But he’d sensed the pressure building inside Alicia. Sitting across from her in Julio’s had been like chatting with a lump of C-4. She’d had disgruntled post office employee written all over her. But maybe this incident had been a good thing. Maybe she’d released enough steam so he could talk her out of torching her father’s old house.

“Yeah,” he said as noncommittally as he could. “I was thinking of stopping down there and having a word with her.”

“Is this about that ‘personal matter’ she wanted to discuss with you?”

“Could be,” he teased. He knew Gia was dying to know what her Dr. Clayton could want with Repairman Jack, but would never ask.

“Sure,” Gia said. “Come on down. I mean, there’s a police detective here right now, taking her statement. But I’m sure when he’s through—”

“That’s okay,” Jack said quickly. “Maybe some other time.”

She laughed. “I thought you’d say that.”

Jack had to smile. “Very funny. Catch you later.”

He hung up and walked back to the corner of Thirty-eighth for another look at the Clayton house and its cozy neighbors.

Nope. A fire here would definitely not be a good thing.

8.

Kemel Muhallal rose from his evening prayers, carefully rolled up his prayer rug, and returned it to the closet. As he moved toward the front of the living room, his gaze was drawn to the catalog lying facedown on the coffee table. He averted his eyes. Not now. Not so soon after prayer.

Kemel stepped to the front window and stretched as he looked down on West Seventy-seventh Street, five stories below. It was always good to shed those restrictive Western clothes and get into a comfortable thobe. He shifted the narrow shoulders of his lean frame within the flowing white floor-length garment as he watched the traffic crawl along the street. Everything in this city seemed always to be in high gear—the way its people walked and talked, the frantic pace of its business, the headlong rush of its daily life… and yet its traffic progressed by inches.

He turned away from the window, and immediately his eyes, his shameless, rebellious eyes, fixed on the catalog. They drew him forward. He felt as if he were on a wire, being reeled toward the coffee table. Slowly, he lowered himself to the sofa and stared at the glossy back cover. It was addressed to this apartment, but not to him. As the landlord had explained, the previous tenant had left a forwarding address for first-class mail only. The rest of it continued to be delivered here.

“You don’t want it,” the man had told him, “just chuck it out.”

Of course. How simple. But in order to “chuck it out,” Kemel first had to sift through it, to make sure nothing was intended for him. So many catalogs in the course of a week. Did Americans buy everything by mail? Often he would flip through them, marvel at the variety of merchandise available via a simple phone call, then drop them in the trash.