“I guess all eggheads look alike to the Man.”

Neal tried a different tack.

“I’m out of shape, Graham. Very rusty. I’ve worked maybe two cases in the last two years and I screwed both of them up. You don’t want me.”

“You brought Allie Chase home.”

“Not before I botched it up and almost got us both killed. I’m no good at it anymore, Dad, I-”

“Stop being such a crybaby! What are we asking here? You go to San Francisco and find the happy couple, which shouldn’t be too difficult even for you, seeing as they’re in the Chinatown Holiday Inn, Room ten-sixteen, right there in your file. You get the broad alone, you slip her some cash, and she dumps him. She’s no dope. She knows that money for nothing is better than money for something.

“Then you buddy up to Pendleton, have a few shooters with him, listen to his sob story, and pour him onto a plane. What’ll it take? Three, four days?”

Neal walked over to the window. The rain had let up a little bit, but the fog was heavier than ever.

“I’m glad you have this all figured out, Graham. Are you going to do my research for me, too?”

“Just do the job and come back. You can spend the whole summer here at the Mildew Hilton if you want. You have to be back at school September ninth, though.”

He reached into his case and pulled out a large manila envelope.

“The schedules and book lists for your-what do you call them?-your seminars. I worked it out with Boskin.”

Graham is so damned good, Neal thought. Old Graham brings the prizes with him and dangles them in front of my nose: seminars, book lists… You have to hand it to him-he knows his whores.

“You’re too good to me, Dad.”

“Tell me about it.”

So there it is, Neal thought. A few days of sleazy work in California, then back to my happy monk’s cell on the moor. Finish my reading, then back to graduate school. Jesus, this double life of mine. Sometimes I feel like my own twin brother. Who’s insane.