“You’re insulting the eating habits of an ancient Asian culture. I should report you to the diversity police.”

“I am the police,” reminded Dick Tracy.

“Have you ever had a balut?”

“I smelled one once.”

Dick Tracy rang the doorbell, all the while carefully watching Condley as if he might soon bolt. A servant opened the double doors and Dick Tracy nudged Condley forward, waving good-bye and declining to enter the house himself. Condley stepped onto a shining teak entranceway. It was so cool inside that he began to shiver. The servant, who was a Navy steward dressed in a white coat and black trousers, gestured toward the living room.

“Would you like a drink, sir?”

“I’ll take a San Miguel.”

He heard a noise off to his left, and then a woman’s voice. “Maybe you’d like a Heineken?”

He turned and saw the woman, who was descending a stairway. She was about his age, firm and athletic but tense-looking around her eyes and mouth, as if she were expecting him to attack her or break all her dishes. Her hand was on the outer rail. She was wearing a red silk dress, far too nice for a lunch at home. She looked mildly disappointed when she saw him, her eyes lingering on his rumpled shirt and faded blue jeans as if his clothes emanated a bad odor. But then she recovered, perfectly feigning happiness.

“We have every kind of beer.”

“San Miguel is fine,” he said. “Beer isn’t worth drinking unless you can taste the rust.”

She laughed. Once her face relaxed he could tell that she was unpretentious, and he decided that he liked her. “The infamous Brandon Condley,” she said with tentative fondness. “Or shall I say, the legend?”

“You better stick with infamous. Look, I don’t think I can stay for lunch.”

“Of course you can! Wayne will be here any second. I’m Maureen.”

He shook her hand and joined her at a small table that had already been set for three people. The servant brought him his beer and he drained most of it in one large gulp. She was studying him with a curiosity born of a hundred stories told through the decades until reality and imagination had fused into an impossibly complicated and mildly cartoonish persona.

Brandon Condley, still on patrol, passing checkpoint infinity . . .

“Wayne said you never did, actually, come back from Viet Nam. Not in the way the others did. That you’ve stayed in Asia all these years. What is it that you’ve done out there?”

Music dominated the room, a compact-disc collection of classical strings. The servant entered from the kitchen, carrying a silver tray covered with succulent, elegantly prepared beef and vegetable appetizers. Condley picked at the appetizers, relaxing into the music and deciding to enjoy this moment of fairly exquisite living. The day’s quotient of beer had settled into him with a joyous glow.