“It’s winter. It should be bleak.” I wanted him gone, before he learned any tidbits of use. I made it clear. “I’m here because I like to be alone. Because nobody comes up that road. I don’t particularly like to talk to people. Especially about things that’re nobody’s business but my own.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Goodbye, then. Be careful heading down the hill.”

Here we were. One day later. Monday. There he was, down there, in trendy Brooklyn. With an ugly puffy parka and a wool hat that looked like he’d purchased it within the hour from a Nigerian sidewalk peddler. Also, strolling along, and being reasonably subtle about it, with her face mostly covered by a funny furry hat, a wooly scarf, and wearing a peacoat, was Allison, keeping an eye on him. He didn’t seem to take notice of her. Maybe she was good at these things. More important, I was sure that there was no way the Mormon could have tailed me. I’d ducked and dodged enough to be sure of it. But there he was, looking very certain. How?

—

It had been my intention, at least my first-choice inclination, to take Elizabeth’s money and say, “so long, it’s been good to know you.” There was certainly enough of it. But it might be a good idea to disappear for a while. Weeks. Not years, like the last time. Just out of range of casual inquiries. Give things time to settle and reveal themselves.

I wanted that to be a workable resolution. But that was desire.

I turned back from the window.

“If I do,” I said to her—hedging the bet, altering, at least blurring, the game—“I will go and look. I will endeavor to find a way to get your client safely away from her husband with her son. In such a way that they will be safe and you will be able to secure her an excellent settlement. That’s what I can commit to, as your chief investigator.”

“Of course,” she said. “I would never ask for anything more.”

“I’ll let you know once I’ve received the money. And you should give me my Black Amex Card.”

“It will probably take a couple of days for that. But if you leave before it arrives, just give me an address. They’re wonderful about delivering such things.”

“As they should be,” I said.

She returned to the contract. She scrawled a note on my note that limited the additional indemnified associates to two. She initialed my changes and her own. She passed it back to me to initial her changes, which I did. She took out her copy. We made the changes there as well. Now we each had originals.

“The young woman,” she asked, “is she going with you?”