“Joey told me.”

“Want to see it?”

“Sure.”

He led her around to the back of the house.

THE LAST WEEKEND of May, Hart walked into a tavern in Old Town, in Chicago, near North Avenue, on Wells. The neighborhood was different from when he’d first moved here, in the seventies. Safer but a lot less atmospheric. Professionals had pushed out the old-time locals, the transient hotel dwellers, the folk singers and jazz musicians, drunks and prostitutes. Fancy wine and cheese shops and organic groceries had replaced the IGA and package stores. The Earl of Old Town, the great folk club, was gone, though the comedy venue Second City was still here, and probably would be forever.

The bar Hart was now striding into was born after the folk era but was still antique, dating to the disco craze. The time was just past two-thirty, Saturday afternoon, and there were five people inside, three at the bar with one stool between them. Protocol among drinking strangers. The other two were at a table, a couple in their sixties. The wife wore a brimmed red hat and was missing a front tooth.

Living underground for a month and a half, Hart had grown lonely for his neighborhood and his city. He also missed working. But now that Michelle Kepler was in jail and his contact told him she’d given up trying to have him killed, he was comfortable surfacing and getting back to his life. Apparently, to his shock, she hadn’t dimed him out during her interrogations.

Hart dropped down heavily on a stool.

“My God, Terry Hart!” The round bartender shook his hand. “Been a month of Sundays since you been in here.”

“Away on some work.”

“Whereabouts? What do you want?”

“Smirnie and grapefruit. And a burger, medium. No fries.”

“You got it. So where?”

“New England. Then a while in Florida.”

The bartender got the drink and carried the square of greasy green paper with Hart’s order to a window into the kitchen, hung it up and rang a bell. A dark brown hand appeared, grabbed the slip then vanished. The bartender returned.

“Florida. Last time I was there, the wife and I went, we sat on the deck all day long. Didn’t go to the beach till the last day. I liked the deck better. We went out to eat a lot. Crab. Love those crabs. Where were you?”

“Some place. You know, near Miami.”

“Us too. Miami Beach. You didn’t get much of a tan, Terry.”

“Never do that. Not good for you.” He drained the liquor.

“Right you are.”

“I’ll have another.” He pushed the glass toward the bartender. Looked around the place. He sipped the new drink. It was strong. Afternoon pours were big. A few minutes later the bell rang again and his burger appeared. He ate part of it slowly. “So, Ben, everything good around town?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Anybody come in here asking about me?”

“Ha.”

“What, ha?”

“Like a line out of some movie. James Garner. Or some detective, you know. A PI.”

Hart smiled, sipped his drink. Then ate more, with his left hand. He was using that arm, the shot one, for everything he could. The muscle had atrophied but was coming back. Just that day he’d finished with the triple-0 steel wool on the box he’d started up in Wisconsin, using his left hand for most of the work. It was really beautiful; he was proud of it.

The bartender said, “Nobody while I was here. Expecting somebody?”

“I never know what to expect.” A grin. “How’s that for a PI line?”

“You got a haircut.”

It was much shorter. A businessman’s trim.

“Looks good.”

Hart grunted.

The man went off to refill somebody else’s drink. Hart was thinking: If people drink liquor during the day it’s usually vodka. And mixed with something else. Sweet or sour. Nobody drinks martinis in the afternoon. Why is that?

He wondered if Brynn McKenzie was eating lunch at that moment. Did she generally? Or did she wait for dinner, a family dinner?

Which put him in mind of her husband. Graham Boyd.

Hart wondered if they’d talked about getting back together. He doubted it. Graham’s place, a nice townhouse about four miles from Brynn’s, didn’t look very temporary. Not like Hart’s apartment, when he’d broken up with his wife. He’d just crashed and hadn’t gotten around to fixing up the place for months. He thought back to being with Brynn in that van, next to the meth cooker’s camper. He’d never answered her question, the implicit one when she’d glanced at his hand: Are you married? Never answered it directly. Felt bad, in a funny way.

No lies between us…

The bartender’d said something.

“What?”

“That okay, Terry? Done right?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“No problem.”

ESPN was on the tube. Sports highlights. Hart finished his lunch.

The bartender collected the plate and silverware. “So you seeing anybody, Terry?” he asked, making bartender conversation.

Looking at the TV, Hart said, “Yeah, I have been.” Surprising himself.

“No, shit. Who?”

“This woman I met in April.” He didn’t know why he was saying this. He supposed because it made him feel good.

“Bring her in here sometime.”

“Ah, think we’re breaking up.”

“How come?”

“She doesn’t live around here.”

The bartender grimaced. “Yeah, I hear that. Long distance. I had a stint in the reserves and Ellie and me were apart for six months. That was tough. We’d just started going out. And the fucking governor calls me up. When you’re married it’s one thing, you can be away. But just going out with somebody…it sucks to commute.”

“Sure does.”

“Where is she?”

“Wisconsin.”

The bartender paused, sensing a joke. “For real?”

A nod.

“I mean, it’s not like we’re talking L.A. or Samoa, Terry.”

“There’re other problems.”

“Man and woman, there’re always other problems.”

Hart was thinking, Why do so many bartenders say things in a way that sounds like it’s the final word on a subject?

“We’re like Romeo and Juliet.”

The bartender lowered his voice. He understood. “She’s Jewish, huh?”

Hart laughed. “No. Not religion. It’s her job more.”

“Keeps her too busy, right? Never gets home? You ask me, that’s bullshit. Women oughta stay home. I’m not saying after the kids are grown, she can’t go back part-time. But it’s the way God meant it to be.”

“Yeah,” Hart said, thinking how Brynn McKenzie would respond to that.

“So that’s it between you guys?”

His chest thudded. “Probably. Yeah.”

The bartender looked away, as if he’d seen something troubling in Hart’s eyes-either scary or sad. Hart wondered which. “Well, you’ll meet somebody else, Terry.” The man lifted his soda, which had some rum “accidentally” spilled into it.

Hart offered his own bartenderism, “One way or the other, life goes on, doesn’t it?”

“I-”

“There’s no answer, Ben. I’m just talking.” Hart gave a grin. “Gotta finish packing. What’s the damage here?”

The bartender tallied it up. Hart paid. “Anybody comes around asking for me, let me know. Here’s a number.”

He jotted down a prepaid mobile he used for voice mail only.

Pocketing the twenty-dollar tip, Ben said, “PI’s, huh?”

Hart smiled again. He looked around the place and then headed out.

The door eased shut behind him as he stepped onto the sidewalk, the late May sky brilliant. The wind usually didn’t blow in from Lake Michigan but Hart thought he could smell the ripe scent of water on the cool breeze.

He pulled on sunglasses, thinking back to that night in April, thinking about the absence of light in Marquette State Park. There was no such thing as a single darkness, he’d learned there. There were hundreds of different shades-and textures and shapes too. Grays and blacks there weren’t even words to describe. Darkness as plentiful as types of woods, and with as many different grains. He supposed that if-