Dortmunder blinked. "One a them what?"

"You know Rollo, my bartender."

"Naturally."

"For years," Medrick said, "he was my eyes and ears in that joint."

"Then," Dortmunder said, "he's gone blind and deaf."

"No, it's not him," Medrick said. "I told him, I'm outa here, let somebody else collect the tsouris. Rollo don't even have my phone number. So what's happening?"

"Raphael," Dortmunder told him, "turned control over to a guy named Mikey, whose father's a mob guy, who's busting it out."

Medrick thought hard, then said, "Remind me."

"Buy buy buy on the store's credit," Dortmunder explained, "everything from booze to cash registers. Use up the credit, then some night move everything out, sell it all someplace else, let the joint go bankrupt."

"My joint?"

"The O.J. Bar and Grill," Dortmunder agreed, "on Amsterdam Avenue."

"I know where it is!" Medrick squinted past Dortmunder at his house, thinking again, and then said, "What's your name?"

"John."

Now Medrick squinted at Dortmunder and slowly nodded. "Could be true," he decided. "Come inside, it stinks out here."

It did. Following Medrick through the sliding glass door into the house, Dortmunder said, "What's with the tripod, anyway? If you don't mind my asking. And the black cloth."

Medrick gave him a surprised look as he slid the door closed, then nodded through its glass. "That's my camera," he said.

"It is?"

"I was doin a close-up," Medrick said, pointing at his small backyard, "that sundial back there."

"No kidding."

"I only count sunny hours," Medrick quoted, and shrugged. "Hah. Nice if you can get away with it. Come over and sit down. You want ice water?"

Not an offer you'd expect from a bar owner, but in fact, Dortmunder realized, he was thirsty, so he said, "Yeah, nice."

"Take a seat there," Medrick said, and waved a hand, and stumped away.

Dortmunder sat in a living room that was small, neat, and impersonal, as though Medrick had brought none of his possessions south with him but had started afresh, in discount stores. After a minute Medrick came back with two glasses of water, no ice, sat facing Dortmunder, said, "Use the coaster," and then said, "This isn't supposed to happen."

"You thought the family was gonna cover you."

"Years ago," Medrick said, "when the issue first come up, I told Jerry, whadawe want with a bar?"

"Jerome Hulve," Dortmunder said. "Your partner."

"Well, you do your homework," Medrick said, "What it was, for forty-two years I had a camera store on Broadway. Jerry was the dry cleaner next door. He's the one found this tavern was up for sale, got all its licenses, the bar and the fixtures all in place, the price is right, just open it up and that's it."

"I never saw you there."

"You never saw either of us there." Medrick shook his head. "I was reluctant to get into it, but I have to admit, up to now, Jerry was right. The place was never a big problem. On the other hand, it was never a big earner, either."

"It gets a lotta trade," Dortmunder suggested.

"If you call that trade." Medrick shrugged. "At the start," he said, "we thought we'd do a dinner business, it's a neighborhood, all apartments around there. We had waiters, cooks, silverware, the whole thing. Never happened. The trade we got, it was a bar trade."

"That's true."

"In all the years we had the place," Medrick said, "nobody has ever seen any of our customers eat."

"No, I haven't, either."

"But at least no trouble." Medrick made a disgusted face. "But now," he said, "if it all goes to hell, it doesn't just land on Raphael. That piece of paper between us, he still pays me off, I still got the responsibility. These mob guys, they're gonna what-you-say bust it, that comes to my doorstep. How'd you like it, a dozen New York City wholesalers, coming after you?"

"I wouldn't like it," Dortmunder said.

"These are guys," Medrick opined, "don't want you to return that deposit bottle, they got uses for that nickel. Florida is not far enough away, Mars is not far enough away, you stiff those guys, they'll eat your flesh, a little more every day."

"Then," Dortmunder said, "I think you gotta do something about it."

"I'm in Florida," Medrick pointed out. "Raphael is in cyberspace. What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know things like that," Dortmunder said.

"I had a cat once," Medrick told him, "used to bring dead things into the house — this is after we moved out to the Island — she'd bring them to wherever I was, drop them at my feet. I'd say, 'Hey, what's this? I don't want no bloody corpse, she'd give me a look: 'Not my problem. Stroll back outside." Medrick lowered a dissatisfied brow in Dortmunder's direction. "Now," he said, "I wonder what made me think of Buttercup after all these years?"

Dortmunder said, "What would you do with the bodies?"

Medrick sighed, looked exasperated, looked at his watch, said, "Rollo, on a Sunday, he comes in at four. I used to have a home number for him, but I didn't bring it south. I can call him then, see what he says. You had lunch?"

Remembering the flight down, Dortmunder said, "No."

"I ate a little before twelve," Medrick said, "but I could have a soup with you."

"A little before twelve?"

"When you're very young or very old, you get to eat whenever the hell you feel like it, which, when you're very old, is just a little bit earlier every day. Six o'clock, five forty-five… I figure, the day you sit down to supper at four o'clock, that's God saying hello. Will that car of yours seat two?"

"Well," Dortmunder said, "you're short."

Medrick led him to a no-name eatery in a sprawling one-story half-empty mall where most of the parked cars were the largest Cadillacs made twelve years ago. Over lunch in which the only thing Dortmunder recognized was mashed potatoes, Medrick explained that he'd been a widower for six years — "Esther was a wonderful person until the end, when there was nothing good about it" — and he'd been in a relationship with a widow named Alma the last two and a half years. "We don't live together," he said, "we aren't gonna get married, but we hang out, we kanookie."

"How come you aren't gonna get married?"

"The government," Medrick said. "If you're on Social Security and you get married, it costs you actual money out of your benefits, so what you got down here, you got an entire state here of people, been upright citizens their entire lives, in their golden years they're living in sin, because the government's got these rules. The government. These are the same people talk about the sanctity of marriage." Medrick rubbed a thumb and forefinger together. "We know what sanctity they care about."

During dessert — key lime pie should sue for libel — Medrick explained about the camera in the backyard. Having spent all those years selling cameras and camera equipment, he finally got the shutterbug bug himself and started taking nature pictures around and about, figuring he'd found a hobby that would satisfy him for many years of retirement.

"Then came digital," he said, and shook a disgusted head. "What you got with digital, you got no highs and no lows. Everything's perfect, and everything's plastic. You see those Matthew Brady pictures from the Civil War? The Civil War! I'm talking a long time ago. You try to take those pictures with digital, you know what they're gonna look like?"

"No," Dortmunder admitted.

"Special effects in a Civil War movie," Medrick told him. "People look at it, they say, 'Wow, that's great, that's so lifelike! You know what is it, the difference between life and lifelike?"

"I think I do," Dortmunder said.

"Well, there's fewer and fewer of us. Digital finally drove me out of the business. I mean, I was gonna retire anyway, but digital made me go a few months early."