"We didn't kill her, Carolyn."

"I know that."

"We didn't do anything to cause her death."

"I know that, too. It was some other guys and they had no connection with us. I understand all that, Bern. I just feel funny, that's all. What do you think we'll get?"

"Huh?"

"For the coin."

"Oh. I don't know."

"How will we know what price he sells it for?"

"He'll tell us."

"What I mean is he won't cheat us, will he?"

"Abel? He might."

"Really?"

"Well, the man's a receiver of stolen goods," I said. "I imagine he's told a lie or two in the course of a long life. I don't suppose he'd draw the line at telling another. And it's the easiest sort of a lie because there's no way for us to know about it."

"Then how can we trust him?"

"In a sense I don't suppose we can. Not to be perfectly honest, anyway. If he got lucky and peddled the V-Nickel for half a million dollars, say, I'd guess he might tell us he got two hundred thousand dollars for it. We'd get half of that, and I suppose he'd have cheated us out of a bundle if that happened, but would we really have a complaint? It would be hard for me to work up much indignation if my end of a night's work came to fifty thousand dollars."

"Suppose he tells us he sold it for fifty thousand? Then what?"

"Then he'll probably be telling the truth. My guess is that he'd be most likely to cheat us if the coin sells high and most likely to be completely honest if the selling price is low. And we can be sure that our end won't drop below seventeen thousand five hundred, because he offered us that much for cash on delivery, so he'll make sure we get more than that if we have to wait for our money. Unless the coin turns out to be a counterfeit, in which case all bets are off."

"Is that a possibility?"

"No. It's a genuine coin. My prediction is that you and I will wind up dividing fifty thousand dollars."

"Jesus. And all we have to do is sit around and wait for it?"

"Right. What was it the German officer used to say to POWs in the war movies? 'My friend, for you ze var is over.' I think I'll celebrate the end of the war by opening the store for a couple of hours. You doing anything special tonight?"

"I'll probably bounce around the bars eventually. Why? Want to have dinner?"

"Can't. I've got a date."

"Anybody I know?"

"Denise."

"The painter? The one who doesn't shut up?"

"She has a ready wit and a self-deprecatory sense of humor."

"If you say so, Bern."

"Do I criticize your taste in women?"

"Sometimes."

"Hardly ever," I said. I got up. "I'm going to sell some books. I'll call you later if I hear anything. Have a good time at the dyke bars."

"I intend to," she said. "Give my love to Denise."

Denise Raphaelson is long-legged and slender, although Carolyn insists on describing her as gawky and bony. Her hair is dark brown and curly and worn medium-long, her complexion fair with a dusting of unobtrusive freckles. Her blue-gray eyes are artist's eyes, always measuring and assessing and seeing the world as a series of framed rectangles.

There was no end of rectangles, albeit unframed, on the walls of Narrowback Gallery, where she lived and worked. It's on the third floor of a loft building on West Broadway between Grand and Broome, and its name derived from the loft's unusual shape, narrow at the back and wider at the front. Denise subsequently discovered that narrowback is a term of contempt applied by native Irish to those kinsmen of theirs who have emigrated to America. No one has yet satisfactorily explained the term to her, although speculation on the subject has sparked any number of drunken conversations at the Broome Street Bar.

I looked at a couple of paintings she'd done since I was last at the loft, including the one she'd been working on that day. I exchanged a few sentences with Jared, her twelve-year-old genius son, and gave him the stack of paperback science fiction I'd been setting aside for him. (I don't handle paperbacks in the store, wholesaling the ones that come in to a store that sells nothing else.) He seemed happy with what I'd brought, especially an early Chip Delaney novel that he'd been wanting to read, and we had the sort of stilted conversation one has with the precocious and overly hip child of a woman with whom one occasionally beds down.

I'd gone home to shave and change clothes before trekking down to SoHo. I had my Weejuns on my feet again and was comfortably casual in Levi's and a flannel shirt. Denise was wearing a lime turtleneck and a pair of those forty-dollar jeans with an over-the-hill debutante's autograph on a rear pocket. Remember when clothes had their labels on the inside?

We had a glass of wine each at the gallery, then moved on to an Ethiopian place in Tribeca where you bring your own wine and eat unpronounceable dishes at your peril. We brought a rosé to see if it really does go with anything, and it did, but not terribly well. Our dishes, hers made with chicken and mine with lamb, were identically sauced and hot enough to blister paint. They came with a disc of spongy bread the size of a small pizza, and we tore off hunks of this gooey muck and used it to scoop up mouthfuls of the hot stuff. In the name of ethnic authenticity, a whole lot of New Yorkers are relearning the table manners of messy children.

When we got out of there-and not a moment too soon-we walked around for a while and wound up listening to a jazz trio on Wooster Street. We had a couple of Scotches there and Denise worked her way through a pack of Virginia Slims. I tried Abel once or twice, and then we walked north a ways and caught Lance Hayward's ten o'clock set at the Village Corner. Denise knows him, so we chatted with him after the set and it turned out there was another pianist we simply had to hear at a new club in my neighborhood. I dialed Abel's number again and we had a quick drink with Lance-we were drinking stingers by this time-before grabbing a cab uptown.

The new club was on Columbus Avenue in the low eighties and the piano player was a young black kid who kept reminding me of a Lenni Tristano record I hadn't listened to in years. We got out of there when the set ended and cabbed to my place, where I dug out the record in question and put it on. We had a nightcap and threw our clothes on the floor and dived into bed.

I did not find her to be gawky and bony. I found her to be warm and soft and quick and eager, and the music's eccentric harmonies and offbeat rhythm didn't interfere with the pleasure we took with one another. If anything, it gave a nice brittly atonal edge to our lovemaking.

The tone arm had just dropped to begin replaying the record for the third time when she yawned and stretched and reached for the inevitable cigarette. She got it lit and said something about going home.

"Stay over," I suggested.

"I didn't say anything to Jared. I figured we'd wind up at my place."

"And if you're not there when he wakes up?"

"He'll figure I'm here, which is cool, but if I'd known I would have called him earlier. I'd call now but I don't want to wake him."

I thought of trying Abel again but it would have involved moving.

"I think I will stay," she said, after a moment's reflection. "Mind if I change the record?"

"Not at all. Put on a stack."

She crouched at the record rack, her bare behind tilted charmingly in my direction. Bony? Gawky? Pfui.

When she came back to bed I slipped an arm around her and told her I was glad she was staying.

"Me too," she said.

"You said earlier that you went to the movies last night."

"Right. I took the kid and we saw the new Woody Allen picture."

"And you loved it but he thought it was superficial."