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“That’s right, you’re working with him, aren’t you? I mean that Sterl murder. Of course we all knew Marty Sterl wouldn’t shoot himself. He might shoot someone else if they crossed him. But never himself.”

I cleared my throat preparatory to a difficult matter. I said, “I happen to know, Max, that you and Merissa didn’t take a drive up the coast the night of Heinie’s murder.”

“Oh?”

“You and she went to a club instead. The Garden of Delights.”

“She told you that?”

“She did. And she didn’t make that up, did she?”

When he simply stared at me, I said, “Look, I know the GOD exists. And, I can have Edgar brought in for questioning …”

“Okay, okay.” He was clearly embarrassed, which to me, in my persona as a newly minted man of the world, I found inexplicable. The Garden of Delights wouldn’t be my dry martini, but I am, despite everything, not a prude. “Okay, Norman, we did go there. I just don’t want it to get around.”

I nodded. “It’s safe with me. But I do need to know that everything else you told me about that night is the truth.”

“It is. Everything. I swear.”

I looked him right in the eyes. I said, “I believe you.”

We both happened to glance at Alphus. He nodded.

Max Shofar put on his fashionable summer hat, a modified Panama. He stood and shook my hand. “Merissa’s something else, isn’t she.”

“She told you?”

“Naw. I can tell.”

I was chagrined after he left to take down the small video camera from the shelf to find I hadn’t turned it on.

Alphus signaled that it wasn’t necessary. “He’s clean,” he signed.

“About everything?”

“Except the part about the forgers.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I think he left something out.”

“Deliberately?”

“Deliberately.”

Not long afterward, Doreen came in to announce the arrival of Ms. Esther Homard, a literary agent from New York who wanted to meet Alphus before considering him as a client.

A woman in her late middle age, hard-crusted in that New York way, she wore a business suit and an expression of skepticism bordering on suspicion. She was accompanied by an “interpreter,” a tall blond woman of indeterminate age named Priscilla Watts.

We all shook hands and sat down around a small table I have under the windows facing north.

Ms. Watts looked distinctly taken aback when Alphus responded to her simple hello in sign language with an impressive display of gestural volubility.

“What did he say?” Ms. Homard wanted to know.

“He said, ‘Welcome to Seaboard and the Museum of Man.’ And that we had picked a nice day to travel.”

“He understands spoken language,” I put in.

Ms. Homard turned to him. “Do you read?” she asked.

Alphus nodded.

“What are you reading now?”

Alphus reached into a rucksack he uses, dug out a copy of Edward O. Wilson’s On Human Nature, and handed it to her.

“What’s it about?” she asked, still skeptical.

When Alphus began to sign with his usual speed, the interpreter said, “You’ll need to go slower.”

He nodded and began again. Ms. Watts repeated his words vocally. “It’s an introduction to sociobiology as it applies to the human species …”

“What’s sociobiology?” the agent wanted to know.

Alphus thought for a moment and then began signing. Ms. Watts, speaking for him, said, “Sociobiology is the application of evolutionary principles to behavior in everything from ants to elephants. The general theory as it relates to people explains charity, incest avoidance, and other instinctive behaviors that contribute to reproductive fitness.”

Amazement showed in the faces of both women.

Alphus put up a finger and spelled something out for Ms. Watts. She said, “He says charity is the wrong word. Altruism would be more accurate.”

“Who’s your favorite actor?” Ms. Homard asked, much less wary but still in a test mode.

“Jack Nicholson,” he spelled out for Ms. Watts.

“And your favorite movie?”

“Chinatown.”

“Why?”

Alphus gave it some thought. He signed and again Ms. Watts spoke. “All of the characters are deeply flawed and yet ideal in some way.”

Incredulity was giving way to awe. Ms. Homard said, “How would you count to fifteen by twos?”

Alphus thought for a