Stone Quarry

Stone Quarry

S.J. Rozan

Acknowledgements

my agent, Steve Axelrod my editor, Keith Kahla what a pair

Emily Horowitz, who first told me I was writing a novel the experts

David Dubai, Joe Karas, Pat Picciarelli, Carl Stein and Harvey Stoddard

the critics

Betsy Harding, Royal Huber, Barbara Martin, Jamie Scott (and her damn owls), and, on this one, Becca Armstrong and Steve Landau

Steve Blier, Hillary Brown, Max Rudin, Jim Russell, and Amy Schatz

the muse Richard Wilcox

the genius Deb Peters

and

the goils Nancy Ennis and Helen Hester

Chapter 1

It can be a treacherous road, State Route 30, especially rain slick in the twilight of late winter, but I know it well.

I sped along its badly banked curves faster than legal and faster than necessary. I was heading for Antonelli's; I had plenty of time. I drove that way just for the charge, pushing the road, feeling its rhythm in my fingers, its speed in the current in my spine. Water hissed under my tires and my headlights reflected off the fat raindrops that splattered the blacktop in front of me.

Years ago, 30 carried a fair amount of tourist traffic, but even then it was people on their way to somewhere else. Now that the state highway slices through the northern part of the county and the Thruway wraps around it, no one passes through Schoharie anymore unless they mean to stop, and not many have a reason to do that. The tourist brochures call this countryside picturesque. If you look closely, though, you'll see the caved-in roofs and derelict silos, the junked cars and closed roadside diners with their faded billboards. These rocky hills were never good for much except hunting and dairy farming. Farming's a hard way to make a living, getting harder; and hunters are men like me, who come and go.

The hiss of water became the crunch of gravel in the lot in front of Antonelli's. I swung in, parked at the edge.

I had Mozart in the CD player, Mitsuko Uchida playing the B-flat Sonata, and I lit a cigarette, opened the window, listened as the music ended in triumph and the exhilaration of promises fulfilled.

Then I left the car and strolled over to look across the valley. I was early. City habits die hard.

Hands in my pockets, I let my eyes wander the far hills, asked myself what I was doing. Work wasn't what this place was about, for me. But on the phone, when Eve Colgate had called, I'd heard something: not her words, clipped and businesslike, but the long, slow melody under them. Raindrops tapped my jacket; a tiny stream ran through the gravel at my feet, searching for the valley.

Unexpectedly, I thought of Lydia, her voice on the phone when I'd called to tell her I was coming up here, would be away awhile. There was music in Lydia's voice, too; there always was, though I'd never told her that. She wasn't surprised or bothered that I was leaving. Over the four years we've known each other she's come to expect this, my sudden irregular disappearances and returns. In the beginning, of course, I never told her when I was going, didn't call when I got back. Then, we just worked together sometimes; if she needed someone while I was gone, there were other people to call. But at some point, and I couldn't say just when, I'd started calling, to let her know.

The rain was ending. Wind rolled the high black clouds aside, revealing a sky that was still almost blue. The air was full of the smell of earth and promise, everything ready, tense with waiting. Soon spring would explode through the valley and race up the hills, color and noise engulfing the sharp silence I stood for a while, watched tiny lights wink on in the windows of distant homes. When the sky was dark 1 turned and went inside.

The crowd in Antonelli's was small and subdued. A golf tournament, all emerald grass and blue sky and palm trees, flickered soundlessly from the TV over the bar. A couple of guys who probably thought golf was a sport were watching it. A few other people were scattered around, at the bar, at the small round tables. None of them was the woman I had come to meet.

I slid onto a bar stool. Behind the bar, Tony Antonelli, a compact, craggy man whose muscles moved like small boulders under his flannel shirt, was ringing up someone's tab. He looked over at me and nodded.

"Figured you were up," he said, clinking ice into a squat glass. He splashed in a shot of Jim Beam and handed it to me. "Saw smoke from your place yesterday."

"Big help you are," I said. "Whole place could burn down, you'd just watch."

"Happens I drove down to make sure your car was there, wise ass. I oughta charge you for the gas."

"Put it on my tab." I drank. "How's Jimmy?" I asked casually.

Tony turned, busied himself with glasses and bottles. "Still outta jail."

I said nothing. He turned back to me. "Well, that's what you wanna know, ain't it? Make sure all your hard work ain't been wasted?"

"No," I said. "I knew that. How is he?"

"How the hell do I know? He don't live with me no more; he moved in with some girl. If I see him I'll tell him you're askin'."

I nodded and worked on my bourbon. Tony opened Rolling Rocks for two guys down the other end of the bar. He racked some glasses, filled a couple of bowls with pretzels. Then he turned, reached the bourbon bottle off the shelf. He put it on the bar in front of me.

"Sorry," he said. "It ain't you. I oughta be thankin' you, I guess. But that no-good punk pisses the hell outta me. He never shoulda came to you. He gets his ass in trouble, he oughta get it out."

"Uh-huh," I said. "How come you never gave him a break, Tony?"

Tony snorted. "I was too busy feedin' him! What the hell you see to like in that kid, Smith?"

I grinned. "Reminds me of me."

"You musta been one godless bastard."

"I was. Only I didn't have a big brother like you, Tony. I was worse."

"Yeah, well, he should'n'a came to you. And don't think you're gonna pay that candy-ass lawyer you brought here. I told you to send me his goddamn bill."

"Forget it. He owed me."

"That's between you and him. I been bailin' Jimmy's ass outta trouble for years; I got no reason to stop now. I don't like the kid, Smith, but I'm family. You ain't."

I looked at Tony, at the sharp line of his jaw, his brows bristling over his deep-set eyes. "No," I said slowly. "No, I'm not." I poured myself another drink, took the bottle to a table in the corner, and sat down to wait for Eve Colgate.

Another bourbon and a cigarette later, the door opened and a tall, gray-haired woman stepped into the smoky room. No heads turned, no conversations stopped. She looked around her, reviewing and dismissing each face until she came to mine. She stayed still for a moment, with no change of expression; then she came toward me, contained, controlled. She wore a down vest over a black sweater, old, stained jeans, muddy boots. I stood.

"Mr. Smith?" She offered her hand. Her grip was sure, her hand rough. "Thank you for coming."

"Sit down." I held a chair for her.

"Thank you." She smiled slightly. "Men don't do this much anymore—help ladies into their seats."

"I was born in Kentucky. What are you drinking?"

"Tony keeps a bottle of Gran Capitan under the bar for me." The skin of her face was lined like paper that someone had crumpled and then, in a moment of regret, tried to smooth out again. Her blunt, shoulder-length hair was a dozen shades of gray, from almost-black to almost-white. I went to get her drink.

Tony gestured across the room with his eyes as he poured Eve Colgate's brandy. "You know her?"

"Just met. Why?"

"I meant to tell you she was askin' about you, coupla days ago. Wondered about it, at the time. She don't usually talk to nobody. Comes in alone, has a shot, leaves alone. Maybe sometimes she talks cows or apples with somebody.

She ain't—I don't know." He shook his head over what he didn't know. "But she's got money."

"My type, Tony." I picked up her brandy from the bar.

"Hey!" Tony said as I turned. I turned back. "You ain't workin' for her?"

"Nah. She just thinks I'm cute."

"With a puss like you got?" Tony muttered as I walked away.

Eve Colgate's mouth smiled as I put her drink on the scarred tabletop. Her eyes were doing work of their own. They were the palest eyes I'd ever seen, nearly colorless. They probed my face, my hands, swept over the room around us, followed my movements as I drank or lit a cigarette. When they met my eyes they paused, for a moment. They widened slightly, almost imperceptibly, and I thought for no reason of the way a dark room is revealed by a lightning flash, and how much darker it is, after that.

I smoked and let Eve Colgate's eyes play. I didn't meet them again. She took a breath, finally, and spoke, with the cautious manner of a carpenter using a distrusted tool.

"I'm not sure how to begin." She sipped her brandy. If I had a dollar for every client who started that way I could have had a box at Yankee Stadium, but there was a difference. They usually said it apologetically, as if they expected me to expect them to know how to begin. Eve Colgate was stating a fact that I could take or leave.

"I called you on a matter difficult for me to speak about. I don't know you, and I don't know that I want you closely involved in my—in my personal affairs. However, I don't seem to have many options, and all of them are poor you may be the best of them."

"That's flattering."

She looked at me steadily. "Don't be silly. I can't pretend to welcome the intrusion you represent. I'm too old to play games for the sake of your pride, Mr. Smith. I may need you, but I can't see any reason to be pleased about it."

I couldn't either, so I let it go.

She went on, her words clipped. "However, things are as they are. At this point, Mr. Smith, I'd like to know something more about you. All I have up to now are other people's opinions, and that's not enough. Is this acceptable?"

"Maybe. It depends on what you want to know."

"I'll tell you what I do know. I know you bought Tony's father's cabin ten years ago. You come up here irregularly, sometimes for long periods. Tony says you're moody and you drink. Other than that he speaks very highly of you. I understand you helped get his brother out of serious trouble recently—and went to considerable trouble to do it."

"The kid deserved a chance. He was in over his head in something he didn't understand. I bought that cabin twelve years ago. I sleep in the nude."

She looked at me sharply over her brandy. Her movements were small and economical. In contrast to her eyes, her body was composed and still.

"And are you always rude to your clients?" she asked.

"More often than I'd like to be." I refilled my glass from Tony's bottle. "I've been a private investigator for sixteen years, twelve in my own shop. Before that I was carpenter. I've been to college and in the Navy. I drink, I smoke, I eat red meat. That's it."

"I doubt it," said Eve Colgate. "Have you a family, Mr. Smith?"

I took a drink. "I had."

"But no longer?"

"I'm hard to live with."

"Was your wife also hard to live with?"

"Her second husband doesn't think so."

"And children?"

That was territory where no one went. I drank, put my cigarette out. "Look, Miss Colgate, you called me. I can use the work, but not the inquisition. I gave you references; call them if you want, ask about me."

"I have." She didn't continue.

"Well, that's all you get."

We drank in silence for a while. Eve Colgate's eyes never rested. They swept the room, probing the corners, counting the bottles on Tony's shelves. They inspected the cobwebs at the raftered celling. Every now and then, unpredictably, they returned to me, settling on my face, my hands, taking off again.

"Yes," she said suddenly, draining her glass. "You'll do. I'll expect you tomorrow morning. Do you know where I live?"

"You'll expect me to do what?"

"Some—things were stolen from me. They're worth a good deal of money; and yet they're not as valuable to the thief as they are to me. I want them back."

"The police are good at that sort of thing."

Her eyes flashed. "I'm not a stupid woman, Mr. Smith. If I'd wanted the police involved I would have called them."

"Why haven't you?"

She stood. So did I. "I don't want to discuss it here. If, after I tell you what I need done, you don't want to do it, I'll pay you for your time and your trip. Thank you for the drink, Mr. Smith." She walked from the room, her back straight, her steps measured.

When the door shut behind her the bar was the same as it had been before, as it had always been. Men and women who'd been stopping in at Antonelli's after work since Tony's father had run the place bought each other drinks, talked quietly about sports, the weather, their cars, and their kids. In the back, laughing, smoking, drinking beer from the bottle was a tableful of young kids who'd been children when I first started coming here. Now that rear table was clearly theirs, Antonelli's as much their place as their parents'. Room had been made for them, and Antonelli's continued.

I swirled the bourbon around in my glass, then signaled to Marie, Tony's waitress, who was leaning on the bar chewing gum and trading wisecracks with the Rolling Rock drinkers. "Hi," she said, bouncing over to my table. "Can I get you something?" Her shaggy hair was bleached to a very pale blond, fine and soft.

"Hi." I pointed to my glass. "I need more ice, and I'm starving. What do you have?"

"Lasagna." She nibbled on a maroon fingernail that must have been an inch long "And bean soup. And the usual stuff." She giggled.

I ordered the lasagna. Marie bounced off chomping openmouthed on her gum. I glanced up at the TV. The golf was over, the news was on. That meant there'd be NCAA basketball soon. I had a client, a bellyful of bourbon, and Tony's lasagna coming. I stretched my legs and idly watched an elderly couple a few tables over. They were eating dinner in a silence punctuated only by quiet remarks and small gestures that dovetailed so perfectly they might have been choreographed.

I'd told Lydia I was coming up here, told her I'd be away; but I hadn't said I'd be meeting a client, that I might be working.

I got up, bought a Mountain Eagle from the pile by the bar. Sipping my bourbon, I caught up on what had been happening since I'd last come up.

There was federal DOT money coming along and with it the state was planning to replace or rebuild three county roads. That was bad. Seven years ago they'd replaced this stretch of 30 with a faster, straighter road on the other side of the valley. Now this was strictly a local road and most of the establishments along it had died slow, lonely deaths. Antonelli's was one of the few still open.

I glanced at the other lead stories. Appleseed Baby Foods was expanding. That was good. Appleseed was the only major employer in the county. Appleseed CEO Mark Sanderson smiled from a front-page photo. I sipped my bourbon, considered the photo. In the old days, pictures of the state senator's Christmas party or the county Fourth

"I July bash always included a shot of Mark Sanderson with his arm around the usually bare shoulders of his stunning wife, Lena. Then four years ago shed left him, just waIked away. Consensus among the women in the county seemed to be that anyone married to Mark Sanderson would have considered that option, maybe much earlier than Lena Sanderson did, but Sanderson reported her to i he county Sheriff and to the State Troopers as a missing person, made anguished televised pleas for her to come home, and waited. My professional opinion at the time was that the cops would come up empty and wed seen the last of her, and I was right. Looking at Sanderson's round, smiling face now, it seemed to me he'd come through the whole thing pretty well.

I drank more bourbon, read on. New York State Electric and Gas had run an open meeting to get local comment on a natural gas pipeline they wanted to pull through the county. It would be heading down from Canada, where the gas was, to New York City, where it was needed. Local comment pro had to do with promised jobs. Local comment con was about tearing up fields, fencing off pastureland, polluted water, damaged crops, and the chance of major explosions. Pro won, hands down.

I lit a cigarette, turned the page. The Consolidated East girls' basketball team had won the tri-county championship in a squeaker last Friday. There was a photo with this one too, sweaty, long-legged girls grinning at the camera, arms around each other's shoulders. I imagined that picture fixed with magnets to refrigerator doors all around the county.

I was onto the Police Blotter—a lot of DWIs, one marijuana arrest—when Marie sashayed over, bringing silverware and a tall glass of ice. As she put them on my table the door swung open, letting a chill breeze push into the room.

I looked over. Three men stepped inside, chuckling as though they’d just exchanged a joke. They headed for the big table at the front. The first to sit, an angular, pasty man, cocked a finger at Marie, winking. The features on the left side of his face—ear, eye, eyebrow—were set a little higher than the ones on the right, and his nose was crooked. The other two men dropped themselves into chairs on either side of him. The big one was dark, with a thick, droopy mustache, wide shoulders, and an easy, friendly manner. The other was small and bony with bad skin and dead-brown hair.

Marie, paling, looked unsurely to Tony. Tony shook his head, lifted the gate, stepped around the bar.

"Who's that?" I asked Marie quietly.

"Frank Grice," she whispered, her eyes on Tony.

"No kidding." I knew that name. The trouble Jimmy Antonelli had been in last fall, the hole I'd dug him out of, was because he'd been dumping stolen cars for Frank Grice, cars Grice used to run dope from Miami to Albany. But Grice denied knowing the kid, and Jimmy wouldn't roll on him. Grice left the state when the sheriff picked Jimmy up and came back after my lawyer had gotten him out. I knew the name; but this was the first time I'd laid eyes on him.

I ground out my cigarette and leaned forward in my chair as Tony walked to where the three men sat.

"You ain't welcomed here, Frank." He spoke low to Grice, ignoring the others. The line of his jaw was white. "Get out.

"What kind of a way is that to talk, Tony?" Frank Grice smiled widely, spread his hands innocently, palms up. "We |just came by for a drink."

"Drink somewhere else."

Grice didn't answer. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his overcoat, pulled one loose. The big guy flicked a gold lighter for him. Grice looked at the flame as if it were something new and interesting. Lighting the cigarette, he looked up at Tony. Smoke streamed lazily from his mouth. He said something softly, so softly I couldn't hear it. Tony went a deep red; I couldn't hear his answer, either. Grice stood suddenly. The other two exchanged looks, then followed suit. Grice sauntered to the door, opened it, and held it open, smiling the whole time, his cigarette dangling from his cockeyed lips. Tony half turned, searching for Marie. "Keep an eye on things," he growled. "I'll be right back." He slammed forward, past Grice, through the open door. Grice followed, his boys followed him, and the door swung shut behind them.

Before the door closed I was out of my chair, moving swiftly past the bar and through the vinyl-padded doors that swung into the kitchen. Buzzing fluorescent lights, too bright, reflected off the stainless-steel counters. The room smelled of garlic and ammonia. A skinny kid up to his elbows in greasy water stared as I slipped out the kitchen door into the winter darkness. My steps made no sound as I rounded the corner of the building, a cold wind pushing its way through my shirt. Three figures—Tony, Grice, and the big, friendly man—leaned close together in the middle of the parking lot; a fourth, the little guy, stood by the bar's front door. I worked my way in the shadows of parked cars.

I couldn't see Tony's face, but his voice came to me, tight and gravelly. "You don't get it, Frank. I want you outta here, damn fast."

"No, you don't get it, Tony." Grice's voice still held a smile. "If I'm thirsty, you pour me a drink. If I'm hungry, you grill me a steak. That's how it is now."

