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"This way they’re never wrong"

"That’s it exactly ‘Well, we said only a ten percent chance of rain and it poured all day, so all thatshot caist doesn’t mean you don’t feel the need to cover your ass" He took a breath "I never asked you this, but do you prefer Matt or Matthew?"

Either’s fine with ood," I said

"Matt, why do they insist on a formal identification? He was in prison, he has a police record, they’d already identified hierprints Suppose there was nobody around who could do it They’d get along without it, wouldn’t they?"

"Sure"

"I really didn’t want to see him like that My father’s funeral was open-casket, and there he was, like so froe I was left with, this lifeless waxen effigy We had our problems, God knows I was not the son he’d had inhis last illness, and there was love and liorous man I wanted to remember I knew that would happen, I dreaded it, but at the same time I couldn’t not look Do you knohat I o was this?"

"A little over a year Why?"

"Because tie that," I said "The earlier memory will supplant the other"

"That’s already begun to happen I didn’t knohether I could trust it, whether it was real Or just soto do with it," I said, "but it’s still real We wind up re people the way they were, or at least the e knew them I had an aunt with Alzheimer’s, she spent the last ten years of her life institutionalized, while the disease ate herthat made her human And that’s how I knew her, and how I remembered her"

"God"

"And that all faded out after she was gone, and the real Aunt Peg came back"

Over coffee he said, "I barely looked at him just now All I really saere the wounds"

He’d been shot in the mouth and the forehead They’d shown the corpse with a sheet covering him from the neck down, so if there were other wounds ouldn’t have seen theht," he said "About the i It can’t fade too soon forthe trip"

I hadn’t much wanted to keep him company, but it was a hard request to say no to

"I didn’t want to go at all," he said, "and I certainly didn’t want to go by myself I could have found someone else to coht choice Thank you"

We’d headed north on First Avenue e left the ue, and stopped at a coffee shop called Mykonos just past Forty-second Street When he ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, I realized it had been a while since I’d eaten, and said I’d have the sa else I want to talk about"

"Oh?"

"The two men at the back of the room They were police officers"

"Somehow I sensed as much"

"Well, I didn’t need radar, because I saw their badges when they interviewed me In fact they were the ones who asked me tothe case, and they said so noncommittal"

"That’s no surprise"

"Do you think they’ll solve it?"

"It’s possible they’ve solved it already," I said, "in the sense that theysufficient evidence to bring a case to trial"

"Could you find out?"

"Whether or not they knoho did it?" He nodded "I suppose I could ask around An ordinary citizen wouldn’t get a straight answer, but I still know a few people in the department Why?"

"I have a reason"

One he evidently preferred to keep to hio

I said, "I’ll see if anybody wants to tell ht now as to who killed Jack"

"You can?"

"Not by nauess why he was killed Somebody wanted to shut him up"