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nod and place my briefcase on the stool at my right.
    â€œEggs are good today. The new grill’s just broken in,” she says, placing a saucer and cup in front of meand filling it with coffee. “For the first few days everything tasted sort of funny—metallic.”
    She sets a folded napkin on the counter. “Let me get you some silver. We just did a set.”
    My father ate breakfast most mornings of his adult life in a diner much like Gooland’s. It was perched on a sleepy ridge overlooking Lake Erie, and on more than one occasion I heard him say to Sara, the restaurant’s proprietor and chief cook, that the best thing that could happen to the old place was for it to crumble off the side of the earth and dissolve into the lake. After hearing this, oftentimes Sara would come out from behind the plasterboard wall that separated the kitchen from the eating area, and shove my father against the inside of his corner booth. She would settle down next to him, her apron hiked up above her dimpled brown knees, and explain why it wouldn’t do to have her restaurant resting beneath the waves. She would always finish by saying, “ ‘Sides, Hap, if this place wasn’t here, you’d have nowhere to go.”
    The waitress comes back, wiping the silverware dry with a cloth napkin before laying it out. I stir cream into my coffee with the still-warm teaspoon and ask to see the manager.
    â€œIs there something wrong? You ain’t had nothing but coffee.”
    â€œNo, everything’s fine. Business.”
    Frankie Larch is tall with stooped shoulders and a narrow, crooked spine that cups slightly below his neck. He comes out from a small office behind the kitchen and takes the stool at my left, swinging his long legs awayfrom the counter and into the center of the restaurant. He is wearing a newly pressed blue button-down and khaki slacks that pull up an inch or so too short. He touches a lonely patch of stubble at the base of his chin, brushing it with his fingertips as if willing it to expand and cover the rest of his face.
    â€œGordon,” he says, nodding. “I knew you’d be out here sooner or later. She told me you’d probably be handling this for her.”
    I shrug and turn to retrieve my briefcase.
    â€œHey, I understand it’s only business. So I won’t hold it against you. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t think you’re gonna do too well with this one.”
    â€œYou know, Frankie,” I start, removing a yellow legal pad. “I think a lot of people feel that way.”
    Frankie inherited the restaurant from his mother, Ellen Gooland. He has been running it pretty steadily for nearly ten years without much trouble, until Joyce Ives. The two of us get up and move over to a side table, the waitress bringing me a fresh cup of coffee and Frankie a glass of Pepsi.
    â€œRob was seeing one of my waitresses—Carol,” Frankie says, looking over his shoulder. “She ain’t here now. But Rob had been coming in real regular during her shifts, for about six months or so. I figured everyone knew—I mean, it’s not like they acted hush-hush. Christ, I saw them holding hands a bunch of times. They even kissed each other goodbye—depending on who was around.”
    â€œDid you ever say anything to Carol?” I ask.
    â€œNaw. It’s none of my business who she sees andwho she don’t. As long as she shows up on time and does a good job.”
    Frankie removes a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and offers me one, lighting both cigarettes with the same match. I inhale deeply and after several seconds begin to feel a rush.
    â€œSo, tell me about that afternoon.”
    â€œWell, there ain’t really all that much to tell. I was standing”—he pauses and turns, pointing toward a glass case beside the cash register that holds mostly chewing gum, candy bars, and cheap cigars—“there. I