By the time we left Harbor View and headed over to St. Vincent’s, it had cooled off a little, the sun not overhead anymore but tucked behind the buildings west of us. I bought a yogurt at one of the ubiquitous Korean grocery stores, sat on the stoop of a brownstone, and shared it with Dashiell, watching his big tongue cleaning off the little white plastic spoon until long after all traces of food had disappeared.

We worked our way slowly through the revolving door and stopped at the reception desk, where a sand-colored woman with a profusion of bright gold hair and little flowers at the tip of each vermilion nail was talking on the phone. She pulled the receiver away from her hair and raised her eyebrows.

“Venus White.”

One long press-on nail slid down the list of names.

“ICU.”

A real New York conversation.

She hadn’t looked over the counter, and Dash hadn’t done a paws-up, so I saved the story I had worked out on the way over for later. Only no one asked. St. Vincent’s had a visiting dog program, and everyone must have assumed Dashiell was part of it.

Until I got to the ICU.

The nurse was the color of a Tootsie Roll and the size of a Mr. Frostee truck. I asked where I might find Venus. But she wasn’t answering me. She had something else on her mind. She was scowling, looking down at Dashiell.

“He can’t be in here,” she said. “How’d you get in here with him anyway?”

“He’s a—”

Then I surprised both of us. I began to choke up, tears running down my cheeks, no words coming out, though I know I was trying to tell her that Dashiell was a registered therapy dog.

“He’s a cool one, isn’t he? He won’t jump on the bed, will he?”

I shook my head.

“Therapy dog,” she read off his tag. She frowned at me. “You won’t let him near the IV?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Okay. Follow me.” She looked at Dashiell again. “You, too. And mind your manners, you hear?”

Venus was in one of those curtained cubicles, barely bigger than the bed and full of machines that looked as if they ought to be on a UFO.

She hasn’t awakened, the nurse told me as she slid the curtain back, they couldn’t be sure she would, and I had fifteen minutes.

Another New York conversation.

Who was I going to bother, I thought, sitting there and watching a machine breathing for Venus?

She must have thought the same thing when she looked at the expression on my face. She flapped her big hand at me. “You can sit awhile,” she said. But she was frowning again. “But pull yourself together,” she said, straightening out the part of the blanket that covered Venus’s feet. “Do you know what she’s picking up? No, you don’t. So wipe your eyes. We don’t need that kind of negative energy in this room.”

She waited.

“That’s better. Don’t you be afraid to hold her hand. She won’t break. You can touch her.” She nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Talking’s good, too. Not just any kind, something interesting. You can’t expect a person to want to listen if you’re boring them to death. You need to engage her mind,” she told me, pointing to her own temple. “Let me tell you something, honey, there’s a shitload we don’t know about what’s going on with this girl. You get my point?”

She wheeled around, her white shoes squeaking on the freshly mopped floor, parting the curtain and disappearing. I told Dashiell to lie down and reached for Venus’s hand.

“You should have seen Samuel’s class today,” I told her, “you would have loved it. The night I went back late, you know, to snoop, remember, I told you about that? Anyway, when I got to Harbor View, I worked out this game with Dashiell, a sort of ring-around-the-rosy thing. And this afternoon, Sammy and I taught it to the kids.

“Cora and Dora, instead of falling down, because of course they couldn’t do that, unless they were willing to risk breaking something, they bent their heads into their laps. Cora covered her eyes, too, as if she were playing peekaboo. Of course, Dora gave her hell for that one. Dora was having herself one fine day. She could have passed for a chick in her early eighties, she was so with it today.

“I got to talk to Cora while I was showing her how to play and tried to get her to tell me what she saw the day Harry was killed. You were right, Venus. She didn’t say anything helpful. All she did was tell me about the naps she had to take with Dora when they were kids, how their mother would fly into a rage if they left their shoes on and dirtied the sheets. She spoke of it as if it were yesterday.

“But I had to give it a try, just in case. Sometimes the smallest clue, just a hint, can set you in the right direction, set you thinking the way you should be in order to get the answers you need. So you try everything. Just the way you do with the kids.”

You ring every bell, Marty said once, talking about the cops looking for a witness. If there’s the slimmest chance in the world of getting a piece of the puzzle, you go for it. You have to, he said. That’s the job.

