Paul raised his hands in frustration, then let them fall to his side. “I guess I’ll just hang out here then,” he said. “Maybe there’s a game on.”

I glanced at Sarah just as Sarah glanced at me. For Sarah’s recently announced plan to be acted upon, it would be better if we had the house to ourselves.

“Okay,” I said slowly, reaching for my wallet. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll give you twenty bucks if you promise that tomorrow you’ll start looking for some sort of part-time job.”

Paul strode across the kitchen, snatched the twenty I was holding up in my hand, and said, “Deal. I’ll be some goddamn sorry-ass burger flipper if that’s what you want.” And he was out the door again in a shot.

I waited for it to swing shut, for the dust to settle, and then said to Sarah, “I’m beginning to think we need to crack down on the kids’ language.”

Sarah shook her head sadly. “That fucking ship has sailed,” she said. “I think you have failed to set a good example.”

She got up from the table, reached out for my hand, and started leading me to the stairs.

“What did they used to call Myanmar?” I asked her.

“Burma,” Sarah replied.

“I think that’s right,” I said.

Sarah, not even waiting until we’d reached the second floor, was unbuttoning her blouse as she scaled the stairs.

“Dangerous,” I said, following her. “You’re the one who’s dangerous.”

3

I WAS SETTLING BACK in at my desk at the Metropolitan, having just returned from the cafeteria with a coffee, when I caught a whiff of something unpleasant behind me. That could mean only one of two things. Either one of the photogs had just returned from covering a drowning in the sewers, or our top police reporter was in the vicinity.

Without turning around, I said, “What is it, Dick?” Slowly, I spun my computer chair around to look at him.

“How did you know it was me?” he asked. Dick Colby is not only the paper’s best crime reporter, he’s also its most odiferous. His fellow staffers are unsure whether it’s that he fails to bathe, or to do his laundry, or possibly a combination of the two. He lives alone. I don’t know whether he’s ever been married, but I couldn’t imagine a wife sending him out into the world this way. He’s a gruff, slightly overweight, prematurely graying creature in his late forties, and I didn’t know whether he was aware that most everyone referred to him, behind his back at any rate, as “Cheese Dick.”

“Sixth sense,” I said. I’d taken a deep breath before turning around and was slowly exhaling as I spoke. “You want something?”

“Your notes on the Wickens thing. Phone numbers, stuff like that. I need them.”

This request so took me by surprise that I breathed in suddenly, then coughed. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said.