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the phone on the wall.
    Alicia turned back to the sink and stared at the water splashing on the greens. “Somebody shoots at you?” she said. “I thought you don’t do such dangerous things any more.”
    “I thought so, too,” I said. I took flour from a cupboard plus eggs from the refrigerator, and started the pasta dough in a big bowl. “Teague got to me today, actually reached me out in the boat, and the next thing I knew I was in the middle of a case.”
    “Again? This must not go on. You have a duty to tell Roger Teague to go to hell.”
    “Just as soon as he hands me the final dollar of my payout. And then I’ll drive a stake through his black heart.”
    “Very nice, but you’re no good to me if that man gets you killed. Run away from him. Or if you want, I have Uncle Tito come fly over next week and feed Teague to the fishes for you. You don’t need Teague’s money. I got money. You know that frenchy landscape painter I show now, that Pichou? I sell one today for seven thousand dollars. Thirty-five hundred profit, just like that. All the money you want,” Alicia said.
    “I don’t want to be a kept man.”
    “Why not?  Men wait their whole lives for such an offer.”
    “I have this stupid pride,” I said. “The money I get isn’t Teague’s money. It belongs to me. All I want is what’s mine.” I filled the big pasta pot with water and put it on to boil.
    She shrugged and sighed, rolling her eyes at the ceiling. The unspoken message was that I was stubborn and impossible, but she’d known that since the day we met. “Open some wine now. Merlot,” she said. “Then you tell me how you got bullet holes.”
    I opened a bottle and we started on it.  As I told Alicia the story, I kneaded the dough on the butcher block with my hands, rested it a few minutes, then cranked it through the pasta machine to form long strands of fettuccini .
    Alicia sauteed chopped garlic in olive oil, added the broccoli rabe to the big skillet and wilted it down. She took the vegetable out and browned bite-size pieces of Italian sausage in the oil. The aroma was already irresistible.
    “So this Ingo, he makes fun of Kenny, and Kenny is so humiliated he swims in the cold water to prove how brave he is?” she said.
    “Something like that.” I said. “Then he goes under and drowns. Maybe a cramp. Who knows? But maybe somebody pulled him under, somebody from the boat. It would’ve been hard to see because the water was murky. And just maybe, Ingo knew what was waiting in the water, and sent Kenny out there to die. What I know is, Ingo was too anxious for me to go away. He doesn’t want me digging into this.”
    “OK, maybe.” She took an open bottle of pinot grigio from the refrigerator, poured wine into the skillet and turned up the fire. It quickly bubbled up and began to boil. “But you tell me Ingo mostly goes swimming himself in the afternoons. You think maybe somebody is out there waiting for him, kills Kenny by mistake? I think this story is better.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t believe such a rich man like Ingo kills people. Why should he make such a risk? Too much to lose.” She added chicken broth to the skillet, some chopped fresh marjoram and basil, salt and several grinds of pepper. The sauce boiled down fiercely in the skillet. She salted the water in the pasta pot, and put in the fettuccini. “Five minutes,” she said. “Get the bowls.”
    In four minutes exactly, she drained the pasta and finished cooking it in the skillet, where the sauce was now thickened just slightly. She added the broccoli rabe, turned the food over and over with tongs, then filled our oversize pasta bowls, spooning a bit of the sauce over each portion.
    The dinner was better than mortals have a right to expect, rich and garlicky, covered with the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese which Alicia grated, just so, into our bowls. We ate it all and finished the merlot, talking about the shooting and Ingo and Kenny and Hector.
    And