'Why?'

'I need to know if all of us could ever be together,' he said. 'Like the old days when you had dinner with us, when you came to visit. My wife has begun to ask why you don't do that anymore.'

'You're saying that you fear she is suspicious.' I felt paranoid.

'I'm saying that the subject has come up. She likes you. Now that you and I work together, she wonders why that means she sees less of you rather than more.'

'I can see why she might wonder,' I said.

'What are we going to do?'

I had been in Benton's home and watched him with his children and his wife. I remembered the touching, the smiles and allusions to matters beyond my ken as they briefly shared their world with friends. But in those days it was different because I had been in love with Mark, who now was dead.

I let go of Wesley's hand. Yellow cabs rushed by in sprays of snow, and lights were warm in apartment building windows. The park glowed the whiteness of ghosts beneath tall iron lamps.

'I can't do it,' I said to him.

We turned onto Central Park West.

'I'm sorry, but I just don't think I can be around you and Connie,' I added.

'I thought you said you could discipline your emotions.'

'That's easy for you to say because I don't have someone else in my life.'

'You're going to have to do it at some point. Even if we break this off, you're going to have to deal with my family. If we are to continue working together, if we are to be friends.'

'So now you're giving me ultimatums.'

'You know I'm not.'

I quickened my pace. The first time we had made love I had made my life a hundred times more complicated. Certainly, I had known better. I had seen more than one poor fool on my autopsy table who had decided to get involved with someone married. People annihilated themselves and others. They became mentally ill and got sued.

I passed Tavern on the Green. I stared up at the Dakota on my left, where John Lennon was killed on a corner years ago. The subway station was very close to Cherry Hill, and I wondered if Gault might have left the park and come here. I stood and stared. That night, December 8, I was driving home from a court case when I heard on the radio that Lennon had been shot dead by a nobody carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye.

'Benton,' I said, 'Lennon used to live there.'

'Yes,' he said. 'He was killed right over there by that entrance.'

'Is there any possibility Gault cared about that?'

He paused. 'I haven't thought about it.'

'Should we think about it?'

He was silent as he looked up at the Dakota with its sandblasted brick, wrought iron and copper trim.

'We probably should think about everything,' he said.

'Gault would have been a teenager when Lennon was murdered. As I recall from Gault's apartment in Richmond, he seemed to prefer classical music and jazz. I don't remember that he had any albums by Lennon or the Beatles.'

'If he's preoccupied with Lennon,' Wesley said, 'it's not for musical reasons. Gault would be fascinated by such a sensational crime.'

We walked on. 'There just aren't enough people to ask the questions we need answered,' I said.

'We would need an entire police department. Maybe the entire FBI.'

'Can we check to see if anyone fitting his description has been seen around the Dakota?' I asked.

'Hell, he could be staying there,' Wesley said bitterly. 'So far, money hasn't seemed to be his problem.'

Around the corner of the Museum of Natural History was the snowcapped pink awning of a restaurant called Scaletta, which I was surprised to find lit up and noisy.