“And I’m the worst,” she said, and laughed. “Okay.”

“You’re taking advantage of me. I want to say thank you properly—” He had to stop while they pushed out to the street. The air coming up the hill was moist and fresh. “So thank you,” he said. “That’s from me. My client will be grateful. You would be thinking about shopping if you hadn’t worked so very hard for us—”

She smiled, a little, enough to indicate that she had heard him. She was thinking. He could see the parking lot in the middle of the next block and there was time to wait. This was a narrow old street and the sky overhead was laced with telephone wires. Trucks and cars were stalled halfway down the hill like an army convoy. The wires obscured the view across the river and at the bottom of the street was a four-story gray brick warehouse that might have been built before the Civil War. Name after name had been painted below the windows of the fourth story and the weather had eroded them all. Leland lit a cigarette.

Betty Kaminsky asked, “Is there any way at all I can find out what happened to him? I did help, didn’t I?”

“You know you did. But you understand how someone paying for this would object to having it given away?”

“Yes, but maybe I can work something out with her. How much money would be involved?”

“Betty, I’m certain that that wouldn’t be the consideration. I’ll pass along what you’ve done and said, believe me. Look, you’re tired. This thing’s been working on you.”

She took a deep breath and let it out quickly. He thought that it showed the kind of tension that could turn to anger in a moment. “Listen to me, Betty. Last August twelfth a young woman gave her husband his breakfast, saw him off to work, and the next thing she heard, almost twelve hours later, was a police officer on the telephone telling her she was a widow. There is no more to it that anyone knows, save perhaps person or persons unknown. Do you understand me?”

She nodded.

“He died instantly. There were no notes. We’re still unscrambling his business affairs. We don’t know any more about his family than we did on Tuesday. For a year before the war he attended the University of California. After his divorce from you, he saw his mother once in a six-year span. That’s it.”

“You know something about his father,” she said.

“He didn’t respect his father. His father made enough money while he was alive to attend to the needs of his wife for another twenty years. Period.”