"Hell it is," Tony spat.

A nod from Grice, just a small movement of his misshapen head, and the big man slipped behind Tony like a shadow, pinned his arms as Grice smashed his fist into Tony's belly. Tony doubled over, groaning. The big man pulled him up. Grice laughed, rubbed his fist into the palm of his other hand. He stopped laughing suddenly as I slammed into him like a freight train, spreading him backwards across the rusted trunk of an old red Chevy. I backhanded him once across the mouth, just to slow him down; then I sprang back, left him there. He was Tony's.

Tony tore himself out of the big man's surprised grip and reached both hands for Grice, hauled him off the car while I grabbed the big man's shoulder, spun him around. I threw my best punch into the middle of his mustache. He wasn't any bigger than I was, and my best wasn't bad, but it didn't faze him. He staggered back; then, spreading his lips in a hungry smile, he launched himself at me. I sidestepped, drove a kick into his ribs.

He stumbled; I watched. Then something crashed into me from behind, knocked me to the ground. Small, bony hands lightened around my throat, squeezing, shaking. A knee dug into my back.

Gravel scraped the side of my face as I twisted, digging with my right foot, trying to shake off the little guy as my lungs began to strain for air. I groped at his hands pressing into my windpipe. My heart pounded, raced; yellow and red explosions started behind my eyes. His breath rasped loudly in my ear. I had no breath at all. The world got smaller, darker. Closing on one finger of each choking hand I forced them back, my muscles only half obeying, beginning to tremble. I put everything into bending those two fingers; at the last minute the hands loosened and I clawed them away from my throat.

I sucked air loudly and twisted left, yanking on his right arm. He slipped from my back; I drove my right elbow hard beside me into whatever was there. It landed solidly enough to send bolts of pain ricocheting up and down my arm. From the sounds behind me, I wasn't the only one who noticed. I pulled away and got up on one knee and then the big man was back, with a fist the size of a bowling ball slamming into my chin. My head snapped back and I landed in a cold muddy puddle. I lay motionless, breathing hard.

The big man leaned over me, relaxed and smiling, for a good look. When he was near enough that I could smell the stale coffee on his breath, I shot my arms out and grabbed his jacket, pulled my knee to my chest, shoved my foot into his gut. I straightened my leg and threw him away from me, and this time when he stumbled I was right there, three fast mean punches pounding his face and another sharp kick up under his ribs. He moaned and started to sag. I clenched my hands together and swung them like a hatchet down on the place where his neck joined his shoulder. At first nothing happened; then he fell over sideways like a tree. I stepped back, panting, and looked around. The little bony guy was standing now but he was a lot smaller than I was and he wouldn't try to take me again, not from the front where I could see him coming. I grinned so he'd know I knew that.

A loud, wordless sound came from behind me. I whipped around and saw Tony sitting on Frank Grice's chest, his knees pinning Grice's arms, his square fist thumping repeatedly into Grice's already bloody face. "Tony!" I yelled hoarsely. "Hey, Tony, that's enough! Come on, man, you're going to kill him."

I pulled Tony back and off Grice, who groaned, rolled, and worked his way slowly to his feet. Tony struggled in my grip and I held him, not relaxing until he did.

"All right?" I asked, as his rocky muscles loosened under my hands. He nodded and I let him go.

Grice stood slightly stooped, breathing noisily through his mouth. He lifted a hand to his face, cupping his nose, then moved the hand away. "You'll pay for this, Tony," he hissed. "This was stupid. And you"—he turned his bloody face to me—"whoever the hell you are, stay the fuck out of my way from now on."

"Aw, Frank," I said, my voice still hoarse. "Why should Tony have all the fun?"

Something flared in Grice's eyes. I suddenly noticed how cold I was, soaked with sweat and muddy water out here in the winter night.

"Go on, Tony," Grice said, still looking at me. "You bring me all the smartass muscle you want. It won't help you, Tony." He coughed.

“I don't need no help, you son of a bitch," Tony snarled, taking two fast steps toward Grice.

From off to my right a voice like gears grinding said, "Don't do that." I spun around. Ten feet away, the little bony guy was planted, legs spread apart, holding an automatic pointed at the centre of Tony's chest.

Grice and Tony saw the gun the same time I did. Everyone froze, and for a long moment no one moved in the gravelled lot under the blue-black sky, scattered now with more stars than a man could count, even in a long lifetime.

My gun was pressed to my ribs under my flannel shirt, as out of reach as the stars.

Then Grice laughed, a short, guttural sound, as of something being ripped in two. "Oh, Christ, Wally. What the hell is that for? Put it away. Come on, let's go." He looked at me, then at Tony. "Next time," he said.

He turned sharply and walked to a big blue Ford, got in the front passenger door. The little guy hesitated, swore, then tucked the gun into his belt. He grabbed the big man, who looked as if he wasn't sure what day it was. Steering him to the car, he shoved him through the rear door, got behind the wheel, and sprayed gravel tearing out of the lot.

Tony and I watched the red glow of their tail lights vanish down 30. "I don't like your friends," I told him.

"You got Frank pissed off at you now," he said.

I fingered my left cheek carefully. It felt hot and sore. "You owe him, Tony?"

Tony turned to me. A lead curtain fell behind his eyes. "I don't owe nobody, Smith." He wiped his hand down his sweaty face. "You shoulda stayed out of it."

"Yeah." I shrugged. "But I was hungry. Grice beats the shit out of you, I don't get my lasagna."

We turned together, headed back toward the door. The ancient, pitted tin sign that read "Antonelli's," Tony's father's sign, creaked as it swung in the wind. A smile cracked Tony's face. "Sucker," he said. "I'm outta lasagna."

Two hours later, full of food, warmer, I turned my six- year-old Acura onto the dirt road that leads from 30 down to my cabin. The single lane was rutted and slippery, ruts that fit my tires exactly because almost no one drove that road but me. I parked in the flat field next to my place and spent a long time leaning on the car, looking at the stars through the black cross-hatching of tree branches.

Inside, I turned on the lamp in the front room. The cedar-panelled walls soaked up most of the light, except where the glass frame of a photograph or drawing caught it, threw it back. When I bought the cabin it wasn't winterized, so I'd done that, insulating, finishing with cedar because it stood up well to damp and I liked the smell. I'd reroofed, too, and rebuilt the porch; this year, as soon as the weather was warm enough, I was going to replace the chimney.

I shed my jacket, threw it over the broken-in reading « hair by the window. As I turned, lamplight glinted on the child's silver-framed photograph in the middle of the bookshelves. Days, weeks could go by without my looking at that picture, knowing it was there but feeling it only as a source of warmth, a hand on my shoulder. At those times I felt almost at peace; sometimes I even thought I wanted to talk about it, although I didn't know with whom and I never tried.

And then other times, like now, I'd walk by too close, too close, and slice my heart on the sharp edges of Annie's smile. Then the old pain would well up from where it lived in the hollows of my bones, and my eyes would grow hot. Ambushed by this aching, I would stare, as I did now, into this picture that never changed, and wonder why I kept it here, where it was so dangerous. Seven years ago I'd packed away the pictures I'd had in New York, and all her things. Her things were gone from here, too; this was all that I had left, all I'd kept, and I wondered why.

But I knew.

Because although the fresh prettiness of her face, the round cheeks and soft brown eyes and the wave in her hair, had all been her mother's, that sharp, slanted smile was mine.

And because, in all her nine years, I had never seen Annie afraid.

I turned away from the picture. I poured myself some Maker's Mark, left the bottle out. I drank, then flexed my

hands, palms up, palms down; they seemed all right, so I carried the bourbon to the piano bench and raised the cover off the keyboard of the old, battered Baldwin.

I ran through a series of scales, the keys cold and smooth and hard under my fingers; then, after a still minute and a few deep breaths, I started on the Mozart B minor Adagio, trying out the phrasing that had been running around my head since morning. It didn't really work, but I played through the piece anyway, twice, and then went on to more Mozart, the Sonata in A minor, which I'd been playing a lot longer and played better.

As I moved into it, the power and the tension in me grew until my whole body rang with them, with the exhilaration of balancing on a very narrow beam, barely controlling the lines of the music as they wove toward and away from each other, building, fading, stopping and not stopping, only my hands preventing chaos, creating just enough order for just enough time that the immense beauty of the music could exist here, now, in this dark, small place halfway down a wooded winter hillside, under a million stars.

Chapter 2

Morning came, cold, clear, and much too early.

Groggy, I rolled across the bed out of the sunlight, tried to remember why I ached, why my cheek was stiff and sore and my jaw was tender. There must have been a fight, but I didn't remember it, and a sick, familiar feeling began in the pit of my stomach. The fights I couldn't remember were usually ones I'd started, usually over nothing, usually with men I didn't know and had no quarrel with except the quarrel that comes in a bottle of bourbon like the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks. Time had been when I would often wake sick and aching, finding nothing in my memory but shadows and regret. It had been a long time since the last time, though, and it had never happened up here. That was one of the reasons I came here, and so I worked at remembering, pushing my way through the bourbon haze and the dull thudding in my skull.

Nothing came. I groped on the table by the bed for a cigarette. I lit one, missed the ashtray with the match, rolled onto my back. I looked slowly around, to the window, the charcoal drawing on the wall, the bureau, the straight-backed chair with yesterday's clothes slung over it. Nothing. A cloud covered the sun, left the room gray and cold.

Early-morning smoke caught in my throat and I coughed, felt a pain I wasn't expecting. I touched my neck, feeling the sore, bruised places, and then memory and relief flooded in together like tide in a sand castle. It was all there: Tony, Frank Grice, the bony hands around my neck. The muddy puddle. The gun.

I finished the cigarette, threw off the quilt. Standing at the window I watched the high thin clouds drifting east. Birds searched my yard for breakfast. They moved with the jerky speed of a silent movie, flashing from branches to the ground.

I shrugged into a robe, went out to the front room. As always, it was warmer there than in the rooms in the back, the one I slept in and the other, rarely used now.

I flicked on the hot water heater in the corner of the kitchen. I built a fire in the wood stove and put some water on to boil. When the coffee was ground and waiting I took a quick shower, in water I wouldn't have called hot anywhere but here.

I dressed quickly in clothes as cold as the air. I thought about shaving, but I looked in the mirror at my cheek, streaked and raw, and decided to skip it. Eve Colgate would just have to live with it.

Wearing my jacket and gloves, I took my coffee outside to the porch. Up on the ridge 30 ran, invisible, around the rim of my land. The damp smell of decaying leaves mixed with the dryness of woodsmoke. In the crisp and clear air the black skeletons of trees were sharp against the sky. The oaks up by the road I'd planted myself, the first summer I was here. They were still small; oaks are slow growers.

By the time I'd finished the thick, bitter coffee the Bounding in my head was gone. I smoked a cigarette while the pale- sun stabbed through the branches as though it were searching for something. I grabbed a handful of bird- seed from the can by the door, scattered it in the yard. Then I went back inside, rinsed out my coffee cup, slipped on my holster and my .38. I wiped the frost from the car and headed up the road to meet Eve Colgate.

Eve Colgate's house sat on the crest of a hill along Route 10 in the north of the county. Below, the state highway gleamed two wide flat ribbons laid over the fields. Cars raced along it with a faint whoosh. From Eve Colgate's place you could see that, but there were better things to look at. The sky was a brilliant blue and the wind raised miniature waves on puddles by the roadside. The sun was almost warm. Eve Colgate had apple, peach, and cherry orchards, pasture for a small dairy herd, and a long, straight drive arched over by chestnut trees planted close. A stand of forsythia already showed tiny spots of green.

The house was small but solid, yellow clapboard with white shutters and a big front porch. To the right of the drive a lawn slanted up to the house. On the drive's other side, ten feet of lawn separated the chestnuts from a tangle of undergrowth and scrub trees sloping down to the forest. A hundred years ago someone had cleared the forest from that slope, probably intending to plant and harvest and

Prosper. But the ground was rocky and winters were hard. Some of the scrub trees were as tall as the house.

A muscular black dog came charging off the porch as I drove up. I parked behind a blue Ford pickup. In front of the house was another truck, a work-scarred red one. Eve Colgate, in a black sweater, hatless and gloveless, stood beside it talking with a thickly built man.

I got out of the car. The dog barked, planted his feet, growled deep in his throat like a dog who means business. I took a step forward. So did he. I stopped, waited.

"Leo!" Eve Colgate called. The dog looked to her, then quickly back at me, giving one wag of his tail. He didn't stop growling. "Leo!" she called again, more sharply, and he hesitated, then went to her reluctantly, glaring at me over his shoulder.

Eve Colgate stood scratching the dog's ears. I walked up the drive toward her and the heavy man. The dog bristled as I got close but he didn't move.

Eve Colgate's eyebrows rose slightly when she saw my face, bruised and unshaven. She looked from me to the man next to her; then she explained us to each other. "Bill Smith, Harvey Warner. The Warners have the next farm to mine. Mr. Smith is up from New York. He has a cabin near North Blenheim." We shook hands.

"Well, I'll call you," Warner said to her. "Is day after tomorrow's good?"

"It's fine," she said. "I'll be sure to have read this by then." She gestured with a folder of papers she was holding.

"Damn thing better be all it's cracked up to be." Warner spat in the dirt. "Else I swear I'm gonna sell them damn cows, go sharecroppin' for Sanderson like everybody else."

"You swore that last year," she smiled.

"Yeah well, this year I'm gonna do it. Damn pipeline's gonna ruin my best pastureland anyway. Or maybe I'll just stick Sanderson with the whole damn place, retire to Florida before he figures out he's out of his mind. To hell with it. I'll call you." He swung into the red pickup, drove nil down the muddy drive. The dog chased after him, yapping.

Eve Colgate watched the truck go, then looked at me, her eyes probing my face as you might test an ice field before you walked out on it.

"What did he mean, sharecropping?" I asked, to be saying something under those eyes.

She turned back to the drive, watched the dog trotting up it. "That's what they all call it. The small dairy farmers are all giving up. They're selling their herds to whomever will buy them, and their land to Appleseed. Then they contract to Appleseed, putting the pastureland into vegetables. They grow what Mark Sanderson tells them to and he pays them whatever he wants." She ran a hand through her blunt gray hair. "A lot of people are bitter about it. But they do it, because they're farmers and this is what they know, even on land that's no longer theirs." She gestured with the folder in her hand. "Harvey's grandfather settled that farm. But fifty cows aren't enough anymore. I have even fewer. We're talking about consolidating our herds and investing in new equipment."

"Will that pay?"

"I hope so. I don't know what Harvey will do if he has to sell his cows, or his land."

"He says he'll go to Florida."

She said, "He's never been farther than Albany."

"What will you do?"

"I—" She paused. Her crystal eyes moved over the hills and pasture, ocher and charcoal and chocolate under the bright sun. "I have options Harvey doesn't have. Don't misunderstand me: this farm supports itself, it's not a hobby. But neither am I totally dependent on it. I have no mortgage, no bank loans. I can weather bad times." She turned away from the drive. "Shall we walk?"

I lit a cigarette, turning to shelter the match from the wind, and we headed down the slope behind the house. The dog sniffed at me. I showed him my hand and when he stuck his cold nose in it I carefully scratched his ears the way Eve Colgate had. He wagged his tail grudgingly and bounded away.

Eve Colgate watched the dog, then looked at me appraisingly. "He usually won't let a stranger touch him."

"Professional courtesy," I said.

She continued to look at me for a short time, absorbing me with her colorless eyes. Then she laughed.

"They say I'm eccentric, Mr. Smith," Eve Colgate said as we paced over yielding earth criss-crossed by papery yellow grasses.

"Is it true, or just convenient?" I asked her.

"It's true enough."

"Where are we going?"

"I need to show you something."

We didn't speak again, striding side by side through last year's field. As we walked I could feel Eve Colgate's mood change. She grew distant, tense.

Finally we came to a small outbuilding, weathered siding and corrugated steel roof in a clearing where a dirt road curved up from the valley. We stopped at the padlocked door. Eve Colgate looked at me, looked down at the mud at her feet; then, her lips drawn into a thin line, she pulled a single key from her back pocket and thrust it into the lock, jerked it open. She pushed the wide sliding door just enough to make an opening a person could fit through and she went inside.

I followed her into a single square room, flooded with unexpected brightness from a skylight. Unexpected, too, was the fact that the interior was finished: sheetrock walls and ceiling, white; gray deck paint on the broad-plank floor; double-glazed frosted windows, allowing light but no view out or in; and heat, electric heat from baseboards running all around the place.

The warmth and closeness of the air, after the sharp cold of the morning, was unpleasant, and it intensified the strong, heady smell of turpentine that rolled toward me as I came through the door. But that wasn't what stopped me dead two steps inside. What did that was the canvas leaning on the wall before me.

Six feet high, eight feet wide, unfinished, but already with the power of a nightmare, barely contained. Brutal, slashing lines; sullen, swollen forms whose weight seemed to threaten the canvas that held them; a darkness, a lack of clarity that made you want to shake your head, clear the film from your eyes. When you did that, when you stared long and deep enough, the thick grays and decaying browns, even the black, began to unfold, revealing the taut wires of color within them—blood red, cobalt, the green of a Kentucky sky in the minutes before a twister hits, other colors I couldn't begin to name.

I had seen paintings like this before. They were in the Museum of Modern Art, at the Whitney, at the Tate. There had been at least one in every large twentieth- century show at every major museum for the last thirty years. Landscapes, I'd heard them called, but that was only by people who needed distance, needed to name and so deflect the pain and anger that lashed out from these paintings to rip open the places inside you where you hid things you had let yourself believe were gone forever.

