“I’m here to see Mr. Dean.”

“Mr. Dean has retired for the night.”

“Tell him I’m here. Tell him I’ve got a question for him.”

“You’ve got a question? That’s a surprise, isn’t it? Solicitors are always full of questions. Like a cow is full of shit.”

“Tell him I’m here.”

“Ever seen a slaughtered cow split right down the gut. The shit slides right out onto the ground. I wonder if it’s like that with solicitors, slit their bellies and the questions come sliding out, slapping down on the floor, along with their intestines, small and large.”

“Thank you for that image. You should write children’s books.”

“You’ve got a question. I’ve got your answer right here. Bugger off.”

I rang the bell again.

“You didn’t ’ear me?”

“Oh I heard you. Tell your boss I’m here.”

“Climb into your bung hole and get lost.

“Do we have to keep doing this? Isn’t it getting tedious, this little give and take? Because in the end you’re just a servant boy, working for the boss. So be a good little servant boy and let your boss know I’m here.”

“I already said he’s asleep.”

“Or maybe he’s standing right behind you, whispering in your ear. Either way, I think he’ll want to see me. Tell him I’m here. Tell him I have a question. About the Dane.”

“HAMLET?” SAID EDDIE Dean from the doorway.

I was in the parlor once again, with the red walls, the grand piano, the paintings of horses, the model ship, farther along in construction than before, but still incomplete. I was standing by the shelves of books, holding the volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies, opened to Hamlet. I looked up to see Eddie Dean, in his paisley dressing gown, with his dead face, his ascot, his cigarette and long blond hair, looking like a ludicrous mannequin from a long-gone age. He belonged on that dead ship he was so concerned about, I thought. They both were ghosts.

Behind him stood the glowering Colfax.

“You told us Hamlet was a great favorite of yours,” I said. “I’ve been reading it myself and I find I have a question.”

“This late at night?”

“Literature doesn’t keep banker’s hours, does it? I have a question and I thought you’d be the perfect person to ask.”

“I’m no expert,” he said, a false modesty stretching his voice.

“Don’t slight yourself.”

Maybe my voice was a bit harsh, because Eddie Dean’s chin rose for a moment before he turned and nodded at Colfax. Colfax stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. Dean walked toward me. “Fire away, then, Victor. What part of the play can I elucidate for you?”

“See, here’s my problem,” I said. “I’ve read it over a couple times now and each time I can’t help wondering why it is that Hamlet dithers so.”

“It is part of his nature. A fatal flaw so to speak. It is simply what Hamlet is.”

“A dithering fool?”

“Not a fool. But a man, perhaps, who is unable to act with great force because his mind goes off in too many directions.”

“When it should be focused on the one.”

“Precisely.”

“Revenge,” I said.

“Yes, well, remember, Victor, it is, at heart, a simple revenge play after all.”

“And Shakespeare was such a simple writer.” I looked down at the book, carefully turned a page. “So you believe Hamlet is right to seek a bloody revenge against his uncle, the king?”

“The king killed Hamlet’s father, he married Hamlet’s mother, he usurped Hamlet’s crown and wealth. What else is to be done?”

“Ergo murder.”

“I believe in the law it is called justifiable homicide.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “Revenge is not a legal justification for anything. A man named Lonnie Chambers was killed a few nights ago. His funeral is early tomorrow morning. It turns out he was an old friend of Tommy Greeley’s.”

I looked carefully at Eddie Dean’s face. It was a mask, frozen, inscrutable, hideous. “I didn’t know.”

“This Lonnie Chambers might also have betrayed Tommy. Lonnie was supposed to guard his old friend the night Tommy was killed. He obviously failed, but maybe by design. He was upset that Tommy was sleeping with his wife.”

“Very interesting, Victor.”

“Except you knew that last part already, because I told it all to your vice president of external affairs.”

“Did you?”

“There’s a famous line in the play that troubles me, when the ghost of Hamlet’s father says – where is it?” I paged back through the play, being careful to touch only the gold gilt on the edge of the pages. “Yes, here. The ghost says, ‘Murder most foul as in the best it is.’ Even assuming that murder for revenge is the best kind of murder, it still is characterized, even by the ghost who is urging it, as being most foul.”

“Obviously he’s not referring to the killing of his own killer.”

“Obviously?”

“Maybe you should go home and read it again.”

“I returned my copy to the library. May I borrow this?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, be my guest.”

“Babbage. Ever hear of a man named Babbage?”

His frozen face didn’t change, but he hesitated a moment before he said, “Cabbage?”

“Babbage.”

“No. Can’t say that I have.”

“He was the man whose testimony drove a stake through the heart of Tommy Greeley’s organization and would have put Tommy in jail. Babbage died just a few weeks ago. Heart attack.”

“Pity.”

“Although,” I said, tapping my head, “a clump of hair was missing, so the heart attack might have happened while someone was in the process of interrogating him quite forcefully. Maybe the same way Joey Parma was interrogated quite forcefully.”

“I hardly think so.”

I nodded, stepped back and then forward again. “But why does he dither? I’m talking of Hamlet again. If killing the king is so obviously the right thing to do, why does he hesitate? There is a moment when he no longer has any doubts about what his uncle has done, and he spies the murderer kneeling, and he unsheathes his sword, but he can’t bring himself to use it.”

“Because the uncle was praying, Victor. You must not have read the text very carefully.”

I started looking through the play, turning a page, scratching my head.

“Give the book to me,” he said as he grabbed it away. He licked his thumb and paged through the volume until he found the scene he was looking for. He traced his finger down one page and then the opposite and then tapped the line in victory. “Yes, Hamlet doesn’t want to kill his uncle when his uncle’s thoughts are turned toward God. He says, ‘A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven?’ He decides to wait, so that he can catch him in a more compromising position and send him to hell. See?”

He turned the book toward me, pointed at the line. I took the book and started to read the section and then stopped. “Okay,” I said. “I see.” I laid the silk marker in the page and then closed the book. “Maybe you’re right. Or maybe Hamlet is rationalizing because a part of him, the best part of him, doesn’t want to do it at all, knows it is wrong, knows a bloody revenge can end only in his own physical and moral destruction.”

“What is that, Victor, the Quaker interpretation?”

“Or the author’s, because that’s pretty much what happens to our hero. I mean, it’s not a tragedy simply because Hamlet dies in the end, is it? Hamlet at one point describes himself as ‘crawling between heaven and earth.’ It seems to me he’s split, one side wants to kill, but the other side yearns for something better, finer, more spiritual, maybe more moral. I wonder if it is that split which causes his hesitation.”

“The man killed his father, Victor. The killer deserved to die. What would you have him do?”

“Use the law, maybe.”

“But the killer was king. The law wasn’t available to Hamlet.”