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“Because you still had the license,” he says. “And you’d have found some way to make it useful to me.”

A van goes past too fast.

“There’s a bar on the corner,” he says. “Or there’s your apartment.”

“The apartment.”

“Right.”

He falls in beside me and takes the bag out of my hand without asking, which is the single most Doyle thing that’s ever happened to me.

We walk along the quay. The tide is out. The mud smells the way it smells in August. Two men are fishing off the end of the pontoon with a radio between them.

“Suspension came through on the ninth,” he says. “One season. Unpaid, no facilities. I sign again next summer if anybody wants me.”

“Somebody will want you.”

“Yeah, probably.” He shifts the bag to the other shoulder. “I’ve been laying floors with Fin since June. I’ve got a farmer’s tan and I’ve put on nine pounds. My hip is the best it’s been in two years, which is the funniest part of all this.”

“You look well.”

“I know I do,” he says. “It’s obscene.” He puts the bag down inside the door.

“Before anything,” he says. “Sit down. I want you to tell me the three things.”

“What?”

“On the stairs in April, you said there were three things you hadn’t told me. You said ask me for the third one, and I didn’t.” He pulls out one of the two chairs at the table by the window, then sits in the other one himself. “So I’m here. I’m asking. I’m not going to say a word until you’re finished. Then I’m going to say something you’ll want to hear. But you first.”

I sit down.

“All right,” I say. “One.”

I take my glasses off even though I don’t need to. I fold them and put them on the table.

“In the first week of December, Vera sent Roth into your building at midnight to sit in your lobby. You came to my office the next day and asked me to keep him away. I told you he wouldn’t approach you again. I made that promise knowing it wasn’t mine to make. The following morning, she told me to my face that I don’t decide who approaches you. For five months, I let you believe I was between you and anyone else. That wasn’t true. Every time you slept in that apartment after December, you were sleeping on a promise I knew was false.”

He doesn’t move.

“Two. On the last day of February, after she gave you the first game, she kept me back. She told me that if the goal didn’t go in, Roth would settle the balance directly. Not just with you. With you and your brother. Fin’s name was said out loud in that office. I didn’t tell you. Three days later, I told you not to do it. I said I would find another way. What I was actually doing was making sure you did it while believing it was your decision.”

The tap in the kitchen behind me drips twice.

“Three. She gave me the date of the second game on the night of the first one. The message came to my phone in this room, with you here. I turned the screen over. In the last week of March, she put the twenty-fourth of April on her schedule in front of me before she asked anybody else. I carried that date for two weeks. I cooked in your mother’s pan with it in my pocket. You were right about that on the stairs. I haven’t been able to put it down.”

I stop.

“That’s three,” I say. “There’s also the stub from your wallet. I took it in February. It’s in the back of a notebook in a box on that shelf. You can have it in a minute. After that, there’s nothing left that you don’t know.”

I get up and take the notebook off the shelf. The elastic comes off. I get the stub from the pocket in the back cover, put it on the table in front of him, and then sit again.

He looks at it without picking it up. It’s gone the color of weak tea along the crease.

“I went through the truck twice,” he says.

“I know.”

“I asked the equipment manager. I made him look under the mats in the van.”