Madelaine was looking out at the river and the mountains, sipping away at her bottomless glass, as if she wasn’t there, as if all she heard was the flowing water and the slow whispering wind.

“That’s why it feels good.” Elizabeth said. “Because we finally matched his violence with violence and we stopped him and won.”

“But you used a man to do it,” I said.

“This time,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“We did it,” she said. “A gun, a knife, a bomb, a man. Just tools. We used the available tool.”

“Are we safe?” Madelaine said suddenly, having turned away from ‘the view’ and looking at me.

“Yes.”

“When they examine the body, if they do a tox screen?” Elizabeth asked, out from behind the lectern, now Miz Bizness, doing straight-up due diligence.

“They’ll do a tox screen,” I said. Of course, they would.

“What will they find?”

“Whatever they find, he’ll have put it in himself. Certainly alcohol. We know that. I’m guessing cocaine. I don’t know that,” I said, lying somewhat. I looked at Madelaine. “Your guess is better than mine about that.”

“That’s a good guess,” she said.

“Maybe tadalafil,” I said.

“Very possibly,” Madelaine said, a bitter taste on her tongue. Spritz, quick, to wash it away.

“The police have the car,” Elizabeth said. “They’re investigating.”

“Of course they are,” I said.

“Will they find anything?”

I said, “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I guarantee they won’t.”

“How did you do it?” Elizabeth asked. Maddie looked, too, really wanting to find out.

“Do it? I didn’t do anything,” I said, trying to sound like it was a double bluff. That I was being disingenuous, devious, and dishonest, trying to cover it up, and failing so badly that they could see through it. “It was an accident.”

“Oh, really,” Elizabeth said, tones of disbelief.

“Really,” I said.

“Then we needn’t pay you,” she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A SHORT STORY

IT’S A BUTTON. ELECTRIC ZAP. Red as rage, green as the Hulk. Primal as a thirteen-year-old at Sands Jr. High, down by the Brooklyn Navy Yard, some kid who thinks he’s tougher says, “Gimme your lunch money.” Fight or pay every day. Toxic male violence, motherfucker! But I’ve had better than six decades to slowly learn some control and how to put on a show, so in spite of the blood going boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, inside my skull like the drums of doom, I went all abstract and literary on them. I said, “Beinhart’s favorite writer is Dashiell Hammett. Did you know that?”

Madelaine said, “Oh, I think I knew that.”

Elizabeth didn’t say anything. Her look was a clear what-the-fuck?

“There was a collection of short stories.” I spoke softly, like we were at the library. “One of them was The Looting of…a place with a strange name, I forget it…an island off the coast of California. There’s this massive robbery of the whole island, with fistfights, handguns, machine guns, a murder or two, and they get the bank, the jewelry story, and the wedding gifts at a mansion.