Marino has dug up a sports drink that’s as hot as the humid foul air. The bottle was hiding inside a rucksack for God knows how long but I don’t care. I wipe lint and grime off it, twist the cap, releasing the seal with a pop. The fruity flavor is salty and cloying, and I feel it instantly like the hit of a cigarette or a shot of Scotch.

“I don’t know if something like that can go bad after a while,” Marino watches me sip, and his clothing is several shades darker from sweat. “Sorry it’s not cold.”

ON THE DECK BEHIND the house is the Endless Pool Briggs was constantly repairing.

I can see it in my mind as vividly as a photograph, and it pains me unbearably. Too frugal and stubborn to replace it, he held it together with spit and rubber bands, he liked to quip. To him it was a functional exercise machine no different from a treadmill or a stationary bike, and swimming in place was part of his daily routine when he was at his and Ruthie’s Maryland home.

I was witness to it when I would stay with them, and the appointed time was six P.M., the witching hour between work and Johnnie Walker, as he liked to say. He’d step down into water heated to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and turn on the current, selecting whatever resistance suited his mood and conditioning. Then he’d swim in place for thirty minutes. No more or less, and after all we’ve been through? After all my complaints about his jerry-rigged engineering? This is how it ends?

I ask Benton that. I need to know it for a fact. Where was Briggs? Was he at the house in Maryland? I want to know for sure and don’t care if Benton doesn’t want to talk in front of Marino or perhaps at all. I don’t care whose case it is. I need to know a few things. I need to know them now.

“Yes, in Bethesda,” Benton answers me while communicating with a look not to push him too far, that we can’t be talking about this here.

“Where was Ruthie?” I push a little more. “Was she home?” He can tell me that much.

“She was making dinner.”

The kitchen sink overlooks the redwood deck and fenced-in yard in back. But one can’t see the pool because it’s off to one side near the bird feeder and the toolshed. I told Briggs more than once it wasn’t safe. If he had a heart attack, if something happened, very likely no one would see him in time.

I badgered him about getting a defibrillator, about installing security cameras. When he got the pacemaker, I gave him a CCTV starter kit so Ruthie could monitor his exercise from different areas of the house.