The third message was brief: “Everett (?) called. He apologizes again for what happened this morning. You would understand, he said.”

Leland laughed and put the message in the wastepaper basket. He signaled Florence.

“This is ready,” he said, giving her Hugh Thoms’ report. “Ask Mike if he wouldn’t mind handling the Kelso thing. I’ll be relieving Harry McLeod for dinner.”

“Do you want me to do anything?”

“See how they’re making out at Bonney’s. If they need help and you want to work, put yourself on for a couple of hours. I’ll be there after eight o’clock. Everett is my cabdriver. There’s a taxi shack down the block from my apartment. See if you can look up the number there and leave the message that I probably won’t see him until Friday, if then, and no, I’m not angry with him. Who is going to take the souvenir book over to Mrs. MacIver?”

“I am.”

“Tell her I’ll call first thing in the morning. She knows that, but it won’t hurt her to hear it again. You’re putting in a long day. If you decide to go down to Bonney’s, be sure to eat a good dinner first. I don’t want anything happening to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Buzz me at ten to five. I have arrangements of my own about dinner.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and went out. He reached for the souvenir book.

161st FIGHTER SQUADRON

EIGHTH AIR FORCE

E. T. O. 1943–1945

He looked for the index. He had not been through the book since he had received it, in 1947, and as he went past faces he thought he recognized, it struck him for the first time that Colin MacIver had been one of them. He had made himself a part of the statistics that anyone in the insurance business knew just too well. The youngest of the faces was now thirty, the senior officers well into their forties. Leland exchanged cards with some of them and letters with one: he heard things. Myocardial infarction. Carcinoma. In the insurance files were certified photocopies of the death certificates, as innocuous as licenses to drive. In time they would be stapled to every one. Leland did not like this, looking at the young faces and wondering who, and how, and when. The records said that MacIver was their suicide, that he had brought it upon himself. Perhaps. Through him, whether he wanted or not, Leland could see what awaited them all.

SECOND LIEUTENANT COLIN W. MACIVER, beside a formal portrait of a tense young man wearing his overseas cap, followed by the date of his birth and his home town, Manitou, and then a little history: