"Can I do anything for you, Ms. Winetraub?"

"Find Angelique," she said. "Make sure she doesn't come to harm."

Prominent in my red metal toolbox are three huge key chains that have the masters for ninety percent of the locks in New York. I update my stock every six months. For those locks that take a little more I have special lock-picking keys that were designed by my personal engineer and hacker, Bug Bateman.

I used one such special key on Angelique Lear's lock. It was a simple mechanical adjustment, and I made it into her top-floor apartment in under a minute. All I had to do was insert the key mechanism and rotate a bolt on the base until the tumblers fell into place.

The first thing I did was go to the kitchen, blow out the pilot lights, and turn a couple of the burners up high for thirty seconds or so. Then I went through the place quickly, looking for immediate clues.

I gathered all the mail I could see and secreted the envelopes in the false bottom of my red toolbox. Then I cruised through the apartment, scanning bureaus and tabletops, going through any drawers as I came across them.

Two of Angelique's bedroom walls were hung with many framed photographs. The wall to the left of her bed had photos of her with either a blond-haired, olive-skinned, blue-eyed woman or a slender and pale young man with black hair and piercing eyes. She was laughing with Blondie at Carnival in Rio, and arm-in-arm with the intent young man in Rome. My unaware, maybe even unwilling, client was smiling or laughing in every photograph. Not one picture looked posed or insincere.

Across from the foot of her bed were her diplomas-from elementary school to her master's from NYU. The bed was neat and made. The orange-and-yellow bedspread was frayed here and there from many years of use.

The night table held some tissues, a box of condoms, and a fuzzy pink pair of handcuffs-no useful clues there.

The floors were bare oak except in the bathroom, which was covered in off-white linoleum flecked with tiny squares of bright and shiny confetti colors.

Her bookshelf was small and crowded with the classics, from the Bronte sisters to Melville, Shakespeare to Flannery O'Connor. The pockets of the clothes hanging in her closet had nothing in them. The purses and suitcases on the shelves above were likewise empty.

I didn't have the time for an in-depth search but after twenty minutes or so I was pretty sure that Angelique lived the uneventful life of most young women her age. She was just a happy-go-lucky girl with an education and a job, biannual vacations, and a healthy interest in men. There were no antidepressants or sleeping pills in her medicine cabinet, no secret stash of hashish, or any harder substance, that I could find.

I wondered how such a normal young woman could be mixed up in murder-or, even worse, with Alphonse Rinaldo.

"Hello?" came a voice from the front doorway.

I pulled a shiny black plastic box from my pocket. It was half-again the length and three-quarters the width of a classic BlackBerry. I pressed a button on the side and a yellow light appeared at the front end of the little faux machine.

I scooted into the hall, situated myself in front of the bathroom door, and said, "In here."

A few heavy, hurried footsteps and Klott was at the entrance of the short hallway.

"What are you doing in here?" he demanded.

"My job." I was holding the little box out in front of me, taking readings.

"How did you get in here?"

"Door was unlocked and I smelled gas. Don't you?"

Klott sniffed the air and turned toward the kitchen. I followed him, holding the box out in front of me like a uranium prospector with a new-century Geiger counter.

When I entered the kitchen I pressed a button underneath the box with my baby finger and the yellow light slowly turned red.

"You see?" I said, pushing the box closer to the stove and secretly pressing the button again. Now the red light started blinking.

"What's that?" Klott asked.

"The newest thing. We use it to detect escaping gas. When it's white everything's okay. I got an amber light outside the front door."

"How did you get in here?" Klott asked again.

"It was open."

"I check every apartment every night. This door's been locked for the last week and the tenant hasn't been here."

"She must've come in when you weren't looking and left in a hurry 'cause the door was unlocked, and you can see that it wasn't broke or anything."

Klott went out to inspect the front door.

"What were you doing in the other part of the house?" he asked.

"You use the detector to make sure the gas is not coming from multiple sources," I said, pretending to be paraphrasing some manual.

"Let me see that thing," he said, reaching for my box as he did so.

I stiff-armed him with my left palm. He went backward eighteen inches. Now that we knew who had the muscle in the room, he wouldn't try to get physical again.

"Don't be grabbin' at me, man," I said, reverting to the dialect he expected of my skin color.

Klott's eyes tightened but he stayed put.

"Are you finished?" he asked.

"Just gotta check out the stove and I'm done."

"You didn't do that first?"

"I save the obvious for last."

I pulled the stove away from the wall and for the next eight minutes or so pretended to check the connections. After that I pushed the unit back into place and relit the pilots.

"That's it," I said.

"I'm calling your supervisor," Klott replied.

"And what are you going to tell her?"

"That you broke in here."

"Lock's not broken and I haven't taken anything," I reasoned. "My boss'll tell you to call the cops, and they'll ask for the proof. You won't have it and the next time you call them they won't come."

A shiver went through Mr. Klott. He'd been living in his little real estate fiefdom for so long that he honestly believed that he was king of the mountain.

"Nice doin' business wichya," I said with a smile.

After that I picked up my red box full of master keys and letters and made my way down to the street.

Back at my office I found Mardi reading through the files I kept of my honest cases. She looked up and gave me her soft impression of a smile.

"Hi, Mr. McGill."

"Mardi. How's it goin'?"

"I've been reading through your files."

"And?"

"I thought the life of a private detective would be romantic, or at least exciting," she said.

"Not hardly."

"I can see that. In this case you sat out in front of a woman's apartment for nearly two weeks and in the end you say that nothing happened."

"Thomas Lavender," I remembered. "Got a job in Boston and was sure that his wife was entertaining some lover whenever he was gone. With his approval I bugged the phone system, put mikes in the bedroom, living room, kitchen, and even the bathroom. Then I sat out in front of the house eighteen hours a day. She never so much as sang in the shower."

Mardi giggled, hearing a joke I might not have made.

"She was looking for a couple'a bucks six months later and found my card in Tom's wallet. She called and asked me why her husband needed a private detective."

"What did you say?" Mardi asked.

"I told her that I'd never heard of her husband or her for that matter. She wanted to know how he got my card if I didn't know him. I asked her was anything written on the card. She said yes, that someone had written a phone number on the back. I said someone had probably used my card to write him some note, that it happens all the time."

"How did you know there was a number on the back?" Mardi asked, much more interested in my story than she was in the file.