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of national and international luminaries, such as John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, were not the basic cause of the action of assassination but the result of the desire of well-to-do and comfortable people who lived orderly and lawful lives—such as so many people in Greenwich did—to continue to live their lives in the manner they did. This raised a problem for Ruth, and they had discussed it to the point of Ruth’s utter boredom.
    But then, when he began to write, leaning on the proposition that Greenwich and similar places defined American society, Ruth pointed out to him that he had lost Greenwich. He was writing the story of an assassin.
    â€œThat,” he said, “is precisely it.”
    â€œBut decent people do not employ assassins.”
    â€œWho else does?”
    His wife, Ruth, had been privy to this meandering mental excursion he had embarked on, and it was through her that he met not only some of the assortment of CEOs who had chosen Greenwich as their living space, but also a variety of Wall Street millionaires and even one or two billionaires, as well as politicians and highly placed United Nations officials, both American and foreign, Greenwich being a favorite spot for UN officials to settle their families while they did their work in New York.
    But while Ruth had been privy to all of this, and even aided it with her knowledge of Greenwich and her father’s connections, she by no means shared his theory. She rested secure in the belief that the manuscript would never see the light of print.
    Their relationship was one of mutual respect. She was a successful photographer, he was a successful writer, and they enjoyed each other, both body and mind. And the never-completed manuscript gave Harold a hobby, since he had absolutely no interest in golf or tennis or gardening or any other manner of physical exercise.
    Now, however, he was delighted that she would be taking the latest version of his manuscript with her to read during the hours she would have to spend at Greenwich Hospital.
    Harold was inordinately fond of Ruth’s father, Dr. Ferguson, who like himself, was a cigar smoker and beer drinker. “Good beer,” he had once explained to Harold, “is not an alcoholic beverage. It’s food as old as mankind. It’s mother’s milk for those poor bastards we call blue-collar workers, and it’s beneficial to the urinary system.”
    Harold was relieved to hear from Ruth that her father was not worried about the surgery, and he decided that the day after the operation, he would keep the older man company at the hospital.

Four
    W hen Frank Manelli walked into his home that evening, his wife, Constance, took one look at him, made no move toward her usual welcoming kiss, but said immediately, “Sit down, Frank, and let off some steam, and I’ll get you a cold beer.”
    â€œI don’t want to sit down, I don’t want a beer, I don’t even want to talk. I want to get into a hot bath and sit there.”
    â€œSure,” Constance said quickly. She was a round gentle woman, round not fat, who counted her blessings and was satisfied with them. She had started to go with Frank when both of them were students at Greenwich High School, and now there were four kids with Frankie Junior going into his sophomore year at UConn and Dorothy beginning in the fall as a freshman at Sacred Heart University, and the two younger ones still at Greenwich High—all this on the income of an independent working plumber. Frank could have put young Frank on the truck with him, and he and Constance had discussed this, but when the boy said he wanted a degree in engineering, Frank supported him all the way.
    Not that Frank ever put himself down as a plumber. In a good year, he netted better than sixty thousand dollars, which was all right but only barely met their needs with four kids; and he also took pride in the fact