He sits in the coffee shop. He has a table next to the window, and he can sit here and eat his breakfast and keep an eye on the building diagonally across the street. Scudder lives there, Scudder and the fair Elaine, and there is a young black man who seems to spend a lot of time with them. Ever since he returned to New York he has seen Scudder in the young man’s company, sometimes walking on the street, sometimes having a meal together in this very coffee shop.

Elaine never seems to leave the building. Scudder comes and goes, the black man comes and goes, but he never sees Scudder and the black man together anymore. It is hard to be certain, he doesn’t spend twenty-four hours a day observing the building’s entrance, but it seems to him as though at least one of the two men is always inside the building. Scudder never leaves until the black man has come to take his place at her side.

Which suggests to him that they’re guarding her. Keeping her inside where no one can get at her, and standing by to protect her in the event that he might manage to get inside the building.

And if he were to go away?

The idea intrigues him. He wants to think about it. He pays for his meal, leaves the coffee shop, and walks.

He could just disappear. That’s what he always does, sooner or later. He walks away from the life he’s been living like a snake shedding its skin. He goes somewhere else, becomes someone else.

And does the things he does.

And if he were to do so now? Not, as he’d planned, after he’d finished his business with Mr. and Mrs. S cudder. Suppose he were to leave his business unfinished and simply vanish? He could go south or west, he could go anywhere, with his darker hair and his reshaped hairline and his eyeglasses, and no one would know him.

And the Scudders could remain here, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Keeping their guard up, with the woman afraid to leave the building and the man afraid to leave her alone, both of them chained by their terror, while he, the cause of that terror, is nowhere to be found. Gone, vanished, absent without leave, but they in their ignorance are unable to relax, unable to live their lives.

Like the whole country, he thinks. They’ll have their own personal equivalent of long lines at airport security, they’ll cower for the blow that never comes, while he’s thousands of miles away.

He has the great advantage of patience. He’s lived for years with unfinished business, ever since Scudder drove him out of this city. It’s never eaten at him, never preyed on his mind. It’s always been an item on the agenda, something to take care of sooner or later, when the time is right.

Suppose he returns it to the back burner. And suppose he’s gone for a few more years, and the Scudders return to their ordinary lives, and time passes. Thoughts of him, unbidden and unwelcome, will trouble them from time to time. They’ll know he’s out there, they’ll be aware that he might come back. But every month will make that threat a little less urgent, and they’ll reach a point where they’ve relaxed entirely.

And then he’ll return. Oh, he won’t have this particular knife in his pocket when he does. He’ll have let it go somewhere, for one reason or another. But he’ll have another knife, and perhaps he’ll like the new one even better.

And when the time is right he’ll get to use it.

But he ought to do something before he goes. So that they don’t forget him too soon.