“Yeah, okay,” Neal said.

“I’m telling you,” Graham said, “this one is a grounder, easy throw to first, out of the inning.”

“Right.”

So maybe it’s time to come down from the hill, Neal thought. Ease myself back into the world with this sleazy little job. Maybe it’s too easy up here, where I don’t have to deal with anything or anyone except writers who’ve been dead for a couple hundred years.

He looked out the window and couldn’t tell whether he was looking at rain or fog. Both, he guessed.

“Have you heard from Diane?” Graham asked.

Neal thought about the letter that had sat unopened on the table for six months. He’d been afraid to read it.

“I never answered her letter,” Neal said.

“You’re a stooge.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Did you think she was just going to wait around for you?”

“No. I didn’t think that.”

He had left her with no explanation, just that he had to go do a job, and he’d been gone now for almost a year. Graham had contacted her, told her something, and forwarded her letter. But Neal couldn’t bring himself to open it. He’d rather let the thing die than read that she was killing it. But she wasn’t the one who had killed it, he thought. She was just the one who had the guts to write the obituary.

Graham wouldn’t let it drop. “She left the apartment.”

“Diane wouldn’t be the kind to stay.”

“She found a place on 104th, between Broadway and West End. She has a roommate. A woman.”

“What did you do? Follow her?!”

“Sure. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe look her up when you get back to the city.”

“What are you, my mother?”

Graham shook his head and poured himself another shot.

“Way I look at it,” he said, “she’s a friend of the family.”