I might have gotten it without the letter, but I doubt it. A few days to realize and another couple to believe, but it finally sank in. Maybe he wanted me to know. Less than a week later I finally reached him at his office. He wasn’t prepared to drop everything to visit a friend.

“Look, I’m sorry I haven’t checked in, but I’ve been swamped. Believe me, I know what I owe you. I want to see you but I won’t be out of here until late tonight. Can’t we wait for a better time?”

“No. I’m tired of waiting. I don’t care how late you show, just let yourself in the alley door.”

There was a silence, then, “I don’t like being away from home right now.”

“Don’t worry, there won’t be much of a delay. I’m not planning a party.”

“Matt man, you’re angry and you have reason. Hell, first I wouldn’t speak with you and then I’m out of town during your recovery, but you’ve never held a grudge before …”

I chuckled and hung the receiver gently on its hook.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when I heard the crunch of tires on the alley’s gravel. The apartment was dark, but my bottle of Wild Turkey and the single-shot glass glistened in the amber anti-crime security light seeping through my window from the grocery store’s parking lot. My gun lay in the gloom next to the bourbon.

I heard the rattle of the knob and watched as he quietly pushed the door open.

“Matt, Matt, are you awake?” His voice was low. I didn’t think he wanted to disturb me if I were sleeping. He was out of luck—I was already plenty disturbed.

“Right in front of you, Simon.”

“Oh, there you are.” He sounded disappointed. “What’s with the dark? The doctors never mentioned vision problems.”

“I don’t have any problem with my sight. I just don’t like what I’m seeing.”

He started to open his mouth, shut it, and dropped into the chair across from me. He pointed toward the middle of the table, “You have another glass for that stuff?”

“That one is for you.”

“Since when do I drink alone when we’re together?”

“Since your letter. Check that, since I understood your letter.”

He pulled his already loose tie a little further from his neck. “I just needed a little time to be alone with Fran. I told you that.” He reached for the bottle and glass, poured, drank, and poured again. He stuck his hand inside a pocket and pulled out a cigar. “You have a light?”

I flipped the matches across the table and watched him fire up. I held on to the mad that had kept me afloat the past week. “I thought really smoking those interfered with your climb to the top, Simon.”

He stared at me. “What’s wrong, Matt?”

“The little things, buddy, the little things. See, Alex was right when he said he could afford Starring. Why kill when all you have to do is pay? Then there’s the guy who whacked Gloria around. Why would Alex hire scum when he had someone good like Clifford in his pocket? Fact was, he didn’t hire him. You did. My guess is Dr. James mentioned her duplicate record to Fran and you found out. It was easy enough to gild Alex’s lily by adding them to his collection.

“The lock was the line about ‘sentimental souvenir’ in your letter. I never talked about the birth certificate with anyone. Anyone. I figured Alex had it destroyed, until I understood your letter. I had Alex and Clifford figured wrong, didn’t I, buddy? You were jerking me around from the start.”

Simon shook his head, drained his drink, and poured another. “You’re still figuring wrong.”

I felt my anger begin to crackle. “Don’t lie to me, you bastard. You wanted Alex out of your way and found an almost foolproof way of accomplishing it. You were tired of being ‘Simon the second fiddle.’ Tired of being the boss’s son-in-law. Tired of waiting. You wanted it all.”

He sucked furiously on his cigar, his other hand trembling. “That’s not it, Matt. What do you take me for?”

“Since I realized you killed Starring, I haven’t known what to take you for.”

Simon pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. “You have an ashtray?”

I got up, walked to the counter, then slammed one down in front of him. The headlights of a car in the parking lot shone through the window momentarily, adding a milky paste to the amber. I went back to my chair and pulled it deeper into the shadows.

“I wasn’t jerking you around. My marriage was coming apart, I just didn’t know why. When I discovered that Fran had withdrawn a large amount from her account, I guessed blackmail.” His voice dropped lower. “I just didn’t know who, or why. As soon as I got Starring’s name and address from Boots I went to his dump to get him off Fran’s back. I wanted him to stop, I wanted the bleeding to end. He just laughed and waved that fucking birth certificate in my face . . .”

Simon’s face contorted. “But that wasn’t enough for him. Blackmailing Fran wasn’t enough, blackmailing Alex wasn’t enough. He rubbed my face in Fran’s adultery, and then tried to get money from me to keep quiet.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Money from me.”

Simon breathed deeply. “Matt, he had pictures. He showed them to me and I exploded. All the torture he’d already put us through wasn’t enough. He wanted to put us through more. I didn’t think there would ever be a way to stop his leeching. I didn’t know what I was doing. All I could see were the damn pictures, the damn birth certificate. I lost it, Matt. When I first got there he waved a gun in my face, then put it down. I grabbed it and …”

Even in the dark I could see the tears run down his face. “So you shot him and decided to frame Alex.”

“Matt man,” his voice begged for understanding, “nothing was going to happen to Alex. Bad P.R., that’s all, a law student could get him off. Ten million don’t do time.” He ran his handkerchief across his face, breathed deeply and said, “Fran hasn’t been the only one with nightmares.”

My fingers snaked out and rubbed the cold metal of my gun. I could feel electricity where I touched it. “You used me to bloodhound the kid and you used Fran’s dreams to point me toward Alex. I saved you a lot of worry, didn’t I?”

“Damn it, no one asked you to kill Alex, you did that on your own!”

The night in the solarium flooded my head, and the crease in my scalp felt raw. I gritted my teeth, and closed my eyes. Somewhere I’d harbored a secret hope that I had gotten it wrong, that it had been Alex after all who was responsible for Starring’s death. Desperately I had wanted to wash some of the blood from my own conscience.

When I opened my eyes Simon was staring at my hand, the one pointing the gun.

“Are you planning to turn me in?”

I shook my head. “Like you said, Simon, ten million don’t do time, and right now you are the one with the ten.”

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

For a very long moment the idea seemed appealing. My unnecessary slaughter of Alex had shoved me out further than I’d ever been from civilization. My finger began to tighten, then stopped. I placed the gun back down on the table. “No, I’m not going to kill you, Simon.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing.”

For a second relief flooded his face. It almost made me change my mind. He stood up and held his hands apart. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything.”

He took me at my word. He gulped the last of his drink and turned toward the door. Before he was out he looked back and opened his mouth, but I shook my head. He shrugged and was gone.

I listened as the sound of his car’s engine grew faint, then disappeared. Still I didn’t move. I wasn’t mad, didn’t want a drink or any dope; my belly was full of betrayal, and there just wasn’t room for anything else. I sat deep in the dark and waited for the depression to hit. But all I felt was the tug of disappointment. I didn’t know if more of me was dead or I was just older.

I sat until gray cracked the pale amber and erased the room of shadows. I stood, stretched, and felt the pain in my leg and the tightness of my muscles as I walked to the sink. I splashed water on my face and stared at my reflection in the kitchen window. The glass needed a good spring cleaning. I wandered into the living room and lowered myself down on the couch. I hoped there was a decent dawn movie—I had time to kill before I could explain things to Boots.