there you are. hiding?
i've been learning. stephen likes to talk about you.
is it true?
i'm not going to tell it as good as stephen. you two kicked around till your early teens, then stowed away on a merchant marine freighter and ended up in st. petersburg, where you spent five years under the tutelage of a shadowy old swindler named the diamond dog. and he was your fagin and stephen was his artful dodger, but it ended suddenly and badly.
why did he do that?
it does.
it's not the first thing on my mind.