“Just this guy. He works for Charlie and he’s usually the one who brings the money.”

Outside, the sun was dropping down and the sky was taking on a deep blue cast, but there was maybe a half hour of good light left. Toby was still working the ball. “I’m surprised you see Charlie. The top guys like Charlie and Sal always stay away from stuff like this. They use guys like Harry. Something goes wrong, Harry takes the fall. That’s what he’s paid for.”

She sipped some of the wine, then set down the glass as if the wine had lost its taste. “This is common to you, isn’t it? You deal with things like this all the time.”

“Not exactly like this, but close enough. People look for ways to trap themselves and they usually find what they look for. I see people at their extremes.”

“Are you good at what you do?”

“Not bad.”

“I’m surprised you found me. I took great care to hide myself. I erased my maiden name from all my credit records. I took the name Lloyd from a billboard.”

“You left a trail a mile wide.”

She picked up the wine again and had some, as if she needed the wine to help her talk about these things. “I want you to know that what I’ve built, I’ve built without their help and without their money. I didn’t use Peter’s help and I didn’t use theirs.”

“All right.”

“Three days after I made the first transfer, a man came to the bank and gave me an envelope containing one thousand dollars. I called Sal and told him to take the money back, but he wouldn’t. He told me that friends have to take care of one another, that kind of thing. He was sweet and charming, and it was a thousand dollars, so I let myself get talked into keeping it. That first time, after I got used to the idea, it was even sort of exciting. Do you see?”

I nodded.

“But after more calls, and more money, it wasn’t. I knew it was wrong and I was scared, and finally they said, okay, if you don’t want to get paid, we won’t pay you. But they had already paid me a total of sixty-five hundred dollars, and I had spent it.” She got up and went back down the hall again and came back with a 5 × 7 manila envelope. She opened it and shook out a small stack of papers and handed them to me. “Over the past three years I’ve put forty-two hundred dollars into various charities. I didn’t want to keep any of the sixty-five hundred. That’s all I can do.”

I looked. The receipts totaled forty-two hundred dollars. Twenty-three hundred dollars until a clean conscience. Extremes.

She said, “Does this help at all?”