Devlin would have to have a street map ready, too. Yeah, right. His street map was in the glove box of the Seville.

And there was also the possibility that police were already at the address developing other evidence, and Devlin would walk into them accidentally.

He drove west before heading south again, then pulled over and lit a cigarette before reading again. He was getting that haunted-house feeling, as if he were stepping into a crime scene.

… I think none of it hurt us. In fact, given the way my father conducted his affairs so openly in front of us all—Joe and I realized what he was doing with women when we were ten and thirteen respectively—I wouldn’t be surprised if some shrink came to the conclusion that our own activities kept us diverted from the sordid truth about our beloved daddy.

I had the misfortune to marry badly. All of Anita’s public and private virtues do not make up for her inability to be intimate. I discussed this with you. When you said, “It sounds as if she makes love warily,” I thought that I was in the presence of a woman who is truly wise. In any event, I don’t know if marriage to Anita made me worse than I would have been, but I do know that my realization that the marriage, irrevocable as it was, was to be a failure, triggered the process that led to the revelation of my obsession in all its power and glory.

The rest, another two and a half pages, had been written at another time, and by the look of the handwriting, somehow more spiky, words crammed together, as many as fifteen per line, Jack was under very heavy internal pressure during the writing. Devlin was getting the haunted-house effect good now, his skin crawling, palms itching. I don’t work that way! What the hell was wrong with acting like a college boy imitating a movie star? Devlin did it all the time, if Jack was talking about sending the lady flowers, taking her to the places she wanted to go, and otherwise giving her reason to smile.

Sure. Devlin folded the letter and looked out the steamy windshield for a bar, coffee shop, or newsstand. In the middle of the block was a Chinese restaurant, just as good.

The place was empty. The telephone was in the rear, on the wall between the doors to the toilet.

The woman who picked up Eileen’s line said she hadn’t seen Eileen since morning. Devlin recognized the woman’s voice. She had gotten things wrong before. Devlin called John Lord, who picked up in the middle of the first ring.

“Ginzboig?” Devlin asked in a thick Yiddish accent.