We’re sitting in his study, that odd room built entirely of leather and wood – oak floors, bookshelves filled with calf-skin bindings, window shades with oak slats shut tight – a room that is somewhere between English gentleman’s club and New Jersey funeral parlour. Four days have passed since my visit to Amanda’s apartment, four days of relative calm – relative, anyway, for Jimmy Thane – four days without a church-basement exorcism, or an abortive sexual escapade, or a public drinking binge in the office lunchroom. I glance at the clock on Liago’s desk, old-fashioned enough to proclaim ‘Electric’ proudly on its face. It glows orange. ‘Nothing happened,’ I say. ‘I left her apartment and I went home to my wife.’ ‘And what did your wife say, when you told her where you went?’ ‘I didn’t tell her.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Why not?’ I laugh. ‘Are you married, Dr Liago?’ A simple question, I think. A question that requires only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for an answer.
