Harris looked away. He seemed to be glancing around his apartment. It was furnished in white and chrome in the kind of expensive yet sterile luxury which says nothing about the owner except that he has money. When Harris turned back, there was a queasy look in his eyes, as if he had swallowed something that didn’t agree with him.

“How did you do it?” Harris wanted to know. Despite everything, he couldn’t suppress a note of professional curiosity.

The Scorpion shrugged and said, “Given the French connection, I knew Gerard had to be working for either the Sûreté or the SDECE …”

“SDECE,” Harris said.

“Yes, they go in for subcontracting the pushers and pimps. At that point, it was just a matter of putting out the word and offering the right amount.”

Harris nodded. He tried to force a smile. It looked like the smile on a politician’s face as he’s being grilled by reporters on his unreported taxes.

“You were jealous, weren’t you, Scorpion? You did it to hurt her,” Harris whispered.

“Not her, you.”

The sound of a police siren hee-hawing through traffic grew louder, then faded into the night. Other tragedies, the Scorpion thought. He glanced at the gleaming white monuments to dead presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln; islands of light in a sea of darkness, like civilization itself, he mused. He thought about Kelly and sipped his drink.

Harris leaned forward. He looked longingly at the Scorpion’s drink and licked his lips. The Scorpion held it out and let him sip at it like a thirsty child.

“I couldn’t stand the idea of that greasy pig Abdul Sa’ad all over her. It kept getting in the way,” Harris said. His face was pained, as if something had broken inside and he was trying to hold it together.

“You really take the cake, Bob. Blaming Kelly for what was your fault, not hers,” the Scorpion sniffed.

“I can’t help it,” Harris confessed.

“Neither could she.”

For a long moment neither man spoke. They sat in their dinner jackets waiting for the conversation to resume, like two retired club members who never liked each other but who are the last survivors of the old crowd and have no one else left to talk to.

“How did you figure it out?” Harris asked quietly.

In some way, the shared knowledge that they had used each other and that each of them had used Kelly made it possible to talk.