I had a night of dreams and shallow sleep. The dog, Bandy, turned up in one of the dreams. He wasn’t really dead. His death had been faked as part of some elaborate scam. He told me all this, told me too that he’d always been able to talk but had been afraid to disclose this talent. “If I’d only known,” I marveled, “what conversations we could have had!”

I awoke refreshed and clearheaded and fiercely hungry. I had bacon and eggs and home fries at the Red Flame and read the News. They’d caught the First Avenue Slasher, or at the least had arrested someone they said was the Slasher. A photograph of the suspect bore a startling resemblance to the police artist’s sketch that had run earlier. That doesn’t happen too often.

I was on my second cup of coffee when Vinnie slid into the booth across from me. “Woman in the lobby,” he said.

“For me?”

He nodded. “Young, not bad-looking. Nice clothes, nice hair. Gave me a couple of bucks to point you out when you came in. I don’t even know if you’re comin’ back, so I figured I’d take a chance, look here and there and see if I could find you. I got Eddie coverin’ the desk for me. You comin’ back to the hotel?”

“I hadn’t planned to.”

“What you could do, see, you could look her over and gimme a sign to point you out or not point you out. I’d just as soon earn the couple of bucks, but I’m not gonna go and retire on it, you know what I mean? If you want to duck this dame—”

“You can point me out,” I said. “Whoever she is.”

He went back to the desk. I finished my coffee and the paper and took my time returning to the hotel. When I walked in Vinnie nodded significantly toward the wing chair over by the cigarette machine, but he needn’t have bothered. I’d have spotted her without help. She looked utterly out of place, a well-groomed, well-coiffed, color-coordinated suburban princess who’d found her way to the wrong part of Fifty-seventh Street. A few blocks east she might have been having an adventure, making the rounds of the art galleries, looking for a print that would go well with the mushroom-toned drapes in the family room.

I let Vinnie earn his money, strolled past her, stood waiting for the elevator. Its doors were just opening when she spoke my name.

I said, “Hello, Mrs. Ettinger.”

“How—”

“Saw your picture on your husband’s desk. And I probably would have recognized your voice, although I’ve only heard it over the phone.” The blonde hair was a little longer than in the picture in Douglas Ettinger’s photo cube, and the voice in person was less nasal, but there was no mistaking her. “I heard your voice a couple of times. Once when I called you, once when you called me, and again when I called you back.”

“I thought that was you,” she said. “It frightened me when the phone rang and you didn’t say anything.”

“I just wanted to make sure I’d recognized the voice.”

“I called you since then. I called twice yesterday.”

“I didn’t get any messages.”

“I didn’t leave any. I don’t know what I’d have said if I reached you. Is there someplace more private where we can talk?”

I took her out for coffee, not to the Red Flame but to another similar place down the block. On the way out Vinnie tipped me a wink and a sly smile. I wonder how much money she’d given him.

Less, I’m sure, than she was prepared to give me. We were no sooner settled with our coffee than she put her purse on the table and gave it a significant tap.

“I have an envelope in here,” she announced. “There’s five thousand dollars in it.”

“That’s a lot of cash to be carrying in this town.”

“Maybe you’d like to carry it for me.” She studied my face, and when I failed to react she leaned forward, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “The money’s for you, Mr. Scudder. Just do what Mr. London already asked you to do. Drop the case.”

“What are you afraid of, Mrs. Ettinger?”

“I just don’t want you poking around in our lives.”

“What is it you think I might find there?” Her hand clutched her purse, seeking security in the presumptive power of five thousand dollars. Her nail polish was the color of iron rust. Gently I said, “Do you think your husband killed his first wife?”

“No!”

“Then what have you got to be afraid of?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you meet your husband, Mrs. Ettinger?”

She met my eyes, didn’t answer.

“Before his wife was killed?” Her fingers kneaded her handbag. “He went to college on Long Island. You’re younger than he is, but you could have known him then.”

“That was before he even knew her,” she said. “Long before they were married. Then we happened to run into each other again after her death.”

“And you were afraid I’d find that out?”

“I—”

“You were seeing him before she died, weren’t you?”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Why would I have to prove it? Why would I even want to prove it?”

She opened the purse. Her fingers clumsy with the clasp but she got the bag open and took out a manila bank envelope. “Five thousand dollars,” she said.

“Put it away.”

“Isn’t it enough? It’s a lot of money. Isn’t five thousand dollars a lot of money for doing nothing?”

“It’s too much. You didn’t kill her, did you, Mrs. Ettinger?”

“Me?” She had trouble getting a grip on the question. “Me? Of course not.”

“But you were glad when she died.”

“That’s horrible,” she said. “Don’t say that.”

“You were having an affair with him. You wanted to marry him, and then she was killed. How could you help being glad?”

Her eyes were pitched over my shoulder, gazing off into the distance. Her voice was as remote as her gaze. She said, “I didn’t know she was pregnant. He said... he said he hadn’t known that either. He told me they weren’t sleeping together. Having sex, I mean. Of course they slept together, they shared a bed, but he said they weren’t having sex. I believed him.”

The waitress was approaching to refill our coffee cups. I held up a hand to ward off the interruption. Karen Ettinger said, “He said she was carrying another man’s child. Because it couldn’t have been his baby.”

“Is that what you told Charles London?”

“I never spoke to Mr. London.”

“Your husband did, though, didn’t he? Is that what he told him? Is that what London was afraid would come out if I stayed on the case?”

Her voice was detached, remote. “He said she was pregnant by another man. A black man. He said the baby would have been black.”

“That’s what he told London.”

“Yes.”

“Had he ever told you that?”

“No. I think it was just something he made up to influence Mr. London.” She looked at me, and her eyes showed me a little of the person hidden beneath the careful suburban exterior. “Just like the rest of it was something he made up for my sake. It was probably his baby.”

“You don’t think she was having an affair?”

“Maybe. Maybe she was. But she must have been sleeping with him, too. Or else she would have been careful not to get pregnant. Women aren’t stupid.” She blinked her eyes several times. “Except about some things. Men always tell their girlfriends that they’ve stopped sleeping with their wives. And it’s always a lie.”

“Do you think that—”

She rolled right over my question. “He’s probably telling her that he’s not sleeping with me anymore,” she said, her tone very matter-of-fact. “And it’s a lie.”

“Telling whom?”

“Whoever he’s having an affair with.”

“Your husband is currently having an affair with someone?”

“Yes,” she said, and frowned. “I didn’t know that until just now. I knew it, but I didn’t know that I knew it. I wish you had never taken this case. I wish Mr. London had never heard of you in the first place.”

“Mrs. Ettinger—”

She was standing now, her purse gripped in both hands, her face showing her pain. “I had a good marriage,” she insisted. “And what have I got now? Will you tell me that? What have I got now?”