"Jesus Christ," I said finally, and then again, "Jesus Christ." I looked at Eve Colgate, who was standing in front of me, a little to one side. Her, back was rigid, as though she were expecting a blow, bracing herself. "You're Eva Nouvel."

She turned to face me. Two hot spots of red shone on her cheeks, but her eyes were completely calm. "Yes," she said, in a voice that matched her eyes. "And now you know something that not a half dozen other people in this world know." She pushed past me and out through the narrow opening. I turned back to the unfinished canvas for a long look, then stepped over the threshold, joining her in the crisp, bright day. In silence we skirted a pasture where black-and-white cows nosed at a carpet of hay. Beyond the pasture was an apple orchard, where new, mature, and ancient trees ran in parallel rows up and over the hillside. We walked beneath them under branches studded with buds. The dog threaded in and out as though stitching the orchard together.Eve Colgate, without looking at me, spoke. "You recognized my work. I didn't expect that. It may make this easier”.

At the edge of the orchard a low stone wall curved sinuously along a ridge. Eve Colgate leaned on the wall, her arms hugging her chest, her back to the sun. I leaned next to her, watching the shadows of the high, cottony clouds move across the hills.

"If you know my work," she said quietly, "perhaps you know my reputation."

"Eva Nouvel is a recluse. A hermit."

"That's right." She put her hands on the wall behind her and slid onto it, cross-legged. The black dog settled into a round pile in the sun.

"I was just thirty when I left New York, Mr. Smith. I came here and bought this farm and I have lived here since, alone. I stopped painting when I came here and did not paint for some years after." She picked up a twig lying on the wall, dug it into the joint between two stones. "That's not quite true. Within weeks of establishing myself here I did a series of six canvases. I—" She drew a deep breath. "Before I came here I had been in the hospital for—for a long time. I had been seriously injured in an automobile accident in which my husband was killed. The accident was entirely our fault, my fault, I was driving. We had been drinking heavily." She paused again, stared into the distance, past the valley, past the hills.

To my mind, sudden, unwanted, and unavoidable, came the screech of brakes, the shattering of glass, sirens and shouts. Not Eve Colgate's accident, but another one, seven years ago: the crash when Annie died. An accident I hadn't seen, hadn't even known about until days later. I'd been away then, out of town on a case, and hadn't called anyone to say I was leaving, to say where I'd be.

The sun was high by now, shining through a silence broken only by the drone of a distant plane. Eve Colgate spoke again. "The paintings I made when I first came here . . ." She stopped, restarted. "It doesn't matter. They were not successful. They couldn't have been. I stopped painting then, and did not paint again for almost five years." The twig in her hand lodged between two stones and snapped. "When I came here I brought almost nothing from my days in New York. Most of my husband's things, and mine, I disposed of. The few things I couldn't part with I brought here, packed in the steamer trunk we had taken on our honeymoon. The trunk went into a storeroom and I never looked at it again. When I realized the paintings I had made were not good, I intended to destroy them, as I do all my unsuccessful work, but I couldn't. I crated them and put them in the same storeroom." She threw the broken twig away.

"Four days ago—two days before I called you in New York—I had a burglary. I'm a prosperous woman in a poor county, Mr. Smith; it's happened before. I expect it

and I survive it. But this time the storeroom was broken Into The trunk and the crate were taken, as well as some other things: tools, equipment. I don't care about any of II, mil even Henri's things, which were in the trunk. I don't need to have them anymore."

She fell silent, empty clear eyes staring out over the far hills. Then she turned to me, and I saw that her eyes weren't empty. Something gleamed deep within them like grins locked in ice. "But I want those paintings back. Do you know why?"

I looked into her eyes, saw amethysts, rubies, sapphires, sparkling, infinitely distant. "I think I do."

She waited, still and silent.

I said, "Because they're not good."

She nodded, let her breath out slowly. "I want you to mind those paintings, Mr. Smith. Can you do that?"

"I don't know. Have you told the police?"

She shook her head. Then she gestured over the orchard, the pasture, the hills. "Do you know what this is?"

I answered a different question. "It's beautiful."

She was quiet for a very long time. Then she spoke. "It's mud," she said. "Manure. Hay. Snow. Eight-hundred- pound cows that have to be helped to calve. Eggs that have to be collected every morning in a henhouse that stinks. Apple trees that lose their blooms in a frost, or their fruit in a hailstorm. Or produce so much fruit you can't hire help enough to pick it, at any price." She unfolded her legs, slipped off the wall to stand again on the rocky ground. The black dog leapt to his feet, tail wagging. Eve Colgate looked at me. "It's why I can paint."

We started walking again, back through the orchard, toward the house. "Eva Nouvel is famous," she said. The dog dropped a stick at her feet. She picked it up, threw it in a high, curving arc. The dog charged after it. "But Eve Colgate is a farmer. She splits wood and wrings chickens' necks. And she's the one who paints." The dog trotted back, dropped the stick. I bent down for it. He lunged but I was faster. I lifted it into the air, let him jump at it; then I sent it flying end over end through the sunlight. He raced away.

"Thirty years ago," Eve Colgate went on, "I made an arrangement with myself. It was based on my opinion of the world as I knew it. I've had no reason to change that opinion." She didn't speak again until we came up the hill behind the house, trim and solid against the blue of the sky. "Fame is a disease, Mr. Smith. I don't want it; I won't have it. Nor will I have those paintings dissected, discussed, exposed—!"

The spots of red appeared in her cheeks again, but her voice stayed low, controlled. "I want you to find those paintings, and do whatever you have to do to get them back. Pay the market price, if you have to. I can do that." She smiled a small, bitter smile; then it faded. "But who I am is my business."

We rounded the house, stopped at the porch steps. I looked at her. Her boots were caked with mud. Her eyes were like crystal creatures caught in the net of lines around them.

"The paintings" I said, watched her eyes. "Who would recognize them as yours? An expert? A layman? Are they signed?"

"They're not signed. An expert would certainly know them. An educated layman, possibly. My work is distinctive, Mr. Smith. There are recurring images, themes that don't change."

I searched for the right way to put my next question. "If it were necessary to destroy the paintings to preserve your privacy, would that be all right?"

She didn't speak right away. Finally she said, "I don't know."

Simple and clear, that answer; and I'd made my decision. I said, "There are some things I'll need."

"What things?"

"Descriptions of whatever was in the trunk. And I'll need to bring someone else in."

She stiffened. "Why someone else? No."

"If I'd stolen your stuff, I'd forget about selling the paintings—assuming I didn't know what they were worth— and try to unload whatever looked valuable: silver, old photographs, things like that." And probably dump everything else in the county landfill, but I didn't tell her that. "But if I were smart enough to know what the paintings were worth, I'd also know I couldn't sell them up here. I'd take them to New York. I want to call someone, check that out. I could go down there myself, but I think I'm more useful up here."

She was silent for a time, her eyes roving over the sloping lawn, the drive, the tangles of forsythia. "All right, she said quietly. "I'm hiring you as a professional. If you think this is necessary, do it. But understand that total discretion is as important to me as the return of those paintings."

I couldn't help grinning. If I hadn't gotten that message already it would have been a good time to tear up my license and go fishing.

Chapter 3

It was early for lunch at Antonelli's. Tony was alone inside except for two T-shirted guys wolfing down beers, burgers, and a mountain of fries. Tony, leaning on the bar, looked up from his newspaper as I came in.

"Jesus," he said. "You look like hell."

"And you don't. Why is that?"

He grunted. "Clean livin'." He folded the paper, put it aside. "You okay?"

"Sure," I said. "Just thirsty. Let me have a Genny Cream." He opened a bottle and put it on the bar with a glass. "Listen, Tony, I need to talk to Jimmy. Where can I find him?"

"Trouble?" His mouth tightened.

"No. Just something I need to know."

"From that punk?" He gave a humorless laugh. "If you can't drink it, drive it, or steal it, he don't know nothin' about it."

"Oh, Christ, Tony, there are some things he's good for, if you'd cut him a little slack. He cooks as well as you do. And he's better than anyone I know with a car." I was sorry the minute I said it.

Tony's face flushed. "Yeah. He can fix 'em, smash 'em, or cool 'em off if they're hot."

Oh well, I was in now. "That what Frank Grice was here about last night? Something to do with the quarry?"

"That's none of your fuckin' business!" He slammed his open hand on the bar. The T-shirts looked up from their fries. Tony shifted his eyes to them, then back to me. He dropped his voice. "You saved my ass last night. I owe you, okay? But keep out of this. I can handle Grice."

"His type doesn't handle, Tony. You give him what he wants or you shut him down."

"What the hell do you know?"

"Not much," I said. "I only know Grice by reputation. But I've met a lot of guys like him. I do it for a living."

"Then stick to the payin' customers."

I drained my glass, turned it slowly between my palms. Tony gestured at it. "You want another?" I nodded. He opened a bottle, filled my glass. I drank.

"I'm sorry, Tony," I said. "I have trouble minding my own business. And guys like Grice make my skin crawl."

"Forget it." He took the empty bottles, put them in slots in the cardboard case under the bar. "Jimmy's been workin' a coupla days a week at Obermeyer's garage over in Central Bridge. Call over there, maybe you can get him."

"Thanks." I stood. "Okay if I tie up the phone for a while?"

He shrugged. "It ain't rang in two days."

I took my beer over to the pay phone against the back wall. I thought for a minute, about Tony, Jimmy, Eve Colgate's pasture, and some paintings she hadn't seen in thirty years; about how things change and how they don't. Then I slipped in some quarters, dialed Lydia's office number in New York.

I got the bounce-line message; so she was on the phone; either actually in her office or at home on the line that rings through. Normally I would have just left a message of my own, but calling me back up here wasn't all that easy. I took a chance and dialed the other number, the one that rings at home, in the kitchen. It's not a number I call often, but it's engraved deep in my memory just the same. I lapped my fingers on the old, scarred woodwork as the phone rang and rang.

Finally a woman's voice answered in Cantonese, using words I recognized, though I didn't understand them. I gave her my dozen Cantonese words: a respectful greeting and a request. There was silence, then a snort; then the phone clattered in my ear and I could hear the voice calling to someone else.

A few moments later came another woman's voice, this time in English. "My mother says you should stop trying to impress her; your Chinese is terrible."

"What did she call me this time?"

Lydia said, "The iron-headed rat."

"What does it mean?"

"'Iron-headed'—you know, stubborn, willful; sometimes stupid. I guess it could mean gray-haired, too."

"You think she meant that?"

"No. In Chinese that's a good thing."

"Great. Why rat?"

"Don't ask."

"Someday she'll like me. Listen, are you real busy, or can you take something on?"

"She'll never even tolerate you. I'm tailing a noodle merchant whose wife thinks he's messing around with her younger sister, but it's not as engrossing as it sounds. But I thought you were up in the country."

"I am."

"You never call from there. Are you all right?" A slight quickening came into her voice.

"I took a case."

"Up there?" Now, surprise. "I thought you—"

"It's a long story," I said, even though as I said it I realized it wasn't; or at least, not the way that's usually meant. "I got a call from someone up here; that's why I came up. Can you work on it?"

"Um, sure." Her tone told me she wanted to ask more, maybe hear the long story, but she answered the question I'd asked. "What do you need?"

I told her about the burglary, what was stolen. I didn't say from whom. She whistled low. "Six Eva Nouvels? My god, they must be worth a fortune."

"Maybe two million, together," I agreed. "Could be more: they're unknown, uncatalogued."

"How unknown?"

"The client says completely. I don't know. But right now I'm not thinking anyone came looking for them. It was probably just a break-in, kids. They may even have junked the paintings by now, just kept the stuff that looked valuable to them."

"That's a cheerful thought."

"I'm going to try some other things, but if nothing turns up it may be worth a trip to the county dump. But just in case, I want you to look around down there. I don't think anyone will try to sell those paintings in New York; they'd ship them out to Europe, maybe Japan. If that's happening I want to stop them."

"What were they doing in a storeroom? Six paintings that valuable?"

" That's where the client kept them."

"Okay, funny guy. And who's the client?"

" I can't tell you."

She skipped half a beat. "You can't tell me?"

"Now," I said. "From here. Over the phone."

"Oh." That single word held a dubious note, as though my explanation was logical but not convincing. "Are there other things you're not telling me?"

"Yes," I said. "But when I tell them to you, you hang up on me."

"For which not a woman in America could blame me. What do I do if I find a trail? Are the police in on this?"

"No, and that's important. I don't want anyone who doesn't know these paintings exist to find out from us."

"Top-secret paintings stuck in a storeroom by a top- secret client in the middle of nowhere. And I thought it was all trees and cows and guys who shoot at Bambi up there. Silly me."

"I'll call you later," I told her. "If anything turns up, you can try the cell phone, but you might not get through up here."

"I'm surprised you even took it with you."

"You told me I had to carry one. I always do what you tell me."

"Uh-huh."

"Uh-huh. Well, anyway, if you can't get through, try this number." I gave her the number of the phone I was at. "Ask for Tony. Leave a time and a place I can call you. Hey, and Lydia?"

"Yes?"

"Tell your mother I'm a nice guy."

"I never lie to my mother. Talk to you later."

She hung up. I took out another quarter, dialed Obermeyer's garage—the number was carved into the wood-work—and asked for Jimmy. A voice muffled by food told me he hadn't come in yet. "You got a problem?"

"Lots," I answered. "If you see him, tell him Bill Smith is looking for him, okay?"

"Sure." The voice slurped a drink, went on. "If you see him, tell him I'm all backed up here, and where the hell is he?"

"Sure."

There were loud crunching sounds. I hung up.

The vinyl-covered phone book was chained to the shelf under the phone. I flipped it open to the Yellow Pages in the back, found Antique Shops, pages of them. Schoharie was studded with these places. Most of them were no more than someone's front room or disused garage, where chipped china and molding books shared space with broken-legged tables and chairs with torn upholstery. But a few shops were bigger or more choosy about their merchandise. It was still possible to come across the kind of finds up here that had long since vanished from areas closer to the city or more attractive to tourists. The past was one of the few things people up here had to sell.

Jimmy could have pointed me in the right direction.

He'd have protested innocence, or maybe with me he wouldn't have bothered; but he'd know where to find a fence for the sort of things Eve Colgate had lost. Without him it was a crapshoot, so I fed quarters into the phone and started from A. With everyone who answered I used the same line. A teapot, I said I needed, describing vaguely a silver teapot Eve Colgate had described to me in great detail. For my wife, I said, for our anniversary. She liked that kind of thing, I didn't know anything about it, myself.

At the end of half an hour I had four promising places, all within an hour's drive of Eve Colgate's farm.

I brought my empty glass back to Tony at the bar. The T-shirts were gone; the place was empty.

"You leavin'?"

"Yeah. I'll be back tonight. Someone may call me here." I pointed a thumb at the phone.

"Okay," Tony said. "Only help me out with somethin' before you go."

"I thought I was supposed to mind my own business."

"You gonna want ice in your goddamn bourbon later, this is your business. Damn thing's busted again." Tony's antiquated ice machine had more weak points than a sermon.

"What is it, that valve? Like when I was here in the fall?"

"Yeah, and twice in the winter when you wasn't. You gotta turn it off downstairs, wait till I tell you to turn it on again. The red one. You know." I knew. "Unless you're in a hurry. It can wait till the O'Brien kid comes in, or Marie."

"No hurry."

The door to the cellar was back by the phone. Under my weight the wooden stairs creaked. The light from the head of the stairs didn't reach very far, but dusty gray daylight filtered in through the grimy windows in the back wall. The place smelled of mildew and damp concrete. I shook a spiderweb from the back of my hand.

Tony's cellar was a shadowed landscape of boxes, crates, abandoned furniture. Lying across the pipes overhead were old fishing rods, skis, a pair of snowshoes whose leather webbing was crumbling to dust. About five miles of greasy rope was heaped in a corner, next to a bureau Tony's father had moved down here before Tony was born.

Tony knew every object here, and could navigate smoothly through them in the dark. I couldn't. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, then picked my way carefully to the middle of the room, where a single light- bulb dangled from the ceiling.

I reached a hand up to it; then I stopped and froze. I wasn't the only thing moving.

Barely visible, a shadow darker than the others slid noiselessly behind a hill of boxes.

Slowly, silently, I eased the gun from under my arm. I stared through the dimness; there was nothing. Everything was still, as though it always had been. But I'd seen it. I moved to my left, to where the shadow went. My steps were silent. Maybe whoever it was wouldn't hear my heart pounding, either.

Suddenly a crash, something shattering on the concrete floor. Another flash of movement. I pressed my back against the wall, gun drawn. Before me two unblinking eyes appeared, glittering in the half-light.

The cat whose face they were in crouched on a pile of boxes, hissed, thrashed its tail. It turned, flowed through a broken windowpane and was gone.

I breathed. "Shit," I said to the vanished cat. "You could get killed doing that." I put my gun away, rubbed the back of my neck.

"Hey, Smith!" Tony yelled from above. "What the hell are you doin' down there?"

"All right!" I yelled back. I stepped over a broken barstool into the center of the room and yanked the chain on the dangling bulb. The sudden glare brought sharp edges and color springing out of the soft shadows. I looked around, searching for a clear path to the back of the room, but I never found it.

From the back wall near the floor another pair of eyes met mine. These didn't blink either, but they didn't glitter. They were human, and they were dull because they were dead.

