The man crossed his arms and held himself. He hunched forward. Dunne thought he was close to crying. He wondered if tears would come out of the socket containing the eye made of high-tech plastic.

“And then what?” he asked.

“He stayed at the place. Went out a few times. Said he had things to do.”

“And he asked for help?”

“I fucking told you,” he shouted. “I didn’t know anything about that.”

He swung his arms and knocked the bottle of rum. It flew off his lap and landed on the wood floor. The rum flowed into the floorboards.

“Shit,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“So what did he ask you to do?” Dunne asked.

“Said he needed a woman. Said he would pay. Not for him. But for some business associate.”

“You fixed him up with Raymond, who you knew from the bar?”

“But I didn’t know what it was all about. I fucking swear it.”

“And then?”

“Then he said he was going away for a few days. But no big deal. Like he was going to be back soon. Left some stuff. In my place. Then he … I bugged out of my place after that.”

He stared into space and rubbed one hand across the stubble on his face. Dunne wrote in the notebook.

“He was a fucking good man. He fucking was.”

“I’m sure he was,” Dunne said. “And his last name?”

“We weren’t supposed to tell each other that. Went by those names they gave us. Like me: Albert Peters. There’s a fucking name for you.”

“It wasn’t Max Bridge? Do you know why he would use that name?”

“No fucking clue—except that we used to sometimes call ourselves the fucking Maxes, like we’re going to take it to the max. It was a joke. That’s why we liked that tattoo. I mean, it looked like an M for Max.”

“Do you know where he was from?”

“A GOB like me.”

Dunne raised his eyebrows.

“Good ol’ boy. You know, another goober. From the South. Don’t know where. Used to talk about fishing and hunting with his dad. Told me he shot a copperhead when he was ten or something.”

“And how did he come to join your team?”

“I figured he’d been sent over from one of the services like I was. But one time—maybe when we were in Berlin—he said he went through Basic in the Marines but it didn’t work out. And never said nothing else about that.”

His eyes were beginning to droop. He was slurring words. What else to ask? Dunne wondered.

“Okay, who ran the team in Washington?”

“Who the fuck knows.”

“Well, you must have talked to someone, right?”