"It's my air of innocence that does it," Carolyn said. She stationed herself in front of one of the more striking paintings on display, tilting her head to one side and planting herself with her hands on her hips. "Painting must really be fun when you don't have to make it look like anything," she said. "You can just sort of smear the paint on any old way, can't you?"

"I'll make some coffee," Denise said. "And I'm sure Ms. Kaiser must want something to eat."

"No, I don't think so," Carolyn said. "I haven't had much of an appetite lately. Maybe I'm getting anorexia. I understand it strikes some women late in life."

It went on like this, and I might have been able to sit back and enjoy it if they hadn't both been favorite people of mine. God knows there was nothing else for me to do. They didn't need a referee; they were doing fine all by themselves, and nobody was bothering to keep score. Jared, I learned, was out for the afternoon. I thought that showed sound judgment on his part.

The phone rang at two o'clock. I picked it up, held the receiver to my ear, and waited until I heard a familiar voice. Then I nodded shortly and passed the receiver to Carolyn.

"The gentleman you're calling hasn't arrived yet," she said. "Please call again in precisely fifteen minutes."

She hung up, looked at me. I grabbed up my attaché case and got to my feet. "I'm on my way," I said. "You know what you're supposed to tell him when he calls?"

"Uh-huh. He should go to the Squires coffee shop at the corner of Madison and Seventy-ninth. He should sit at the table farthest from the door and wait, and you'll either join him at his table or have him paged under the name of Madison, as in Avenue."

"And if he asks about the coin-"

"You've got it."

"Right."

"You've got me involved in something," Denise said. "You're still a burglar, aren't you, Bernie? Of course you are. The leopard doesn't change his spots. Or the convict his stripes, apparently."

"They don't wear stripes in prison anymore."

"Oh, but they should. They're so slimming. But you'd know what they wear and don't wear, wouldn't you? You've been there. And you're still a burglar. Are you a killer, too?" She looked at Carolyn. "And what are you, exactly? His henchperson?"

"Carolyn will explain everything," I said. And I didn't envy her a bit.

All of a sudden I was taking cabs a lot. I took the third of the day to the corner of Eighteenth Street and Ninth Avenue. We made good time, and by two-fifteen I was staked out across the street from the heavy iron gate marked 4421?2. At that very moment he was supposed to be on the phone, and perhaps he was, because ten minutes later the gate swung open and Herbert Franklin Colcannon emerged from it. I was in a shadowy doorway where he couldn't have seen me, but he didn't even look in my direction, turning to his left and striding purposefully toward Tenth Avenue, either to catch a cab or because he had a car parked there.

I didn't care which it was. I let him reach the corner, then jogged across the street-I was wearing my Pumas, their excessive width notwithstanding. It was a bright sunny afternoon and there were people on the street, but that didn't bother me this time. I knew which of my skeleton keys would do for the lock on the iron gate, since I'd already determined that Tuesday night, so I had the key in hand as I crossed the street and I was through the gate and had it locked behind me in a matter of seconds.

I wasn't wearing rubber gloves, either. This time around I didn't care about prints. If things went wrong they'd go wrong dramatically, and fingerprints would be the least of my worries. If things went right, nobody would give a damn where my fingers had been.

Once I was through the gate and into the tunnel I unsnapped the locks on my attaché case and took the gun from it.

Nasty things, guns. This one looked to have been made of blued steel, but its surface was warmer to the touch. The material was some sort of high-impact phenolic resin. I suppose I could have carried it onto an airplane. I let my hand accustom itself to the feel of the weapon, checked its load, and made my way through the tunnel.

I wanted that gun in my hand in case Astrid was spending the afternoon in the garden. I didn't expect that would be the case, but the bitch was attack-trained and I wasn't, and I didn't want to be unprepared for an encounter with her. At the mouth of the tunnel I paused with the gun at my side and scanned the garden carefully.

No Astrid. No people, either. I slipped the gun beneath the waistband of my trousers where my jacket would screen it from view and then walked quickly across the flagstone patio with scarcely a glance at the tulips and daffodils, the little fishpond, the semicircular bench.

With a garden like that, why would a man go chasing phantom coins all over the place? Of course it might not be his garden, it might indeed belong to the front house, but surely he could sit in it, couldn't he?

I mounted the stoop and rang the bell. I'd seen him leave, but how did I know he'd been alone there? I put my ear to the door and listened, and I heard some barking that I could have heard without putting my ear to the door, and then a rumbling sound as if something bulky had just fallen down a flight of stairs. A chest of drawers, say, or an excitable Bouvier des Flandres. The barking was repeated and got louder, and all I had between me and Astrid was a wooden door about two inches thick.

Which I promptly set about opening.

The locks had been easy the first time, and they're always easier the second time around. My fingers remembered their inner workings, and I knocked them off one-two-three in not many more seconds than it takes to tell about it. If anyone had watched from a rear window of the front house, say, I don't think he'd have had cause for suspicion.

I turned the knob, opened the door the merest fraction of an inch. The barking increased in volume and climbed in pitch. There was a manic intensity in it now-or perhaps it just sounded that way to me.

I drew the gun, checked the load once more.

Was there any way I could avoid doing this? Couldn't I just close the door and lock up after myself and get the hell out? Maybe I could rush up to Madison and Seventy-ninth, maybe Colcannon and I could work something out, maybe-

Quit stalling, Rhodenbarr.

I leveled the gun in my right hand, held the doorknob in my left. In one motion I threw the door violently inward. The dog-a huge black beast, and utterly ferocious to look upon-recoiled reflexively, then gathered herself to spring at my throat.

I pointed the gun and fired.

The dart went right where I'd aimed it, taking Astrid in the left shoulder. Bouviers have a dense curly coat and there was no way to be sure the dart wouldn't get deflected en route, and for a moment I thought it had because she seemed unaffected by it.

Then the tranquilizer hit. Astrid was about halfway into her spring, forepaws off the ground, when all at once her eyes glazed over and her jaw went slack. Her paws worked in the air like the feet of the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons when he runs off a cliff and tries to keep going. Astrid couldn't keep going. She settled back down again, her spring unsprung, and then she wobbled like a child in high heels, and finally she uttered a sort of whimpery sound and pitched over onto her side.

How do you check a dog's pulse? I actually tried, fumbling around with what I don't suppose you call a wrist when you're dealing with a dog, but I gave that up because I didn't know what I was doing, and what difference did it make, anyway? If she was alive all I could do was let her sleep it off, and if she was dead there was nothing anybody could do for her, and my own course of action was the same in either case.