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he couldn’t tell the truth without drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself. He was probably a criminal. I got that picture from the way he talked with the two of them.”
    “So did I.”
    “But I think he was probably a criminal with some background in the construction business. A lot of rackets have legitimate front operations. You know the cigar store across from the Lafayette?”
    “In Binghamton?”
    “Yes. It’s a bookie joint.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “It’s not exactly a secret. Everybody knows it, they operate pretty much in the open. Still, the place is a cigar store. They don’t have a sign that says ‘Bookie Joint,’ and the man who runs it tells people he runs a cigar store, not a bookie joint. It’s probably something like that with Carroll. He was probably in construction, or on the periphery of it, no matter what racket he may have had on the side.”
    He was talking as much to himself as to her now. If they were going to find Lee and the other man, they would do it by reasoning from the few facts and nuances at their disposal.
    “Carroll did something wrong. That was why the two of them came after him. He double-crossed somebody.”
    “He said that he would make it good.”
    He nodded. “That’s right. There was a name. Their boss, the one they work for. Carroll told them to tell the boss that he would make it good.”
    On the notebook page he changed the first entry to read: “Joe Carroll—Construction.” Then he wrote: “Nassau County,” which was where Carroll had said he was in business.
    Jill said, “They mentioned the boss by name. Or Carroll did.”
    “I think Carroll did.”
    “I can remember it. Just a minute.” He waited, and she closed her eyes and put her hands together, pressing the palms one against the other.
    “Dublin,” she said.
    “No, that’s not it.”
    “Dublin, it was Dublin. Tell Dublin that I’ll make it good. No, that’s not right either.”
    “It’s not what they said.”
    “Lublin, maybe?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, say the sentence for me. I think I can tell if I hear it, if you say it for me. Like a visual memory, I except different. Say the sentence the way he said it.”
    “With Lublin?”
    “Yes.”
    He said, “‘Tell Lublin I’ll make it good.’”
    “That’s it. I’m positive, Dave. Lublin.”
    He wrote: “Lublin—Boss.”
    “They worked for Lublin? Is that it?”
    He shook his head. “I think he hired them. I don’t think they were regular . . . well, employees of his. They were paid to kill Carroll. And when one of them wanted to kill us, so that we wouldn’t be able to tell the police anything, the other said something about not killing anybody unless he was getting paid for it As if they had been specifically hired to kill Carroll, to do that one job for a set fee.”
    “That was Lee who said that. I remember now.”
    He wrote: “Hired Professional Killers. Lee.” He said, “I know one name—Lee. It could be his first name or his last name.”
    “Or a nickname,” she said. “If his name is LeGrand, or something.”
    “It could be anything. That was all he was called, wasn’t it? I didn’t hear him called anything else. And he didn’t call the other one anything.”
    “No, he didn’t.”
    He lit a fresh cigarette. He looked at the notebook, at the neat entries one beneath the other: “Joe Carroll—Construction. Nassau County. Scranton paper. Lublin—Boss. Hired Professional Killers. Lee.” He went to the window and looked across at the office building. He wanted to look out at the city but the building was in the way. There were eight or nine million people in the city, and he was looking for two of those millions, and he couldn’t even see the city itself. There was a building in the way.
    “Dave.”
    He turned. She was next to him, her hair brushing his cheek. He put an arm around her and she drew close. Her head settled on his shoulder. For a moment he had thought of those two,