“Bernie…”

“Think about the man you just met in my store. That was no more than half an hour ago, Ray, and you looked right at him, but did you really see him? If you had to do it, could you furnish a description of him?”

“Sure,” he said. “Name, Tignatz Rasmoolihan. Height, five foot two. Weight, a hundred an’ five. Color of hair, black. Color of eyes, green.”

“Really? He had green eyes?”

“Sure, matched his shirt. Probably why he picked it, the vain little bastard. Complexion, pale. Spots of rouge here an’ here, only it ain’t rouge, it’s natural. Shape of face, narrow.”

He went on, describing the clothes Rasmoulian was wearing down to an alligator belt with a silver buckle, which I certainly hadn’t noticed. I must have seen it but it didn’t register. “That’s amazing,” I said. “You barely looked at him and you got all that. You fluffed the name a little, but everything else was picture-perfect.”

“Well, I’m what you call a trained observer,” he said, clearly pleased. “I’ll screw up a name now an’ then, but I get the rest of it right most of the time.”

“Now that just shows you,” I said. “I’m the other way around. I guess I’m just more verbal than visual. I’ll get the names right every time, but the faces are another story.”

“I guess it comes from hangin’ around books all the time.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Instead of gettin’ out and mixin’ with people.”

“That must be it.”

“So?”

“How’s that, Ray?”

“So are you gonna ID this poor dead son of a bitch or what?”

“Just hypothetically,” I said. “Suppose I wasn’t a hundred percent certain.”

“Aw, Jesus, why’d you have to go an’ say a thing like that?”

“No, let me finish. I get the impression that my identifying the body is really nothing more than a formality.”