Chapter 4

He must have been standing right up against the back wall when he was shot. Three dark rings with darker centers the size of a baby's fist stained his shirt. He'd slumped down leaving a thin smear of blood on the ancient whitewash, until he settled, sitting on the dirty floor, one arm over a case of empties as though it were a friend of his. His face was a mottled gray, like candlewax and ashes, and from his slack, open mouth a thin line of blood, now dry and cracking, had dripped down his chin to splash perfect circles onto his open, bony hand.

I knew those hands. After last night, the way they'd circled my throat, shaking and choking, after that I'd have known them anywhere.

He looked so foolish, so surprised. I wanted to close his eyes, his mouth, cover him with something. He was indecent, unready as the curtain went up on his final show, probably the only starring role a guy like him had ever had.

I knelt, felt his neck for a pulse. I knew it was stupid. I lifted the edge of his coat with a finger, looking for the gun he'd had last night. It was gone.

The sweet smell of blood was thick in the damp air. I let his coat fall and stayed where I was, prowling the floor with my eyes. I didn't know what I was looking for but I found it, a set of keys on a silver ring in the dirt by his knee. I stared at them in the dim light; then I took out a handkerchief, picked them up in it, and slipped them, wrapped, into my pocket.

I stepped back the way I'd come, careful not to disturb anything I hadn't disturbed already.

The creaking of the stairs as I went up seemed louder than before, but I could have been wrong about that.

Tony and I were sitting at the round table in the front of the room, about as far from the cellar as you could get. I was drinking bourbon; he was drinking gin. Tony had called the state troopers. Now all we had to do was wait.

A fly, early and stupid, staggered slowly around a wine stain in the red-and-white tablecloth like an old man avoiding a puddle.

I lit a cigarette, shook out the match. "Tell me about it, Tony."

Tony looked into the glass in front of him. He didn't find anything but gin. "Nothin' to tell."

"There's a stiff in your cellar says otherwise."

He raised his head sharply, glared at me. "You think I put him there?"

I shook my head. "You didn't even know he was down there or you wouldn't have sent me down. But you do know something, Tony. About what?"

Tony didn't answer. I sipped my bourbon, tried again. "What did Grice want last night?"

"Ah, shit!" He slammed his glass onto the table. "He thinks he's got somethin' on Jimmy."

"Does he?"

Tony poured himself another slug of gin. He didn't speak.

"What does he want?" I asked. "For whatever he's got?"

He shrugged, drank. "I told him to go to hell."

"Does that mean you don't know? Or you don't care?"

He started to stand, his face darkening. He started to speak, too, but stopped, clamped his mouth shut, and sat back down heavily. He stared at his gin, then drank it as though he were doing it a favor.

I took the handkerchief from my pocket, unwrapped it, laid it on the table. The keys on the silver ring glinted between us.

Tony's eyes narrowed. "Where did you get those?"

"Downstairs," I said. "They're Jimmy's, aren't they?"

Sirens wailed as cars screeched into the lot. I slipped the keys back in my pocket. Doors slammed and the curtains at the front window pulsed red and blue.

"Tony," I said quietly, "I'm on your side."

He got up to open the door for the law.

Sheriff Garrett Brinkman, followed by a paunchy, sleepy-eyed deputy, stepped around Tony into the room. Their boots made hard sounds on the worn wood floor. Brinkman wore high black boots like a motorcycle cop, and kept them shiny enough to see your face in. He was a long-faced, long-legged man whose hair was thinning and hadn't been much of a color when he'd had it. His hands were big and his eyes were small. When he was young, he'd played right field for a Triple-A ball club. He still held the minor-league record for spiking second basemen.

"Brinkman."Tony scowled. "What the hell are you doing here? I didn't call you, I called the troopers."

"No, how about that?" Brinkman drawled amicably, his eyes shifting from Tony to me, back again. "My county, you find a dead guy, but you call the state and you don't call me" He smiled a small, nasty smile, and waited, eyes on Tony, for an explanation we all knew he didn't need and wasn't going to get. Then he shrugged. "But what the hell, Tony. We picked it up over the radio. So I thought we'd come give the pretty boys from the state a hand, in case they need to find their dicks or something." Brinkman turned to me, the nasty smile widening. "And how lucky can I get?" he said. "Look who's here."

"Hello, Brinkman," I said. "Long time."

"Not long enough, city boy." The smile pushed back the deep creases that ran from his nose to his chin. "I hope you're messed up in this."

"Sorry." I smiled too. It was in the air. "I found him. That's all I know."

"We'll see," said Brinkman. Then, "Show me."

I pushed my chair back, got up from the table. I was about to throw back the last of my bourbon when Brinkman put his hand over my glass. "I like my witnesses sober."

"Yeah," I said. "I guess alcohol could dull the pain." I stopped smiling.

"Don't push me, city boy," Brinkman said softly.

I walked around him, opened the cellar door. Brinkman and the deputy clattered down the wooden stairs. Tony and I followed.

I'd left the light on. Sharp black shadows lay heavily beyond the circle of it. "Where?" Brinkman asked.

"In the back." I showed him how to go.

We picked our way among things once wanted, now useless and decaying. The four of us collected in a semicircle at the back wall. The little bony guy stared at us out of sightless eyes, his arm still over the dusty bottles, his mouth still open.

"Well," said Brinkman. "This just gets better, doesn't it?" The smile twitched again at a corner of his mouth. "Know him?"

Tony took that one. "Met him once," he said tightly. "Don't know his name."

"Oh?" said Brinkman. "Well, his name's Wally Gould. Works for Frank Grice. What I hear, he does anything so dirty even Grice won't touch it. What's he doing here, Tony?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Smith?" Brinkman said over his shoulder, without looking at me. He squatted next to the body, moved the dead man's coat aside, as I had. His boots scratched in the dirt as he stood again and turned.

"Forget it, Brinkman. I came down to shut off a leaky valve. I found him like this, we called the troopers, got you instead. That's it."

"I guess you didn't know him either?"

"I met him once, same as Tony."

"Uh-huh. When was that?"

Tony answered before I could. "Last night. Grice was here with two guys—this guy, and some big gorilla. I threw ‘em out.

Brinkman raised his eyebrows, the small smile still playing on his lips. "And they just went?"

"No. They were lookin' for trouble."

"Oh." Brinkman let the smile grow. "That what happened to your face?" he asked me.

"I was born with this face, Brinkman. Some days it just looks worse than others."

Brinkman pushed back his hat, revealing more of his endless forehead. "You know, a guy in your position should show more respect for the law."

"What position am I in?"

"Hey, you're the top man on my shit list, Smith. Ahead of Tony's little shit brother, ahead of Tony, even ahead of Frank Grice. Right on top."

"Listen, Brinkman, I'm sorry about your little plan to put a net over Grice, but it wouldn't have worked anyway. Jimmy wasn't going to deal."

"He sure as hell was, until you and your New York Jew lawyer fucked me up. Fucked me up real good. I sneeze in this county now, my fucking county, Grice yells for his lawyer. 'Harassment.' 'Brutality.' Where the hell you think he learned that shit, Smith? Fucking city lawyer shit!"

"Too bad it's so easy to believe."

Brinkman's mouth twisted into an ugly shape. He made a grab for me but the deputy, smooth and graceful the way a fat man can be, slipped his bulk between us, his back to me, his cushiony hands on Brinkman's arms. "Come on, Sheriff. Everyone's upset here. I'm sure Mr. Smith didn't mean nothing by it."

Brinkman snarled, shook the deputy off, took a step back. "Oh, he did, Art. He sure did," he said, controlled and soft.

He turned and looked at Wally Gould, still sitting stupidly in the dirt, staring at nothing. Then he turned back. "All right. Upstairs. Art, call the pretty boys at the state, find out where the hell they are." His small eyes lit with a thought. "Smith, you packing a gun?"

"You know I am." I held my jacket open so he could see the Colt under my left arm.

"Give it to me."

I laughed. "You're not in a good enough mood for me to reach for a gun, Brinkman. You take it."

His hands clenched and he took a step toward me. Then he stopped, his eyes on mine, and the mean little smile came out of nowhere, spread like a stain across his face.

He reached for my holster, snapped the safety off, slid the gun out. It was the gun I carry when I have a choice, an old snub-nose five-shot. He looked at it wonderingly, held it out for Art to see. "Look at this shit. Christ, Smith, why don't you get yourself a piece that works?"

"It works."

"Oh?" He broke it open, sniffed at it. "Maybe so. Been cleaned lately."

"I keep it clean. I like clean things."

"How about that, Art?" He nudged the deputy. "A city boy that likes clean things."

He pocketed my gun and moved toward the stairs, pushing me aside instead of stepping around me to show he could.

Upstairs the air was better. The company was the same.

Brinkman settled on a barstool, his back to the bar, his elbows resting on it. "Where's Jimmy?" he asked Tony pleasantly.

"I ain't seen him in a coupla weeks."

"Oh, come on, Tony. Doesn't he live with you? In that big old place your grandpa built?" Brinkman jerked a thumb in the direction of Tony's house across the road from the bar.

"He moved out Christmas."

"You throw him out?"

Tony's eyes blazed. "Go to hell, Brinkman."

Brinkman smiled. "Well, I'll find him. You seen him, Smith?"

"I just came up night before last."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why'd you come up?"

"I've been coming here for eighteen years, Brinkman. I never needed a reason before."

"Well, city boy," Brinkman drawled, crossing a shiny boot over his knee, "maybe you're going to need one from now on."

Chapter 5

The state troopers' Bureau of Criminal Investigation for the tri-county area was near Bramanville in a gray block building off the state highway. It was surrounded by a featureless field of grass and a parking lot. The grass was brown and thin now, at the chill end of winter, but spring wouldn't make much difference to it.

I was sitting where I'd been sitting for close to an hour, in a one-windowed office at the end of a narrow corridor. The walls were paneled in wood-veneer pressboard and hung with a pin-dotted county map and photos of the governor. Glass-doored bookshelves held law enforcement manuals and phonebooks. A big wooden desk with a glass top sat diagonally across a corner of the room, facing the door. I sat facing the desk.

The man whose office it was, Senior Investigator Ron MacGregor, got up from behind the desk to shut the door. MacGregor was unremarkable to look at, medium height, medium build, about as much red, thinning hair as you might expect on a man pushing fifty. A few freckles still stood out on his thin face and he had tired blue eyes.

MacGregor and I knew each other casually and accidentally. A good trout stream ran through the bottom of my land. I didn't fish it often, because from where I was it was nearly inaccessible. My land was vertical, ten acres spread down the side of a steep hill, with a few shelves like the one the cabin was on and just enough of a levelling out near 30 that a road could be coaxed out of it.

Only a fanatic would bother with the long, tricky climb down to the stream over boulders and slippery leaves, especially when about five miles south the stream flowed through county land with a well-kept path to it. I wasn't that kind of fanatic, but MacGregor was, and one April afternoon a couple of years ago when roadwork muddied the water downstream, I drove in to find one of my windows forced open and some expensive-looking fishing tackle in my kitchen. A note, written in an unfamiliar hand on paper torn from a pocket notebook, was stuck on the reel. "Was fishing your stream," it read. "Sprained my ankle. Why don't you have a goddamn phone? Having enough trouble without this stuff. Eat the fish. I'll be by for the gear." It was signed "Ron MacGregor."

I looked in the fridge. There were four beautiful trout in a creel. I took one out, wrapped it in newspaper, put it back on the shelf. Then I took the creel and the rest of the gear over to Antonelli's and checked the phone book. There were two Ron MacGregors in the county; I hit it the first time. "Didn't want your fish to rot," I told him.

"You the guy in Lou Antonelli's place? Why the hell don't you have a phone? It took me an hour to crawl up your goddamn driveway."

"Get a phone, people start calling you," I explained. "You never know where it might end."

I took him his fish and his gear, and we sat drinking beer in his split-level ranch for the rest of the afternoon.

Since then he'd fished my stream often. What he liked about my stream was the same thing I liked about my cabin: there was no one else around. What I liked about him was that he left his car at the top of the road and never stopped by to say hello without an invitation.

MacGregor sat back down. "You want another cup of coffee?"

"No," I said. "That one was bad enough."

I'd told my story twice, once briefly when MacGregor and his men arrived at Antonelli's, then in more detail here for the benefit of MacGregor, a uniformed trooper, and a tape machine. I'd told it patiently and completely, gave details as I remembered them, answered questions as I could. I left out only two things. I didn't say what the fight last night had been about—I didn't really know anyway— and, though I gave MacGregor the keys on the silver ring and told him where I'd found them, I didn't tell him whose I thought they were. When I was through, the trooper left, taking the tape to be transcribed.

With the door closed and the trooper gone, MacGregor frowned. He poked the eraser end of his pencil at my handkerchief, lying in the centre of his desk with the keys on top. "Withholding evidence, Smith. That's a bad business."

"I'm not withholding anything. I'm giving it to you."

"Tampering, then. What if there were prints on these?"

"Then there still are. I've had them gift-wrapped, Mac. They were safer with me than they would have been with Brinkman's boys."

MacGregor sighed with that weariness in a cop that a night's sleep or a month's vacation won't cure. "That's true. It's the only reason I'm not going to chew your ass over this—now. What else have you got? The murder weapon, maybe?"

"Nothing else."

"Why'd you pick these up?"

"I thought I recognized them. I wanted to see them in the light."

"Oh? Private citizen wants to look at the evidence, he just scoops it up and walks off with it?"

"Private investigator, Mac. It's in my blood. I'm sorry."

"And?"

I shook my head. "I'm not sure."

"What do you think?"

"I think that when I'm sure I'll tell you."

MacGregor pushed at the handkerchief some more. "You're pretty close with the Antonellis, aren't you?"

"Tony and I go back awhile. I rented his father's hunting cabin when I first started coming up here; when the old man died Tony sold it to me."

"And Jimmy?"

"He was a kid when his father died, eight or nine. He used to spend some time with me, when I was up."

MacGregor looked up from the handkerchief. "I heard you were like another father to him."

"I wasn't here enough for that, except one winter. I had troubles of my own around that time. The kid was good company. He didn't talk much."

"And when he was arrested?"

"Which time?"

"You know what I mean. Last fall."

I shrugged. "He was looking at five to fifteen. He didn't deserve it."

"Says you."

"Okay," I said.

"So you brought up a slick city lawyer and got him off."

"I thought the troopers weren't involved in that, it was a county thing. What do you care?"

"It pissed off every cop on this side of the state, Smith. We're simple folks up here; we're not used to being outmanuevered by lawyers with manicures and bow ties."

"I didn't like it either. I don't like to operate that way. But the kid didn't have a chance. Brinkman was out to get Grice and he was squeezing Jimmy hard. The whole scam was Grice's; Jimmy wasn't even in it for the money, just the fun."

"How so?"

"You know what Grice paid Jimmy to drop those cars in the quarry? A hundred bucks each. It must have been worth a lot more than that to Grice to lose them."

"So why'd Jimmy do it?"

"Because it was dangerous. You know how he did it?"

"Put the car in neutral and pushed, I'd guess."

"You'd be wrong. He drove the damn things like a bat out of hell over the edge with the door open, jumped out just before they hit the water. Twice a car rolled over on him; once he got knocked on the head. He still doesn't know how he made it onto the rocks that time; he didn't wake up until morning."

MacGregor shook his head. "He's crazy."

"No, he's not. Just wild. Making a lot of noise so he won't hear the sounds in the dark. No different from a lot of kids."

MacGregor chewed his bottom lip. He had kids, too. Girls; but girls had their own ways of being wild.

He said, "You got any idea where I can find him?"

I said evenly, "No. Why?"

He threw down the pencil. "Oh, come on, Smith! You got a better suspect?"

"Why would Jimmy kill Gould?"

"I've got two theories and I haven't even thought about it yet. Maybe it was Gould who tipped off Brinkman about the quarry, and Jimmy was pissed. Guys like Gould have turned out to be snitches before this. Or, maybe Jimmy was looking to move up in Grice's organization and Gould was in the way."

"And why leave the body lying around?"

"Maybe he meant to come back for it, after he figured out what to do with it. From the looks of that cellar, no one goes down there from one month to the next unless something blows."

"Things blow all the time over there. Jimmy would know that."

"Well," he said, his eyes on the handkerchief on his desk, "maybe he went out to his car to get something and found he'd lost his keys, couldn't get back in." He looked at me again. "He can hot-wire the car; maybe he's got another set of keys to the bar at home. Maybe it's pretty close to morning anyway, Tony'll be there soon. Maybe he figures he'll chance it, leave the body, come back the next night. He's big on taking chances, I hear."

I looked at him levelly. "He's not a killer, Mac."

MacGregor didn't answer, only shrugged.

"Can I leave?" I asked. "I'm starving."

MacGregor sighed and his tone changed. "In a minute. Tell me something else. Brinkman has this bug up his ass about Grice. So why hasn't he ever picked him up?"

"What do you mean?"

"I never heard Brinkman was crooked but I never heard he was Kojak, either. All the rackets Grice runs—protection, prostitution, even drugs—some jerk or other has run in Schoharie since the Creation. Never bothered Brinkman as long as the boys were local and kept their heads down. Then along comes some minor-league bozo out of Albany to do a little muscle work and all of a sudden fighting crime is more important to Brinkman than sitting on his duff watching his pension grow."

"Jesus, Mac, I thought you and Brinkman were on the same side." He glared. I asked, "What kind of muscle work?"

MacGregor snorted. "Union-busting. For Appleseed."

"Scabbing at the baby food plant? God, that's disillusioning."

"Yeah. So Brinkman develops the same boil on his butt about Grice that he has about you—asshole from the city messing in his county, all that shit." I raised an eyebrow at "asshole" but that didn't stop him. "But in the four years Grice's been around, Brinkman hasn't managed to take him up even once. Why is that?"

