“The location is confidential.” Josh mimicked him, but with a voice of exaggerated piety. “So this is how you treat your uncle Josh, after all the years we’ve known each other, after all we’ve been through together. After all the times I saved your worthless ass in college when you were about to flunk a course. After all the girls I fixed you up with. This is how it ends. ‘The location is confidential.’”

“Can the damned dramatics, Josh. I’m not going to tell you, okay? I signed a statement, and I’m not going to risk getting fired. I’ll tell you anything else.”

“I didn’t know you could get fired from a volunteer job. But Josh has a big heart, and I’ll let it pass. Even though it’s breaking. And let me risk another question, even if it means another bruise on my ego. You told me you were going to have a mentor tonight. Tell me about your mentor.”

Tony said, “Yes, I did have a mentor. She was very good.”

“Jesus, you sound like a first-grade reader. What was her name?”

“Uh, Sally,” Tony said, using Shahla’s Hotline alias. Among his other faults, Josh was a bigot.

“And is this Sally a babe?”

The last thing Tony was going to do was to admit to Josh that she was a babe. He said, “She’s a teenager. She’s seventeen.”

“So, is there a statute of limitations on babedom? Today’s teenyboppers are hot. I’ll bet she was wearing low-cut jeans and a top that was barely there. And a thong. Did you happen to notice when she bent over? Or does your new-found sanctity prevent you from peeking?”

Josh was uncomfortably close to the truth. To head him off, Tony said, “I took several calls. One was from a guy who was talking about blowing his brains out.”