“Says the guy who can’t get up off my floor.”

“I’m waiting for my second wind!”

“What are you doing here, Javier? Why’d they even let you out?”

“Let me out?” said Javier. “It’s a retirement village, not a goddamn prison camp! I leave when I want to leave! If I want to catch a plane, I catch a plane! Don’t you be treating me like I’m an old man. I ain’t dead yet!” Moving slowly, and carefully, Javier turned over on to his hands and knees.

Virgil watched him. “Did you travel across the country just so you could hit me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Javier wheezed, crawling to the wall. “Hitting you was a bonus. Hitting you made the trip sweeter.”

“So why are you here?”

“The mystery,” Javier grunted. Using the wall to steady himself, he started getting to his feet. Virgil stared at him. He knew about the murder? How the hell did he know about the murder?

“My doppelgänger,” Javier continued. “Want to … see him for myself. See if he … really is my double.” Finally, Javier was standing again. “Oh, thank Christ,” he muttered.

“Someone looks a little like you and you immediately get on a plane?”

Javier glared. “You said he looked exactly like me. That’s what you said.”

“I know what I said, but you couldn’t have known that I wasn’t exaggerating. You took my word on something like that? Why?”

“Because I want to see him, goddammit. Is that so hard to understand? If I have a double who looks just like me from years ago, I want to meet him. Comprende?”

“You can’t meet him.”

“The hell I can’t! Where’d you see him? Just tell me where you saw him and I’ll do the rest.”

“He was in my neighbour’s house …”

“Well, okay!”

“… killing my neighbour.”

Javier paused. “What’s that you say?”

“You heard.”

“My doppelgänger killed your neighbour? That’s what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Well … why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do the cops say about it?”

“That’s complicated.”

“In what way?”

“They’re in on it.”

“In on what?”

“The murder.”

Javier frowned. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning.”

“I was here. I looked into my neighbour’s house as your doppelgänger killed him. He snuck out, and before I could call them, the police turned up. The Chief of Police, actually. They took the body out in the middle of the night and covered up the whole thing.”

“Say it ain’t so.”

“I wish I could.”

“What kind of pills are you on, Abernathy?”

“Heart medication.”

“No pills that would make you hallucinate or imagine things or go crazy?”

“No crazy pills, no.”

“Cos it sounds like you’re on crazy pills.”

“I know how it sounds.”