It was Pauline Ostrova who, among other things, wrote for our high school newspaper. Someone had told her there were rumors Gordon Cadmus was involved with "the mob." Being insanely self-confident, she decided to do an in-depth interview with our local gangster. She put on her nicest dress, combed her hair and rang his bell.

When he answered the door – a thing he rarely did – a nice-looking girl stood there, looking as it she might be selling magazine subscriptions or tickets to a church raffle. She said, "Mr. Cadmus, my name is Pauline Ostrova and I write for the Crane's View High School newspaper. It's well known you're associated with organized crime and I'd like to interview you."

That's when he laughed and then invited her in.

Almost three decades later, his son said, "You've got to understand that most people couldn't even look at my father without breaking into a sweat."

"Aw, come on, David. We were nosy kids. We knew what everybody did in Crane's View. How come we never knew about your father? How come we didn't know he was in the Mafia?"

David smirked. "Because on paper he wasn't. He was in waste removal and olive oil importing. He had a construction company." He could have filled a wheelbarrow with all the cynicism in his voice.

"Yeah, all synonyms for the Mafia, right?"

He smiled and nodded.

"So how did a high school girl find out who he was?"

"Because at the time, the high school girl's lover was the chief of police."

"Cristello? Pauline was Cristello's lover too? Who was this girl, Mata Hari?"

Policeman Cristello told his lover about mobster Cadmus and she went right out and became his lover too. Simple as that, or according to the mobster's son it was.

Cadmus fell for her that first afternoon. Why? Because she made him laugh. Years later, he told David the whole story. The two men had grown very close over the years and one Christmas the old man asked his son what he wanted for a present. David said the truth. He wanted to know about his father's life because he knew absolutely nothing and it mattered very much to him. In one astounding night, Gordon Cadmus told his son everything.

I didn't probe, but did ask how he felt after he'd heard his father's story. "I never loved him more."

As I was leaving, I asked David how he knew I was going to ask about his father's connection to Pauline. His answer shocked me.

"Because your pal McCabe called and said so. He's been taunting me for years about it but has never been able to find even the smallest shred of proof that Dad killed her. Because there isn't any. My father loved Pauline. He was crushed by her death."

"Wait a minute! Can I be frank? Your father could have found out who did it. He must have known people who could have found out."

"Dad believed the boyfriend did it. Edward Durant."

It made real sense. Durant killed her and went to jail. When he got there, Cadmus arranged to send in the clowns who used Edward as a sex toy until his brains were scrambled eggs and he saw no way out but a permanent necktie. What a neat and evil way to get your revenge.

It sounded plausible, but what had seemed so simple a few days before had suddenly become a surreal three-ring circus of motives, love and revenge.

David walked me out of the building into a scorching California afternoon. We talked by my car a few minutes. I noticed the heat didn't seem to bother him. No sticking shirt, no squinting against the sun.

"This is a long way from Crane's View, New York. Have you been back there recently?"

He shook his head. "I remember you and Frannie McCabe walking down the halls of the school. I never knew if I envied or hated all of you in that gang. No, I haven't been back, but McCabe keeps calling me. He's a strange motherfucker. I'd be flattered by his attention if I didn't know it was my father he still wants to get."

We were staying at the Peninsula Hotel but when I got back to the room, Veronica wasn't there. That was okay because we had been as inseparable as Siamese twins throughout the trip. It was good having time alone to think through my meeting with Cadmus and make notes.

I write all my books by hand. There is something ceremonious and correct about putting things down a letter at a time, your hand doing all that slow work instead of fingers tap-dancing across a keyboard. For me, something is lost in all that speed. On the computer screen, the work looks finished even when you know it isn't.

From my briefcase, I took out a beautiful leather notebook Cass had given me for my last birthday. Then the forty-year-old mustard-colored Parker 51 Custom fountain pen that was the only one I ever used for this purpose. I am superstitious about everything and over the years the pen had become a fundamental element of whatever mysterious chemistry was involved in writing a book. I filled it with ink and opened the notebook to the first page.

In that lovely anonymous room with the air-conditioning purring around me, I began the story of Pauline Ostrova's death – with my dog Jack the Wonder Boy.

He looked at you seriously and appeared to listen to what you said. He was smart and generally reasonable, but there were certain things he insisted on and refused to stop doing even if you went after him with a broom or an angry hand. Bones could only be eaten on a rug, he had to sleep on the corner of my bed, any food left too close to the edge of a table was his if he could somehow get to it.

Every morning of his life he stood by the front door at a reasonable hour, waiting to be let out. We all knew to check the hall as we walked to breakfast to see if he was waiting by the door. In all of his fifteen years, I don't think his neck ever knew the feel of a collar or the tug from a leash. Jack took care of himself, thank you, and didn't need to be led by any human. None of us ever followed him on his rounds, but he was a dog of such fixed routines and dimensions that I'm sure he walked the same route, lifted his leg on the same trees, sniffed the same places thousands of times.

I began the book with our front door opening and Jack stepping out into a new day in Crane's View. My words took him out to the street and then on his morning jaunt.

I wrote for an hour, then got up and walked restlessly around the room, flicked the television on, channel-surfed, turned it off. Looking out the window, I remembered I had a book signing at Book Soup at seven and wondered if Veronica would be back in time. I sat down again and went back to work.

Jack trotted through town. Stores were beginning to open. A few cars were parked in the Grand Union lot on Ashford Avenue. Three teenagers stood in front of the firehouse smoking cigarettes and watching cars go by. Bobby LaSpina. Victor Bucci. Alan Tarricone. According to McCabe, LaSpina died in Vietnam, Tarricone ended up running his father's gas station, Bucci left town and no one heard from him again.

Why did Frannie keep calling Cadmus over the years? Even if Gordon was guilty of Pauline's murder, what could David do about it, especially now that his father was dead? And what else was McCabe up to? What other inexplicables did he have up his sleeve?

Pauline Ostrova hit our dog Jack in front of Martina Darnell's house. At the time, I had a big crush on Martina but she wasn't interested in me. The only time we ever spoke for more than ten seconds was when she described hearing the screech of tires in front of her house, the thud, Jack howling.

That morning, I was the only one home when Pauline knocked at our door.

"Hi there."

I was so involved in writing that Veronica's voice gave me a jolt. I turned around. Her face was a foot from mine. "It's just me."

"Hi! I didn't hear you come in."

"I see that! You're writing away like a little engine. Whacha doin'?" She had a couple of bags in her hand, which she tossed onto the bed. A piece of anthracite blue lingerie slid provocatively out of one. Pushing her hair up with one hand, she fanned her face with the other. "It's not hot outside – it's a punishment! Can you tell me what you've been writing?"