“Ed thinks it’s time you came back to work,” Graham said.

Ed was Ed Levine, manager of Friends’ New York office, where Graham worked and Neal usually didn’t.

“Who’s missing?” Neal sighed. “Who do you want me to find?”

Because that was mostly what he did for Friends.

Graham smiled his rat-sucking-on-garbage smile and said, “That’s the beauty part.”

“What’s the beauty part?” Neal asked. Giving in and asking was easier than letting Graham drag it out.

“You don’t have to find anybody,” Graham answered. “We already found her.”

“Sooo…?” Neal asked.

Graham grinned.

“We want you to teach her English.”

“Who? Why? Where’s she from?”

“Brooklyn,” Graham answered.

“Which leaves who and why,” Neal said.

“Are you taking the job?” asked Graham.

He wasn’t going to give up anything else unless Neal was on the job.

Uh-uh, thought Neal. I say yes and then you tell me you found her in some prison in Outer Mongolia and my job is to break in, teach her English, and escape on camelback across the Soviet Union.

“I’m retired,” Neal repeated.

“How much?” Karen asked Graham.

Neal raised his eyebrows at her.

“We’ve been talking about putting a deck on the back of the house,” she explained.

Neal turned to Graham. “What is she, a witness?”

“Maybe,” Graham answered.

“Maybe?”

Graham said, “It might depend on how good you do with her.”

“Who is she,” Neal asked, “Eliza Doolittle?”

Graham rubbed his artificial hand into his real palm. It was a habit he had when he got nervous or impatient.

“Are you on, or what?” Graham asked.

“Is this a mob thing?” Neal asked. Because mob witnesses were dangerous. People tended to get killed in their general vicinity. “You want me to clean up some mob bimbo who’s mad because Guido slapped her around, and now she wants to tell the world about his funny friends, right?”