“She forgets the gingersnaps again,” Ernie likes to pretend to growl, “you’re gonna read about it in the Daily News.”

The sisters warily exchange a hug. The conversation avoids all contact with the controversial until onto the living-room tube comes a Channel 13 yakker hosted by Beltway intellectual Richard Uckelmann called Thinking with Dick, whose guests today include an Israeli cabinet official Brooke and Avi used to run into at parties. Under discussion is the always-lively topic of West Bank settlements. After a minute and a half, though it seems longer, of government propaganda, Maxine blurts, “This guy didn’t try to sell you any real estate, I hope.”

Just what Brooke has been waiting for. “Miss Smartmouth,” a little screechy, “always with a remark. Try going out on night patrol sometime, arabushim throwing bombs at you, see how far that mouth gets you.”

“Girls, girls,” murmurs Ernie.

“You mean ‘girl, girl,’ I think,” Maxine sez, “I’m the one suddenly being trashed here.”

“Brooke only means she’s been to a kibbutz and you haven’t,” Elaine soothingly.

“Right, all day long at the Grand Canyon Mall in Haifa, spending her husband’s money, some kibbutz.”

“You, you don’t even have a husband.”

“Oh, look, a screamfest. Just what I came over here for.” She blows a kiss at the p’tcha, which seems to wobble in reply, and looks around for her purse. Brooke stomps off to the kitchen. Ernie goes after her, Elaine gazes sorrowfully at Maxine, Avi pretends to be absorbed in the television.

“All right, all right, Ma, I’ll behave, just . . . I was gonna say do something about Brooke, but I think that moment passed thirty years ago.” Presently, Ernie comes out of the kitchen eating a gingersnap, and Maxine goes in to find her sister shredding potatoes for latkes. Maxine finds a knife and starts chopping onions and for a while they prep in silence, neither willing to be the first to talk, God forbid it should be anything like “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, Brooke?” Maxine eventually. “Pick your brain a minute?”

A shrug, like, I’ve got a choice?

“I was out on a date with a guy who says he’s ex-Mossad. I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting me or what.”

“Did he take off his right shoe and sock and—”

“Hey, how’d you know?”

“Any given night in any singles bar in Haifa, you can always find some loser who’s taken a Sharpie and put three dots on the bottom of his heel. Some old folklore about a secret tattoo, total bullshit.”

“And there are still girls who fall for it?”

“Didn’t you ever?”

“Come on, Jews and tattoos? I’m desperate, but not unobservant.”

Everybody makes nice for the rest of the evening. The Tongue Polonaise comes in on a Wedgwood platter Maxine only remembers seeing at seder. Ernie dramatically sharpens a knife and begins carving the tongue as ceremoniously as if it’s a Thanksgiving turkey.

“So?” inquires Elaine, after Ernie takes a bite.

“A time machine of the mouth, my darling, Proust Schmoust, this takes a man straight back to his bar mitzvah.” Singing a couple bars of “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena” just to prove it.

“It’s his mother’s recipe,” clarifies Elaine, “well, except for the mangoes, they hadn’t been invented yet.”

•   •   •

EDITH FROM YENTA EXPRESSO is out in the hallway, lounging in front of her door as if soliciting customers. “Maxine, some guy was here the other day looking for you? Daytona was out also, he asked me to tell you he’d be back.”

“Uh-oh,” having one of those intuitive flashes. “Nice shoes?”

“High three figures, Edward Greens, snakeskin, appropriately enough. You might want to be careful though, he’s problematic.”

“Client?”

“Known to the community. Don’t get me wrong, lonely is OK, it’s my bread and butter, I’m down with lonely, I’m down with desperate. But this guy . . .”

“Not that look, Edith please. This isn’t romantic.”

“I’m in the business thirty years, trust me, how romantic is it? As romantic as it gets.”

“Creeping me out here. You’re saying I should expect him back?”

“Don’t worry, I already gave them a heads-up at the Times, they’ll spell your name right.”

•   •   •

SO, SURE ENOUGH, as if Edith’s wearing a wire, a phone call from Nicholas Windust. He wants to do brunch at some faux-Parisian brasserie over on the East Side. “Long as you’re springing,” Maxine shrugs, thinking of it as a modest federal tax rebate.

Windust seems to think it’s a date. He is done up, otherwise inexplicably, in somebody’s idea of hipster gear—jeans, vintage sharkskin sport coat, Purple Drank T-shirt, enough dress-code violations to get him thrown off the L train. Maxine peers at this for as long as she has to, shrugs, “It’s a look.”

He wants to sit inside, Maxine feels safer close to the street and it’s nice out today, so, cozy schmozy, outside it shall be. Windust orders a soft-boiled egg and a Bloody Mary, Maxine wants half a grapefruit and coffee in a bowl. “Amazed you could find the time, Mr. Windust,” with a smile of shameless bogosity, “So! my brother-in-law’s back in the USA now, I can’t imagine what else this could be about.”

“We were intrigued to learn he’s hired on at hashslingrz.com. Like your turnout by the way, Armani, isn’t it?”

“Just some schmatte from H&M, but how nice of you to notice.” And what is with the getting cute here, stop, stop, Maxine when will you . . . ?

“Suggesting an interesting hookup of interests, if Avram Deschler is, as we suspect, a Mossad sleeper.”

Maxine makes with a Blank Stare she has learned from Shawn and often found useful. “Too academic for me.”

“Play dumb if you like, but I ran a search on you, you’re the little lady who sent Jeremy Fink up the river. Busted the Manalapan Ponzoids gang over in Jersey. Went down to Grand Cayman disguised as a reggae backup singer, firebombed ten and a half billion in physical Swiss francs, and exfiltrated in the perps’ own Gulfstream jet.”

“That was Mitzi Turner, actually. They’re always getting us confused. Mitzi’s the asskicker, I’m just a working mom.”

“Regardless, given the number of U.S. government contracts hashslingrz is involved with—”

“Look, either Avi’s some fantasy of yours, darkside hacker-saboteur, Mossad assassin, or he’s just another standard-issue geek trying to get through like the rest of us here outside the Beltway—whatever, I still don’t see how I come into it.”

Windust opens and reaches into an aluminum attaché case which he seems to be living out of, judging from the shaving kit and changes of underwear inside, and finds a folder. “Before his next tête-à-tête with Gabriel Ice, here’s something you might want to look over.”

Without being able to see his eyes, she watches his mouth for, what, some footnote? but no, he’s only smiling at her not even in a sociable way, more like he’s holding some winning hand, or a weapon aimed at her heart.

Though unenthusiastic about touching anything that’s been in contact with Windust’s intimate apparel, she’s also a fraud investigator whose prime directive is You Never Know, so she takes the folder gingerly and stashes it in her Kate Spade satchel.

“On the clear understanding,” Maxine quickly adding, “as Deborah Kerr, or Marni Nixon, might say, or actually sing—that this is none of my—”

“Am I making you nervous?”

She risks a fast sideways peek and is astonished to catch on his face now a look that would not be out of place in a pickup joint south of 14th Street, some late Saturday night when the hotter inventory has been squired away out the door and the pickings have grown unhelpfully slimmer. What’s up with this? She is not about to react to such a face. A silence arises, and lengthens, and not only a silence, as her glance, inadvertently wandering to that other indicator of the inward, confirms. It’s in fact a hardon of some size, and worse, he’s caught her looking.