THURSDAY 12:18 P.M.

I sat on the couch. Caesar clambered up and put his snout on my right leg. I’d lowered the lights. With the front drapes open, I could see the snow falling. Caesar sighed. With one hand, I scratched the back of his neck the way he liked. With the other, I held a cup of hot chocolate and sipped from it. I thought I might sit there for a few minutes in contentment.

I fell asleep on the couch. I woke with Caesar’s head nestled under my chin. He was snoring. Wasn’t the worst way I’ve ever woken up.

I’d slept for a few hours. I made sure Caesar was fed and watered. I checked his outside access. I watched his large paws clump at the edge of drifts. His floppy ears made their own trails in the snow. He shook himself when we got back inside.

I live in a small home between two apartment houses on Buckingham east of Clark and west of Halsted. I’d saved the reputation and fortune of a closeted gay man who had wanted to make sure his parents never found out he was gay. I couldn’t live that way, but he was desperate that they keep the illusion. A hustler was determined to drag his name through the tabloids, but I’d managed to keep his reputation and fortune from ruin. In gratitude, he gave me the house, a rundown mess. I’d been renovating it myself for a couple years. The downstairs and the basement were done. The two rooms and half bath upstairs needed some finishing touches.

I looked out the bay windows to the yard out front. It was hard to make out my tracks through the show to the front door. On radar on the computer, I saw vast plumes of snow flooding off the lake. The weather forecaster was doing her perky best to assure us it would end and that we needed to bundle up if we went outside. At moments like that, I always wondered when the weather forecasters had become our mothers. I guess it made them feel better to be in the mommy role.

The alley was impassable. I got out my heavy duty snow blower from the garage. I cleared paths around the house, to the street, and removed the drift along the back of the garage. I cleaned the sidewalk for a third of a block on each side of my place. I threw sand and environmentally friendly chemical mixture salt along the cleared pavement.

Caesar watched my activity in the front yard from the comfort of his throne of doggy blankets and pillows on the shelf of the bay window. I thought he may have even bestirred himself from his repose twice to watch what I was doing for up to ten seconds at a time. Caesar and snow and exercise are not best of friends, although he no longer bays at the snow blower. They’ve come to a truce over the years. Or Caesar is just too lazy to keep up the fight.

My legs felt okay from all the walking through the snow yesterday. The snow clearing I’d just done would serve for today’s workout.

I thought as I worked. Vincek hadn’t told me everything, but I kind of knew that. Who was Youssef? Vincek in disguise? Doubtful. Vincek and Youssef and Blake and some number of others were running an international scam on terrorists? I was nowhere near ready to believe that. I need to talk to Vincek again, but I wanted more information first.