It was so hard to explain. “Well, say that one night you and Dan see a man at the back of an alleyway, and you think he has a gun, and you both hear a shot, and the two of you fire back. He drops. And now you run to his side and you see he’s a twelve-year-old kid with a toy gun and the shot you heard was a truck that backfired. The kid says, ‘Why’d you kill me?’ His face turns blue and he’s dead.

“Now you and Dan, you’re the only ones who saw what you did. You bundle up the kid and you take him to a reservoir and you toss him in. No one finds out, there’s no repercussions, and you go about your lives. Except that the two of you both have this knowledge. Sometimes it goes away for a while, but it always comes back. You like each other, trust each other . . . but wouldn’t you eventually want a partner who doesn’t know that this thing happened . . . so that you could pretend for a little while each day that you and your conscience were just fine?”

Culpepper said, “Yes, but, Ray, the thing is: you didn’t kill anyone.”

The wind made our jackets flap for a moment. We were like two perched birds figuring out where to roost this evening.

Culpepper continued to stare straight ahead. “Now, Ray, I’m going to show you something that you didn’t see. Understand? You’re not going to talk to anyone about it, and if you do, I’ll say you took it out of my glove compartment while I was talking to Officer Ciancimino. He just gave it to me now. They found it in Hewett’s cigar case, one of those metal-sleeve jobs that’ll hold five Panatellas. They didn’t think to open the case until a while ago.”

He reached into his vest pocket and took out the glassine envelope that he’d been given by Officer Ciancimino. It contained a folded sheet of blue paper.

“I’ve talked with your ex-wife and additionally God gave me this pair of eyes. I can see there’s something you feel about Gail Prentice other than admiration for her musical talents, and before you say how dare you, understand I’m not saying your feelings are necessarily romantic or sexual. I’m also aware that Gail is close to the age your daughter would be if she were alive today. It happens that I like you, Ray, or maybe I like your wife and since she likes you, I want to like you, too.”

He reached into his inside pocket and produced a set of white cotton gloves, as if he were about to do an impression of W. C. Fields.

“Put these on,” he said.

Apparently, I was the one who was going to do the impression.