We drove northeast out of Woodstock, climbing into the mountains. Carter talked aimlessly about Libby Blister. She had vacationed the summer before in Phoenicia, separated from her husband. Carter had met her one afternoon while tubing on the waters of the Esopus and she had asked to see him concerning matters of her divorce. She was, he enthused, the world’s most fantastic woman in bed. She was also bright, sophisticated, humorous, patient, and beautiful. “She is, don’t you think, Bobo? Beautiful, I mean?”

I assured him she was beautiful and told him I looked forward to having dinner with them.

“Tomorrow night?” he said. “That all right with you? I’ve got a meeting with a client tonight. A bankruptcy thing.”

“Fine,” I said.

We continued the slow drive and Carter began to talk about the closing of the resort hotels in the Shandaken Valley. He sounded like Lila. It was, he reported, a sad sign of the times. He personally had handled a half dozen closings in the bankruptcy courts, and there was about to be another. Great old places, he said of the resorts. I recognized two or three of the names.

“If you ever want to pick up something cheap and get back up here, let me know,” he advised. “Now would be the time, but who knows if anybody could make a go of them. Jesus, everybody goes to Europe now, or out west, or down to Florida. There was a time you came to the Catskills because it was paradise.”

He slowed his car and turned off the road at an unmarked mailbox that was wrapped with a flowering vine. The driveway was graveled. It twisted through a dense stand of hemlocks and ended at a large, secluded cedar ranch house.

“What do you think?” asked Carter.

“Impressive,” I said. “Why are we here? Is it yours?”

Carter did not answer. He got out of the car and motioned for me to follow.

At the front of the house, Carter lifted a stone and pulled out a plastic Ziploc bag with keys inside it. He went to the front door and opened it and stepped inside.

“I suppose you have a legal right to do this,” I said.

“Sure do, Bobo. It’s on the market in an unlisted sort of way. A new client of mine. I keep the keys under the rock because I don’t want every sleazeball agent in the valley having his go at the lockbox, but I’ve got a cleaning lady coming in once a week and she needs to get in.”