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“You bought a suicide pill or something?” I asked.

“Guy shot me in the back when we were through with a bank job,” Mel said. “Shot me right there in the bank for sixteen percent divided by five.” He shook his head in disgust.

“And he’s out here somewhere?”

“No.” Melquarth Frost just twisted his lips and I felt a twinge of fear. “He hooked up with a girlfriend’a mine after the job.”

“So maybe it wasn’t just the one-fifth of sixteen percent.”

Mel smiled and then grinned. “He was supposed to meet her at the Carving Table in North Chicago one night and someone shot him in the eye.”

“All that public knowledge?”

Instead of answering me he went on. “Cops saved my life and then did this pissant job of framing me. They shoved money from the bank in my pocket, but my lawyer proved it wasn’t me put it there.

“I had an illegal firearm on me. If they had let it alone I’d’a gotten twelve years. But they had to deal it down if the cops didn’t want to be caught doin’ what they do.”

Another thing I noticed about my visitor was the way he sat. His legs were spread wide. He pulled over an empty chair and laid his left wrist on top of the backrest. His right hand lay on his knee. It was as if he was at home, enjoying life more than a billionaire.

He gazed at the space above my head, thinking about a hard life with a sense of élan and maybe even a little whimsy.

“So?” I said before he tried to move in.

“I got five years, and from the first day they had me in solitary confinement.”

I must have winced, because a smile flitted across the career criminal’s lips. He nodded slightly.

“It almost broke me,” he continued. “Almost did. I remember shouting for days. Then I cried. And finally one morning—I guess it was morning because that’s when I woke up. On that morning I found the peace to think about my life. I went over the whole thing from grade school to solitary, and you know what I figured?”

“Not in the least.”

“That in all that time you were the only one treated me fair.”

“What the fuck? I arrested you for bank robbery.”

“You coulda shot me. You coulda hit me in the head with a lead pipe. You sure as shit coulda testified that I had somehow mentioned the bank job. I know your bosses were mad when you didn’t lie.”

Mel leaned forward, now with both hands on his thighs.

“So you came here from Illinois to thank me?” I asked.

“I already told you,” he said. “I’m not goin’ back to prison. I came out here to ply my old trade and to tell you that if you ever need a good turn I owe you a few.”

That was a very important nexus for me. It was rare for anyone to see in me what I saw in the mirror. Melquarth might have been a villain, but he was a villain with my number in his pocket.

I wasn’t about to share that intelligence with him.

“What kind of trade?” I asked.

“Watchmaker.”

“Really?”

“When I was fourteen they wanted to put me in juvie for assault and battery. The judge gave me a choice of enrolling in an after-school program or being locked up. I chose watchmaking with a little Jew named Harry Slatkin who did watch repair on Cherry Lane. He taught me a lot. Later on I applied that knowledge to bomb making, but in my spare time I studied watches.”

“You know,” I said, “that even though I’m no longer a cop I’m still on the other side of the line from you.”

He laid a small white business card on the desk and said, “I hear you play chess.”