A Divertimento: Donald E. Westlake

"I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again."

There is a very nice restaurant on the border of New York and Massachusetts in that area where the Berkshire Hills meet near a river valley that introduces the west-bound traveler to the Catskills. It is so nice that my wife and I could only afford to eat there once, sometimes twice, a year.

I was waiting for her one evening in a comfortable seating …