Stella opened the door and said, “There you are. I figured you’d beat that twenty-minute figure. Come on in.”

“Thank you,” said Leah. She stepped in and held out her identification with her badge on it.

Stella waved it away and walked from the door into the parlor, which was the first room past the small foyer. “I don’t need to see that. I could hear it in your voice. Come and sit down.”

They sat in the small parlor, which was furnished with a couch and two large armchairs, all of them positioned to provide a view of the big television screen on the wall. Just as Stella sat down, there was the sound of a teapot whistling. She got up and said, “I made us some tea.”

Leah followed her along a narrow hallway, past the staircase to the second floor and a small dining room, and into the kitchen, where Stella poured the tea into big cups with two teabags in each one. Leah said, “Where were you a police officer?”

“Here,” Stella said. “I retired as a sergeant thirteen years ago. I was one of the first cops in Buffalo who sat down to pee. And I can tell you we weren’t exactly welcome at first. It was tough life for a while.”

Leah nodded and waited. Any cop who had lived through the bad old days had a right to go on a little bit. She took her tea and said, “Thanks very much for the tea.”

“It’s a pleasure. I like coffee better, but there’s no point in my being up all night anymore.”

Leah sipped the tea. “I like it.”

They sat in the parlor and Stella said, “I knew the Panko family professionally. I ran into a couple of them as juveniles. Their age was also the reason I ran into the old man a couple of times too. It was not a pleasure. He was involved in a lot of small-time stuff—smuggling things to and from Canada, combined with a little fencing of stolen goods both ways. He did a little forgery, mostly in service of car theft—pink slips and registrations and stuff. After I’d met a couple of the kids and their father, I was not happy to notice that they lived a half mile from here at the time. They were another reason to look over my shoulder. The father died a few years ago, and the house was sold. The wife may be alive, but I think I remember something about her going to an old-age home. There are about five kids, I think. They’d all be in their thirties at least, and a couple of the boys as old as forty-five. Viktor would be in his late thirties.”