“You take care, Harry,” the man said.

“Don’t you worry about me. I been through storms would make this look like pissing in a can. You take care-you got the nice suit.” Harold made himself smile up at the man. He thought, Maybe the guy will leave me the umbrella. Then he thought, What, and walk out in the rain without it? Next he thought, I could probably take it away from him. But finally he thought, The guy gave you a cigarette, talked to you, passed his time with you, kept you dry for a while, and you mug him for his umbrella? Schmuck.

He thought all this in the time it took him to take two more drags on the cigarette.

“I hate to ask,” Harold said, not quite able to get the umbrella fantasy out of his mind, “but would you mind standing there while I finish this? A little easier without the rain in my face…” He let his words trail off. The man was shaking his head.

“Sorry. I have to be somewhere.”

“Nah, that’s okay, I understand.” Harold raised the cigarette. “Thanks for the smoke.”

“My pleasure,” the man said.

“Sladek, Harold R. R for Robert.” The detective flipped through the creased wallet he’d retrieved from Harold’s pocket. There was a long-expired driver’s license from New Jersey; a photograph of Harold, when his hair had been brown; another photograph of Harold and a woman standing next to a white-iced, pink-flowered cake; a stained dollar bill with one corner missing; and an ancient business card, smudged and bent, listing Harold Robert Sladek as Assistant Manager for J.C. Penney, New York.

The detective nudged his partner with his elbow. “Check the bags.”

The younger man bent to look through the plastic bags, still standing in a puddle of water.

At the curb, a uniformed officer, the one who had found Sladek’s body, was coordinating getting the covered corpse into the EMS van. He had radioed for EMS instead of the morgue because he had thought Sladek was still alive.