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it was Rosalia Alonzo Ybarra I was referring to. Remember I said I’d asked myself if I would like to be young again, ambitious again, in love again? Well it was Rosalia I was thinking about.
    When I was with Rosalia I was all those things: young, broke and in love. I was twenty, she was eighteen. She put up with the poverty and there was no doubt she loved me and I loved her, but she couldn’t take the other part of me: my burning ambition, the need to win at all cost. She left me because of it. All she wanted was a normal family life with a husband who came home nights and a lot of children. I’m telling you the truth now—and this is the first time I have ever really talked about her. I never saw her again and I’ve never gotten over her. I sacrificed her to a part of my life that seemed more important at the time. It was only as the years passed that I realized how selfish I’d been.
    So you see, lass, when I saw you alone and afraid that night at the party, something in me from the past reached out to you. It was as though by saving you I could make amends, maybe even find a kind of happiness through you. And I did, my sweet Daisy girl (your mother, God rest her soul, should have been shot for giving you that name. You’re much more of an Eleanor or an Isabel, a Juliet even, because you are a true romantic, even though you try to hide it from yourself). But that’s beside the point and anyhow,
lass
suits you just fine. And by the way, even without even seeing you I know you need to get your hair done, it’ll be straggling all over the place like always. Go get a hairdo, a massage, a facial, and bloody well cheer up! No use moping around now it’s all over.
    I suppose I was never a good man in the best sense of the word and anyone who called me a son of a bitch probably had good reason. But Itried and I cared, and in time the money meant less to me. It became merely a reflex action, making more and more. But when it gets down to it, “enough” is all a man needs.
    If the worst happens to me—other than dying in my own bed of natural causes with a glass of good Bordeaux and you by my side—-you can be sure I was
murdered.
    My heart skipped a beat. It was here in Bob’s own handwriting. Swallowing back the shocked tears I read on.
    I’m imagining you reading this and realize it will come as a shock, but a man like me doesn’t get to my age—sixty-four, in case you’ve forgotten—without making an enemy or two. And no doubt some of them would like to see me under the earth instead of basking on top of it in the sunny South of France with my latest—and most lovable—redhead. Namely—-you. But for some time I’ve had the uneasy feeling that someone from the past was out to get me. At first I thought it was just a joke, some crazy with a bee in his bonnet about a wealthy public figure. Now, though, I’m not so sure. But who? you might ask. I have no idea, and anyhow, I hope it’s all a figment of my overactive imagination, though Lord knows I’ve probably offended enough people (and that’s putting it mildly) and I’ve beaten enough of them out of a business deal or in a game of high-stakes finance to fill a good-size downtown Manhattan bar, where at six p.m. no doubt they will all cheerfully drink to my demise.
    I have given Harry Montana a list of possible suspects I’ve “offended,” though I can’t be certain it’s actually any one of them. After all there are plenty of other loose cannons out there in the world of high finance,both male and female. Anyhow, Montana knows the score and how all of this came about, and no doubt he’ll fill you in.
    On this list are six people I tried to help in my lifetime, though I daresay none of them would admit it, or even believe that was my motive. Could one of them be my killer? (I say “killer” because if you’re reading this then obviously I am already dead.) Again, who knows, though I’m personally of the opinion that there’s more to each of