"A distinct possibility."

Win nodded, checked the carpet's lie. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"No. Not the first time. Are you in?"

"There is nothing in this for us," Win said.

"Maybe not," Myron agreed.

"No financial gain."

"None at all."

"In fact there is never any profit in your holy crusades."

Myron waited.

Win lined up another put. "Stop making that face," he said. "I'm in."

"Good. Now tell me what you know about this."

"Nothing really. It's just a thought."

"I'm listening."

"You know, of course, about Valerie's breakdown," Win said.

"Yes."

"It was six years ago. She was only eighteen. The official word was that she collapsed under the pressure."

"The official word?"

"It may be the truth. The pressure on her was indeed awesome. Her rise had been nothing short of meteoric – but nowhere near as meteoric as the tennis world's expectations of her. Her subsequent fall – at least, up until the time of the breakdown – was slow and painful. Not at all like yours. Your fall, if you don't mind me using that word, was far swifter. Guillotinelike. One minute you were the Celtics' number one draft pick. The next minute you were finished. The end. But unlike Valerie, you had a freak injury and were thereby blameless. You were pitied. You cut a sympathetic figure. Valerie's demise, on the other hand, seemed to be of her own doing. She was a failure, ridiculed, but still no more than a child. To the world at large, the fickle finger of fate had ended the career of Myron Bolitar. But in the case of Valerie Simpson, she alone was culpable. In the eyes of the public she did not possess enough mental fortitude. Her fall, thus, was slow, torturous, brutal."

"So what does this have to do with the murder?"

"Perhaps nothing. But I always found the circumstances surrounding Valerie's mental collapse a bit disturbing."