“All righty then,” said McDeiss without rising from his crouch. “I suppose then there’s nothing more to be done.”

“I suppose so.”

“Thanks for all your assistance.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “You need any help getting up?”

“I’ll manage.”

We should have been through, I should have stood, kicked the curb, left, gone on with my life. I should have, yes, but that thing I had said about clients dying all the time, that whole cynically hardboiled little speech, was an utter lie. They didn’t die all the time, and when they did, I couldn’t just shrug it off. So I didn’t stand, kick the curb, and go on with my life. Instead, I said, “Before you go, Detective, I wonder if you could do me a favor.”

“A favor. Is this related or unrelated to what happened to Mr. Parma?”

“Unrelated. I wonder if you could check your files to see if any unidentified floaters turned up about twenty years ago in the Delaware River. And maybe you could also see if you have a file on a missing man named Tommy, who disappeared twenty years ago and was never found.”

“An unidentified floater and a missing person, name of Tommy.”

“Or Thomas. Or Tom.”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Approximately.”

“And this is unrelated to your friend Parma.”

“Unrelated.”

“But you just happen to ask me this favor after your friend Parma meets with his criminal defense attorney for no apparent reason and then gets dumped between two rusting shipping containers with his throat slit and his blood flowing into the Delaware.”

“Just happenstance.”

“And I should do this why?”

“Because I’m a sweet guy.”

“You make it hard to want to help you, Carl.”

“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”