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“No, I’ve got Renata’s little boy.”

“The boy? And where is she?” I didn’t answer. “She blew you off. I see. You’re broke, and she’s not the type for a tacky boarding-house like this. She took up with somebody else and left you to be the sitter. You’re what limeys call the nanny. That’s a riot. And what’s the black armband for?”

“Here I’m a widower.”

“You’re an impostor,” said Cantabile. “Now that I like.”

“I couldn’t think what else to do.”

“I won’t give you away. I think it’s terrific. I can’t figure how you get yourself into these situations. You’re a superintelligent high-grade person, the friend of poets, a kind of poet yourself. But being a widower in a dump like this is a two-day gag at most and you’ve been here two months, that’s what I don’t uiiderstand. You’re a lively type of guy. When you and me were tiptoeing on the catwalk of that skyscraper in a high wind sixty stories up, hey, wasn’t that something? Honestly, I wasn’t sure you had the guts.”

“I was intimidated.”

“You entered into the spirit of the thing. But I want to tell you something a little more serious—you and that poet Fleisher, you really were a quality team.”

“When did you get out of jail?”

“Are you kidding? When was I in jail? You don’t know your own town at all. Any little Polish girl on confirmation day knows more than you, with all your books and prizes.”

“You had a smart lawyer.”

“Punishment is on the way out. The courts don’t believe in it. Judges understand that no realistic sane person goes around Chicago without protection.”

Well here he was. He arrived in a sort of torrent as if the tail wind that drove his jet had gotten into him somehow. He was high, exuberant, showing off, and he transmitted the usual sense of boundlessness, of cranky dangers—chanciness I called it. “I just now blew in from Paris,” he said, pale, dark-haired, happy. His chancy eyes glittered under the dagger-hilt brows, his nose was full at the bottom and white. “You know neckties. What’s your opinion of this one I bought on the rue de Rivoli?” He was dressed with brilliant elegance in a double-knit sort of whipcord pattern and black lizard shoes. He was laughing, nerves were beating in his cheeks and temples. He had only two moods, this and the threatening one.

“Did you trace me through Szathmar?”

“If Szathmar could get you into a pushcart he’d sell you by the slice on Maxwell Street.”

“Szathmar is a good fellow in his own way. From time to time I speak harshly of Szathmar, but I really love him, you know. You invented all that stuff about the kleptomaniac girl.”

“Yes, but what of it? It could have been true. No, I didn’t get your address from him. Lucy got it from Humboldt’s widow. She phoned her in Belgrade to check out some facts. She’s almost done with the thesis.”

“She’s very tenacious.”

“You should read her dissertation.”

“Never,” I said.

“Why not?” He was offended. “She’s smart. You might even learn something.”

“I might.”

“But you don’t want to hear any more about your pal, is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“Why, because he blew it—he goofed? This big jolly character with so many talents caved in, just a fucking failure, crazy and a deadbeat, so enough of him?”

I wouldn’t reply. I saw no point in discussing such a thing with Cantabile.

“What would you say if I told you that your friend Humboldt scored a success from the grave. I talked to that woman Kathleen myself. There were some points I had to discuss with her and I thought she might have some answers. Incidentally, she’s real keen on you. You’ve got a friend there.”

“What is this about a success from the grave? What did you talk to her about?”

“A certain movie scenario. The one you described to Polly and me just before Christmas in your apartment.”

“The North Pole? Amundsen, Nobile, and Caldofreddo?”

“Caldofreddo is what I mean. Caldofreddo. You wrote that? Or Humboldt? Or both?”

“We did it together. It was horseplay. A vein of humor we used to have. Kid stuff.”

“Charlie, listen, you and I need