BUTCH LET HIMSELF and Curly back into Theresa’s apartment. “I’ll get packed,” he said. “You get your stuff together.”

“Where we going?”

“The Y, unless you have a more affordable idea.”

“Why?”

“Did you get the impression that my sis didn’t like you?”

“Sorta.”

“That’s why. I’d be thrown out tomorrow anyway, so we may as well go now.” He went into the kitchen, opened a tea canister and shook out two hundred dollars, leaving an IOU.

“So tell me about this mark you got,” Curly said.

“Nothing to tell yet, except he’s well heeled. I’ll need to do some research.”

“When?”

“I’ve got a job interview tomorrow morning. I’ll know more after that. You might look around for a way to make a reasonably honest buck. I can’t support you, Curly.”

“I still know how to pick a pocket. I’ve been practicing.”

“I don’t understand how someone who looks like you could get close enough to anybody to pick his pocket.”

“All I need is a crowd. I’ll go over to the theater district about curtain time and case the bunch leaving the theaters. They’re always in a hurry.”

“You’re going to get busted, and there goes your parole.”

“I told you, I didn’t get paroled. I served my time. I’m free as a bird.”

“Until you get caught picking a pocket. And remember, I don’t have bail money for you.”

—

THEY DINED on excellent beef and a very fine wine. Laurence had decided that his newest regular indulgence would be never to drink plonk again; he had had enough of cheap wine at Oxford to last him a lifetime.

“Is your mother still alive?” she asked.

“Very much so, and married to the man she married when I was eight.”

“Who is he and what’s he like?”

“His name is Derek Fallowfield. He’s a very nice guy, who I think of as more of an uncle than a stepfather. He has his own successful ad agency in London and knows everybody.”

“I had a stepfather, too, but not nearly so nice a guy. I hated him.”

“No longer with us?”

“No, thank God. When he died he left my mother with enough to get by on, but not much more.”

“Where does she live?”

“In Greenwich, Connecticut, but not on the best side of town. At least she’s got the house, but it’s mortgaged. He was a traveling salesman—hale fellow, well met, you know?”

“I know. Derek is a bit that way himself, but in a charming and sophisticated way. He took me to his tailor when I left Oxford and had some clothes made for me. It was his way of sending me off into the world. He gave me my first car, too—his ten-year-old Mercedes Roadster, which I drove into its grave in a few years.”

“Were you a hell-raiser at Oxford?”