"I don't know."

He shook his head. "You don't know. Well, maybe you know this After your slimy lawyer sprang Jimmy Antonelli, Brinkman still had nine cars that his boys spent a week— and a hell of a lot of county money—pulling out of the quarry. If Grice was running dope up from Florida in them there must have been some other way to prove it. Why didn't he or the DA even try?"

I stood up. "What the hell do I look like, the Answer Man? Ask Brinkman. I'm going to get some lunch."

"Not even a theory?"

"Yeah, I have a theory. But you won't like it."

"Try me"

"Grice has protection, someone watching his back."

"Oh, screw that. In New York maybe. It doesn't work that way up here."

"Come off it, Mac. A jerk who'd be nobody anywhere else drifts into the county, puts all the local talent out of business, and for four years even a jack-booted sheriff with a grudge can't get near him. Did you know Grice left for Florida the night before Brinkman busted Jimmy? Left in a hurry, came back three days after Jimmy got out. It glows in the dark, Mac. Only a cop could miss it."

MacGregor turned his face to the window, stared out over the brown grass to the trees that started abruptly beyond it. After a minute he reached over, punched a button on his phone.

"Craig? You got Smith's statement yet? Well, bring it in. And bring in Tony Antonelli, too; I'm ready." He dropped the receiver in the cradle. "Sign your statement and beat it. Don't leave the county. You got a phone yet?"

"Not a chance." I didn't tell him about the cell phone.

Up here in the hills, it's close to useless anyway, which I can't say I really minded. "You need me, you can leave a message at Antonelli's." I looked at his gray, tired face. "Cheer up, Mac. Fishing season starts in four weeks."

Life came into his blue eyes. "Three weeks, three days. I've been tying flies all winter."

"I don't doubt it." The door opened and Tony came in, with the uniformed trooper who'd taken my tape. The trooper handed me three typed pages; I glanced through them, signed the bottom of each.

"All right," said MacGregor. "Go on. Just don't disappear."

"When do I get my gun back?"

"When we're finished with it. Call tomorrow."

I turned to Tony. I could read tension in the set of his shoulders. His face was opaque. "See you later," I said to him. He stared at me for a moment, then nodded. I left MacGregor's office, navigated past a pair of troopers in gray uniforms sitting at gray desks. I took long, deep breaths as I headed toward my car across the gray asphalt parking lot.

The damn car was gray, too. I couldn't remember why that had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Off the highway just west of the trooper station there was a shabby Amoco station with a working pay phone. I called Obermeyer's garage, letting the phone ring long enough for a mechanic to curse, crawl out from under a car, and pick up the receiver in a grease-blackened hand; but it didn't happen. There was no answer.

I leaned against the chipped enamelled steel panels of the station and watched a chunky kid in a green football jersey fill my car. I thought. Not that I had a hell of a lot to work on, but I thought.

I paid for the gas and a pack of Kents and turned back east, toward the village of Schoharie. I cut off the highway onto 1A, a county road. For a few miles 1A ran through pines and maples and birches, past some old frame houses that had needed a coat of paint for as long as I could remember, past a couple of trailers parked broadside to the road, until suddenly it opened out just before it started down into Schoharie.

Even in this season, when everything lay still and cold, not quite ready yet to take another chance, the sudden view over these hills could take your breath away. There was a promise of generosity and refuge in the soft contours, in the bowl of the hills, in the wide valley quilted with farms and fields. The river that flowed through here was choked with ice now and the hills were gray-brown where they weren't pine; and in a dark, unhealed gash in the hills you could see the old stone quarry, three played-out pits, empty now of what had made them worth ripping the hillside apart for; and farther down the hill, the smaller, working pit. Still, coming down into this valley, even in winter, could make you believe home could be more than just a word.

Schoharie's not the largest town in the county—that's Cobleskill, where the state ag-and-tech college is—but it's the county seat. Main Street runs half a mile, flat, straight, and tree-shaded. In each direction, like a caterpillar's legs, short narrow residential streets branch off it. None is more than three blocks long, the houses thinning by the start of the second block.

On the east side of Main in the center of town stand the village hall and the county buildings: the executive offices, the courthouse, the sheriff's office with the new jail annex behind it. They're mostly brown brick, but the courthouse, the oldest of them, is a square-shouldered building of gray local stone, pulled from the quarry in the busy, prosperous days.

I parked on the nearly empty street a block up from the courthouse. I fed the parking meter—six minutes for a penny, half an hour for a nickel—because the sheriff's office was half a block away and Brinkman knew my car.

I crossed in the middle of the block, creating a two-car traffic jam, and stepped onto the cracked and uneven concrete sidewalk. There was no grass verge here. Beyond Main Street's half mile there wasn't even a sidewalk.

The Park View luncheonette was at the end of a block of two-and three-story brick buildings with their dates set in stone at their cornices. The luncheonette's storefront windows were clouded, the way they always were on a cold day. Beads of water streaked them from inside; dish towels lined the low Formica sills, catching the condensation before puddles formed and dripped onto the checkerboard linoleum.

The chrome-legged tables at the front were empty except for two old men with plaid wool jackets and rheumy eyes. I walked past them, sat at the counter on a stool whose green vinyl cover was bandaged with silver tape.

At one of the rear tables a giggling group of adolescent girls who should have been in school were drinking Cokes and puffing on cigarettes without inhaling. At another a young woman ate a sandwich while a baby in a high chair rubbed his hands in his apple sauce. A man and a woman with a city look about them were spread out at the back table drinking coffee and reading the Mountain Eagle. There were people who said that people like them—yuppies with money to spend—would be the salvation of the county. A class above weekenders like me, they would buy the shabby farms, hire locals to repair the buildings and tend their gardens and look after their horses while they were back in the city making money. A few of the local cafes had put in cappuccino machines, and the A 8c P in Cobleskill was starting to stock arugula and endive, for the ones who’d come already. But the drive from New York is long, and summers are short up here in the hills. There's no cachet to a place in this county, nowhere to wine and dine your weekend guests, no one to see or be seen by. People with an eye for beauty and a need for quiet would come here, but they always had. And the moneyed crowds would continue to go elsewhere, as they always had.

Ellie Warren stepped from behind the counter to refill coffee cups and chat. She turned when she saw me sit; her thin face lit in a big gap-toothed grin.

"Well, hi there, stranger!" She came to the counter, plunked the coffeepot down, gave me a peck on the cheek. "I haven't seen you since before Thanksgiving! Where have you been?"

"I haven't been up, Ellie."

She nodded, her eyes glowing conspiratorially. "Making yourself scarce?"

"You think I needed to?"

She laughed. "Probably didn't hurt." She pushed a string of faded red hair back from her face. "Hey, hon, what happened?" Her long thin fingers touched the cheek she hadn't kissed.

I winced. "Nothing; it's okay. But I'm starving. What's good?"

She smiled wickedly. "Nothing here. Come by my place later, I'll fry you some chicken that'll make you cry."

"How about a sandwich to hold me till then?"

"If you have to."

"A BLT on toast. And coffee."

Ellie waltzed down the counter, stuck my order on a spindle at the kitchen opening. She came back, poured my coffee, leaned her elbows on the counter.

"How've you been, Ellie?" I asked through the coffee.

She spread her skinny arms, grinned again. "As you see. Not getting older, getting better."

"You couldn't get any better, Ellie. How's Chuck doing?"

Ellie's son Chuck was twenty-one, a loud, wild boy. He and Jimmy Antonelli had been inseparable troublemakers for years. Brinkman had arrested them more times than anyone could count on drunk-and-disorderlies, as public nuisances, for property damage, willful endangerment, trespassing, and once, after they'd stolen a car, for grand theft. The car turned out to belong to a cousin of Ellie's, who refused to press charges.

Until the boys were seventeen, all Brinkman could do was grit his teeth while the family court judge sent for Tony and Ellie. He'd lecture them, let them pay the boys' fines, and send them home. But finally even the judge got disgusted. As soon as they were old enough by state law to serve time as adults, he started sentencing them to weeks at a time in the jail behind the sheriff's office.

Brinkman had enjoyed that.

Ellie laughed. "He's doing great. Basic training is over and he's been at sea a couple of weeks now. I've got a picture. You want to see?"

"A picture? I thought you'd be good for a dozen, Ellie."

"He only sent me the one, so far. It's only been three months."

She reached under the counter for her purse, rummaged through it. She flipped her wallet open, smiled as she looked at the photograph, passed it to me.

Chuck Warren had Ellie's smile, with more teeth. His eyes were as challenging as ever, but his mustache was gone, and his thick blond hair was cropped close and largely hidden under a seaman's cap.

"Christ," I said. "He must have been really scared, to go and do that."

"He thought Jimmy was going to end up doing fifteen years in Greenhaven. We all did. He knew it could have been him. It made him think" She laughed again. "Sometimes, you have to hit them over the head with a frying pan to get their attention."

The bell in the kitchen rang. Ellie went down the counter, brought back my sandwich, along with coleslaw and fries I hadn't ordered. "A big guy like you needs some real food," she explained, eyes twinkling.

I salted the fries. "Ellie, I need to find Jimmy. Tony says he's been living with a girl. That mean anything to you?"

She frowned, folded her hands together under her chin. "I haven't seen him since Chucky left."

"This would be from before that. Tony says he moved out around Christmas."

The door opened, letting in cold air and two men who sat at the end of the counter. Ellie winked at me, went over and took their orders. She poured them coffee, came back, and refilled my cup. "You know, I think he did have a girl. I never met her, but Chucky told me. Oh, what was her name?" Her face furrowed into lines of concentrated thought, then melted. "Alice. Alice something."

"Alice what?"

"Come on, hon, what do you want from an old lady?"

"If I knew an old lady I'd tell you. Do you know what she looks like?"

She thought again. "You know, I do. Chucky said she was pretty; dark and sweet; but heavy-set. That sort of surprised him; I guess that's why he mentioned it. He said Jimmy'd always gone for the skinny ones, the little lost- looking ones. Alice was real different from Jimmy's other girls. She's not part of that crowd, you know, Jimmy and Chucky's crowd. I don't think Jimmy was hanging around with them either so much anymore, since he met her."

"Well, thanks, Ellie. That'll help." I reached for my check; only the sandwich was on it.

I paid her, finished my coffee as she made change from the ornate cash register. As I zipped my jacket she put her hand on my arm. "Wait," she said. "I think I did see Jimmy. I'm not sure, but I think it was him. Chucky told me Jimmy'd bought a truck—one of those stupid things with the big wheels and the light bar on the cab?"

"What about his old van, that he worked on so hard?"

"Oh, he still has that, I think Anyhow, a truck like Chucky told me about tore through here about two weeks ago as I was coming in. Ran the stoplight, had to drive onto the curb to miss the mail truck coming from Spring Street. I think it was Jimmy's, but he wasn't driving. Some girl was."

"Alice?"

"I don't think so, not if Chucky was right. This one was small, with lots of blond hair. And laughing, as though tearing around town on two wheels was funnier than anything."

I kissed her skinny hand. She pulled it back, laughing. Then her face got serious. "Is Jimmy in trouble, hon?"

"I don't know. But Brinkman's looking for him, and the state troopers. Just to ask him some questions, for now. But I don't want Jimmy to do anything stupid if Brinkman finds him."

"Oh, lord. Sheriff Brinkman would love that, wouldn't he?"

"Yeah, he would. Keep an eye out for him, will you, Ellie? I'll see you later."

I stepped out into the afternoon. Lighting a cigarette, I looked up and down the street. A yellow dog wandered, sniffing, along the sidewalk opposite. The stoplight at Main and Spring changed. No one was at it.

It was a big county. Finding a dark, heavy-set girl named Alice, if that was all I had to go on, could take weeks.

And there was another problem. I had a client. I'd taken Eve Colgate's money to follow a trail that was already four days old and getting colder by the minute.

I reached in my pocket, found the list of antique shops I'd made a century ago, this morning at Antonelli's. I looked at my watch. Two o'clock. If I was smart about it, I could get to the places I'd targeted and be back at Antonelli's by six-thirty or seven. If the place was open—and if I knew Tony, as soon as MacGregor was through with him and MacGregor's boys were through with his cellar, he'd be open—maybe Tony would talk to me.

If he wouldn't, maybe the Navy would let Chuck Warren talk to me.

Either way, at least I'd get a drink.

Chapter 6

One of the antique shops on my list was in Schoharie, down Main Street from the Park View A wooden sign in the shape of a sheep hung over the sidewalk. The proprietress, a thin, quick woman, was very nice, but as far as Eve Colgate's silver, I came up dry. I gave her the number at Antonelli's, asked her to call me if anything like what I'd described turned up, and left.

I decided to hit the farthest of the other shops first and then work my way back across the county. I U-turned in the middle of Main Street, went south where Main turns into 30 and 30 turns into a four-lane highway. Down here in the valley there was nothing dramatic about this road, but it was fast. Even where it was only two lanes, it had been widened and straightened, something they did to the old roads around here when they didn't build new ones to bypass them entirely. Now 30 cut right through some of the farms that had looked so timeless and sure from the hills. Not a few farmers had retired to Florida on what the state had paid for the fields I was driving through. Asphalt was a cash crop, up here.

I turned off 30 onto a narrow road that lead up into the hills past Breakabeen. The shop I was headed for was a few miles outside town. Town was a post office, a bar, a grocery, a Mr. Softee, and a dozen houses strung out along a crossroads.

Just beyond the point where the last of the houses disappeared behind me there was a road leading up to the right—probably a driveway masquerading as a road, like mine. Faded script letters on an arrow-shaped sign told anyone who cared to know that The Antiques Barn was a half mile up.

The first hundred yards was respectable, but after that the road was badly kept, full of potholes and mud. The Acura had good suspension—the old ones did—but I wouldn't cut a diamond in it, even on the highway. I was glad to get out of the car onto ground that wasn't moving.

The Antiques Barn was a real barn, big, with flaking red paint and double square doors wide enough to drive a combine through. Those doors weren't open. Neither was the person-sized door cut into one of them, but it gave when I turned the knob. As it opened, it rang a set of sleigh bells hung on the jamb.

I stepped over the high wooden threshold into a dusky, dank room where plates and pitchers, candlesticks and jewelry, walking canes, hats, boots, and thousands of books lay in piles on wooden furniture of every description. The piles had an air of having been undisturbed since time began. Each piece, including the furniture, bore a square ivory-colored tag with a number written on it in a spidery hand.

The room went on forever, disappearing into the dusk, and it seemed I was alone in it. "Hello!" I called into the aged air. Nothing happened. Maybe in here nothing ever happened. I called "Hello!" again, louder; then went back to the door and rattled it, ringing the sleigh bells again and again.

I stopped because I thought I heard a voice. I listened, ready to go back to my sleigh bells; but I was right. Faintly, from somewhere beyond a clutch of stuffed chairs in the center of the room, came words, and with the sound came movement, a figure shuffling toward me out of the primordial twilight.

"Yes, yes!" it muttered as it inched along, placing objects from a pile in its arms onto bureaus and bookcases like a glacier depositing rocks. "My, my!" The figure came very, very slowly to stand before me. It was the figure of a man, round for the most part. His age was unguessable, as was the actual color of his hair, now a thick dust gray.

He squinted up at me over dusty glasses that seemed to have been forgotten at the end of his nose. "You must learn to curb your impatience, young man. It will get you nowhere in life."

"I've been there already," I said. "I didn't like it."

He sniffed, "Well," he said. "Well. An impatient young man like yourself hasn't come here to browse. You're looking for some particular item. Yes; you know precisely what you want. Not for yourself; a gift most likely, for someone who"—he peered at me intently—"who assuredly would rather have you at home by the fire than running all over hell-and-gone seeking out the perfect gift. But you won't hear of it, so we'll say no more about it. What was it you wanted?"

I stared at him. "Old silver," I said. "Was that just for me, or can you do it all the time?"

"Some people," he sighed. "Some people could benefit; but they won't learn."

He turned and moved off with the speed of an acorn becoming a mighty oak. I followed. Luckily we were only going around a glass-doored breakfront to an alcove where wooden shelves were piled high with platters, plates, and carving knives, teapots and baby spoons. I don't think it took us more than an hour to get there.

"Here." He made a round, inclusive gesture. "Here is old silver. But you, of course, had a particular piece in mind. What was it?"

"A teapot. I called earlier; I may have spoken to you."

"I've spoken to no one on the telephone today, young man. Perhaps my wife . . ." He turned a full circle like the light in a lighthouse. "I don't see her now, but she's in the shop somewhere."

"It doesn't matter," I said hastily. If he went wandering off to find her it might be years before. I saw him again. "Is this all your silver?"

"You've looked at none of it yet, but you're unsatisfied?"

I didn't need to look at it. Everything was covered with a layer of dust so thick that the dust itself was probably on the National Register. Nothing had been put on these shelves in the last few days.

"Is this all your silver?" I asked again.

"Well," he sighed, reached up onto the shelf. "As to teapots, this one, for example, is particularly fine." He blew a cloud of dust off the graceful pot in his hands; it settled on my shoes like snow. He handed the pot to me. I took it, turned it, examined it. He was right; even tarnished as it was, it was beautiful. I handed it back.

"I do have something particular in mind." I described Eve Colgate's teapot, the chased floral pattern, the scroll handle. He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.

"Young man, I can't help you. If you really are going to insist on a pot of that description, good luck to you; you will waste more time searching for it than the finding of it will be worth." He looked at me sadly in the dim light.

