When he realized he’d probably gone on too long, he apologized, but she just pushed her cigarettes back across the table. She asked him to tell her about his life on the force, and she listened as closely when he told her about the glamourless day-to-day as when he told her about the front-page felons. And when he told her about the Doheny Drowning, she just lit up with laughter.

She laughed like young ladies should laugh in kitchens and castles, in Hollywood and Tenafly, and everywhere else in the world.

•

WHEN THE DINING CAR was finally empty—after the studious young man had lugged his labors back to his berth and the freckle-faced kid had deftly swept the change that his mother had left for the waiter into his blazer pocket—Evelyn said that she owed Charlie an apology.

—When you sat down, she said, you looked like a salesman who’d traveled his route ten too many times, and I had every intention of ignoring you. But once you got started, Mr. Granger, I could’ve listened all the way to Timbuktu.

She patted the table once and stood.

—I guess it just shows to go you.

But as she began to walk away, he stayed her progress by reaching for her arm. She looked back and tilted her head.

—May I ask you a personal question, Miss Ross?

—Of course, she said.

—Why did you extend your ticket from Chicago to Los Angeles?

She showed a hint of surprise and then smiled.

—To be perfectly honest, I have no idea.

And he could see it again: that sparkle of having made the decision. A decision that was all the better for having no cause or impetus or subjugation to a grander scheme. And suddenly, Charlie knew that he wasn’t going back to his son’s.

The young lady didn’t continue on immediately. She lingered for a moment, mulling some quandary of her own as the East grew ever eastward.

—May I ask you a personal question, Mr. Granger? she said at last.

—Of course.

—How does one make a five-star Mickey Finn?

Prentice

ON THE SIXTH OF OCTOBER, 1938, at the northeast corner of the swimming terrace of the Beverly Hills Hotel, Prentice Symmons stopped to catch his breath between two chaises longues. He stopped as had Kutozov on the fields of Borodino; as had Washington on the western shores of the Hudson having slipped through the grasp of Howe. Here on the swimming terrace, the sun paused in its course, and the snap of the canopies subsided as Prentice leaned upon his cane.