"Oh," Bill said. "Sure." He fished in his pockets. "You dropped your notebook, though, and I came to give it back to you." He located the object he was hunting for and brought it out with the triumphant gesture of a man displaying the head of a dragon he had slain. "Here," he said, waving the book.
"Notebook?" Malone said. He stared at it. It was a small looseleaf book bound in cheap black plastic.
"We found it in the gutter," Bill said.
Malone took a tentative step forward and managed not to fall. He stepped back again and looked at Bill scornfully. "I wasn't even in the gutter," he said. "There are limits."
"Sure," Bill said. "But the notebook was, so I brought it along to you. I thought you might need it or something." He handed it over to Malone with a flourish.
It wasn't Malone's notebook. In the first place, he had never owned a notebook that looked anything like that, and in the second place he hadn't had any notebooks on him when he went for his walk. Mine not to question why, Malone told himself with a shrug, and flipped the book open.
At once he saw why the cop had mistaken it for his.
It had his name in it.
On the very first page were two names, written out in a careful, semieducated scrawl:
Mr. Kenneth J. Malone, FBI Lt. Peter Lynch, NYPD