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“I’ve got to go way the hell across town to the Detention Center,” he said. “I thought it made more sense to get dressed now. I may have to call you and ask you to meet me at the Thompsons’. All right?”

She nodded. “I’ve been thinking about having a drink. Specifically, a straight cognac. Does that sound appealing?”

“Very tempting, but I’d better not. I don’t want someone sniffing my breath over there.”

“You don’t mind if I do? I think I’m fighting a cold.”

“Don’t fight too hard. You heard what I said about you maybe having to drive yourself to the Thompsons’?”

“Why don’t I just skip the Thompsons’?”

“We’ve been over this before. Thompson is important in the party.”

“You make him, you make the both of you sound like apparatchiks in the Supreme Soviet,” Helene said.

“That’s the second, maybe the third, time you made that little joke. I don’t find it funny this time, either.”

“You’re certainly in a lousy mood. Has it to do with—what did you say? ‘The Detention Center’? What is that, anyway?”

She got up and walked to the bar, retrieved her glass and the bottle of Rémy Martin, and poured a half inch into the snifter.

“The Detention Center is where they lock people up before they’re indicted, or if they can’t make bail. Essentially, it’s a prison in everything but name.”

“What are you going to be doing there?”

“The one witness we have to the robbery and murder at Goldblatt’s is going to try to pick the guilty parties out in lineups. Washington—that great big Negro detective?—has scheduled it for half past six. Christ only knows how long it will take.”

“I think you’re supposed to say ‘black,’ not ‘Negro,’” Helene said.

“Whatever.”

“Have you seen the paper?”

“I wasn’t in it, my secretary said.”

“I meant about the Islamic Liberation Army threatening reprisal, revenge, whatever.”

“I heard about it,” he said, and then followed her pointing finger and went and picked up the Ledger.

She waited until he had read the newspaper story, and then asked, “Do they mean it?”

“Who the hell knows?” he said, and then had a thought. “Going over to see that kid was a good idea. I don’t know if I knew or not, but I didn’t make the connection. You do know who his father is?”

“Tell me.”

“Brewster Cortland Payne, of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester.”

“He’s important in the party too, I suppose?”

“Helene, you’re being a bitch, and I’m really not in the mood for it.”

“Sorry.”

“But to answer your question, yes. He is important in the party. And if this political thing doesn’t work out, Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester is the sort of firm with which I would like to be associated.”

“Then maybe we should have gotten him a box of candy or something.”

He looked at her and took a moment to consider whether she was being sarcastic again.