16 .
It was a bright morning. Early November and people were strolling past my corner as if it were still summer. I was reading the paper, celebrating the return of Calvin and Hobbes with two donuts and an extra coffee. Doherty came into the office.
“I threw her out,” he said.
“Jordan,” I said.
“Yeah, I threw her out of the fucking house.”
“You hurt her?” I said.
“No, I mean I didn’t touch her. I told her to get out and she went.”
“She say where she was going?”
“No,” he said. “It’s over. Gimme your fi nal bill.”
“She take anything with her?”
“I let her pack a suitcase. Gimme your bill.”
“You don’t want me to fi nd Alderson?”
“Fuck him,” he said. “It’s over. I don’t care where he is.”
“It would be a bad idea,” I said, “to go after him.”
Doherty’s face was pale except for redness around his eyes. He nodded.
“I know,” he said.
“There’s life after death,” I said.
“I know that, too,” Doherty said. “I’m going to survive this; I won’t kill him.”
“Good.”
“I’ll always regret it, though,” Doherty said.
“Not killing him?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice to think about,” I said, “on cold winter evenings.”
“Yeah.”
“You might want to talk with someone,” I said.
“A shrink?”
“Might help.”
“I don’t need it,” he said.
“Got a guy if you do,” I said. “Guy named Dix, specializes sort of in cops.”
“I’m not a cop,” he said.
“FBI,” I said. “Close enough.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I’m a trained investigator,” I said. “Plus your wife said so on the tape.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Cutting-room fl oor,” I said.
“Maybe I should hear the whole thing,” he said.
“Maybe you should move on from it all,” I said.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I should.”
I wrote out Dix’s address and phone number on a piece of notepaper and gave it to him. He took it and folded it up and stuck it in his shirt pocket without looking at it.
“Anybody at the bureau know about this?” he said.
“No.”
I knew the question would come and I had already decided on my answer. By now Epstein might have figured something out. If he had, there was nothing Doherty could do about it. If he hadn’t, there was no point in him worrying about it.
“Good,” he said. “Doesn’t help, you know, it gets around that there’s trouble at home.”
I nodded. Doherty stood. I waited.
Finally he said, “We didn’t start off so good, but you been pretty decent with all this.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll send you the bill.”
He nodded, and hesitated another moment, then turned and left.