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comfortable in the black leather jacket Tina had bought him on their honeymoon to Florence.
    “I do wear a jacket, when I’m outside. Lady Frankenstein said you wanted to have lunch. I eat inside. I left my jacket in the car.” He continued to rub his arms. “It’s freezing.”
    “I thought you grew up in New Jersey?”
    “Why do you think I left? I don’t do snow or ice unless it’s in a drink.”
    One of the fish vendors called out an order from below and the crowd screamed and scattered from a flying fish. It was a tourist gimmick, the fish made of fabric.
    “How’s Alex?” Sloane asked.
    “Still using the ‘M’ word. Last night she tried to lure me into sex on a blanket in the garden.”
    “I hope you fell for it.”
    Jenkins smiled. “The things I do for love.”
    Sloane sipped his drink. “Why don’t you get married? Guys would kill to have a woman like Alex swooning over them.”
    “Trust me, the swooning part is over.”
    “What, did she get glasses?”
    “Ha-ha. You’re a regular Henny Youngman this morning, aren’t you?”
    “Henny Youngman?” Sloane asked.
    “You don’t know Henny Youngman?” Jenkins shook his head, disgusted. “‘A man goes to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, ‘You’re crazy.’ The man says, ‘I want a second opinion!’ So the doctor says, ‘Okay, you’re ugly too!’”
    Sloane gave him a blank stare.
    “I am old.” Jenkins looked out over the roof of the market at the sun shining on Elliott Bay. “Maybe I should get married.”
    Though Jenkins had never confided in him, Sloane suspectedthat he was uncomfortable with the disparity between his and Alex’s ages. Alex was just twenty-eight.
    “It’s not as scary as you make it sound.”
    “Alex wants kids.”
    “So?”
    “So, I’ll be fifty-four in May,” Jenkins said.
    The waitress returned with Jenkins’s drink. Sloane ordered a salad and a bowl of black bean soup. Jenkins ordered the soup plus a chicken and rice entree. “I have to have something more than rabbit food,” he said, bringing more giggles from the waitress.
    Sloane handed him an envelope. “We received the check on the Ramirez matter.”
    “No appeal?”
    It had been Alex’s idea that Jenkins work for Sloane, though Jenkins didn’t know it. She had pulled Sloane aside at a barbecue on the Camano farm when he and Tina moved to Seattle, and said she thought Jenkins was bored and looking for something to do after rebuilding their home. Sloane needed an investigator, but he had been reluctant to ask an ex-CIA field operative, thinking it would be an insult. Alex, who had also once worked as a field operative—the person Joe Branick chose to deliver the classified file to Jenkins—convinced Sloane otherwise, though he knew her true motivation was to get Jenkins out of the house. He was driving her crazy just sitting around. Jenkins had initially feigned disinterest, but he took the work and had since helped Sloane on several of his cases. Sloane had enjoyed his company.
    “They always talk a good game. In the end they pay.”
    “What happened with Gonzalez?”
    “Jury came back yesterday. One point six,” Sloane said.
    “No wonder you’re buying lunch.”
    “Actually, I need your help on another matter.”
    “That was fast.”
    “A woman tracked me down after court yesterday. Her husband was a national guardsman killed in Iraq.”
    Jenkins shook his head. “The similarities to Vietnam frighten the hell out of me.”
    “Let’s hope we don’t have to lose fifty thousand before we get out.”
    “Amen to that. How did your guy die?”
    “A bullet to the side,” Sloane said.
    “How does that translate into a lawsuit?”
    “I’m not sure it does,” Sloane agreed. “I told her I’d look into it. She was willing to accept his death until the New York Times published that report about soldiers dying because their body armor was insufficient.”
    Jenkins sat back and sipped his drink. “If she had anyone else as