I liked it more than I should have liked it, considering the dead man and the questions that remained. But I didn’t like it as much as I did before the knock on my door. It still had the past, present, and future in it, but the idealized sheen was gone, and I could see them now for what they truly were: soiled, paranoid, dead.

“You seem to have recovered from the trauma,” I said when I pulled away.

“You want to know the truth, Victor?”

“Not really.”

“I’m not broken up that he’s dead. The truth is, the last few months I couldn’t stand the sight of him.”

“Let’s try not to tell the cops that. As soon as they can, they’re going to separate us. They’re going to try to turn us against each other. That’s what they do.”

“Are you going to turn against me?”

“I’ll do what I can for you.”

“Even after what I did?”

“It was both our faults, isn’t that what we decided? The best way to play it right now is for both of us to say nothing. Can you manage?”

“I’m good at saying nothing. You can trust me.”

“We’ll trust each other,” I said.

“We’re in it together.”

“Sure,” I said, still holding on to her arm as I walked her to the door. “In it together.”

I stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, grabbed a dish towel from the counter, and wiped her lipstick off my lips.

“Now let’s go meet the cops,” I said. “Their names are Sims and Hanratty. Hanratty is the big one. Watch out for Sims.”

4

They put me in a small green room in the Roundhouse. The table was cheap, the chairs hard, the place smelled like sweat and vinegar and dead mice. But you had no excuse not to look snazzy, because the room had a great mirror on one of the walls in which you could straighten your collar and check your teeth.

Julia was in an identical room somewhere in that same ugly building. I assumed they were giving her the business. Sims was whispering sweet nothings into her ear; Hanratty was banging on the table. But no matter how tough it got, I figured she was holding up just fine.