"Well, thanks anyway," I said. "You've been a great help." I started to leave before I got any older.

"Wait," he said from behind me as I rounded the break- front and reached for the door handle. "Young man, come back and look at these. They've only just come in. There isn't a teapot, but if the one you describe is to your taste, these may be also."

I let go of the door handle, not without a pang of regret. I circumnavigated the breakfront again and found him kneeling in the dust, unwrapping newspaper from around a small silver tray. A pair of candlesticks, already unwrapped, stood on the floor beside him.

Bingo.

He smiled up at me. "You're pleased. My, my." He handed me the tray and clambered to his feet.

They were a set, the tray and the candlesticks, as extraordinary as Eve Colgate had said they were. The minutely detailed pattern of grapes and grape leaves that covered the tray was repeated on the candlesticks' shafts.

"Where did you get these?" I asked.

He frowned. "Young man." He shook his head. "If you find them beautiful, you mustn't worry about provenance They are silver, I assure you. A pedigree does not ensure that they will give you pleasure, only that someone else will be willing, someday, to give you cash." He peered again. "And you do not strike me as a man to whom that matters very much."

"Where did you get them?"

His round eyes blinked in his round face. "Some people ..." he quoted himself sadly. "A young lady brought them. She was given them by her grandmother and doesn't care for them. Though I must say she seemed a refined young lady; I was surprised at her taste, but—"

"When?" I interrupted.

"When? Saturday."

Three days ago. "Did you know her?"

"Not I."

"Can you describe her?"

"Oh." His face took on a faraway look. "Oh, my, she was lovely. Petite; with golden hair, not straight and pale as straw the way they wear it now, but thick and golden, like summer sunlight. Red cheeks glowing from the cold; shining eyes. Standing at the threshold of womanhood, but still with a child's eagerness and joy. Lovely."

"And you believed her?"

"Believed her? In what way?"

"These things are stolen," I told him.

"Stolen?" He looked at me as though I should be ashamed of myself. "Stolen? Oh, my, young man, you are—"

"I'm a private investigator," I said. "These things are among a group of items stolen from a client of mine last Friday." I handed him my card. He looked at it and then at me. He handed it back.

"Young man, you have been less than forthright with me."

"You do your business your way, I do mine my way."

His face took on a stern and schoolmasterly look. I went on, "Do you get much of your stock that way, total strangers bringing in pieces this valuable? Happens every day?"

"Of course not. What is there that happens every day? My stock, as you call it, comes to me from many sources. Much of it I go in search of. Some is brought here by acquaintances or strangers. Without being immodest, I may tell you that this shop is known for handling only items of the highest quality. A young lady with such valuable items to sell would naturally—" He broke off, his open mouth forming a perfect circle. "Young man! I hope you are not implying that I knowingly—"

"I don't think I am." I picked up the tray and the candlesticks. "I want these things back and I'll pay for them—assuming the price is reasonable. But I want to know everything you remember about this girl. Did she bring you anything else?"

"No, just this set." He pursed his lips. "Stolen . . . you're sure? Yes, yes, of course you are; a young man like yourself is always sure. Really, I can't tell you very much else about her. A dazzling smile, a promise of secrets. Enchanting. Many years ago, I would have been tempted to play the prince to her Rapunzel."

"Was she alone?"

"She came in here alone, though I believe someone waited in the car for her."

"What kind of car?"

"A truck, actually, I think, a blue truck, the kind that rides high on its wheels."

"And she didn't give you her name, tell you where she was from, where her grandmother lived?"

"No, no." He shook his head. "Really, young man, such a charming child—"

"Never mind. If you remember anything else, or if she comes back, give me a call at this number, okay?" I wrote the number at Antonelli's on my card and passed it back to him.

He looked at me as though it were I who had opened Pandora's box and let evil loose on the world.

The price of the tray and candlestick set was very reasonable, although it was more cash than I had in my pocket. But it didn't matter.

He took my American Express Card.

I started the car, swung it around, and headed back down the pockmarked road. The silver was carefully wrapped and in the trunk. I'd had on my gloves when I'd handled the pieces, so I had fair hopes of being able to lift a good set of prints from them, including the shop owner's.

I had less hope that anything I found would be useful. The golden young lady's prints wouldn't be in anyone's computer unless she had a criminal record, which seemed unlikely.

But she might have been working with someone who did.

I walked around that thought slowly in my mind, looking at it from all angles. The sun was thin above the overhanging pines and a breeze was coming up. I was driving with the window open, as usual; I could smell the dampness in the air. Maybe rain, maybe snow. The road surface modulated from potholes to asphalt and I shifted gears, accelerating as the road curved. I reached for the radio dial.

Suddenly I slammed on the brakes. The car rocked to a stop about six feet from a Chevy truck parked square across the road.

The truck was big, black, and empty. It filled the shadowed road ditch to ditch. I threw the Acura into reverse, but not in time. Two figures leapt out from the darkness under the trees. They had guns, one each. They came up even with my front windows and stopped, on either side of the car. The one on my side spoke loud and fast.

"Turn the car off!"

I turned the car off.

"Now throw out the keys."

I tossed my keys in his direction. They rang as they hit the pavement.

"Get out. Slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them. Watch him!" he called to the other.

The second figure circled around the front of the car, his gun trained on me through the windshield. I opened the door and got out slowly, my hands open and far from my sides.

"What's up?" I asked. The face in the shadows was vaguely familiar.

"Turn around, spread your hands on the car. Search him, Ted."

I put my hands on the top of the car. Ted went over me clumsily from behind. In my jacket he found my wallet; under my arm, my empty holster. He searched my pockets but there wasn't anything he wanted. He didn't look for an ankle rig. I wasn't wearing one, but he should have looked.

"His holster's empty, Otis," Ted whined. "His gun ain't here." He backed away from me.

"Where's your gun?" Otis barked.

"State troopers, D Unit," I said over my shoulder. "Ask for Lieutenant MacGregor." I heard my keys jingle as Ted picked them up.

"Funny," said Otis. "Look in the car, Ted."

Ted tucked his gun in his belt and searched my car, crawling into the back, running his hand under the seats, snapping the glove compartment open and closed. In the well by the gearshift he found the roll of quarters I kept there. He pocketed them with a grin, climbed out of the car.

"Nothin'," he told Otis, pointing his gun at me again.

There was a Smith 8c Wesson .22 strapped up behind the dash, but it would have taken a better man than Ted to find it.

"The Park View," I said suddenly. "You guys sat down the other end of the counter."

"Free country," Otis said. "Fuck the gun. Let's go. You come with me. Ted'll bring your car."

I turned slowly, stood facing him. His face was broad, doughy. The knuckles on the hand wrapped around the big automatic were hairy and thick. "Where?" I asked.

"Guy I know wants to see you." He gestured in the direction of the black truck.

"Who?"

"What do you care?" The gun was black and mean- looking. He waved it around a little.

"I guess I don't." I walked a few steps toward the truck, Otis walking behind, Ted back by my car. When I had space around me I turned again to face Otis, as slowly as before. My arms were still and loose at my sides, but my fingers and my spine were tingling.

"No," I said.

"What the hell do you mean, no? I'm supposed to bring you in, I'm goddamn gonna bring you in."

"You won't shoot me. Whoever wants me probably wouldn't like it if you brought me in dead."

"No." Otis smiled, showing thick brown teeth. "But he might not mind if you was hurt a little." We were standing no more than four feet apart. He lowered the big automatic, leveled it at my knee.

"He might not," I said. "But I would."

While I was still talking, while his eyes were on my eyes and his attention on my words, I whipped my left foot up, over, out, caught his gun hand on the inside of the wrist. His arm flew back and I dived after it, grabbed it, spun him around so he was between me and Ted. He swung at my jaw with his free hand but he was way off balance and couldn't put a lot behind if, when it landed it didn't matter much. I kicked him again, in the stomach this time, and he squealed as I twisted his arm sharply from the wrist, bent it hard in a way it was never meant to go. He grabbed wildly at me. I wrenched the gun from him and smashed it across his jaw. I pulled his twisted wrist hard up behind his back, shoved the barrel of the gun under his chin.

"Tell Ted to drop it!" I said.

Nothing happened. I yanked on the wrist in my hand.

"Goddammit, Ted!" he gasped.

Ted threw his gun down as though it were suddenly hot.

"Okay," I said. "Face down in the road, hands behind your head. Now!" I pushed Otis down. Ted scrambled to flatten himself.

I picked up Ted's gun, a smaller, older version of the Ruger 9-mm I'd taken off Otis. I went over both men for anything else of interest. I found their wallets, leafed through them. Local boys, Otis and Ted, nothing more than what they looked like. I took my wallet, my quarters, and my keys back from Ted and then stepped over to my car.

"All right," I said. "Get up."

They climbed to their feet. Otis was white, holding his wrist close to his chest. Ted just looked sullen, as though his picnic had been spoiled by rain.

"You broke my wrist, motherfucker," Otis growled.

"No," I said. "If I had, it would hurt. Let's go."

"Where to?"

"You tell me. It's your party."

He narrowed his eyes. "I don't get it. If you was coming anyhow, what was all this for?"

"Oh, a lot of reasons. One, I like to be the guy with the guns. Two, I want Grice to know I'm coming because I'm curious, not because he sent some penny-ante punks after me." Otis ground his teeth when I said that, but he didn't speak. "And three, nobody drives this car but me."

"How did you know it was Frank wanted you?"

"I didn't. But this seems like his style. Heavy-handed and amateur. Let's go."

They got into the black truck, started it up. I slid behind the wheel of my car, turned the key, and watched Ted slam the truck forward and back until it faced downhill.

I lit a cigarette, dragged on it deeply. The truck rolled down the hill and I followed. When we came out of the pines we turned right, driving farther up into the hills away from town. The late afternoon sun was lost behind a flat lid of clouds. Geese in a V-formation sliced across the sky, heading north.

I hadn't made those guys in the Park View, hadn't spotted them tailing me. I squashed the cigarette butt against the ashtray, slammed the ashtray shut. Ted sped up, bouncing over the rough road. There was no chance of my losing him but I sped up too, hugging his tail more closely than I needed to. Maybe it would piss him off.

There was a time when I kept a bottle of bourbon in the glove compartment, but it wasn't there now, so I lit another cigarette and followed the truck into the fading afternoon.

A pale-green house, dark-green trim, peeling paint. Shutters slanting or missing altogether. Unpainted two-by-tens on concrete blocks stepping up to a sagging, rail-less porch. Tattered screen doors; dark, uncurtained windows, staring blind.

The Chevy turned into a swampy field to the left of the house, bounced to a stop. I pulled partway off the road, parked so a car could pass me but not park me in easily.

Not a lot of people had ever tried living up here, deep in the woods near the top of the ridge, and most of the ones who had had given up and gone away. There was nothing here, except small streams and blackberry thickets and pale snowdrops already showing through a carpet of maple leaves. By next week, wild crocuses, lavender and gold; then lilies in stands of sunrise colors on the stream banks. But you couldn't farm this land, and the streams weren't really good for fishing.

I'd driven through here a few times over the years. I'd driven just about every road in the county at one time or another. Sometimes there would be a tired woman hanging clothes out on a line, or a man with his head and arms under the hood of one of the junked cars that sprouted like mushrooms. But mostly there were just empty frame houses and a few desolate trailers, their aluminum doors flapping in the wind.

The Chevy truck sat silent on the grass. I got out of my car, crossed behind it, keeping the car and then the truck between me and the house. Otis's gun was in my hand. I opened the Chevy's driver-side door. "Okay, come on out."

Ted climbed down, his eyes on the gun. He moved a little away from me, chewing on his lip. "Anyone in the house?" I asked. He shook his head, looked into the truck at Otis.

"This way," I told Otis. He slid across the seat and under the wheel, dropped to the spongy ground beside me. "What happens now?" I asked.

His left hand still cradled his right wrist. He scowled. "I'm supposed to call Frank when we get here."

"This his place?"

"He don't live here. But he owns it."

"Where does he live?"

"Cobleskill."

"Why come all the way out here?"

He didn't answer, just kept scowling.

"Yeah," I said. "Stupid question."

We went around the truck and up the plank steps. There was no movement, no noise except for the sounds we made. Otis fumbled with a key but he couldn't work the lock left-handed; Ted had to do it, in the end.

The failing afternoon light didn't reach inside. Otis flipped a switch and a floor lamp came on in the front room, to our left. There was a tattered couch against the far wall; two brown chairs, upholstery split, white stuffing hanging out; some side tables; peeling, faded wallpaper. A doorless doorway in the back led to a kitchen with a linoleum floor, cabinets on the wall. Straight ahead of us was a small hallway. An uncarpeted wooden staircase ran along the right side of the hallway, leading up into darkness.

The whole place was still and deserted and smelled of mildew and stale cooking grease. It was colder than it was outside, in the way a damp, closed place can be.

"Sit down," I said to Ted. I gestured with the gun at one of the brown chairs. "If you get up I'll shoot you. It's not a problem for me. Understand?" He nodded and sat quickly, hands gripping the soft arms of the chair. I turned to Otis. "Okay. We're here. Call Frank."

He crossed the room to a table that stood under the one lit lamp. There was a black phone there. Otis lifted the receiver with his left hand and, holding it, dialed. He put the receiver to his left ear and I put the gun to his right one, repeating in my head the number he'd dialed.

There was silence in the shadowy room, then Otis spoke. "Yeah. It's me. Gimme Frank." He waited. I gently wrapped my fingers around his swollen right wrist. He tensed and looked at me. I raised an eyebrow and nodded. "Yeah, Frank," he said back into the phone, licked his lips. "No, it's good. We're here." Pause. "Yeah." Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. "Yeah, okay. No problem." He replaced the receiver slowly. I let go of his wrist, took the gun from his head.

"What the fuck was that for?" He drew his wrist to his chest.

"Sorry," I said. "You strike me as a guy too stupid to be sneaky when he's really scared. You did fine, Otis." I stepped back a little, included Ted in the wave of the gun.

Let’s go.

Ted stood up fast. Otis said, "Go where?"

There was a door in the wall under the staircase. I backed over to it, watching the two men who stood in the yellow lamplight. I threw the bolt and the door creaked open. A gust of mud-scented air rolled into the hallway. "Downstairs," I said.

Ted and Otis filed past me. I bolted the door behind them, then went quickly out the front. There was a double- doored cellar hatch on the side of the house by the truck. It was held shut by a large bolt. I found a piece of warped two-by-four from a rotting pile of construction lumber on the porch and, as insurance, wedged it through the doors' iron handles.

I went back inside, looked at my watch. Five-thirty. It would take Grice at least half an hour to get up here from Cobleskill. I switched on another light in the living room, picked up the phone. I dialed the number at Antonelli's.

It rang a long time in the emptiness.

If the cops were still there they would have answered, because all over the world that was what cops did.

If they were gone Tony should have answered. Under the circumstances another man might have closed the bar for the rest of the day, or the rest of the week. But as much as the big house across the road, the bar was where Tony lived. And unlike the house, in the bar he wasn't alone.

I pressed the cut-off button, got another dial tone, called the state troopers.

"D Unit. Sergeant Whiteside," a woman's voice said.

"Ron MacGregor, please."

"Sorry, he's gone. Someone else help you?"

"You still have Tony Antonelli up there?"

"Hold it." The voice went away, came back. "Says here Antonelli was just here answering questions, left hours ago. Who're you?"

"Richard Wilcox. You guys find Jimmy Antonelli yet?"

"Who's Richard Wilcox?"

"Jimmy's lawyer. Are you holding him, or is the sheriff?"

"Far as I know, no one is," she said cautiously. "You hear different?"

"My mistake," I said. "Thanks, Sergeant." I hung up.

Out in the kitchen an old refrigerator started to hum. I went back there, looked around. A cast-iron pan with a half inch of pale grease and crumbs in the bottom sat on a splattered gas stove. Dishes and crusted silverware were piled in the sink and a breadboard held a hunk of bread you could have thrown through a plate-glass window. I opened the fridge. What was in it I wouldn't have touched on a bet.

Except the three green bottles of Rolling Rock, lying on their sides on the bottom shelf. I took one out, twisted off the top, and went back to the living room. I moved one of the brown chairs so that I could see the front door from it, but someone looking in the window couldn't see me. I sat, lit a cigarette, sipped the Rolling Rock, and waited.

I was on the second bottle when I heard the faint rumble of an engine, coming closer fast. A minute later a pair of headlights swept into the front windows, stopped moving, went out. The engine stopped abruptly. Doors slammed, footsteps sounded on the loose boards of the porch.

I raised the automatic, held it steady in my right hand. The beer was in my left. The front door opened. Frank Grice stepped into the little hall, trailed by the big, friendly- faced guy with the mustache. Grice turned into the living room doorway, his mouth open as though he were about to say something.

Then he saw me. He stopped, frozen in a half-completed motion. The big guy stopped too, then started again, moved forward with a little growl. Grice put his hand up without taking his eyes off mine. The big guy stopped.

"Hi, Frank," I said. "Disgusting place you've got here."

He still didn't move. "Where are Ted and Otis?"

"Downstairs," I said. "They're not very good, Frank." I sipped the beer, waved the gun. "Sit down."

He came through the doorway, sat on the other chair, facing me. He leaned back, crossed one leg over the other. His twisted face was bruised; there were two Band-Aids over his right eye.

"You too," I said to the big guy. He looked at Grice, who nodded. He crossed to the couch and sat, leaning forward, eyes a little wide, hands rubbing his knees in opposite circles. In the light I could see that his lip was split and swollen under the mustache.

"You wanted me," I said. "I'm here. Why?"

