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isn’t clear.”
    Mulheisen looked very interested. He stood there, thoughtfully chewing on a cigar that had gone out. Finally, he took the cigar from his mouth, looked at it carefully, prodded the dead end to see if it was still lit, then dropped it onto the path and ground it under his boot. “Joe Service,” he said. “Imagine that.” Abruptly, he raised his eyebrows as if clearing his mind and said, “Oh, well.”
    Tucker said, “Then you’ll join us?”
    “Nah. Sorry. I really can’t. Thanks for the offer, though.”
    Tucker was astounded. He followed after as Mulheisen strode toward the house. “But, but . . . you’re not interested?” he said. He really was amazed. “What about your mother?”
    “I’m thinking of my mother,” Mulheisen said. “She needs my help.” He stopped at the door and thrust out his hand to shake. “Say,keep in touch, will you? I’m interested, naturally, in case you find out anything. Thanks for coming by. Bye.”
    He went in the back door and closed it, firmly. Tucker stood openmouthed, staring after him. Finally, he went to his car and drove away.

2
    A Dog’s Conscience
    T o say that Joe Service was a man with a dog’s conscience is not to say that he was innocent. But in his heart he was innocent. It was true that he had killed a few men, and he had taken a few dollars to which, strictly speaking, he had no legitimate claim, but these things could be explained. To wit: self-defense and the money was owed him . . . more or less. There was that unlucky guy in Iowa City, a few years back, and there might be some who would regard his role in the assassination of Carmine Busoni as straining the limits of self-defense. Some would say he had been more than an enabler in that case, not just encouraging his lover, Helen Sedlacek, in avenging the murder of her father, but conceiving the hit plan, showing her how to do it, and even driving the getaway car. Carmine deserved it, to be sure. Joe was free of recriminations about any of these killings.
    At the moment, Joe felt especially virtuous now that he was on the straight and narrow. He had lately become a home builder, a carpenter, a man who owned a dog, a man who bought license plates for his car and even a legitimate driver’s license. It was true that his car and the plates and the license were acquired with the use of an alias, but that was a mere precaution. Joe Humann was his name now.
    Joe also represented Helen as his wife, which in the eyes of the state of Montana meant that he was in fact married, although Joe wasn’t aware of that. (One might pose a reasonable legal question as to whether the fact that they represented themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Humann rendered their common-law marriage moot, as well as unconscious.) Doubtless it didn’t matter, but had Joe known that he was now legally married—theoretically—it would bolster his feelings of an innocent heart (although he might have other qualms).
    It was remarkable how readily Joe fell in with his newfound probity. Helen had no such feelings. Until she’d met Joe she had been “straight,” as it were—a square, a home guard. Her father had been a crook, a well-known gangster, but in the way of such things he had always denied that, claiming he was falsely accused, merely because he knew a few mobsters and he made his income in an unorthodox way—as a business adviser to men suspected of criminal activities. A child doesn’t question these things too deeply. If a beloved parent insists that he’s innocent, merely a friend of people who are unfairly suspected by the cops, why even an intelligent child like Helen is likely to accept that. A child could even play with that popular myth, at once relishing the special status that seemed to accrue to so-called gangsters, and at another moment, if the canard were seriously alleged, she might spiritedly defend her father’s putative honesty. It was only in her late