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along with her. As he’d done in so many recent things, overriding his own suspicions in the belief this woman had something to teach him about human nature that his more calculating, cynical self had never before permitted itself, he’d said sure. The fruits of that compliance, a four-color image of the two of them comfortably composed under a grape arbor in Napa, beaming out at the camera with their announcement bannered below, had appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. Staring at his shoes, he said softly, “I think I see what you’re getting at.”
    “Indeed,” said Bortz, and allowed a pause for the truth to sink in. “As to what you can do now, well, that’s entirely up to you. We will, if the case goes forward, move considerable resources into it, rest assured, and do our best to apprehend these people. I can understand that the time frame may not work for you, but that’s about all I can tell you.”
    Potash at this point actually put his face in his hands. When he took them away, the FBI agent was looking at him with a not unkindly expression. He seemed to be thinking.
    “Here’s what I can’t do,” Bortz said in a softer voice. “I can’t tell you to try to get to her, personally. I can’t tell you to hire a PI skilled in such things and try to track her down and confront her with arrest, and maybe attempt to bargain a partial return of the monies in exchange for not pressing charges. I can’t tell you I know a person who’s been effective at that from time to time, and most of all what I can’t do is provide you his name.”
    Continuing to hold his eye, Bortz slid a card across the table.
    “What I can tell you,” he said, “is that whichever way you go, you’re going to have a tough time of it.”
    “Thank you,” Potash said hoarsely.
    “Because your girl,” said Bortz, “is good.”
    On the trip home, traffic had abated and he drove on the interstate in a trance, making tiny yanks of the wheel to the right and the left while the landscape gave the impression of being slowly hauled by on either side. After an hour and a half, he left the highway and entered the gently curving roads of his development. Presently, his house appeared around a bend with its calm, tidy proportions, its deep green lawn and beckoning eyelike eaves. It seemed to him just then to be glowing with dumb innocence, like a middle-aged matron receiving guests while being betrayed by her husband in the back room.
    He parked and almost immediately saw his wife coming out of the house holding the cordless phone in one hand. Anabella was radiant, her lean body seeming to rise up, up, up, and for a brief, wild second, seeing her there haloed with salvational light, he was certain that she had Janelle Styles on the line and that it had all been a terrible misunderstanding. He was still lurching after this thought when to his dismay he watched her mouth the words your mother and extend the phone in his direction.
    Of all the words he wanted to hear at this moment, those two ranked near the very bottom. But since his father’s death a year earlier, he’d found it simply impossible not to take his mother’s calls.
    He faked a quick smile at his wife, who still knew nothing about their imminent financial collapse, got out of the car and with a grazing kiss on her lips, retrieved the handset.
    “John?”
    “Hi, Mom.”
    “Happy anniversary.” Her tone was deadpan.
    “It’s not for another month,” he said.
    “I was being proactive.”
    “How’d you even know?” He was astonished.
    “Your wife, Little Miss Sunshine, told me. But isn’t every day an anniversary out at Camp Cosmic?”
    Sarcasm was one of her main weapons. Her belief was that his town was a hippy-dippy Aquarian paradise filled with complacent millionaires, and that she and she alone knew the harsh truth of how the world was made. He loved her, and yet felt very happy to be half a world away from her.
    “Ha-ha,” he said miserably.
    “So how’s