"Last night," Grice said easily, "I didn't know who you were.”

"If you had?"

"I'd have shaken your hand. Your trick-pony lawyer saved me a lot of trouble last fall, when they dropped the charges against Jimmy. I never got to thank you."

"If I saved you any trouble, Grice, it was an accident. Any trouble I can make for you," I said, finishing the beer, "will be a pleasure. What do you want from Tony?"

He shook his head, dismissing the question. "Just business." He smiled a cockeyed smile. "You're right," he said. "Otis and Ted aren't very good. They're typical of what's available around here. You ever get tired of working for Tony, I could find a place for you."

"First, I don't work for Tony Second, I don't work for assholes like you."

"That's too bad. That was what I wanted to see you about."

I stared at him. "You sent two armed morons after me so you could offer me a job?"

He nodded. "What do you get?"

"Fifty an hour, plus expenses. Working for a guy like you, expenses could be high."

He lifted his uneven eyebrows, smiled his crooked smile. "That's all? Jesus, you're in a chickenshit business, Smith. I pay Arnold more than that." He gestured at the big guy, who smiled through his split hp. Arnold? Well, what did I know? Maybe since Schwarzenegger, Arnold was a tough name.

"What did you pay Wally Gould?"

He shook his head. "That was too bad, wasn't it? Wally was valuable. I'll miss him."

"Then why'd you kill him?"

"Me? You've got to be kidding." He looked at Arnold, who snickered. "Maybe you're not as smart as I thought. Why would I kill Wally? And if I did, why would I do it in Tony's basement?"

"Damned if I know. You were trying to shake Tony down for something last night. Maybe Wally wanted too big a piece of the action."

"Wally wasn't bright enough to want anything, except to be allowed to kill something once in a while."

"Like Tony or me, last night?"

"Sure, he would've enjoyed that. But like I say, I didn't know who you were."

"Well," I said, standing, the gun held loosely in my right hand, "you know now. Sorry I can't help you, Frank." I moved toward the door.

"Don't you at least want to hear the offer?"

"Okay," I said. "Okay, Frank. Let's hear it."

"A thousand dollars," he said. "I want to talk to Jimmy Antonelli."

I laughed. "Every cop in this county is probably looking for Jimmy by now. What makes you think I could find him first?"

Grice spread his hands, made a little self-deprecating smile. "You're a friend of his."

"Why do you want him?"

"Not your business, Smith. A grand for finding him and walking away. I'm not going to hurt him. In fact, I can help him."

"Why does he need help?"

"Murder's a harder rap to beat than disposing of stolen cars."

"There's always the chance Jimmy didn't kill Gould, just like you."

"Yeah," he grinned. "I guess there's that chance. But whether he did or not, he'll be better off if I find him than if Brinkman does."

"He'd be better off with Godzilla than with Brinkman. But I told you, I don't work for assholes."

Grice shrugged. "Think about it. The cops'll find him sooner or later. I'd like to find him first."

"Why?"

"Let's say I feel like I owe him one."

I leaned against the doorway, slipped a cigarette in my mouth. "You do owe him," I said. "But you don't know what that means or what to do about it. I'll tell you something. I was the guy he called, when Brinkman finally let him near a phone. My advice was to take the deal, sell you to Brinkman for as much as he could get. He wouldn't do it, Frank. Not because he likes you. He doesn't like you. But he wouldn't rat. Even on you."

Grice took a cigarette out of a gold case. He closed the case and tapped the cigarette slowly on it as Arnold hurried to dig a lighter out and hold it for him. Jesus.

He blew a thin trail of smoke and said, "I guess I'm a pretty lucky guy, then."

"Tell me something, Frank." I blew smoke of my own. "You're not much better than Otis or Ted. And Brinkman seems to want you a lot. So how come he hasn't been able to make anything stick to you yet?"

"Like I said: I'm lucky."

"Luck runs out, Frank. Keep away from Jimmy, and from Tony."

There was no sound of movement behind me as I opened the door and went out.

I stepped down the planks and walked to my car over the spongy earth. The night air felt sharp and clean. As I reached my car Grice stepped onto the porch. "I'll find him," Grice said. "You can make a grand on it or not, but I'll find him."

I turned to face him, saw him silhouetted in the dim light of the doorway. The silence was complete and heavy; there was no moon, no light but the glow from inside the house. Arnold appeared next to Grice. He was grinning.

I could have shot them both, two quick, surprising shots from Otis s big automatic; then to the basement, two more shots, and I could have driven away. No one would miss them, no one would wake suddenly in the night and know all over again and feel that helpless sick feeling start to grow.

Or maybe someone would. Maybe somewhere someone loved even men like this.

I started the car and pulled out hard. I drove away from that place fast, down the rutted, deserted road under a sky where faint streaks of gray light still showed in the west.

Chapter 7

By the time I got to Antonelli's the clouds had thickened. The stars had given up, and the moon was a nonstarter. Patches of fog stood sentinel-like in the trees on the other side of 30, up by Tony's house.

The parking lot was as empty as the sky. The outside lights were off and the red neon Bud sign was dark, but the inside lights were on. I tried the door. Locked. I rapped a quarter on the window. The curtain moved, showed me Tony's face, jaw tight. The curtain fell back into place as I went over to the door. Tony pulled it open, locked it behind me.

The tables from the back of the room had been piled on the ones in the front and the chairs pushed between them or dropped on top. A mop stood in a steaming bucket in the middle of the empty stretch of floor. The reek of ammonia was so strong it made my eyes water.

"What the hell are you doing?" I went around the room opening windows.

"Started downstairs. Couldn't stop." Tony's words came a little thick, a little slow. "Fuckin' cops left the place a mess, just walked out when they was through."

I came back to where he was standing. "I thought you'd be open."

"Woulda been," he nodded. "Started to. But . . ." He paused, looked at me. "This happen to you before, your line of work?"

"Bodies, you mean? Once or twice."

He went over behind the bar, took the bourbon off the shelf. The gin was already standing open on the bar. Tony brought the bottles and glasses over; I pulled two chairs from the pile. We sat, bottles on the floor beside us.

"Vultures," Tony said. He gulped a large shot, poured himself another. "Phone's been ringin' since I got back here. Couldn't take it."

I looked over at the phone. The receiver was dangling from its spiraled silver cord.

"Reporters. Every goddamn paper west of Albany must have nothin' to write about." More gin. "Coupla people wantin' to know could they help. Help with what?" He gestured around the room. "An' assholes. 'Hey, Tony, what happened?' 'Hey, Tony, heard you found a stiff in the basement.' 'Hey, Tony, heard your brother killed him.' Shit!" He shrugged. "I didn't open." His knuckles whitened around his gin glass. His voice got louder. "They been comin' around anyhow, bangin' on the door. Who the fuck they think they are, these guys?"

I drank in silence and he drank too, until the silence was both blurred and sharpened and talk was easier.

"Tony," I said quietly, "did Jimmy kill that guy?"

He looked at me for a long time. The gin had cleared everything from his eyes but pain. "Looks that way," he said finally. "Don't it look that way to you?"

"How it looks and what it is might not be the same,"

I said. "Let MacGregor and Brinkman worry about how it looks. Tell me what's going on, Tony."

He picked up his bottle; it was empty. He got up and got a new one, walking too carefully. "I don't know," he said. He sat heavily. "Little sonuvabitch said he was gonna stay clean. Stay away from Grice. Get a fuckin' job. He was scared, Smith. You saved his ass an' he knew he was lucky." He paused, drank. I lit a cigarette, got up, found an ashtray. "He met this girl, moved in with her. Nice kid. Didn't see him much after that. Funny thing, we was gettin' along better, the coupla times he did come around." He trailed off. His eyes roved over the silent room as though he were looking for something.

We drank. I waited a few minutes. Then, "Tell me the rest, Tony."

His face suddenly flushed. "What the hell for? Anything I say, you're gonna run to your buddy MacGregor. You gave him those fuckin' keys, Smith. What the hell'd you do that for?"

"I had to do that, Tony. You know I had to." I kept my voice even.

"Had to," he muttered, half to himself. "Motherfucker."

"Tell me the rest, Tony."

"Fuck," he said. He drained his glass. "Grice came here last night workin' that protection shit. He ain't never pulled that on me before. Maybe I ain't a big enough operation. Or maybe he figured chewin' on me would break his teeth. But last night he's tellin' me Jimmy's in deep shit, an' it's gonna cost me to keep it quiet. Cost me a piece of the action, long term. Action." He laughed

softly, without humor. "I told him to shove it. You was there for the rest."

"What kind of trouble did he say Jimmy was in?"

"Didn't say. What's the fuckin' difference?"

"Maybe it's not true. Maybe he was just fishing."

"My ass." He reached for the gin bottle, closed his hand on air. He tried again more slowly, picked the bottle up. The cold night air drifted through the room, drifted out again. It didn't take the ammonia smell with it. I wouldn't have, either.

"Jimmy's girl," I said. "Know anything about her?"

"Nice kid." He poured gin very slowly into his glass.

I leaned forward. "What's her name, Tony? Where does she live?"

He gave me an unfocused gaze. "Don't know. Somewhere."

"What's her name?"

"Nice name. Old-fashioned." He frowned. "Alice. Alice Brown ..."

"That's a song, Tony."

He stared defiantly, "s a name, too."

"Yeah, Tony, okay. Where does she live?"

"Alice Brown, Alice Brown, prettiest little girl in town. She sells seashells. No, she don't." He rubbed a hand along the side of his nose. "No, she don't. She sells pies. Georgie Porgie, puddin' an' pie—"

I took the gin glass from his hand. "Go on, Tony. Pies?"

"Pies, asshole." He reached for the glass; I put it on the floor. He slumped back in his chair, looked at me. "Pies. Blueberry, strawberry. Chocolate cake. Cookies, even."

"Where?"

"People eat 'em. Gimme my gin."

"Where?"

He frowned, didn't answer.

"All right," I gave him his glass. "Listen, Tony. I'm going to make a couple of calls and then we're going to close this place up and go home. Okay?"

He shook his head. "Gotta clean up. Smells bad in here. Smells like blood. Shit!" His eyes were suddenly wild. "In the cellar, Smith. There's a dead guy in the cellar!"

"No, there's not." I stood, put my hand on his shoulder. "There was. He's gone. It's okay, Tony."

He stared at me, unseeing. Then he turned his eyes away. "Fuck you," he said.

"Yeah." I walked to the bathroom. I ran cold water in the cracked sink, splashed it over my face and the back of my neck. That cleared my head. I came back out; the ammonia hit me again, cleared it even more.

I picked up the mop and the bucket, hauled them to the bathroom, dumped the scummy gray water down the toilet. Half a dozen flushes later the place was almost bearable. I left the door propped open and went to the phone.

I hung up the receiver, searched my pockets for change. I checked my wallet for Eve Colgate's number. She answered on the second ring.

"It's Bill Smith," I said. "I want to ask you a couple of questions."

"Where are you?" Her voice was low and measured, the way it had been last night. "Are you at Antonelli's? Is Tony all right?"

I looked over at Tony, slouched in the chair. He wasn't drinking now, just staring into the emptiness in front of him.

"He's drunk. He's okay. You heard?"

"My foreman. He said you ... found the body. It all sounded horrible. I'm sorry." She paused. "Not that sympathy does you much good."

"You'd be surprised," I said. "Thanks."

There was a short silence. Through the phone I could hear a Schubert piano sonata. The C Minor, written while Schubert knew he was dying. I'd never played it.

"You said you had some questions?" she prompted.

"Oh. Yeah." I cradled the phone against my shoulder so I could light a cigarette. "I found some silver today that I think is yours."

There was a very short pause, just a heartbeat. "Where? How?"

"An antique place near Breakabeen. I'll bring it over in the morning. But I wanted to ask you: do you know a girl, probably about sixteen? Golden hair, sparkling eyes, dazzling smile?"

"Quite a description, but I don't think so. Who is she?"

"She's peddling your stuff. I was hoping you could tell me who she is."

"No," she said slowly. "But I'll think about it."

"Good," I said. "Listen, I've got to get some dinner. Tony's out of business for tonight. I'll be up in the morning." We fixed a time and I hung up, seeing in my mind the yellow farmhouse standing in the sunlight at the top of the hill.

I glanced at Tony. His empty glass had slipped from his grip and was lying on the newly scrubbed floor. He was still staring ahead of him, looking at nothing.

I fed the phone again and called Lydia. This time, Lydia answered her office number. That line rings through to her room at home, and I knew that's where she was, because I could hear her mother puttering around in the background, singing a high-pitched Chinese opera song. She obviously had no idea what a narrow escape she'd just had, not having to talk to me.

I, on the other hand, did.

After Lydia got through telling me who she was in English and again in Chinese, I said, "Hi, it's me. You have anything for me?"

"Oh," she said. "Well," as though she was thinking about it, "just information."

"What else could I want?"

"What you always want."

"Not over the phone," I said in wounded innocence.

"Since when?" I heard her rustling some papers; then she asked, "Are you all right? You sound tired."

"I am."

"Oh," she said. "That's why the lack of snappy patter."

"No, this country living must be dulling my razor-sharp senses. I thought I was being pretty snappy."

"Wrong. Now listen: I haven't picked up anything about your paintings, if that's what you want to know."

"Among many other things. Where are you looking?"

"Shipping companies. Maritime and air-ship insurance. Art appraisers, auction houses." She paused. "Don't worry, I was subtle."

I hadn't said anything, but she knew me. "How?"

"Mostly I said I was looking for stolen Frank Stellas that would be being shipped as something else. People were very cooperative."

"Good old people. Anything else?"

"I went to see your friend Franco Ciardi. He remembered me and was charmed to see me."

"Isn't everyone always?"

"Of course they are, but sometimes they hide it well. Anyway, he knows nothing, but he promised he'd be interested and most discreet if I do come up with anything. Was he offering to take them off my hands if I find them, do you think?"

"I'm sure he was. That's it?"

"Yes, but isn't no news good news? There's no sign yet that those paintings are on the market. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Yes. How sure are you?"

"Well, I've only been on it since this morning. I may be missing something; but you can do a lot with a phone and a cab in a day."

"Okay. Any other ideas?"

"I haven't got any ideas. But I have something interesting."

"I'm sure, but you won't let me see it."

"And you said not over the phone."

"Sorry."

"Uh-huh. Anyway, listen. You know how art galleries work? On commission? Well, the normal commission is ten to fifty percent of the price of the work—the lower

the sale price, the higher the commission. Artists who feel a gallery is taking too high a percentage will go with another gallery, if someplace else will take them. Okay?"

"Okay," I said. "And?"

"Eva Nouvel's work is very, very high priced. Any gallery in town would love to handle her, but she's been with her gallery—Sternhagen—since she first started to show in New York, close to forty years ago. Bill, they take seventy percent."

"Umm," I said. "How do you know that?"

"My brother Elliot? You know his wife's an art consultant. She has a friend who has a friend who used to work at Sternhagen."

The Chin network. I said, "You believe her?"

"Him. Yes."

"Lydia, I didn't ask you to check on Eva Nouvel."

She paused for a moment. "No, that's true. But I was waiting for some people to call me back and I got curious. What's the problem?"

I rubbed my eyes. "No, nothing. It's okay."

A slight chill crept into her voice. "It might be better if I knew what was really going on."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, if I knew who the client was," she said. "If I knew why six valuable paintings were sitting around a storeroom in cow country. If I knew why you took a case up there at all. If I knew things like that, maybe I wouldn't make dumb mistakes."

"You never make dumb mistakes."

"I might if I don't know what's going on."

The windows I'd opened had made it cold in the bar. Back where I was, by the phone, the floor was empty, all the tables and chairs crowded together in the other half of the room as though something were wrong back here.

I rubbed my eyes again; that did about as much good as it had done the first time. "Jesus," I said to Lydia. "Look: you're right, and I'm sorry. But it's been a long day. Can we do this tomorrow?"

"We can do this whenever you want. You're the boss."

"That's not—"

"Apparently it is."

"Lydia—"

"Should I keep on it?" she asked, brusque and professional.

"Yes," I said. "Please."

"Talk to you later, then."

The phone clicked, and she was gone.

I walked around the silent room shutting the windows I'd opened. Then I went through the swinging doors into the kitchen, lifted Tony's jacket off the hook there, brought it to him. "Come on, buddy," I said softly, leaning down. "Time to go home." He looked at me as if he didn't know me. He rose unsteadily, pushing on the arms of his chair. I gave him his jacket. It took him some time to get into it. I didn't help, just stayed close enough to catch him if he needed that. He didn't.

I shut the lights and locked the place and we went out into the parking lot, crunching through it to the road. The night was dark and damp and foggy. It wasn't the up-close kind of fog where you couldn't see your own hand if you held your arm out straight. It was a soft film you didn't notice if your focus was close, where everything was clear and sharp and normal, what you expected. It was only when you tried to look around, to get your bearings, that you noticed that five yards away in all directions there was absolutely nothing at all.

Chapter 8

I left Tony inside his front door without a word. I waited on the porch just long enough to see him get a light on; then I headed down the steep stone steps and across the mud to my car.

The fog was thickening along 30 as I drove toward my place. I kept my speed down. I was hungry, exhausted, and in spite of Tony's bourbon I could feel all my nerve ends twitching.

The car slipped in and out of silvery patches of fog. I half expected with each one to come out somewhere miles away, some bright, warm place where people had honest work to do and no one's steps echoed in an empty house. Someplace where you didn't get to be Tony's age, or mine, with nothing to show but a collection of losses.

