He grunted and rolled his window halfway down. Rockabilly music burst into the ’Vette from speakers above the diner’s wraparound awning—somebody who sounded like Buddy Holly but wasn’t.

“Hi.” The carhop outside leaned toward him with a pad, a pencil, and a very cute smile. “Will the two of you be needing menus?”

Nimec told her they wouldn’t and placed their orders and watched the carhop roll off across the parking lot with the diminishing clatter that skate wheels make when spinning away over paved surfaces.

Then he became quiet again.

“About the Blob winning an Oscar,” Megan said. “A nonhuman superstar of undetermined sexual identity must have caused quite a ruckus at the time. This was 1957 or ’58 and couldn’t have been more than three or four years after the McCarthy hearings, blacklisting . . . did you know even Lucille Ball came under investigation, by the way? Lucy, of all people in the world. But what’s odd about how it came about was that Desi—”

“Meg, give me a break.” Nimec glanced over at her. “There’re some things we need to discuss.”

She gave him a look of mock surprise.

“No kidding,” she said. “Here I thought you only dragged me out of my apartment at ten o’clock at night to go hot-rodding around the Bay Area and chowing down fast food.”

Nimec sat there unconsciously tapping the steering wheel.

“Ricci was over at my place before,” he said. “I asked him to come for shooting practice at the range. Figured it might loosen him up, get him talking. The way it did sometimes before he left here.”

“And it didn’t work.”

Nimec shook his head no.

“A big piece of him’s still gone,” he said. “Maybe most of him. He won’t tell me what he’s thinking, or what he’s feeling. I can guess some of it. But just enough to know he isn’t right.”

“Does it worry you?”

“Some, yeah,” Nimec said. He moved his shoulders. “Could be I’d feel different if I wasn’t heading off for Gabon the day after tomorrow. Once Ricci got back, I had myself convinced the normal routine would help him. You start on an everyday grind, it can smooth the edges from the outside in.”

“And you haven’t seen any change?”

“Not for the better.” Nimec said.

Megan mulled that over.

“I haven’t missed getting nicked by those edges you mentioned,” she said. “But I also haven’t been back in SanJo very long, and it’s an understatement to say I’m not close to him. I don’t believe he likes me too much. Sometimes I doubt he even respects me.” She paused. “I suppose that’s my way of making excuses for leaving you stuck with a problem that really needed attention from both of us.”