“The princess kept losing her crown when she leaned forward, then putting it back on by herself. That was a sight to see. Molly finally found her a couple of bobby pins. I haven’t seen those things in years,” I said, remembering that my grandmother Sonya used gray ones, one on each side, and gray hairpins to hold her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck. Grandmothers don’t look like that anymore, bunned old ladies in orthopedic shoes and support hose. Now grandmothers go to the gym and pump iron. “I didn’t know they still made them, bobby pins,” I said, putting my free hand gently on her arm. “Did you?”

I waited for an answer.

“I’m here, honey,” I whispered.

There was no window, so for a while I watched the monitor and listened to the clicking of the ventilator.

“Even Charlotte learned the game. Here’s what she did—she got in behind Dashiell and aped everything he did. It worked perfectly, until he started licking the floor. I guess Homer missed a spot last night.

“Everyone who came gave it a try.

“Well, almost everyone.”

Three of them there, in Venus’s office, not just David.

Hey, I could tell Marty, we had a little incident over at Harbor View. Someone tried to kill the manager. And I have good news and bad news.

What’s the good news? he’d ask, that cop look on his face, like the shutters were tilted so he could look out, but you couldn’t look in.

We have witnesses, I could tell him. Three of them.

And what’s the bad news? he’d say.

We have witnesses. Three of them.

I stood up and leaned over the bed, looking to see what had been done with the head wound, but it was covered. I was wondering if they’d stitched it. Maybe I could ask the nurse on the way out.

But what difference would it make for me to know? It was Eli’s colleague in charge, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t he have done whatever was best for Venus?

I tapped my leg for Dashiell to stand, tapped the edge of the bed for him to place his head there, and then gently lifted Venus’s hand and laid it on top of Dashiell’s big head, maybe because if I were lying on a skinny bed in an intensive care unit, that’s what I would want.

I placed my hand on top of hers, watching her face to see if anything changed. Nothing did.

“I’ll come as often as I can,” I told her, “but I’m still doing what you hired me to do.”

I waited again.

“Your home phone’s not tapped,” I told her. “That’s good. At least whoever did this wasn’t able to check up on you at home.

“You know, they could be old, those bugs. They might not even be functional. You never know,” I told her, her eyes closed and still, not moving the way they do when you’re dreaming.

Dashiell pushed his head up, bouncing Venus’s hand, reminding her to pet him.

I began to think about Venus’s apartment, the sound of Dashiell’s nails on the stairs, the light coming in the window, Harry’s watch on the nightstand, part of their internet love affair printed out and waiting for me at home. The wedding band, the one she didn’t wear.

Then I remembered the necklace.

I stood, looked toward the end curtain, as if I thought Nurse Frostee might be watching, making sure I didn’t knock over the IV stand or accidentally kick out the plug of the ventilator. But no one was there. I could hear her, in fact, talking on the phone, sitting at the desk waiting for someone’s alarm to go off so she’d have something to do.

I leaned over Venus and pulled away the neck of her hospital gown. No necklace there, only abrasions on one side of her neck, as if someone had been too impatient to open the latch and had yanked it off, some narcissist who had to have what he or she wanted that very second.

I smoothed her gown, touched her face with my hand, then sat back in the chair, looking at Venus, then looking at the machinery that was keeping her going; one minute you’re fine, you’re living your life, the next minute you’re hanging on the brink because someone tried to take away the only valuable thing you have, the years ahead of you.

And your diamond necklace.

Now what would David want with that?

What did the necklace even have to do with this?

Was this done because of the necklace? The damn thing was worth a small fortune.

Or had the necklace been an afterthought?

I needed to clear my head, and I knew just how to do it.

“I’ll be back later, Venus,” I told her, waiting again to see if there would be a reaction, anything at all, some tiny movement that would let me convince myself she’d heard me, that any minute she would open her eyes and be all right.

What did I think she’d do, wave good-bye? Blow me a kiss?

Is is, Frank Petrie used to say, trying to get me to act more like a detective, accept things the way they were, stop my wishful thinking; Medea changes her mind at the last minute and takes her kids to Disneyland; some clever engineer patches the hole in the Titanic and she sails safely to port, no souls lost at sea; Lady Macbeth discovers Purell and gets those pesky spots off her hands without even having to use water.

I opened the curtain for Dashiell, then watched him walk under another part of it. Standing half in and half out of Venus’s cubicle, I wondered if maybe, just this once, I might get my way; Venus would wake up, annoyed as hell, tell me who.

Who. That was only part of it. She’d have to tell me why, too.

Yeah, right.

I looked back at the bed, nothing moving without the help of a machine.

I let the curtain close behind me, thinking, What if she did wake up, just as I wished, but when she did, she remembered nothing?

Oy, there’s the rub.