“And now I have to tell Virginia.”

“You do. And I have no advice for you but to spare her the details as much as possible. Hitting her with all of it at once… well, the cruelty of that is just too much. She’s going to have to take the biggest, worst blow now, and then as the terrible details make themselves manifest, she’ll have to suffer again, but at least with that initial impact behind her. Hell, what do I know about it? I know one thing for sure—she needs to hear this from you, before it gets out otherwise.”

Sorrow and shock had erased any expression from his features. The only difference between Carl Hall’s blankness and Robert Greenlease’s was the humanity behind Bob’s.

Or was Carl Austin Hall all too human? Was he all our weaknesses wrapped up in one selfish, careless package? Where killing a child was just another get-rich-quick scheme?

Greenlease walked me to the door. I told him I’d be heading back tomorrow. My presence here was no longer needed or desirable—he knew where to find me and so did the authorities. He told me a room would be waiting at the President Hotel and that I could leave the Cadillac there. I should be sure, he said, to include such items as cabs to the airport on my expenses. I said I’d book my own flight. Life goes on. Like death.

When I approached the Verona Road FBI checkpoint, Special Agent Grapp waved me over. I rolled the window down and he leaned in, a federal carhop again, asking, “Did you give Green-lease the news?”

“Yeah.”

“How did he take it?”

“Like a guy so far gone he couldn’t feel his guts being ripped out. What do you think?”

He shook his head. His glasses were fogging up again. “They’ve confessed everything, but they’re still all over the map. We’re gonna have to step in.”

“As well you should.”

“For one thing, the count is way off.”

“What count?”

“The money count. Less than three hundred grand in Hall’s luggage. That’s not even half the ransom haul.”

“Your math skills are impressive.”

“You’re not surprised?”

“There are crooked cops and racketeers and cabbie pimps and grasping whores and drunken idiots all over this fucking case. What surprises me is there’s still almost three hundred grand to confiscate.”

“You have a cynical outlook, Heller.”

“Wow. They must train you FBI guys in psychology and everything. Goodnight, Agent Grapp.”

He grunted a tiny laugh and waved me off.

A room was waiting at the President and I fell asleep so fast you would think nothing troubling was on my mental and emotional horizon at all. But I was almost in my fifties and of an age where exhaustion could prevail.

My bedside phone rang and I wondered if I’d been dumb enough last night to put in for a wake-up call; my watch, also on the nightstand, said it was almost ten, so maybe I should get up, even if I hadn’t got to bed till two A.M.