“I’m sorry I put it so badly. That’s not like me. After all, I’m supposed to be good with words. But I do need your help. With Dinah.”

“It’s been a long time since I knew anything about nineteen-year-old girls, Noreen. And even then, what I knew was probably hopelessly wrong. Short of spanking her, I don’t see what I can do.”

“I wonder if that might work,” she said.

“I don’t think it would help her very much. Of course, there’s always the possibility I might enjoy it, which is another reason to pack her off to Rhode Island. But I agree with you. The Barracuda Club is no place for a nineteen-year-old girl. Although there are much worse places in Havana.”

“Oh, she’s been to them all, I can assure you. The Shanghai Theater. The Cabaret Kursaal. The Hotel Chic. And those are just the match-books I’ve found in her bedroom. It might be even worse than that.”

I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t get any worse than them. Even in Havana.” I fetched my drink off the glass table and poured it safely away in my mouth. “All right, she’s wild. If the movies are right, then most kids are these days. But at least they’re not beating up Jews. And I still don’t see what I can do about it.”

Noreen found the Old Forester and refilled my glass. “Well, maybe we can think of something. Together. Like in the old days, remember? In Berlin? If things had worked out differently, we might even have made a difference. If ever I’d written that article, we might even have put a stop to Hitler’s Olympiad.”

“I’m kind of glad you didn’t write it. If you had, I’d probably be dead.”

She nodded. “For a while, we made quite an investigative team, Gunther. You were my Galahad. My knight of heaven.”

“Sure. I remember your letter. I’d like to tell you I still had it, but the Americans reorganized my filing system when they bombed Berlin. You want my advice about Dinah? I reckon you should fix a lock on her door and put her under a nine o’clock curfew. That used to work back in Vienna. When the Four Powers were in charge of the city. Also, you might think about not lending her the car whenever she asks for it. If it was me wearing those heels she had on, I might think twice about walking nine miles into the center of Havana.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Me wearing high heels? Sure, I’m a regular at the Palette Club, although they know me better there as Rita. You know, it’s not a bad thing that children should frequently disobey their parents. Especially when you consider the mistakes the parents made. Especially when they’re as grown up as Dinah obviously is.”