First: Werth’s apartment. Mookie cleans it out. It’s a – well, a rat-trap isn’t the word because of all the cats. Turns out, Werth really liked cats. Or hated them and had them anyway. Maybe that makes it a really good rat-trap? Mookie doesn’t know, doesn’t care. He gives away everything that has value. Takes the cats to a shelter. All of it is hard to do with his one arm in a sling and the rest of his body feeling like it’s been put through a meat slicer. When he’s all done he stands at the door of the apartment and closes it and says goodbye to Werth inside his head. He’s still not sure how to feel about him. He liked Werth. But Werth treated him like shit for years. And at the end…

Well.

That poor old goat.

A day later: Karyn’s. At first he can’t tell her. He pretends that he’s here about losing the cleaver. But she’s distracted. She tries to push some charcuterie on him – good stuff, too, cantimpalo chorizo, salchichon, Jamon Serrano ham. But he can’t do it. Can’t take from her again and again, and finally he just spills it. Tells her all about Lulu. How he was there. How she died. He doesn’t spare a detail. What’s the point? He was never a good liar anyway. She breaks down. He sees it: the love was real. Not just a thing born of intensity. A lot of love isn’t love, it’s just a strong feeling that over time fades, but this, what Karyn feels, is true blue. And it kills her. And she kicks him out because he was there and, even if he didn’t kill Lulu, he can be her scapegoat. He wants to be. Deserves to be. She can pile all her grief and blame upon his ox-like shoulders and boot him out the door. Which she does.

On the third day: Davey Morgan’s funeral.

The cops found Cassie Morgan, Davey’s daughter, unconscious in her NYU dorm room. Half-dead, saved by a wandering RA. She’s at the funeral. Looking bleak. Barely keeping it together. Her emotional state blown apart like rock by dynamite. Mookie doesn’t bother trying to talk to her. She wouldn’t remember him, anyway. That was another lifetime. Besides: what would he even say?

The funeral – there’s a line out the door of people waiting to pay their respects. Sandhogs from the 147 and the 147½. EPA guys. Bunch of cops and firemen. They loved Davey. He ran dozens of crews over the years. He is beloved.

Few of them recognize Mookie. The ones that do give him looks.

You ain’t welcome here, Mikey.

He isn’t. But he stays just the same.