Scarpetta and Benton paused at Elaine’s table to say hello—a kiss on each cheek, and I haven’t seen you in a while, where have you been? Scarpetta learned she had just missed a former Secretary of State, and last week it was a former Giants quarterback she didn’t like, and tonight, a talk show host she liked even less. Elaine said she had other guests coming, but that wasn’t news, because the grande dame knew everybody expected in her salon on any given night.

Scarpetta’s favorite waiter, Louie, found just the right table.

He said to her as he pulled out her chair, “I shouldn’t bring it up, but I’ve heard everything that’s gone on.” Shaking his head. “I shouldn’t say it—to you of all people. Gambino, Bonanno? It was better back then. You know? They did what they did, but they had their reasons, know what I mean? They didn’t go around whacking people for the hell of it. Especially doing some poor lady like that. A dwarf. And that elderly widow. Then the other woman and the kid. What chance did they have?”

“They didn’t,” Benton said.

“Me? I believe in cement shoes. There’s special situations. You don’t mind me asking, how’s the little … you know, the other dwarf doing? I feel like I shouldn’t use that word because a lot of people say it in the pejorative.”

Oscar had contacted the FBI and was fine. A GPS microchip had been removed from his left buttock, and he was taking a rest, as Benton put it, at the private and posh psychiatric unit at McLean called the Pavilion. He was getting therapy and, most of all, was being given the gift of feeling safe until he could sort himself out. Scarpetta and Benton would head back to Belmont in the morning.

“He’s doing okay,” Benton said. “I’ll tell him you asked.”

Louie said, “What can I bring you? Drinks? Calamari?”

“Kay?” Benton said.

“Scotch. Your best single-malt.”

“Make that two.”

Louie said with a wink, “For you? My special stash. A couple new ones for you to try. Anybody driving?”

“Strong,” Scarpetta said, and Louie headed to the bar.

Behind her, at a table by a window overlooking Second Avenue, a big man wearing a white Stetson sat alone, working on what looked like straight vodka or gin with a twist. Now and then he craned his neck to check the score of a basketball game playing silently on the TV above his head, and Scarpetta got a glimpse of his big jaw and thick lips, and long white sideburns. Then he stared at nothing, slowly turning his glass in small circles on the white tablecloth. Something about him was familiar, and she envisioned footage she’d seen on TV and was seized by the shock that she was looking at Jake Loudin.