounds like a phone,” Carpington said.

“No shit?” said Rick. “You think?”

By now it had rung three times. I was holding my breath, waiting for a fourth ring, but it never came. At the first ring, my mind was scrambling. My first impulse was to try to smother the gadget with my hands. If you could have seen me in the dark, you’d have thought I’d been shot in the chest, the way I was clutching it. I wanted to turn it off, but that would have meant taking it out of my jacket, at which point the ring would have become even louder. You had to press a button on the top and hold it hard for three seconds to shut it down, and it wouldn’t take much more time than that for these three men to reach the building.