Yes that’s how it was, that’s what you had. You had yourself a woman. I mean a real woman, not some phonograph record or sappy sweet chippy or one of them glamour broads who, when you add it up, comes to nothing more than a pain in the ass. With this one you had something on the plus side, and I swear you start to think about it, you get upset, remembering—

Like in bed. The way it was them nights when you weren’t drunk or let’s say too drunk. You check back, it amounts to very few nights when you were sober enough to really know her, to realize what you had. It was more than just her face and body. It was so much more than that. I mean the feeling deeper than the fire.

Five years ago.

Five goddam years you been without this woman. Five years of nothing. And not caring. That is, until last night when you saw her in the Hangout sitting alone at that table, drinking beer. This woman who’d never gone for any kind of alcohol; she sat there filling the glass again and again, and you knew the kind of drinking it was. The weary drinking, the dreary drinking, the drinking that says, there’s trouble here.

All right, let’s find out why.

What I mean, goddamit, it ain’t that you’re gettin’ detoured. You didn’t come to this address to offer assistance. In the first place, she don’t want your assistance. In the second place, her personal problems got nothing to do with your money problems. You’re out to score for a stack of G-notes and that’s all.

He couldn’t look at her. He mumbled, “I got some questions—”

“Like what?” and she stiffened slightly, defensive.

“Your husband—”

“What about him?”

“Does he work?”

“Whaddya mean, does he work? Sure he works.”

“Where?”

She didn’t answer.

“Where?” Corey repeated. Then he looked at her and said softly, his expression solemn and official, “Now look, you know you gotta tell me. This is police business.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybes about it. You saw the badge—”

“I didn’t see the warrant.”

“There ain’t no warrant,” he said. “I’m not here to make an arrest. Or search the rooms. All I want is some information.”

“Get it someplace else. I’m not talking to you.”

“All right,” he shrugged. And then, “Better bring an umbrella.”

“What for?”

“So you won’t get wet.”

She took a deep breath. Her mouth tightened.

He shrugged again. “That’s how it is,” he said. “You won’t talk here; you’ll talk at city hall.”

Lillian shifted her position in the chair. “Just tell me one thing,” with her voice dull, the glint gone out of her eyes. “Why do they want him?”

“I didn’t say they wanted him. They’re just investigating, that’s all.”

“Investigating what?”