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island, if only there were such a place. But unidentifiable didn’t mean uncharming.
    In his engaging voice he asked standard opening questions. The how-long-are-you-down-for and where-are-you-from and what-do-you-do preliminaries.
    Then I remembered that I was the one who was supposed to be doing the interviewing. “What about you?” I asked when there was a lull. “Your accent isn’t quite English or American.”
    He laughed. “Doesn’t it sound like Trueheart, Wisconsin?”
    “Not really.”
    “Thought I’d pass for a native by now. We moved there when I was fairly young.” He smiled with the ease of someone who takes it for granted that his audience is smitten.
    And in truth, it wouldn’t be difficult to be smit. There was something elegant, continental about him. I suddenly remembered a personals ad I’d seen. I window-shop that section. In case of emergencies. This particular ad promised “great looks and manors, too.” I, of course, never found out whether the ad-placer had country mansions or simply bad spelling. But Dunstan had that “great looks and manors, too” attitude.
    “I’m a Trueheart boy. ‘Trueheart, Trueheart,’” he sang. “‘Through all our days, we who love you sing your praise.’ Brilliant lyrics, don’t you think?”
    “Listen,” I said. “I need your help. So does Sasha. Not in any big way, just by establishing that she was with you.” I told the incredible story of her arrest, skipping the more tawdry details, such as her bloody slip. “Obviously, somebody’s done a very good job of framing her, but they couldn’t have known that she was with somebody, out in public. Probably other people saw you both, too. Waiters. The bartender on that shift. Other people in the restaurant. Sasha’s kind of…she’s generally noticeable.”
    “Murder?” He sounded stuck on that, horrified in a refined sort of way.
    I nodded. “Isn’t it awful? How about we take a cab to the station and you make your statement and clear this up now?”
    He looked at me for a long while before speaking. His eyes were pale brown, almost caramel. For the first time, I noticed how little light there was in them. “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood,” he said. “I have nothing to tell the police. I barely know your friend.” Each word was clipped with precision. Trueheart’s English teachers must be great.
    “But you were with her. You said so yourself, didn’t you? Didn’t you just say that to me? That’s all I’m asking you to tell the police. You two had a date. You’re her alibi .”
    “You misheard. I saw her. Right here, at some point in the evening. Briefly, and I can’t say when. I remember her. That’s all I was agreeing to.”
    Is that what he’d really said? Meant? Why? Unless Sasha was lying. All the deferred exhaustion flooded me. “You’re saying you were not with her tonight?”
    “Yes,” he answered quite calmly. “That is precisely what I am saying.”
    “But that isn’t true, and it would be easy to help her out.”
    He shrugged, and then he bolted. He stood and walked away double time, out of the bar, across a small open space, and into the casino.
    He had left me—and the bill—without a backward glance. Once I realized he had gone AWOL, I leaped up and followed after him, but I couldn’t see over the tops of the one-armed bandits. I searched each avenue peopled by solemn folk who pulled levers as if it were an obligation to be completed as quickly as possible. Even when their efforts were rewarded by a cascade of coins, they seemed only dimly interested.
    I felt like a lost child. The heavy chandeliers and the gilded mirror ceiling that refracted and reflected the scene below further disoriented me. There was light everywhere, its source nowhere, and obscure music as well, a barely audible up-tempo like a subliminal racing pulse.
    “Dunstan?” I called, even though I knew it was both futile and annoying. Everyone’s eyes stayed glued on the