“I’m aware of that.” She turned to face me. “But a victim is not necessarily a client. Do they say anything about that in the handbook? Or is your pretty little client writing you checks from beyond the grave?”

I didn’t say anything. Margo knows a cheap shot when she hears one. She pulled the towel from her head and coiled it tightly in her arms. She might have been counting to ten.

“Okay, let’s back up a second,” she said. “I know you feel bad about what happened to that woman. Of course you do. So do I. For Christ’s sake, so does anyone in America who is paying attention, which, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty much the whole damn country. But I’m sorry, Fritz, whether you spoke with her a few times or not, it’s none of your business. I’m sure you have this fantasy that you could have protected the beautiful maiden across the street, but that’s not how it played out. Some crazy psychopath got in there and slit her throat. But we have a police force in this city, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. They’re looking into it. That’s their job. Robin Burrell is their client. She’s their responsibility.”

She unwrapped her arms and set the towel down on the counter. One of the edges was too near the stove flame, but I didn’t say anything.

“What is it exactly that you don’t like about this?” I asked. “It’s not as if this is the first time I’ve taken up a case on my own. You know that.”

“I do know that. Daddy used to do it, too, and it drove Mom nuts.”

“I’m not your daddy. And you’re not-”

I stopped myself. One of our relationship’s more tender spots was Margo’s fear that in being with me, she was on track to replicate her mother’s life. On its face, the concern was absurd. But it was an argument we had agreed not to enter into. Many times.

I went on, “You know what I’m saying. There’s someone running around this city slicing people’s throats. And too damn close to home to suit my tastes. I know the police are investigating. They’re doing their thing. And Joe Gallo’s a good cop. He’ll probably nail the guy. But another set of eyes never hurt. For Christ’s sake, Margo, this is what I do. What do you want, for me to take up bridge?”

The kettle began to whimper. Margo shut off the flame and picked it up. “I don’t like being jealous,” she said flatly. “It’s one of the most pathetic emotions.”

“There’s nothing to be jealous of. What do you-”

The kettle went down with a rattle. Her eyes were hard black pebbles. “You were quiet about her! You didn’t tell me that you went over there more than once. You tried to hide that from me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, bullshit, Fritz. It is true, and you know it. You never really said to me what it was you two talked about.”

“Not true. She showed me her letters and the e-mails she’d gotten. I told you that.”

“That takes two visits? You brought that stuff up here after the first time you saw her.”

“Perhaps you can remind me of the last time you came home from one of your interviews and recited everything back to me word for word.”

“This is different.”

“Why is it different?”

“Because she lived right across the street. Because she was a beautiful woman.”

“This city is lousy with beautiful women. Present company very much included.”

Margo fingered the ends of her wet hair. “Right. My name is Medusa, it’s nice to meet you.” She fetched her favorite teacup from the drying rack and set it on the counter. “Listen, Fritz, I’m not going to let you charm your way free of this. I’ve already said I’m jealous, and that’s embarrassing enough. We both know I’m not normally the jealous type. So I’m asking myself, what is it? Maybe it’s just that she was on TV all those weeks and she was all that people were talking about. The woman had an affair with Marshall Fox, for Christ’s sake. A very vivid affair, I might add. Thanks to that stupid trial, I practically know more about that woman’s sex life than I know about my own.”

“I’m here to remind you whenever-”

“Shut up. All I’m saying is that every horny hound in America must’ve had that woman in their dreams, and the next thing I know, you’re dropping by to lend her a shoulder to cry on and being just a bit too blasé about it.”

“What was I supposed to do, run up here and-”

“Let me finish.” She very nearly stomped her foot. It had been a long time since I’d seen her this upset. She took a sharp breath. “I watched you sitting at that window the other night. What can I tell you, Fritz, girls don’t like that. I can’t know what you’re feeling when you go to that place. You go very far away. No Margos allowed. Nobody allowed, as best I can tell. I hate it. And now it’s Sunday morning, and you’re going off to the dead girl’s funeral or whatever you want to call it. And I know you. You’re going to get into her head. That’s how you do what you do. I know you. You’re going to get into her head and you’re going to get into her life and you’re going to get into her ugly, stupid death. And I just wish this one time that you wouldn’t.”

She snatched up the kettle again and began pouring water into her cup.

“You forgot the teabag,” I said gently.

With lightning speed, she rattled the kettle to the stove, snatched up the teacup, and smashed it against the side of the sink. She was left holding the broken cup handle, attached to nothing. She threw that into the sink as well.

“You should just go. Really. Go. This is all now officially very stupid. Just go to your stupid funeral. Do whatever it is you need to do. Just do me a fucking favor, will you, and don’t come home dead.”

11

THE FRIENDS MEETING that Robin had attended was at the old Quaker meetinghouse on the edge of Stuyvesant Park, off East Fifteenth Street. Technically, the park wasn’t named for Peter Stuyvesant, early Manhattan ’s first director general, but for his wife, Judith. It would have rankled old Pete to see anything other than a Dutch Reformed church built on land that was originally part of the Stuyvesant homestead, but the Quakers had wisely waited until 189 years after the Dutchman’s death before building their house of worship, so they were spared the pugnacious peg leg’s fabled wrath.

The meeting room was a large rectangle capable of holding several hundred people. It was arranged with rows of pews facing the center of the room. A photograph of Robin Burrell was taped in the middle of one of the front pews. The photograph was black and white, a solemn posed shot dominated by Robin’s dark eyes. Painful to look at, difficult to turn away from. I took a seat in the pew opposite. As others came into the meetinghouse and took their seats, they folded their hands on their laps and closed their eyes for several minutes. At some point I attempted to follow suit-when in Rome -but an afterimage of Robin’s face from the photograph sizzled in the darkness, and I opened my eyes.

Quaker meetings are as much about silence as they are about talk. Maybe more about silence. At no signal that I could discern, the gentle shuffling and settling in were dispensed with and a stillness settled over the room. The meeting had commenced. There were close to a hundred people attending. Some remained with their eyes closed, but just as many sat with eyes open, gazing down at the floor or off into the middle distance.

After maybe ten minutes of the silence, a man rose to his feet. I placed him in his mid-thirties, with tortoiseshell glasses, a clipped brown mustache and a plaid sweater vest. His hands were clasped in front of him, and he rotated his head slowly as he spoke, taking in the room. The voice was soothing, smooth as butter.

“I’m struck by the affection for Robin that I am feeling here this morning. The enormous…affection.” Here he paused to make eye contact. Slowly. Methodically. Person by person. He continued, “I’m struck with the thought that under different circumstances, if another of us had passed on, Robin would have been here this morning, participating. Robin’s affection, her sense of concern, her caring, they would all be here in the air, just as our thoughts and concerns for her are now passing among us. I’m struck by that thought. What I’m struck by is not so much Robin’s absence but her presence. It’s in this way that I feel Robin is still very much with us. We think of her, as we are all doing this morning, and she is alive to us. The affection and the concern that Robin showed for all of us while she was still among us-that’s what I still feel. That Robin hasn’t died. And I suppose I’m hoping that in some way, maybe in this way, through us, Robin can continue to live on.”