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I putwith a ten-dollar bill My e," I said

Willia else? Rosie made an apple strudel that will knock your socks off"

"I better not, but I’d love a glass of soda water"

"Certainly Would you care for ice?"

"Nope"

"A slice of lemon or lilass with soda froun "You have an extra bar towel I could borrow? A dirty one will do"

He reached under the bar and removed a damp towel he must have stowed earlier Willia petri dish fer bacteria

I perched on a bar stool where the light was good and cleaned the grunge off the tag On one side there was a phone nu’s name, which was Ulf I lifted the li that it still carried the faint scent of rot I put the tag back in ave Williaht air felt chilly and the street was deserted It was only a little after seven, but the neighbors were hoht After twenty-one years, it probably wasn’t possible to detere or if he’d been put down because of illness or injury The "pirates" probably had a good laugh at Sutton’s expense, spinning the yarn about a treasureSutton would have been just as enthralled by a doggie funeral with a bit of poenerateddefensiveness about Sutton’s ending up with egg on his face How his sisterhim make a public fool of himself Ah, well Once I reached my apartment and closed the door behind me, I secured the locks, turned on a couple of laed into rabbed a quilt, and settled on the couch to read Happily, I had a weekend cooof off for the whole of it, which is exactly what I did

Monday ettable The afternoon was taken up with a due-diligence request for an Arizona h-level executive According to his résumé, he’d lived and worked in Santa Teresa fro to suggest he was hiding information, but the Hu ularities caators to do a follow-up I was looking at half a day’s work at best, but it wouldn’t be strenuous A paycheck is a paycheck, and I was happy to oblige

At 10:00, I walked over to the courthouse, and spent the next two hours trolling the index of civil and crie licenses, and divorce decrees There was no evidence of wrongdoing and no suggestion the fellow had ever crossed swords with the law The probleuy at all

I’d been given an address on the upper east side On his application, the guy claiht the house in 1970 and lived there until he sold it in 1977, but the owner of record was someone else entirely Since the public library was just across the street, I left the courthouse and jaywalked, approaching the entrance with a suitable sense of anticipation I love shit like this, catching liars in the act His fabrications had been so specific and detailed, heno one would ever bother to check

I returned to the reference department, where I’d spent such a satisfactory hour the week before I shedit across the back of a chair while I pulled the Santa Teresa city directories for the years in question Again, a fingertip search turned up no trace of the guy I cross-checked the address in the Haines and Polk and ca Well, wasn’t that a kick in the pants?

I was onI took it out again and studied it, tempted by the phone number on one side It wouldn’t take five minutes to look it up in the Haines Maybe I’d never know the whole story, but I lean the odd bit of infor My curiosity was idle and wouldn’t have warranted a separate trip to the library However, I was already on the premises and the effort required would be miniinning to regard as my adjunct office I took out both the 1966 and 1967 Polk and Haines directories and sat down at what I was beginning to think of asdown beside h the Haines until I found the sait prefix I worked my way down the sequence of numbers until I found a ned to a P F Sanchez By flipping back and forth between the Haines and the Polk, I found an address for hinized His occupation was contractor; no indication of a wife