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She stopped chewing. “Are you trying to get me killed?”
“Are you saying he would kill you if he saw you?”
“I don’t mean literally killed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said, then took another bite of her pancake. “Pretty sure.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know his real name. He said to call him Judge.”
“Like the sci-fi character Judge Dredd?”
Gigi shrugged. “Just Judge.”
“So, you called him ‘Judge,’ and he called you ‘the goodbye girl,’ and you have no idea why?”
“You ask like that’s strange. And it’s notthegoodbye girl. Just ‘Goodbye Girl.’”
“Did you know there’s actually an old movie calledThe Goodbye Girl?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I had to google it. Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss, the guy fromJaws, were in it.”
“Never heard of them.”
“It was written by a famous playwright named Neil Simon.”
“I’ve heard of Simon and Garfunkel.‘Hello darkness, my old friend.’Speaks to me.”
“Different Simon,” said Theo.
“Why are we talking such ancient history?”
“Sorry. Back to my point. I want to see where Judge lives.”
“So you’re bribing me with pancakes?”
Theo smiled. “Seems to be working.”
She finished her last bite of pancake. “You really want to see?”
“I really do.”
She slung her backpack over her shoulder, rising without enthusiasm. “Then we’ll go.”
Theo paid the check, and they walked to the Tube. The twenty-minute train ride ended at Bermondsey station, where old photographs on the wall near the exit showed a neighborhood destroyed by World War II bombings. The images explained why nothing Theo saw looked “old” by London standards, virtually every building less than eighty years old.Gigi led him down the street and around the corner to one of the oldest ones, or at least one of the least well kept.
“That’s it,” she said.
Theo was standing on the sidewalk and looking across the street at a three-story, redbrick apartment building that, he guessed, dated back to the 1950s.
“Which apartment is his?”
“The basement.”
