But what you say about him is sufficiently troubling; perhaps we ought to reconsider.” Alistair was uncharacteristically reflective once I’d finished telling him and Isabella about my excursion into the Black and Tan quarter. We were having dinner at Mama’s— an “experimental” restaurant that little resembled a restaurant at all. We sat in Luisa Leone’s living room, in her apartment on West Thirty-fourth Street, enjoying a fifty-cent meal with about ten other patrons. The food was exceptional, and the decor was simple but bright, with red checked tablecloths covering the five tables in the room, and long red curtains separating the eating area from the kitchen. “Because your analysis was flawed?” Isabella asked, with a teasing lilt in her voice. “Or because Timothy’s personal life is so all-important?” A flash of discomfort crossed Alistair’s face before he shook his head. “Criminological analysis can only be as good as our understanding of its subject. In this case, the subject is Timothy— and he has committed a serious lie of omission.”
