He’d supported Stan Timpson when Timpson, fresh out of law school and new to the DA’s office, had run for alderman. Timpson was from the neighborhood, after all, a comer, and if things went right, soon he’d be the guy to call when you needed your street plowed or your noisy neighbors rousted or your cousin put on the union dole.

I vaguely remembered Timpson from my childhood, but couldn’t completely separate where my own recollection of Timpson differed from the one I’d seen on TV. So when his voice filtered through my phone receiver, it seemed strangely disembodied, as if it were prerecorded.

“Pat Kenzie?” he said heartily.

“Patrick, Mr. Timpson.”

“How are you, Patrick?”

“Just fine, sir. How about yourself?”

“Great, great. Couldn’t be better.” He laughed warmly as if we’d shared a joke I somehow missed. “Diandra tells me you have some questions for me.”

“I do, yes.”

“Well, fire away, son.”

Timpson was only ten or twelve years older than I was. I wasn’t sure how that made me son.

“Diandra told you about the photo of Jason she received?”

“She sure did, Patrick. And I got to tell you, it seems a bit strange.”

“Yes, well—”

“Personally I think someone’s playing a trick on her.”

“Pretty elaborate trick.”

“She told me you dismissed the Mafia connection?”

“At the moment, yes.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Pat.”

“Is there anything your office is working on, sir, which could have caused someone to threaten your ex-wife and son?”

“That’s the movies talking, Pat.”

“Patrick.”

“I mean, maybe in Bogotá they go after their district attorneys on personal vendettas. Not in Boston. Come on, son—that’s the best you can do?” Another hearty laugh.

“Sir, your son’s life may be in danger and—”

“Protect him, Pat.”

“I’m trying to, sir. But I can’t do that if—”

“You know what I think this is? I’ll tell you the truth, it’s one of Diandra’s crazies. Forgot to take his Prozac and decided to make her nervous. You look over her patient list, son. That’s my suggestion.”

“Sir, if you’d just—”

“Pat, listen to me. I haven’t been married to Diandra in almost two decades. When she called last night, that’s the first time I’d heard her voice in six years. No one knows we were ever married. No one knows about Jason. The last campaign, believe me, we were waiting for the issue to be raised—how I left my first wife and baby boy and have maintained very little contact. Guess what, though, Pat? It never came up. A dirty political race in a dirty political town, and it never came up. No one knows about Jason or Diandra in relation to me.”

“What about—?”

“It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Pat. Tell your father Stan Timpson said hi. I miss that old guy. Where’s he hiding these days?”

“Cedar Grove Cemetery.”

“Got himself a groundskeeper job, did he? Well, got to run. Take care, Pat.”

“This kid,” Angie said, “is an even bigger slut than you used to be, Patrick.”