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ended at three. I’d had four Kahlua and coffees, and I was a little loose on my feet following him down the stairs and out of the restaurant. When we got out to Madison, he turned on me. “How do I get rid of you?”
    “Let’s take a cab home. I don’t think I can deal with the train.”
    “I want you to go away. Why are you not getting that?”
    “I think you’re in danger.”
    “Yeah, I know. My stepfather has my address. I’m shaking in my boots.” He looked at the snow falling. I could see in his face he wasn’t much interested in waiting on a cold and snowy platform for a train that might not even have heat. I saw a Checker cab coming and raised my hand to flag it.
    After I gave the cabbie Brian’s address, I asked Brian, “What’s the deal with your real father?”
    “I told you, he’s dead.”
    “Did he leave a lot of money?”
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    “I suppose. My mom never had to work, and then she paid for my college. Until I told her I was gay.”
    “She cut you off?”
    “Not exactly.” He looked out the window and watched the traffic crawl by, but he kept talking.
    “She wanted me to go to this psychiatrist who promised to fix me. She’d only pay my tuition if I went. I think it was Donnie’s idea, or maybe the shrink’s, I don’t know. She’d never been like that about anything.”
    “Do you know what happens to the money?”
    “What do you mean what happens to it?”
    “If something happens to your mother. Who gets the money?”
    “Why is that your business?”
    “I didn’t say it was my business. I’m trying to figure something out.”
    “There’s nothing to figure out. My stepfather wanted my address so he and my mother can send me religious pamphlets telling me I’m going to hell. Big fucking deal.”
    “Brian, your mother is dying.”
    He snapped his head to look at me and then narrowed his eyes. “How would you know that?”
    “I called your house. I spoke to the maid. The cancer returned. It’s in your mother’s liver, her lungs.”
    “You’re lying.”
    “We can call. I don’t know if the maid will still be there. She said she was just packing up your mother’s things.”
    “What’s the maid’s name?”
    “I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
    “You’re lying,” he said again. But the tears forming in his eyes suggested that he believed me.
    “So that’s why Donnie’s looking for me. He wants to tell me she’s sick.”
    “What happens to the money, Brian?”
    He shrugged and then rubbed his hands across his eyes. “It’s mine, I guess.”
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    “And if something happens to you? Before your mother passes?”
    “I don’t know. It’s not like we sat around the house reading wills all the time.” His chin was wobbling, and he’d start sobbing soon. I could tell he didn’t want to do it in front of me.
    “If something happens to you, Donnie gets the money. Isn’t that right?” It was the final piece of the puzzle. It had to be the reason.
    “Probably. I don’t know.”
    “Donnie knows. He’s going to try and kill you. Tonight.”

    * * *
Brian didn’t believe me. That happens sometimes. Some things are too big to take in and a person decides it can’t be true, no matter how obvious it is. Denial, they call it. And to be fair, I didn’t have a lot of proof. I had a lot of conjecture, logical, sound conjecture --but easy enough to ignore.
    The cab pulled up in front of his apartment building, and Brian turned to me. “If you get out of the cab, I’m gonna call the police.” He glared at me a second, then added, “I mean it.”
    I figured this time he did. I would have preferred to stick close, but I’d said what I needed to say, and if he didn’t want me around, then he didn’t want me around. He got out, and I told the cabbie to drive around the block. When we came around again, Brian had gone into his building. I had the driver let me out in front of my Plymouth.
    I tried to calculate when Donnie might arrive. He’d