I put the safety on and returned the gun to its holster. It wouldn’t do me much good at close quarters, anyway—I’d brought it out mainly for show.

Bledsoe was wearing a thick tweed jacket over a pale blue cashmere sweater. He looked nautical and comfortable. I was feeling the chill in my left shoulder—it had started to ache as I sat staring into the water.

“I blow up too fast,” he said abruptly. “But you don’t need a gun to keep me at bay, for Christ’s sake.”

“Fine.” I kept my feet braced, ready to spring to one side.

“Don’t make things so fucking difficult,” he snapped.

I didn’t move, but I didn’t relax either. He debated some point with himself—to stomp off offended or say what was on his mind. The second party won.

“It was Grafalk who told you about my youthful misadventure?”

“Yes.”

He nodded to himself. “I don’t think there’s another person who knows—or still cares … I was eighteen years old. I’d grown up in a waterfront slum. When he pulled me into the Cleveland office I ended up handling a lot of cash transactions. His mistake—he should never have put anyone that age in front of so much money. I didn’t steal it. That is, of course I stole it. What I mean is, I wasn’t thinking of stashing away loot and escaping to Argentina. I just wanted to live in a grand style. I bought myself a car.” He smiled reminiscently. “A red Packard roadster. Cars were hard to get in those days, right after the war, and I thought I was the slickest thing on the waterfront.”

The smile left his face. “Anyway, I was young and foolish and I spent the stuff blatantly, begging to be caught, really. Niels saw me through it, rehired me right out of Cantonville. He never mentioned it in twenty years. But he took it very personally when I set up Pole Star back in ’74. And he started throwing it in my face—that he knew I was a criminal at heart, that I’d stayed with him just to learn the secrets of his organization and then left.”

“Why did you leave?”