He didn’t go back to Alice’s office, going instead to his father’s, and sitting at the desk on the leather chair. He stared at the framed print on the wall, an original signed illustration by Robert E. McGinnis of a girl in a short white dress sitting on top of a roulette table. It had been done for a book cover, Harry knew, but he couldn’t remember which one. Something from the 1960s. Harry swiveled in the chair, looking at all his father’s books, wondering what would become of them now. He began to think about all the words his father had read, all the plots he’d absorbed, and how they were all gone, but then he stopped himself. Instead, he picked through a stack of books on the desk. At the top was one of his father’s moleskin notebooks. He’d always had one going, filling at least two notebooks a year. In a sense, they were his diaries, but instead of filling them with activities and day-to-day recollections, they were filled with lists of books he was trying to acquire, and lists of books he already had. There was also page after page of favorite quotes, plus his current ever-changing lists of top tens. Ten best Signet paperback covers. Ten best standalone Christies. Ten best crime novels published before 1945. Harry had flipped through his father’s notebooks before. There was never anything personal, not even a shopping list. But, in a way, it was as personal as a diary. It mapped his interior world.

Harry flipped to the last entry, which came midway through the notebook. It was a quote, centered on the page:

“It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”

As was sometimes the case with quotes his father wrote down, it wasn’t attributed to anyone, probably because his father knew who said it, and these books were only for his father. Harry read the words several times, haunted by them. Maybe it was just some line from a song that his father liked, but it also sounded like a premonition of death.

Harry punched the line into his smartphone, and got an instant hit. It was from a song by Bob Dylan called “Not Dark Yet.” He wasn’t surprised. Dylan was his father’s favorite musician—there wasn’t even a distant second, except maybe Frank Sinatra. Bill had spent as much time obsessing over Dylan’s lyrics as he did actually listening to his music. His notebooks were filled with Dylan quotes, and sometimes he’d transcribe entire songs.

Still, Harry stared at this particular line from Dylan for another minute. It was the last thing his father had ever written. Then Harry flipped back a page. There was another quote, this one with an attribution:

“That’s the worst thing about democracy: there have to be two opinions about every issue.”

—Ross Macdonald, Black Money