“Too much.”

“If the information proves as valuable as I expect, I might be able to convince my contacts to reduce your tax substantially.”

“Is that so? And do we even know who is in charge after yesterday’s dance macabre on the expressway?”

“I’m betting the old bull holds his ground.”

“And if he does, and you get me the break you say you can get me, what do you get out of it?”

I was about to say nothing, but then realized that nothing wouldn’t satisfy the suspicions of a man like Peckworth. There had to be an angle to it for him to buy in. “I get twenty percent of the reduction.”

“That seems steep.”

“My normal contingency fee is a third, but I’m giving you a break out of the goodness of my heart.”

Peckworth nodded and said, “I understand.” They always know you have an angle when you say you’re doing something out of the goodness of your heart. “You must understand something, Mr. Carl. We don’t choose the things that give us pleasure in this life, we only choose whether or not to pursue them. I have chosen to pursue my pleasures and with the money I earn in my side enterprise I am able to do just that. But the life is more precarious than you can imagine and those thugs are killing my cash flow.”

“Well, that’s the deal,” I said. “Take it or leave it.”

He thought about it for a moment, I could tell, because his brow knitted.

“I had some visitors,” he said, finally. “Two men, one very well dressed, short and dapper. The other a stooge in an impossible maroon suit. They suggested that I was mistaken as to the date I saw the UPS man outside Miss Shaw’s door. After they explained it all to me I realized that I must have been.”

“Did they give you their names?”

“No, but they did give me the names of a few of my suppliers.”

“You mean from the auctions.”

“Yes.”

“And that troubled you.”

“Yes.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Were these suppliers maybe under a certain legal age?”

“Never underestimate the delicate piquancy of the young, Mr. Carl.”

“So suddenly the entirety of your pleasure quotient was at risk.”

“Exactly, Mr. Carl. You’re very quick for a lawyer.”

“Any idea who these men were, or who they represented?”

“None, but I knew enough to step away. There is an aroma that follows particularly dangerous men.”

“And the stooge smelled bad, huh?”

“Not the stooge, Mr. Carl. They are a dime a dozen. Beside being monstrously strong, Everett is very loyal and can handle those that come my way with relative ease. It was the well-dressed man, extremely handsome, with even white teeth and groomed gray hair. There was something frightfully languorous about him, but even that languor couldn’t hide the scent of danger he carried.”

“What did he look like, an accountant?”

“Oh no, Mr. Carl. If he was anything he was a funeral director, but one who never had to worry about supply.” He leaned forward and said, “If your friends can lower my tax and take care of these men for me, Mr. Carl, you can take your full one third.”

“That’s very generous of you,” I said. I reached for the door and then stopped reaching and turned around. “Bottom left picture was your UPS guy, wasn’t it?”

“There was a brutality to his native good looks that I found unforgettable.”

“Mr. Peckworth, I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but for someone who has chosen to pursue his pleasures with such devotion, you don’t seem so very happy.”

“Mr. Carl,” he said, with a straight, stolid face, “I’m so happy I could burst.”

EVERETT LUGGED ME THROUGH the apartment and spun me into the hallway. Burford blew me a kiss before he closed the door. A fond farewell, I’m sure, but I was glad to be left alone in the hallway. I didn’t take the elevator down, instead I went into the emergency exit. The stairwell was ill lit and smelled furry. The door hissed slowly shut on me. When I tried to open it again I discovered, as I had expected, that it was locked.

I started climbing up the stairwell, twisting around the landings as I rose. I tried each door on my ascent and discovered each to be locked, until the last. This one I opened, slowly, and found myself on the roof. It was flat and tarred, with assorted risers here and there, and a three-foot ledge all the way around. Scattered about were plastic lounge chairs, which I imagined were used by bare-chested sunbathers on hot summer afternoons. The knob on the outside of the door wouldn’t turn, but all those melanoma seekers would need a way to get back inside once the sun dimmed. I searched the floor and found a wooden wedge, well worn, which I jammed into the crack. With the door stuck open I stepped onto the roof.

I wasn’t really concerned with the roof of the Cambium. What I wanted to see were the surrounding roofs. The building fronted on the park and one side bordered on Nineteenth Street, as the road continued its way south after being interrupted by Rittenhouse Square. Behind the Cambium was a building three flights shorter, so that was probably out. But to the side opposite Nineteenth Street was another fancy-pantsed doorman building, whose roof was roughly the same level, separated only by a six-foot gap. The drop between the two was deadly enough, but six feet was not too long a jump for an athlete with a brave heart. Too long for me, of course, as I was no athlete, which I learned painfully enough in junior high gym class, and my heart was more timorous than brave, but not too long for a committed gunman out to kill an heiress, for my client Peter Cressi.

It was the cellophane candy wrapper Cressi had tossed out in the Reptile House of the zoo that clued me, of course, one end open, one end still twisted, just like the wrapper Caroline had found behind her sister’s toilet. It took a dose of meditation for my unconscious to show it to me because to my conscious mind it didn’t make any sense, Cressi killing Jacqueline Shaw. He had nothing to gain. But others did, others who may have been hunting for a fortune. Maybe Eddie, maybe Oleanna, maybe some other legatee in line for a great deal of money with one or more of the heirs to the Reddman fortune dead. There was someone, I figured, who had enough to gain from Jacqueline’s death to pay for it. And that someone paid enough to allow the killer to purchase a hundred and seventy-nine fully automatic assault rifles, three grenade launchers, and a flamethrower from an undercover cop. This was where Cressi’s money had come from, I now was sure. He had probably run into whoever wanted to do the killing while shaking down Eddie Shaw for the half-million Eddie owed Jimmy Vigs. He had been nosing around, harassing Eddie, harassing his relatives, making his presence known, when an offer was made. And then, after the offer and an acceptance and a meeting of the minds, Peter Cressi had dressed in a UPS outfit and gone to the roof of that building over there and jumped the six-foot gap and rushed down the stairs of the Cambium to knock casually on Jacqueline’s door with the words, “UPS, ma’am.” And after the door was opened and Peter had entered and done his lucrative wet work, he had gone into the bathroom to straighten up, to smooth back his hair, to tuck in his shirt, all the while with Jacqueline hanging there, twisting from the chandelier, probably still moaning out loud. And to freshen his breath, of course, Cressi would pop into his mouth one of the mints he had boosted from Tosca’s and, from force of habit, toss aside the wrapper, just as he had tossed aside the wrapper at the zoo. Sweet Peter.

Dante was in it with him, that was clear too. It was Earl Dante who went to cover Cressi’s tracks after Peckworth had spotted Cressi outside Jacqueline’s door. It was Earl Dante who had convinced Peckworth to change his story and so it must have been Earl fucking Dante who was directing Cressi as Cressi hired himself out as a hit man to get the bucks to purchase the guns that would allow Dante to win his war against the boss. What a little scab, that Dante. He had picked me as a pallbearer and probably advised Raffaello to have a chat with me, all the while knowing there was a white van with a hole in the side waiting to slide up to the Cadillac and blast away. What a murderous pus-encrusted little scab.