Lusk nodded; it was a fair assessment. He scratched the stubble on his cheek. “The wife,” he said, by way of explanation.

Keegan wandered over to the wall of fish tanks, each of them a bright, mesmerizing window into a carefully arranged underwater world. “Why all the aquariums?”

“The word you meant to use is aquaria,” Lusk said. “Good thing you’re not a writer. And don’t tap on the glass, thank you very much.”

Keegan took his finger away from the tank where he’d been trying to get the attention of a long skinny fish with a bullet-like tail. “Sorry,” he said. “Where did you get all this?”

“Here and there,” Lusk said vaguely. “That one you’re annoying is called a snakehead.”

Keegan nodded. The fish nuzzled the pebbles at the bottom of the tank and then darted behind a lava rock. “But why?”

Lusk shrugged. “Am I not allowed to have a hobby?”

In another tank, a tiny zebra-striped shark seemed to be hovering in place, mesmerized, studying Keegan from the other side of the glass.

“I don’t know,” Keegan said. “It just seems a tame pastime for a man of your reputation.”

Lusk dug his hands into his denim pockets. “If it makes you feel any better, most of them are illegal. Smuggled up from Mexico.”

“Fish can be illegal?”

“Dangerous ones can,” Lusk said. “I wouldn’t dip my fingers in any of these tanks if I were you.”

One aquarium on the far-right side held a dense mass of common goldfish—a glinting orange cloud of them. Some floated, dead, at the water’s surface, bleaching to white.

“Why all the goldfish?” Keegan asked.

Lusk grinned. “Think about it,” he said. He gestured at a pair of matching recliners. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable.” He drifted over to a doorway. “I’m getting a beer, if you want one.”

“Sure,” Keegan said. He sat in one of the chairs. The table between them held a broad assortment of ladies’ magazines—Redbook, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s—all a month out of date, some sun-faded. Newsstand cast-offs.

While Lusk was in the next room, Keegan glanced over his shoulder at the writhing mass of orange fish in the single aquarium. “You use those ones to feed the others?” he called into the next room.

“Nothing gets past you,” Lusk called back.

The chair Keegan sat in was peppered with dog hair. From under the coffee table, the tiny black dog looked up at Keegan with rheumy eyes. The hair on its muzzle was going white. It lifted and set down its paws in some odd, excited rhythm.

“Sugar Drop?” Keegan said.