“You’re right, my friend didn’t tell me any of this,” I said. “You would think he’d have mentioned it. Then again, it’s been a while since I’ve seen him. Or his uncle. Hey, maybe you know them. Isaac and Joey Deutsch?”

“I don’t know them,” said Feigenbaum, but behind his glasses, his eyes had narrowed and were studying me carefully, as if maybe he had heard of them, after all. I didn’t spend ten years at the Alex without getting an itch for when a man is lying. He pulled on his earlobe a couple of times and then glanced away, nervously. That was the clincher.

“But you must,” I said firmly. “Isaac used to be a boxer. He was a real prospect until the Nazis excluded Jews from the fights and took away his license. Joey was his trainer. Surely you know them?”

“I tell you I don’t know them.” Feigenbaum spoke firmly.

I shrugged and lit a cigarette. “If you say so. I mean, it’s nothing to me.” I puffed the cigarette to let him get a whiff of it. I could tell he was desperate for a smoke, even though he still had the one I’d given him behind his ear. “I guess all that talk about the three musketeers and looking out for each other was just that. Talk.”

“What do you mean?” His nostrils flared in front of the tobacco smoke and he licked his lips.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.” I took another drag and dried his face with it. “Here. Finish it. You know you want one.”

Feigenbaum took the cigarette from my fingers and went to work on it as if I’d offered him an opium pipe. Some people are just like that with a nail: they make you think that maybe there’s something really harmful about a little thing like a cigarette. It’s a little unnerving to watch an addiction at work like that sometimes.

I looked the other way, smiling nonchalantly. “Story of my life, I guess. I don’t mean anything at all. Maybe none of us do, right? One minute we’re here, and the next we’re gone.” I glanced at my wrist and then remembered I’d deliberately left my wristwatch back at the hotel. “Bloody wristwatch. I keep forgetting I pawned it. Where is this fellow Goerz, anyway? Shouldn’t he be here by now?”

“He’ll be here when he’s here,” said Feigenbaum, and then, still smoking my cigarette, he walked away.