Not a lawyer, certainly not a doctor, even more certainly not an accountant or banker. An airline pilot? Unlikely. Not a businessman, they’re the sweatiest of them all. Maybe an inventor; was that possible?

She was afraid, the more she thought about it, that what Andy Kelly was most like was a cabdriver who’d learned not to get aggravated by bad traffic. But would a cabdriver be this cool, in this situation? Intrigued, more so than she’d expected to be, she awaited his return tonight from another “appointment.”

Appointments after midnight, two nights in a row. Was that a clue? To what? They weren’t appointments with some other woman, she was pretty sure of that, based on his behavior with her afterward. But what appointment could you have that late at night, lasting an hour or two?

Maybe he’s a spy, she thought. But who is there to spy on any more? All the spies are retired now, writing books, reading each other’s books, and beginning to wonder what the point had been, all those years, chasing each other around in their slot-car racers while the real world went on without them. More of the desperate men, those were, hustling to keep up, falling a little farther behind every day. Nope, not Andy Kelly.

So here it was Thursday night, becoming Friday morning, and on Saturday she was supposed to fly back to KC and then drive across the state on home to Lancaster, and of course that’s what she was going to do, it was part of the package, but Andy Kelly was suddenly the wild card in the deck, and she couldn’t help asking herself the question: What if he says don’t go?

Well, most likely he wouldn’t say any such thing, why should he? And whoever or whatever he might turn out to be, she did already know for certain he was definitely a New Yorker and never a Lancastrian, so he wouldn’t be coming home with her, so either he asked the question or he didn’t. And however unlikely it was that he’d ask, she felt she ought to be ready with the answer just in case, so what was the answer?

She didn’t know. She was still thinking about it, and she still didn’t know, at ten minutes to three in the morning when the phone rang.

She was seated on the bed at the time, back against the headboard, watching an old movie on television with the sound turned off, as an aid to thought, so now she reached out to the phone on the bedside table, kept looking at the people on horseback on the television screen, and said, “Hello.”

“Hi, Anne Marie, it’s Andy.”

“It better be,” she said, “or I don’t answer the phone at this hour.”

“I’m a little late. My appointment took longer than I thought.”

“Uh huh.”

“But that was okay, because it was very successful.”

“Good,” she said, wondering, what are we talking about?

“But here’s the thing,” he said. “There’s a friend of mine.”

Uh oh, she thought. “Uh huh,” she said. Group gropes, is this where we’re headed?

“He’s got a problem,” Andy said, “and I think you’re the perfect person to talk to him.”

Her voice very cold, Anne Marie said, “And you want to bring him over now.”

“That’s right, a few minutes talk and—Whoa. Wait a minute. Back up here.”

“That’s right,” she said. She was more disappointed in him than she would have thought possible. “Back way up.”

“Anne Marie,” he said, “get that thought out of your head this second. There are some things in life that are team efforts, and there are some things in life that are solos, you see what I mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

“My friend,” Andy said, “needs to have a conversation about Washington, DC, and then—”

“Why?”

“He’ll explain. He’d like to come talk, maybe five minutes at the max, and then he goes away, and if there’s more to it he’ll give you a phone call sometime, but at least now you know who he is.”

“Who is he?”

“A friend of mine. I’d like to bring him over. Okay?”

She looked around the room. Do I trust Andy? Do I trust my own instincts? The bed was a mess, clothes were strewn around, the TV was on, though silent. “How soon would you get here?” she asked.

“Two minutes.”

Surprised, she said, “Where are you? In the bar?”

“Closer. Be there in two minutes,” he said, and hung up.

Two minutes later, the bed was made, the clothes were put away, the TV was off, and there was a knocking at the door. Anne Marie still wasn’t sure exactly what was going on here, but Howard was gone, her New York week was winding down, the future was completely unknowable, and her new slogan might as well be Caution To The Winds. So she opened the door, and there was Andy, smiling, and his friend, not smiling.

Well. This new guy wasn’t somebody to be afraid of, though at first glance he didn’t look right to be Andy’s friend. He was not chipper, not at all chipper. He was closer to the kind of men she already knew, except he was down at the end of the struggle, after all the hustling has failed, all the energy has been spent on futile struggle, and the exhaustion of despair has set in. He looked to be in his midforties, and what a lot of rough years those must have been. He was the picture of gloom from his lifeless thinning hair through his slumped shoulders to his scuffed shoes, and he looked at her as though he already knew she wasn’t going to be any help.

“Hello,” she said, thinking how complicated life could get if you merely kept saying hello to people. She stepped aside, and they came in, and she shut the door.

“Anne Marie,” Andy said, “this is John. John, my friend Anne Marie.”

“Harya,” said John, in a muted way, and stuck his hand out.

She took the hand, and found he was in any event capable of a firm handshake. “I’m fine,” she said. “Should we . . . sit down on something?” One bed and one chair; that was the furniture, except for stuff with drawers.

“I’m not staying,” John said. “Andy says you grew up in Washington.”

“There and Kansas,” she acknowledged. “We had homes both places. Usually I went to school in Kansas, but college in Maryland, and then lived mostly in Washington for a few years. With my father and his second wife, and then his third wife.”

“The thing is,” John said, apparently not that fascinated by her family, “I gotta go to Washington next week, I got a little something to do there, but I don’t know the place at all. Andy figured, maybe you could fill me in, answer some questions about the place.”

“If I can,” she said, doubtful, not knowing what he had in mind.

“Not now,” he said. “I know you’re busy. But I could like make up a list, my questions, give you a call tomorrow. Now you know who I am.”

No, I don’t, she thought. She said, “What is it you have to do in DC?”

“Oh, just a little job,” he said.

This was not a good answer. She was starting to wonder if she should be worried. What had she got mixed up with here? Terrorists? Fanatics? She said, “It wouldn’t involve anything blowing up, would it?”

He gave her a blank look: “Huh?”

Andy said, “Anne Marie, it isn’t anything like—” But then he saw the expression on her face, and he shook his head and turned to his friend, saying, “John, the best thing, I think, is level with her.”

John obviously didn’t think that was the best thing at all. He stared at Andy as though Andy had asked him to change his religion or something. He said, “Level? You mean, level level? On the level?”

Andy said, “Anne Marie, just as a hypothetical, what would you say if I told you we weren’t entirely honest?”

“I’d say nobody’s entirely honest,” she said. “What kind of not honest are you?”

“Well, mostly we pick up things,” he said.

John said, “Right. That’s it. Pick up things.”

She shook her head, not getting it, and Andy said, “You know, like, we see things lying around and we pick them up.”

Anne Marie felt her way through the maze of this locution. She didn’t quite know how to phrase her next question, but went ahead anyway: “You mean . . . you mean you’re thieves?”