Down at the end of my fissured road my cabin was a squat, unnatural shape hunching in the winter trees. I thought of the work I'd done on it over the years, the constant battle to keep anything man-made—no matter how small, how carefully built, how wanted—from corroding, rotting away. The processes of destruction were relentless, and had all the time in the world.

Inside, the cabin wasn't bright and it wasn't warm but it was a familiar harbor. I put on a CD, Jeffrey Kahane

playing Bach three-part inventions. I built a fire. The smell of cedar and woodsmoke, the music, the shadows began to work on me. I sliced some bread, fried some eggs to go with a can of hash I found on the shelf. I drank some more bourbon and followed the music. Bach. Logic, order, clarity. I should play more Bach. The hard knots in my shoulders began to melt and my eyelids got heavy.

In the morning I had to force myself out of bed. The day was gray and I'd slept badly, prodded awake more than once by uneasy dreams I couldn't remember. I had a dull headache and though I knew it wasn't from sleeping badly, I poured a shot of bourbon into my coffee cup and downed it before the coffee was ready. It helped a little. The coffee helped some more. I showered, and this time I shaved, carefully but not carefully enough, cursing as the foam burned my cheek.

Leaning on the kitchen counter, I smoked a cigarette, worked on the day. The piano gleamed in the light of the kitchen lamp. It wasn't as good a piano as I had in New York, but it was fine, an upright with a strong, clear sound. A guy from Albany with a key to the cabin came out a few days before I came up each time and tuned it for me; and I kept the heat on low in the front room all winter, so the piano did all right. Those things cost me. But the reason I came up here and the reason I played were pretty much the same, and this setup worked for me.

I finished the last of the coffee. If I spent the day practicing, the new Mozart might begin to sound like music.

Music; sleep; walking in the silent winter woods: that sounded like a good day to me.

But I thought about Eve Colgate's eyes as she told me about what she'd lost. And I thought about Tony's eyes, and about other kinds of loss. There were so many kinds.

Halfway up 30 toward Eve Colgate's there was a 7-Eleven.

I bought more coffee and some other things, drank the coffee in the car with the Mozart Adagio in the CD player.

If I couldn't play it at least I could listen to it.

Eve Colgate's yellow house seemed to stand more somberly on the hilltop under the gray sky than it had yesterday in the sunlight, but it was still a vaguely comforting sight, like an old friend at a funeral.

I parked in the drive behind the blue pickup. As I started inward the porch the black dog raced, barking and yapping, around the side of the house. He stopped when I did, cocked his head, wagged his tail tentatively a few times; but when I started forward again he snarled and dug his feet in as he had the morning before. His breath was visible on the cold air.

Eve Colgate came around the house, wiping her hands on a stained red sweatshirt. "Leo!" she called.

"Okay, Leo," I said. "You're tough. I know." I reached Into the 7-Eleven bag, brought out the doughnut I'd bought for him. "Come on." I squatted, held out a piece. He looked at it, looked at Eve Colgate. "It's okay," she said. He grabbed the piece of doughnut and inhaled it, wagged for more. I held out the rest. "Sit," I said. He didn't. I gave it to him anyway, dusted sugar from my gloves, scratched his ears.

"You can't buy him that easily," Eve Colgate said.

"I'm not in the market. I just want a friend." I straightened up, took the wrapped package from the back of my car. The dog escorted me up the drive, nuzzled Eve Colgate's hand when he reached her.

"Good boy." She scratched him absently. Her eyes swept over my face as though registering small changes since she'd last seen me. Then she looked at the package I was holding. "Come inside," she said.

I followed her through a vestibule where a yellow slicker hung on a peg into a single room running the width of the house. On the right was a kitchen, not new but ample and serviceable. On the left an antique dining table and chairs, carefully refinished, stood under the front window. There was a woodstove like mine on the hearth, its flue running up the fireplace chimney. A couch, an easy chair, a side table, a cedar chest on the bare, polished floor. A few framed watercolors—none of them Eva Nouvels—hung on the walls and on the mantel there was a china pitcher and bowl painted in the bright yellows and purples of spring.

I shrugged off my jacket, looked around for a place to put it. Eve took it from me, pausing as her eyes caught the worn shoulder holster with the .22 from the car slipped into it.

"Do you always wear that?"

"Yes." A long time ago I'd stopped answering that question with anything more elaborate.

She turned, hung my jacket in the vestibule. She pulled off her sweatshirt and hung it there, too. Under it she wore a thick white turtleneck tucked into flannel-lined jeans.

The air was warm, and pungent with cinnamon. There was music, too, strings. Schubert, maybe.

"Do you want coffee?" Eve asked. "I've been baking."

"Sounds great. Smells great."

She handed me a plate of sticky looking sweet rolls. "How do you take your coffee?"

"Black." I bootlegged a piece of roll for Leo, who was walking between my legs, head twisted to sniff at the plate.

I put the plate and the wrapped silver on the cedar chest, sat on the couch. Eve brought over coffee in two white mugs. She made good coffee; better than mine, much better than the 7-Eleven's. The rolls were warm and sweet and crunchy with walnuts.

She kicked off her shoes, sat cross-legged on the other end of the couch, her back against the armrest. "How's Tony?"

"I haven't seen him today." I could have guessed how he was, but she could guess, too.

"The police are looking for his brother, aren't they?"

"That's what I hear."

She poured cream into her coffee from a round jug. "Tony used to work for me, before his father got sick. Spring, summer, and fall, as a laborer. I was sorry to lose him when he took over the restaurant." She cupped her hands around her coffee. "I don't have anything to offer him, except sympathy and money. He won't want

my sympathy. He won't want my money either, but he might need it." She sipped at her coffee, was quiet a moment. "I'll say this to Tony later, but I'll tell you now. If there's anything he needs—lawyers, whatever it is—I can take care of it."

"Why tell me?"

"So somebody with a more level head than Tony will know what options he has."

"You're right," I said. "He won't want it."

"Trouble can be expensive. Especially . . ." she paused. "Do you think Jimmy could have killed that man? I hardly know Jimmy. When he was young Tony brought him by occasionally."

"Could have?" I said. "He could have. I don't know anyone who couldn't, for a strong enough reason."

She fixed me with her pale, disturbing eyes. "Do you really believe that?"

"It's true. Reasons vary, but everybody's got one he thinks is good enough. If you're lucky you never get the chance to find out what yours is."

She explored my face briefly, then looked away, as though she hadn't found something she had hoped, but not expected, to find.

The flashing, contrapuntal figures of the music filled the air around us. I put down my coffee, picked up the wrapped package. I laid it on the couch between us, unwound the paper, watched her face as she watched my hands.

At first she didn't react. Then her face drained of color and her hand went slowly to her mouth. She stared at the candlesticks and tray resting on the crumpled paper as though she needed to count every vein in every leaf engraved on them.

She reached out a hand. I stopped it with mine. "Don't touch them. There may be prints."

She looked surprised, as though she'd forgotten I was there. She drew back her hand, shook her head slowly. "They were a wedding gift from Henri's mother," she half whispered. She looked away, hugged her chest. Her face was still pale but her voice was stronger as she said, "I deal with my memories in the way I can. I kept these, but I haven't looked at them in thirty years."

I drank my coffee, gave her time.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You had to identify them. I didn't realize it would be hard."

"No," she said, shaking her head again. "It's all right. What do we do now?"

"Two things. We try to lift prints from these, and we try to find the blond girl who fenced them."

"What if she's not from around here?"

"I have a feeling she is. She could have gotten more for things like these in New York, or even Albany or Boston; if she's not local, why fence them here?" I put my mug down. "You know, both finding the girl and identifying the prints would be a lot easier if you'd report this to the police."

She flushed angrily. "And when they found her and my paintings, the whole world would know who I am."

"If this girl or anyone else has any idea what the paintings are, the whole world will know soon anyway," I pointed out.

"Maybe she hasn't. Or maybe it won't occur to her that I made them, just because I had them." She stood abruptly, paced the room, her hands in her back pockets. The dog, curled in the chair, lifted his head and followed her movements. She stared out the window for a time; then she turned again to face me. "It's important," she said. "Maybe it's not rational. But I'm past apologizing for it. It's why I hired you in the first place. If you can't do it the way I want it done, I don't need you."

The music had stopped, leaving nothing in the air but the fragrance of cinnamon and coffee and the weight of Eve Colgate's anger.

"I'm working for you," I said. "We'll do it however you want. But I've got to give you the choices the way I see them."

She nodded, said nothing.

I rewrapped the silver. "I'll send these to New York. There's a lab I use on Long Island that can pull the prints." I stood. "Can I use your phone?"

Lydia's machine answered my call. Well, that was okay; the machine liked me better than Lydia's mother did. Right now, maybe better than Lydia did. I told her to expect a package on an afternoon Greyhound out of Cobleskill, and that I'd call again and tell her when it was due. Then I called Antonelli's.

Tony's voice sounded hoarse and tired.

"How're you doing?" I asked him.

"Sick as hell. You?"

"I feel great. Maybe you should switch to bourbon."

He grunted. "Can't afford it."

"I'll come over and buy you a bottle. You open?"

"What's the difference? Wasn't open last night. Didn't stop you."

"True. You heard from Jimmy?"

Silence. Then, "No. Brinkman called an hour ago, asked me the same thing. He ain't called me, he ain't gonna call me. Why the hell should he?"

"He's in trouble. You're his brother."

"Hell with that. I'm through with that."

"Tony-"

"Don't preach to me, Smith. I got no time for it."

This time it was I who was silent. "I'll be over later," I finally said.

"Yeah," Tony said. "Whatever. Listen, you got a call. If you're gonna keep givin' out this number, you better tell people it ain't my job to know where you are when you ain't here. An' tell 'em it don't help to try an' impress me with who the hell they are, 'cause I don't give a damn who the hell they are."

"You tell them," I said. "You sound like you enjoy it. Who called? MacGregor?"

"That trooper? Nah. One of your big-time pals. Lifestyles of the rich an' famous."

"What are you talking about?"

"Mark Sanderson."

I frowned into the phone. "Mark Sanderson? Appleseed Baby Foods? I don't know him."

"Well, now's your chance. He left a number. Want it?"

I found a scrap of paper in my wallet. "Yeah, go ahead." He read it off to me. "Did he say what he wanted?"

"To me? I'm just the hired help."

"Okay, Tony, thanks. Listen, there's something else. Two things. Last night you were telling me about Jimmy's girl. Do you remember? Alice. You said something about pies. What did you mean?"

"Oh, Christ, Smith, what do you care?"

"Look, Tony, I know what you think, that Jimmy killed that guy. I think you're wrong. And even if he did, he can't hide forever. In the end it'll make things worse. I want to talk to him. Maybe I can help."

"Maybe he ain't around. Maybe he already beat it, Mexico or someplace. Maybe you helped enough."

"Maybe."

Neither of us said anything. I heard footsteps from the floor above, looked around to find I was alone.

Tony gave a tired sigh. "Alice Brown. I don't know where she lives. Not around here."

"What about the pies?"

"When they started comin' around, she started bringin' me pies, or cakes. Couple at a time. Fancy stuff. She said she made them. I served them here. They were good." He paused. "She's a sweet kid, Smith. Only met her three or four times, but I liked her. Don't know how she got tied up with Jimmy."

"And you wouldn't know where to find her?" "No."

"Do MacGregor and Brinkman know about her?"

"I didn't tell 'em."

"Good. Here's the other thing. I'm looking for a girl, long blond hair, small, pretty. She may be a friend of Jimmy's. Does she sound familiar?"

"No, but I ain't met his friends, except the ones he gets arrested with. What's she got to do with it?"

"Nothing. A friend of mine asked me to find her. It's something completely different."

"Eve Colgate. I knew you was workin' for her."

"Not your problem, Tony."

"Shit. You tellin' me to mind my own business?"

"I get your point. I'll be over later, okay? If you do hear from Jimmy, try to talk him out of anything stupid."

"Spent half my fuckin' life tryin' to talk him outta stupid things. I'm no good at it."

"Try again. He might listen this time."

We hung up. Eve Colgate was still upstairs, giving me privacy while I used her house as a public phone booth.

I looked at the number Tony had given me for Mark Sanderson, started to dial it, but stopped. I called the state troopers instead.

"D Unit. Sergeant Whiteside." It was the same officer I'd spoken to yesterday.

"Ron MacGregor, please."

"Hold on."

Thirty seconds of electronic silence; then, "MacGregor."

"It's Bill Smith. You get any sleep lately?"

"You kidding?"

"Well, I'm glad to know country cops work as hard as city cops. Can I have my gun back?"

"Yeah. Come get it."

"What killed Wally Gould?"

"He was shot."

"Oh, come on, Mac. Is it a secret?"

"What interest you got in this investigation, Smith?"

"I'm a friend of Tony's and Jimmy's. As long as Jimmy's a suspect, I'm interested."

"That's it?"

"Why, he's not?"

"Yeah, he is. You know where to find him?"

"No."

"Would you tell me if you did?"

I thought about it. "I'd tell you I knew. I'm not sure I'd tell you where he was."

"Wait, let me get this straight. You want information from me on an ongoing police investigation, but you're not sure you'd turn over my chief suspect if you had him?"

"I'm not sure I wouldn't. What killed Wally Gould?"

He paused. "Three close-range shots from a nine- millimeter."

"When?"

"About four A.M."

"You found it?"

"The gun? Not yet."

"Well, I have two you can look at."

"Two what?"

"Nine-millimeters."

MacGregor exploded. "Goddammit, Smith! If you've been holding out on me again I'll lock you up!"

"I didn't hold out on you about the keys and I'm not now. I took a pair of Ruger nine-millimeters off two of Grice's monkeys yesterday." I told MacGregor the rest of the story, my conversation with Grice, the green

house, Otis and Ted. He didn't ask what I'd been doing on the potholed road by Breakabeen and I didn't tell him.

I also didn't tell him that Otis and Ted had picked me up at the Park View while I was talking to Ellie Warren. I wasn't paid to give him ideas.

"So Grice doesn't know where Jimmy is," he said thoughtfully when I was through. "And he's willing to pay a lot to find out."

"Maybe not," I said. "I imagine it's one of those fees I'd have a hard time collecting."

"You could be right. You want us to pick them up?"

"Who, Otis and Ted? Don't bother. Everybody'd deny it and I'm sure everybody's got a nifty alibi."

"Yeah, probably. We had Grice down here this morning on the Gould killing."

"Let me guess. At the time Gould was shot, Grice was drinking tea with his congressman and the Bishop of Buffalo."

MacGregor answered that with a grunt. "What do you think he wants Jimmy for?"

"Grice? I think the same as you, Mac. Grice knows something about Gould's death and he's looking for a fall guy"

"Is that what I think? What else do I think?"

I left that alone. "I'll be by this afternoon to pick up my gun."

"If you have evidence to turn over, you'd damn well better make it this morning. Now."

"An hour."

"Half an hour. If not, in thirty-one minutes I'll have every unit in the county looking for you."

"I'll be there."

Now it was time to call Mark Sanderson.

"I'm sorry." Mark Sanderson's secretary's voice was so carefully modulated and inflected that I regretted not being a radio producer calling to offer her her big break. "Mr. Sanderson is unavailable. Perhaps I can help you?"

"I don't think I'm the one who needs help, but I could be wrong. Mr. Sanderson called me; I'm returning his call."

"Oh, I see. In that case, please hold the line a moment."

I did, passing that moment and some others listening to watery Muzak through the phone. I heard footsteps again from upstairs, the sound of doors opening and closing.

"Mr. Smith?" the modulated voice returned. "Mr. Sanderson will be right with you."

A few more bars of Muzak, and then a man's voice, deep but not booming, calm but with an edge somewhere behind it. "Mark Sanderson."

That left me to introduce myself, which was silly, since we both knew he knew who I was. But it was his court, his rules. "Bill Smith, Mr. Sanderson. I understand you've been trying to get in touch with me."

"Smith. Yes. I expected you to call before this; I left that message some time ago. I want you to come by here right away."

This was a man who didn't waste words. In fact he didn't use quite enough of them for my taste.

"Mr. Sanderson, we don't know each other."

"We will. I intend to engage your services."

No one said I had to make it easy for him. "As what?"

That threw him off his stride. There was silence; then, in the voice you’d use to explain to a gardener the difference between roses and ragweed, he said, "I understand you're a detective. I have a job for you."

"I don't come up here to work, Mr. Sanderson. I can give you the name of a good investigator out of Albany, if you'd like."

"No," he said, struggling to hide his impatience, and losing. "It's you I want. You in particular. How soon can you get here?"

From the newspaper photograph I remembered him as a broad-shouldered man with a receding hairline that emphasized the roundness of his face. I imagined that round face frowning now behind a heavy oak desk in a corner office with a picture-window view.

I asked, "Can you give me more of an idea what we're talking about talking about?"

"Not over the phone. We're wasting time, Smith. Where are you? At the bar where I left the message?"

"No. And how did you know to reach me there?"

"I was told you had no phone, but that the bar would take a message. I was also told there was a good chance you'd be there, whatever time I called," he added nastily. "I'll expect you in half an hour."

"I have to be over by Bramanville in half an hour." I looked at my watch, thought some unsatisfying thoughts. "I'll get over to you as soon after that as I can."

"Look, Smith—"

"No, you look, Sanderson. You want me. In particular. I don't want your job, but you're not listening when I say no, and I'm just curious enough to come over and hear you out before I say it again. If that's not good enough, call someone else."

Through what sounded like clenched teeth he said, "All right. I don't suppose it will make that much difference, in the end." He hung up without saying good-bye.