Berger looked momentarily confused and then smiled. “You are that doctor from the Brazilian consulate,” he said. “And you work for the State Department. Which is how you could be here and have been in New York yesterday. I’m sorry, let me introduce myself again.” Berger held out his hand once more. “Hello, I’m a moron.”

Lowen laughed and took his hand a second time. “Hello,” she said. “Don’t feel bad. I wasn’t exactly being forthcoming.”

“Well, after all the attention you got the last couple of days, I can see why you might want to lay low,” Berger said. He motioned to Lowen’s drink. “Is that what the tub of margarita is about?”

“What? No,” Lowen said, and made a grimace. “Well, maybe. Not exactly.”

“The drink is working,” Berger said.

“It’s not about the attention, although that certainly could have driven me to drink,” Lowen said. “It’s about something else, related to my job.”

“And what is that, if you don’t mind me asking?” Berger said.

“What do you do, Mr. Berger?” Lowen asked.

“John,” Berger said. His Cuba libre arrived. He smiled his thanks to the bartender and took a drink. Then it was his turn to grimace. “This is not the best Cuba libre I’ve had,” he said.

Lowen flicked the edge of her margarita glass with her finger. “Next time, go with one of these tubs,” she said.

“Maybe I will,” Berger said, took another drink of his Cuba libre and then set it down. “I’m a salesman,” he said. “Pharmaceuticals.”

“I remember you guys,” Lowen said.

“I bet you do,” Berger said.

“Now it makes sense,” Lowen said. “Easy conversationalist, blandly attractive, not too quirky, looking for the sale.”

“You have me pegged,” Berger said.

“You’re not going to make the sale,” Lowen said. “I mean, no offense. But I plan on walking out of here alone tonight.”

“Fair enough,” Berger said. “Good conversation was my only goal, anyway.”

“Was it,” Lowen said, and drank some more of her margarita. “All right, John, a question for you. How do you make a boring person a killer?”

Berger was quiet for a moment. “Now I’m suddenly very glad I won’t be making that sale,” he said.

“I’m serious,” Lowen said. “Hypothetically, you have this person. She’s a normal person, right? She has normal parents, has a normal childhood, goes to a normal school, gets normal degrees and then goes and has a normal job. And then one day, for no particularly good reason that anyone could see, she goes and murders some guy. And not in a normal way—I mean, not with a gun or a knife or a bat. No, she does it in a complicated way. How does that happen?”

“Is the guy an ex-lover?” Berger asked. “Hypothetically, I mean.”

“Hypothetically, no,” Lowen said. “Hypothetically, the best way to describe their relationship would be work colleagues, and not particularly close ones at that.”

“And she’s not a spy, or a secret agent, or leading a double life as a crafty assassin,” Berger said.