“Going out?” he said.

“Bravo.”

“To do what?”

She snapped open her case, displayed a custom pool cue in two parts that screwed together, drowsing in a bed of midnight-blue velvet.

He had got it right. His mind relaxed in a mental sigh.

She reached for the front doorknob. “Come or stay here, makes no difference to me.”

* * *

In this sense, at least, it was like the old days. How many times had he accompanied her on her nocturnal forays into the lower dens of the city, looking for marks whose money she cheerfully would take? But unlike her drinking bouts, she lost her pool bets as often as she won. Clearly, she was learning the form, feeling her way toward a better ratio. It never came, at least not when Whitman had been with her, and he had at last come to the conclusion that time and again the game rejected her attempts at mastery. This was initially a mystery to Whitman. He knew her sense of geometry and vectors was impeccable. It was some time before he realized her weakness: she would not figure the odds correctly. He sensed she could do it if she wanted, but she clearly did not. She was reckless; she wanted to defy the odds, to rise above them into a kind of goddess-like plane. She never made it. She never crashed and burned, either, which, he supposed, said something just as important about her psyche.

It was very late when they entered The Right Cue, a divey pool hall and bar in the none-too-savory southeast quadrant of D.C.

“Who are you hoping to take money from tonight?” he asked. “The indigent and the homeless?”

He was beginning to think she would ignore him, when she abruptly said, “This is where the best players in town congregate.”

She went not to the double rows of twelve green-topped tables, but to the bar, where she ordered a double Jim Beam. The bartender, a beefy man with a red face and wiry tufts of hair over his ears, complied without comment or interest. He had been watching ESPN when they had walked in, and seemed in no mood to be disturbed. There were two other people at the bar, both men, staring into their drinks as if trying to divine where their lives had made a wrong turn.

Whitman asked for an aged tequila, of which, the bartender said, there was none. He ordered a tonic water instead.

Behind them, the soft click of cues against balls was a slow-motion reminder to Whitman of the clack-clack-clack of mah-jongg tiles in Hong Kong dens he had frequented years ago. Being reminded of those days, when he was no more than a green-behind-the-ears field man, was good for him, especially at this moment in time when it seemed his plan for Charlie was teetering on the edge of oblivion and could so easily tip over into a horror show. Of course, what came after the golden days and crimson nights of Hong Kong was the FBI. And then St. Vincent had shown up. And then came the Well, a horror show of an altogether higher magnitude.