“He leave a number, Norma?”

“Number?”

“Yeah. The digits you dial on the phone when you want to speak to someone. A number.”

She leafed through her desktop Rolodex. “Nope.” Then she cocked her head and said: “Hold on.”

She went into Hinch’s office, where I heard the sound of drawers being opened and closed. She reappeared bearing a piece of wrinkled paper.

“Thank you, Norma,” she said.

“Thank you, Norma.”

John Wren’s last known phone number. Judging by the area code, Northern California. I wrote it down on the back of one of the photos and stuck it in my wallet.

Wren’s answering-machine message sounded like someone who was already feeling put-upon, even though he hadn’t actually been made to answer the phone.

We’re out fishing, but if you’d like to leave a message, fine.

“Hi, this is Tom Valle. I took your position at the Littleton Journal.” I took your house as well, I could’ve added. “I’d like to ask you about a story you were working on before you left. Could you please call me back?”

I left my work and cell numbers.

Then I called Anna.

She was due to leave tomorrow. Back to Santa Monica. We were supposed to go out again and I wanted to confirm the where and when like any responsible journalist should.

She picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“So we’re on for tonight?”

“Of course. Didn’t we make plans?”

“Yeah, sure. Just wanted to be sure they were still on.”

“I would’ve called you if there was a problem.”

“Okay. Great. So we’re still on then.” Mr. Stupid, meet Mr. Needy. “Where are we meeting again?”

“Violetta’s. Just like we said two days ago. You do have a touch of ADD.” At least she sounded friendly when she said it.

“Just confirming,” I said.

“Oh, one thing.”

“Yes?”

“We’re ordering white wine,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m really sorry about that. Is your dress ruined?”

“It’ll be fine. I use a dry cleaner that’s absolutely scorched earth on stains. If Monica Lewinsky had given them that blue frock, there never would’ve been any impeachment hearings.”

I laughed, then immediately wondered if her reference to seminal stains had some kind of invitation inherent in it. All you had to do was ask, she’d said when I wiped at her dress.

There was a brief silence, as if her allusion to sex had consumed all available air, then I asked her how her father was doing. I’d previously skirted this issue, thinking that when she wanted to talk about it, she would. But its absence was starting to feel conspicuous.

“The same,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”

“Your mom still around?”

“Yeah. They’d divorced, though. So it’s kind of just me.”

“That’s tough.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s what you do for someone you love, right? He’s my dad. I’d do anything for him. How about you?”

“Me?”

“Your parents? Still alive?”

“No. They’re both gone.”

Gone. A label my father earned while I was still playing scully on the streets of Queens. He’d come back once, before the funeral, and asked me if I’d like to take a ride on the fire truck the way I used to. We’d gone around the block and parked in the shadow of St. Anthony’s church. What happened, Tommy? Sitting next to me in the cab but not really looking at me. Looking at a picture of the four of us tucked into the windshield. What happened?

“Sisters, brothers?” Anna asked me.

“No. I… not anymore.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I had a brother. He died. A long time ago.”

“Oh. I’m terribly sorry. What happened?”

“Nothing. He just died. It was an accident.”

“Oh God. How old was he?”

“He was 6.”

“Jesus, that’s terrible. I guess you don’t like talking about it.”

“No, it’s just… it’s been a long time…”

“Sure, I understand.”

No you don’t, I thought.

Some things are beyond understanding.

TWENTY

Kara Bernstein.

Kara Betland.

Kara Bolinsky.

Kara Brill.

I used the half hour I had between showering and shaving and combing and recombing my hair and spritzing on some ancient Stetson for Men then washing it off because it smelt like old leather-the half hour between that and actually needing to leave the house-to look up Kara Bolka in the online phone directories.

No luck.

Not that there weren’t a generous number of Karas in California; I pictured legions of OC girls still wearing their braces, chilling at the mall or flaunting their hard bodies at the beach and in the waiting rooms of San Fernando’s porn industry. Kara Bolka sounded like a name Eastern European immigrants might give their American-born daughter. It whispered half woman and half nymph.

Of course, it might’ve been my libido doing the whispering.

The night hadn’t actually begun, but I was wondering how it would end. I was counting down from my last intimate encounter and contemplating whether it really was like riding a bicycle, and if we were talking ten-gear or mountain bike.

I hadn’t completely been a sexual hermit since my arrival in Littleton. No. I’d cohabited at the Days Inn with a certain married woman who’d ventured into Muhammed Alley pretty much for the same reason I had-as a retreat. In her case, from an unfaithful husband who tended to knock her around when his golf game was off or a business deal went sour. He was in real estate, where business deals tended to unravel on a regular basis-especially in Littleton, which still boasted two half-finished resorts.

I won’t tell you her name. It doesn’t matter. We went to the Days Inn instead of my rented home because I didn’t want her husband showing up at my front door. We went there three times, and it was satisfying only in the most rudimentary definition of the term. Like eating cooked-to-death food when you’re hungry.

When she called my cell after our third liaison, I didn’t call her back. I discovered a message on my phone from her a week later.

So this is it, huh? Have a nice life.

If you were going to end an affair, those words were as good as any.

Now I was awash in Karas, which is to say pretty much at sea.

I left them there to meet Anna.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SALAD AND ENTRÉE, BETWEEN TALKING AND FLIRTING, between 8 o’clock and 9 o’clock, Anna mentioned John Wren.

That she knew him.

We’d somehow ended up on the subject of journalism again. Not just talking, either. I was pretty much proselytizing, though it might’ve been the Chianti doing most of the self-righteous babbling. I sounded the way I used to, when I was first starting out and consumed with the fever. A divinity student discussing his faith. Hadn’t I worked for the acknowledged bible of the industry?

Slowly, sin by sin, I’d managed to subvert the very reason for a newspaper’s existence, to turn truth inside out. Like one of those Soviet moles from the thirties who burrowed their way into the heart of the British democracy. And just like Philby and company had spilled innocent blood-so did I.

I have skirted the particulars with you; I have played coy.

The resulting carnage from my exposure and dismissal included one brilliant, dedicated, and generally worshiped editor who did nothing much but believe in me.

He went down with the ship.

Or with the rat.

I’d be pecking away at a story and I’d feel him just behind me, like a divine presence keeping tabs. He had that kind of status, had earned a special kind of reputation, even at a newspaper where journalistic luminaries were the norm.

For some reason, he took an interest in me, saw something there worth cultivating. Maybe he simply knew a fatherless boy when he saw one. He invited me for drinks one night, and when it went okay, when I didn’t bore him with a fusillade of mostly fawning questions, he invited me again. After a while we began having midnight heart-to-hearts over smelly bratwurst sandwiches in his office. We took ambling walks in Bryant Park when he felt like stretching his legs. When he’d do the rounds, I’d sense him there over my shoulder and find myself flushing, trying to will the keys to conjure up something sharp, incisive, and brilliant. Sometimes they even obliged.