Sanchez beamed at Archie, apparently tickled to get to deliver the news. “Doctors said that if you’d had a spleen you would have definitely bled out,” he said. “You’d be dead. The fact that she had already taken it out saved your life.” Sanchez shook his head in disbelief.

Just perfect. “Lucky me,” Archie said.

Sanchez eyeballed his watch again. “Either of you want to give me a statement to release to the media?” he asked Archie and Henry.

“Just make something up,” Archie said. Then he remembered what Debbie had said. “Are they really telling everyone to stay indoors tonight?” Archie asked.

“The city is crawling with jokers wearing masks,” Sanchez said. “She could be any one of them. The fewer people in costume, the better.”

It was all so ridiculous, such a waste of time. Didn’t they realize that? She had gotten what she came for. Archie looked from Sanchez to Henry. Why didn’t they see it? “She’s gone,” Archie told them.

“Sure, she’s gone,” Sanchez said, extracting a small, neatly folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket with two fingers. “For now.”

Sanchez held the paper out to Archie. “In the meantime, I know it’s not much, but you’d appreciate it even more if you knew how much paperwork it took.”

Archie took the piece of paper and unfolded it. It was a check made out to Archie from the FBI in the amount of $329.38.

“For the tuxedo,” Sanchez explained. “It was the least we could do.”

Archie laughed. It hurt, but it was the good kind of pain.

“Be seeing you,” Sanchez said with a nod to both Henry and Archie, and he went out the door to Archie’s room into the bright hospital hallway. As the door closed behind him, Archie noticed two uniformed patrol cops standing in the hall.

“It’s a precaution,” Henry said. “And not to change the subject, but I have a call.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and showed it to Archie.

“Go ahead,” Archie said.

Henry stood up and stepped away to the window to take the call. Archie watched him. He was wearing the black jeans and black cowboy boots he’d had on the day before. The pits of his black T-shirt were scalloped with sweat. The seams of his boots were edged with dirt, and the same pale yellow leaf still clung stubbornly to his heel. Henry’s T-shirt was puckered with dried bloodstains. The black cotton camouflaged them, but Archie could see the hardened blood on the fabric, just as it struck him that the blood must be from him.

The anemic sky darkened behind Henry. Archie watched as his friend pulled his notebook from his pants again and held it against the wall to scribble a few notes. Then Henry thanked the person who had called, hung up, and put the phone back in his pocket.