Claire laughed again. Archie couldn’t remember ever having seen her in a dress before. With her very short dark hair, boyish frame, and penchant for jeans and T-shirts, Claire Masland was pretty and feisty and smart, but few would describe her as ladylike. Her pregnancy had brought out her latent femininity. She was in her second trimester, and Henry had told Archie that last week he’d found her crying over a bowl of cake batter. This from a woman who had once left a witness handcuffed to a park bench next to a flooding river. Estrogen. It was a powerful thing. Claire produced a small, sweetly wrapped gift and put it in Archie’s hand. “We wanted to drop off your present,” she said. Then she bit her lip and gazed past him, into his apartment. “I have to pee,” she added.

Archie stepped aside. “You know where to go,” he said.

She hustled past him toward the bathroom, her black high heels tapping against the fir floorboards.

Henry walked in and closed the door behind him. “She’s been peeing every fifteen minutes,” Henry said. “I don’t know where it’s all coming from.”

Archie flashed back to his ex-wife’s two pregnancies. “It’ll pass,” he said.

Henry took the drink from Archie’s hand and sipped from it.

“Do you want one?” Archie asked.

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Henry said. He lifted Archie’s glass to his mouth again and grinned. “I’ll just take yours.”

Archie examined his now-empty hand. “I find that I am suddenly thirsty,” he said. He walked to the kitchen and got another glass and then set it on the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the main living space, and poured another drink. Henry leaned against the bar next to him. Archie saw him glance across the living room at the closed bathroom door. “You’re getting mixed up in this whole thing with Leo, aren’t you?” Henry asked in a low voice.

Archie recorked the whiskey. “No comment.”

Henry ran his hand over his face and then smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Who’s running it?” he asked.

Archie took a drink and then set the glass on the bar. He looked at Henry with a helpless shrug.

“Jesus, Archie,” Henry said, his face reddening. “What if something happens to you? You don’t turn up, who am I supposed to call?”

“I’ll be fine,” Archie said. “But I need you to stop by tonight and take the dog out, okay? Use your key.”

“At what point do I start to worry?” Henry asked.