Two minutes later Investigator Everett Kramden’s van was heading slowly down the town road, out of sight.

The air was perfectly still. There was no hint of movement in the tall, brown grass, nor even in the smallest branches at the tops of the trees. The only sound was that faint, continuous ringing in Gurney’s ears—the sound the neurologist had explained wasn’t really a “sound” at all.

As he turned to go back into the house, the side door opened and Kyle and Kim emerged. “Is the asshole gone?” asked Kyle.

“Appears to be.”

“While Madeleine has the omelets baking, I’m giving Kim a two-minute ride on the bike.” He sounded excited. She looked pleased.

By the time Gurney reached the kitchen, the throaty twin-carbureted engine was in full, minimally muffled roar.

Madeleine was setting the timer on the oven. She looked over at him. “Did you ever see the French movie The Man with the Black Umbrella?”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s a clever scene in it. A man, dressed in a black raincoat and carrying a folded-up black umbrella, is being followed by a team of assassins with sniper rifles. They’re following him through the winding cobblestone streets of an old town. It’s a misty Sunday morning, and church bells are ringing in the background. Every time the two assassins try to line up the man with the umbrella in the sights of their rifles, he disappears around another corner. Then they come to an open plaza with a big stone church. Just as the assassins are aiming their rifles, the man hurries up the steps and slips into the church. So the assassins decide to take up positions on both sides of the plaza, where they can watch the church doors and wait for him to come out. Some time passes, it starts to rain, the church doors open. The assassins get ready to shoot. But instead of just the man who went in, two men come out, both dressed in black raincoats, and they both open up black umbrellas, so the assassins can’t see their faces clearly. After a couple of seconds of confusion, the assassins decide to shoot both of them. But then another man comes out in a black raincoat with a black umbrella, and then another, and then ten or twenty more, and eventually the whole plaza is full of people under black umbrellas. It becomes rather surreal—the expanding pattern of umbrellas in the plaza. And the assassins are just standing there in the rain, getting soaked, with no idea what to do.”

“How does it end?”

“I don’t remember—I saw it so long ago. All I remember clearly are the umbrellas.” She wiped the countertop with a sponge, then took it to the sink and rinsed it out. “What did he want?”