Thirty minutes later, he was in the basement of a modest high-rise in Newark. He sat at a table with his hands on a semi-sticky table. The room had one barred window and cement walls the color and texture of dried oatmeal. The feds excused themselves and left Myron alone. Myron sighed and sat back. He'd figured that this was the old soften-him-up-by-making-him-wait bit, when the door flew open.

The woman was first. She wore a pumpkin-orange blazer, blue jeans, sneakers, and ball-and-chain earrings. The word that came to mind was husky. Not big really. Husky. Everything was husky--even her hair, a sort of canned-corn yellow. The guy riding in on her fumes was geeky thin with a pointy head and a small, greased shock of black hair. He looked like an upside-down pencil. He spoke first.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Bolitar," Pencil said.

"Good afternoon."

"I'm Special Agent Rick Peck," he said. "This is Special Agent Kimberly Green."

The orange-blazered Green did a caged-lion pace. Myron nodded at her. She nodded back but grudgingly, like her teacher had just told her to apologize for something she didn't do.

Pencil Peck continued. "Mr. Bolitar, we'd like to ask you a few questions."

"What about?"

Peck kept his eyes on his notes and spoke like he was reading. "Today you visited one Stan Gibbs at 24 Acre Drive. Is that correct?"

"How do you know I didn't visit two Stan Gibbs?"

Peck and Green exchanged a glance. Then Peck said, "Please, Mr. Bolitar, we'd appreciate your cooperation. Did you visit Mr. Gibbs?"

"You know I did," Myron said.

"Fine, thank you." Peck wrote something down slowly. Then he looked up. "We'd very much like to know the nature of your visit."

"Why?"

"You are the first visitor Mr. Gibbs has had since moving to his current residence."

"No, I mean, why do you want to know?"

Green crossed her arms. She and Peck looked at each other again. Peck said, "Mr. Gibbs is part of an ongoing investigation."

Myron waited. No one said anything. "Well, that pretty much clears it up."

"That's all I can say for the moment."

"Same here."

"Pardon?"

"If you can't say any more, I can't say any more."

Kimberly Green put her hands on the table, gave a toothy grimace--husky teeth?--and leaned down like she might take a bite out of him. The canned-corn hair smelled like Pert Plus. She eyeballed him--must have read a memo on intimidating glares--and then spoke for the first time. "Here's how we're going to play it, asshole. We're going to ask you questions. You're going to listen to them and then you're going to answer them. You got it?"

Myron nodded. "I want to make sure I got this straight," he said to her. "You're playing bad cop, right?"

Peck picked up the ball. "Mr. Bolitar, no one is interested in making trouble here. But we'd very much like your cooperation in this matter."

"Am I under arrest?" Myron asked.

"No."