Eleven years ago, Roland George and his wife, Liana, had been driving up the Rahway Turnpike from a weekend at the Jersey shore when a dark brown Mercury had pulled up alongside them and two Puerto Rican hitters had cut loose with a couple of Sig automatics, payback from a Colombian dope dealer whom Roland had busted. Roland survived the bullets and the subsequent crash, but Liana did not. Maxie had been left in the care of a neighbor. They had had no children. Roland George took a forced medical retirement, drank heavily for a year, then sobered up to write thick, violent novels about New York cops tracking down psychopathic killers. The first two didn’t sell, but the last three had ridden the New York Times bestseller list to a couple of penthouse apartments, a twenty-eight-room home on a lake in Vermont, and substantial contributions to political candidates favoring the death penalty. Fourteen weeks after Liana George died, the two Puerto Rican hitters held up a Taco Bell in Culver City, California, and were shot to death by a uniformed police officer named Joe Pike. That’s how Joe and I knew Roland George. Roland still wore the wedding ring.

I pulled to the curb, got out, and Roland shook my hand. His grip was hard and firm, but bony. “You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“Let Thomas here put your car in the parking garage across the street. There’s an Italian place we can walk to not far from here.”

“Sure.” I gave the younger man my keys, then leaned down and patted Maxie on his little square head. It was like petting a fire hydrant. “How ya doing, old boy?”

Maxie broke wind.

Roland shook his head and looked concerned. “He’s not doing so well.”

“No?”

“He’s gone deaf. He’s got the arthritis, he’s blind as a bat, and now he can’t hear. I think he sees things.”

“Growing old is hell.”

“I bear witness to that.”

Thomas said, “Shall I pick you up at the restaurant, Mr. George?”

“That’s all right, Thomas, I think we’ll walk back. Be good for old Max.”

“Very good, sir.”

Thomas climbed into che Taurus and pulled away. I said, “I never heard anyone say ‘very good, sir’ in real life before.”

“I keep trying to break him of it, but, you know, he’s working his way through Columbia Law.”

Roland and I turned off Barrow onto Fourth. To get Maxie going, Roland had to lift him to his feet, then give little tugs on the leash to point him in the right direction. Maxie’s tongue stuck out and a ribbon of drool trailed along the sidewalk and his back legs lurched along with a mind of their own. The arthritis.