“He was an old union guy,” I explained, “and he hated the cops, he hated the system, but I managed to get myself on the police department, and it ate him up inside. Later on, when he found out I lied on the witness stand, for money, he used my nine-millimeter to blow his brains out. And I found him like that, at his kitchen table.”

Her eyes weren’t hooded, now. “Oh, Nate …”

“Anyway, I had some problems sleeping after that. I saw a guy, what they used to call an alienist.”

“A psychiatrist?”

“Yeah. And it helped.”

“You think … you think that’s what I should do?”

“Yes. Talk to somebody like that, who can help you sort out the truth from the bullshit.”

She just sat there quietly for the longest time; and suddenly the former Vogue model seemed like a little girl, a kid.

And in a kid’s tiny voice, she said, “All right. I’ll do it.”

Then she kissed me again, and I might have reconsidered my noble stance where bedding her was concerned, but the truth is, I had just enough time to still make my date with Jeannie from the Farm Credit Administration (who maybe had a little to do with this story, after all). So if my conscience kept me from sleeping with Jo Forrestal, that conscience was blonde.

And that would have been the end of it, if it hadn’t been the beginning.

1

The Chevy Chase Club was open for golf every day of the year, but the gun-metal sky threatened rain, a muted rumble of thunder promised the same, and only a madman would risk a round on a chill late March afternoon like this.

Make that a pair of madmen, and make me one of them.

I had an excuse, however; I was half of this ill-fated two-some because I was on the clock. No, not a caddy-a security consultant, as they said in the District of Columbia. Back home in Chicago, the term in use was still “private eye,” even if these days I was an executive version of that ignoble profession.