“I can understand why.”

“I told him to let me think about it, and he said he’d call in a day or two. And that’s where it stood when I spoke to you that time.”

“When you said you had a weird conversation. You weren’t kidding.”

“He called back in a couple of days,” she went on, “and by then I had just about decided I wouldn’t hear from him again, which would have been fine with me, but there he was on the other end of the phone. ‘It’s Al,’ he said.”

“And?”

“I’d had some time to think. You know, a couple of times over the years I’ve used a post office box, or one of those private mailboxes. When we were dealing with somebody we didn’t know who didn’t know us, the box let us keep our distance. But if he already knew the address here on Taunton Place, why make a trip to a post office?”

“If he knew the address.”

“Well, he’d have to know it, wouldn’t he? He knew the phone number, and any four-year-old can Google a reverse directory and find an address to go with the number.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“So I told him to go ahead and send it here, whatever it was. I mean, say it was a letter bomb. What’s the advantage of picking it up at Mailboxes ‘R’ Us as opposed to getting it right here?”

“So you told him to send it.” He nodded at the envelope. “Is that it?”

She shook her head. “What I got,” she said, “came by overnight FedEx.”

“And it wasn’t a letter bomb.”

“I didn’t really think it would be. I thought it would be money, and it was.”

“Money.”

“Cash,” she said. “Fifty thousand dollars.”

“On account.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s…substantial.”

“It is,” she said, “and I don’t know what it’s for, but I could probably make an educated guess. I figured I’d get a phone call to explain it.”

“And did you?”

“I got a phone call, but not much of an explanation. ‘This is Al. I hope the parcel arrived in good order.’ I said it did, but I didn’t understand what was involved. ‘You’ll hear from me,’ he said, ‘when the time comes.’ That was all I could get out of him.”

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

“Hundred-dollar bills,” she said, “used and out of sequence. Five hundred of them.”

“That’s a lot better than a letter bomb,” he said. “Still…”

“It makes you think.”

“It does.”

“Sooner or later,” she said, “Al’s gonna expect us to earn it. Like the Godfather, talking to that undertaker. ‘Someday I’ll need a favor.’”

“I guess that was supposed to be Marlon Brando.”

“If I could do imitations,” she said, “I’d be on the Comedy Channel. Whoever he is, Al’s got a credit balance with us. My guess is we’ll hear from him. In the meantime, you get your share.”

He weighed the envelope in his hand. “You don’t really have to split this with me,” he said. “I mean, there are other people you’ve used from time to time. Who’s to say you won’t use somebody else for Al’s job?”

“And keep you from reaching your million-dollar goal? Not likely. No, I got fifty large on account, and you’re getting half of it, also on account. With both of those envelopes, I’d say you’re off to a good start. Though I suppose you’ll want to spend some of it on stamps.”

20

Two days later he was working on his stamps when the phone rang. “I’m in the city,” she said. “Right around the corner from you, as a matter of fact.”

She told him the name of the restaurant, and he went there and found her in a booth at the back, eating an ice cream sundae. “When I was a kid,” she said, “they had these at Wohler’s drugstore for thirty-five cents. It was five cents extra if you wanted walnuts on top. I’d hate to tell you what they get for this beauty, and walnuts weren’t part of the deal, either.”

“Nothing’s the way it used to be.”

“You’re right about that,” she said, “and a philosophical observation like that is worth the trip. But it’s not why I came in. Here’s the waitress, Keller. You want one of these?”

He shook his head, ordered a cup of coffee. The waitress brought it, and when she was out of earshot Dot said, “I had a call this morning.”

“From Al?”

“Al? No, not Al. I haven’t heard a thing from Al. This was somebody else.”

“Oh?”

“And I was going to call you, but it wasn’t anything to discuss on the phone, and I didn’t feel right about telling you to come out to White Plains because I was pretty sure you’d be wasting your time. So I figured I’d come in, and have an ice cream sundae while I’m at it. It’s worth the trip, incidentally, even if they do charge the earth for it. You sure you don’t want one?”

“Positive.”

“I got a call,” she said, “from a guy we’ve worked with before, a broker, very solid type. And there’s some work to be done, a nice upscale piece of work, which would put a nice piece of change in your retirement fund and one in mine, too.”

“What’s the catch?”

“It’s in Santa Barbara, California,” she said, “and there’s a very narrow window operating. You’d have to do it Wednesday or Thursday, which makes it impossible, because it would take longer than that for you to drive there even if you left right away and only stopped for gas. I mean, suppose you drove it in three days, which is ridiculous anyway. You’d be wiped out when you got there, and you’d get there when, Thursday afternoon at the earliest? Can’t be done.”

“No.”

“So I’ll tell them no,” she said, “but I wanted to check with you first.”

“Tell them we’ll do it,” he said.

“Really?”

“I’ll fly out tomorrow morning. Or tonight, if I can get something.”

“You weren’t ever going to fly again.”

“I know.”

“And then a job comes along.”

“And all at once not flying just doesn’t seem that important,” he said. “Don’t ask me why.”

“Actually,” she said, “I have a theory.”

“Oh?”

“When the towers came down,” she said, “it was very traumatic for you. Same as it was for everybody else. You had to adjust to a new reality, and that’s not easy to do. Your whole world went tilt, and for a while there you stayed off airplanes, and you went downtown and fed the hungry, and you bided your time and tried to figure out a way to get along without doing your usual line of work.”

“And?”

“And time passed,” she said, “and things settled down, and you adjusted to the way the world is now. While you were at it, you realized what you’ll have to do if you’re going to be in a position to retire. You thought things through and came up with a plan.”

“Well, sort of a plan.”

“And a lot of things which seemed very important a while ago, like not flying with all this security and ID checks and all, turn out to be just an inconvenience and not something to make you change your life around. You’ll get a second set of ID, or you’ll use real ID and find some other way to cover your tracks. One way or another, you’ll work it out.”

“I suppose,” he said. “ Santa Barbara. That’s between L.A. and San Francisco, isn’t it?”

“Closer to L.A. They have their own airport.”

He shook his head. “They can keep it,” he said. “I’ll fly to LAX. Or Burbank, that’s even better, and I’ll rent a car and drive up to Santa Barbara. Wednesday or Thursday, you said?” He pressed his wrists together. “‘What time?’”

“What time? What do you mean, ‘what time’? What’s so funny, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s a joke one of the golfers told in the clubhouse in Scottsdale. This golfer goes out and he has the worst round of his life. He loses balls in the rough, he can’t get out of sand traps, he hits ball after ball into the water hazard. Nothing goes right for him. By the time he gets to the eighteenth green all he’s got left is his putter, because he’s broken every other club over his knee, and after he four-putts the final hole he breaks the putter, too, and sends it flying.

“He marches into the locker room, absolutely furious, and he unlocks his locker and takes out his razor and opens it up and gets the blade in his hand and slashes both his wrists. And he stands there, watching the blood flow, and someone calls to him over the bank of lockers. ‘Hey, Joe,’ the guy says, ‘we’re getting up a foursome for tomorrow morning. You interested?’