“You’ve hardly touched your food,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s this case I’m working on,” I said, at least half truthfully. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Oh,” she said. “You’re sure that…I mean, is it very violent?”

“It’s not that,” I said, wondering what she wanted to hear. “It’s just…very puzzling.”

Rita nodded. “Sometimes if you stop thinking about something for a while, the answer comes to you,” she said.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, which was probably stretching the truth.

“Are you going to finish your breakfast?” she said.

I stared down at my plate with its pile of half-eaten pancakes and congealed syrup. Scientifically speaking, I knew they were still delicious, but at the moment they seemed about as appealing as old wet newspaper. “No,” I said.

Rita looked at me with alarm. When Dexter does not finish his breakfast, we are in uncharted territory. “Why don’t you take your boat out?” she said. “That always helps you relax.” She came over and put a hand on me with aggressive concern, and Cody and Astor looked up with the hope of a boat ride written on their faces, and it was suddenly like being in quicksand.

I stood up. It was all too much. I could not even meet my own expectations, and to be asked to deal with all theirs too was suffocating. Whether it was my failure with Starzak, the pursuing music, or being sucked down into family life, I could not say. Maybe it was the combination of all of them, pulling me apart with wildly opposite gravities and sucking the pieces into a whirlpool of clinging normaley that made me want to scream, and at the same time left me unable even to whimper. Whatever it was, I had to get out of here.

“I have an errand I have to run,” I said, and they all looked at me with wounded surprise.

“Oh,” Rita said. “What kind of errand?”

“Wedding business,” I blurted out, without any idea what I was going to say next, but trusting the impulse blindly. And happily for me, at least one thing went right, because I remembered my conversation with the blushing, groveling Vince Masuoka. “I have to talk to the caterer.”

Rita lit up. “You’re going to see Manny Borque? Oh,” she said. “That’s really-”

“Yes, it is,” I assured her. “I’ll be back later.” And so at the reasonable Saturday-morning time of fifteen minutes before ten o’clock, I bid a fond farewell to dirty dishes and domesticity, and climbed into my car. It was an unusually calm morning on the roads, and I saw no violence or crime of any kind as I drove to South Beach, which was almost like seeing snow at the Fontainebleau. Things being what they were for me lately, I kept an eye on the rearview mirror. For just a minute I thought that a little red Jeep-style car was following me, but when I slowed down it went right past me. The traffic stayed light, and it was still only ten fifteen when I had parked my car, rode up in the elevator, and knocked on Manny Borque’s door.

There was a very long spell of utter silence, and I knocked again, a little more enthusiastically this time. I was about to try a truly rousing salute on the door when it swung open and an exceedingly bleary and mostly naked Manny Borque blinked up at me. “Jesus’ tits,” he croaked. “What time is it?”

“Ten fifteen,” I said brightly. “Practically time for lunch.”

Perhaps he wasn’t really awake, or perhaps he thought it was so funny it was worth saying again, but in any case he repeated himself: “Jesus’ tits.”

“May I come in?” I asked him politely, and he blinked a few more times and then pushed the door open all the way.

“This better be good,” he said, and I followed him in, past the hideous art-thing in his foyer and on to his perch by the window. He hopped up onto his stool, and I sat on the one opposite.

“I need to talk to you about my wedding,” I said, and he shook his head very grumpily and squealed out, “Franky!” There was no answer and he leaned on one tiny hand and tapped the other on the table. “That little bitch had better-Goddamn it, Franky!” he called out in something like a very high-pitched bellow.

A moment later there was a scurrying sound from the back of the apartment, and then a young man came out, pulling a robe closed as he hurried in and brushing back his lank brown hair as he came to a halt in front of Manny. “Hi,” he said. “I mean, you know. Good morning.”

“Get coffee very quickly,” Manny said without looking up at him.

“Um,” Franky said. “Sure. Okay.” He hesitated for half a second, just long enough to give Manny time to fling out his minuscule fist and shriek, “Now, goddamn it!” Franky gulped and lurched away toward the kitchen, and Manny went back to leaning his full eighty-five pounds of towering grumpiness on his fist and closing his eyes with a sigh, as though he were tormented by numberless hordes of truly idiotic demons.

Since it seemed obvious that there could be no possibility of conversation without coffee, I looked out the window and enjoyed the view. There were three large freighters on the horizon, sending up plumes of smoke, and closer in to shore a good scattering of pleasure boats, ranging from the multimillion-dollar playtoys headed for the Bahamas all the way down to a cluster of Windsurfers in close to the beach. A bright yellow kayak was offshore, apparently heading out to meet the freighters. The sun shone, the gulls flew by searching for garbage, and I waited for Manny to receive his transfusion.

There was a shattering crash from the kitchen, and Franky’s muted wail of “Oh, shit.” Manny tried to close his eyes tighter, as if he could seal out all the agony of being surrounded by terrible stupidity. And only a few minutes later, Franky arrived with the coffee service, a silver semi-shapeless pot and three squat stoneware cups, perched on a transparent platter shaped like an artist’s palette.

With trembling hands Franky placed a cup in front of Manny and poured it full. Manny took a tiny sip, sighed heavily without any sense of relief, and opened his eyes at last. “All right,” he said. And turning to Franky, he added, “Go clean up your hideous mess, and if I step on broken glass later, I swear to God I will disembowel you.” Franky stumbled away, and Manny took another microscopic sip before turning his bleary glare on me. “You want to talk about your wedding,” he said as if he couldn’t really believe it.

“That’s right,” I said, and he shook his head.

“A nice-looking man like you,” he said. “Why on earth would you want to get married?”

“I need the tax break,” I said. “Can we talk about the menu?”

“At the crack of dawn, on a Saturday? No,” he said. “It’s a horrible, pointless, primitive ritual,” and I assumed he was talking about the wedding rather than the menu, although with Manny one really couldn’t be sure. “I am truly appalled that anyone would willingly go through with it. But,” he said, waving his hand dismissively, “at least it gives me a chance to experiment.”

“I wonder if it might be possible to experiment a little cheaper.”

“It might be,” he said and for the first time he showed his teeth, but it could only be called a smile if you agree that torturing animals is funny, “but it just won’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve already decided what I want to do, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

To be perfectly truthful there were several things I could think of to stop him, but none of them-enjoyable as they might be-would pass the strict guidelines of the Harry Code, and so I could not do them. “I don’t suppose sweet reason would have any effect?” I asked hopefully.

He leered at me. “How sweet did you have in mind?” he said.

“Well, I was going to say please and smile a lot,” I said.

“Not good enough,” he said. “Not by a great deal.”

“Vince said you were guessing five hundred dollars a plate?”