Dramatic talent, that is to say. Their talent in another more private realm is something upon which only Marty could comment, and he wouldn't. The man is discretion personified.

We met, I would have to say, in highly unlikely circumstances. Marty had assembled a substantial collection of baseball cards, and I stole them.

Except, of course, it was more complicated than that. I hadn't even known about his card collection, but I did know that he and his wife were going to the theater on a particular evening, so I planned to drop in. I got drunk instead, and Marty (who had cash flow problems) reported his collection as stolen, so that he could collect the insurance. I wound up with the cards-I told you it was complicated-and cleared enough selling them to buy the building that houses my bookstore. That's remarkable enough, but no more so than the fact that Marty and I wound up friends, and occasional co-conspirators in the commission of a felony.*

And felony, it turned out, was very much what Marty had in mind this afternoon. The putative victim, you won't be surprised to learn, was one Crandall Rountree Mapes, aka That Shitheel.

"That shitheel," Marty said with feeling. "It's abundantly clear that he doesn't give a damn about the girl. He doesn't care about nurturing her talent or fostering her career. His interest is exclusively carnal. He seduced her, he led her astray, the cad, the bounder, the rotter, the…"

"Shitheel?"

"Precisely. My God, Bernie, he's old enough to be her father."

"Is he your age, Marty?"

"Oh, I suppose he's a few years younger than I."

"The bastard," I said.

"And did I mention that he's married?"

"The swine." Marty himself is married, and living with his wife. I saw no need to point this out.