Thinking of the terror and humiliation that Twill's friend had endured, the words of my father came to me: Tragedy either makes or breaks the will of the proletariat.

I had planned to pawn the child off on Aura when Twill made his request the night before. But now I couldn't imagine talking to my ex. And seeing the resolve in Mardi's face, I believed that she might well be made for a job like this.

"Let's try it out," I said. "We'll talk salary and hours later on. There's a laptop computer in the bottom drawer of the desk and an Internet connection in the wall. Why don't you set that up and make yourself at home."

I went to the fireproof brown metal door that led to my inner offices and entered a code on the digital keypad.

"There's a code to this door," I said before entering. "If you last two weeks I'll give it to you. For today I'll just leave it unlocked in case you need to come down and ask me something. And, oh yeah, whenever you walk in the front door three hidden cameras take pictures for about eight minutes. Just so you know."

I left the girl looking up at the ceiling, trying to find the secret eyes.

MY OFFICE DESK WAS made from ebony, its back to a window that looks south, on lower Manhattan. It was a clear day and you could make out the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

I tried my virtual answering machine but the growling bear from before had left no message.

For a while I counted my breaths, making it up to ten and then starting over. After maybe fifteen minutes I called information on my cell phone and they agreed to connect the call for no additional charge.

"Oxford Arms," a severe woman's voice said.

"Mr. Strange, please."

"One moment," she said, as if I were put on earth to irk her. And then, "We have no Mr. Strange in residence."

"Really? He told me that I could call him there at any time. Maybe you have another number for him?"

"Please wait," she said, managing to insinuate her agitation in the sound of the click that put me on hold.

Forty seconds later she was back. "Mr. Strange checked out this morning. He left no messages."

I paused there, wondering what this wrinkle meant for my involvement in Rinaldo's business.

"Is that quite all?" the woman asked.

"Aren't you supposed to be polite or something?"

The lady hung up.

I SHOULD HAVE FELT relief at Strange's departure. If he was gone, didn't that mean the investigation, whatever it was about, was over?

But when working around Rinaldo, loose ends were never a good thing.

I logged on to the New York news engine that the computer whiz Tiny "Bug" Bateman had written for me. This customized piece of software allows me to connect various newswire accounts of specific crimes and criminals-it even taps a special police website using keywords from newspaper and wire accounts.

Wanda Soa had been a cocktail waitress and student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The man found stabbed to death in Wanda's apartment carried no identification and the police had yet to identify him. No one heard the shot that killed the woman, but the door had been left wide open and a passing neighbor got worried and called the super-a woman named Dorothy Harding. Police were asking for anyone with information to come forward.

There was no mention of the name Tara Lear.

The crime made very little sense. It was unlikely that Wanda stabbed the button man before he shot her, and she certainly couldn't have done it with half her face gone. From what I remembered, the door hadn't been broken open, so someone had probably let the killer, or killers, in.

And what was I doing there? That was my existential question, in hindsight.

A buzzer that I'd never heard before sounded-quite loudly. I nearly jumped out of my chair.

"Mr. McGill?" bodiless Mardi Bitterman said.

It took me a moment to remember the intercom box on my desk. I hadn't used it in the twenty- one months I'd had the office.

Pressing a button, I said, "Yes?"

"There's a man out here who says that he's the new financial officer for the building. He wants to talk with you."

I remembered the guards at the front desk telling me that there was a new bookkeeper who was going through everyone's overtime. They didn't like him, and I still had enough of my union-organizing father's background to side with the working class.

"Send him in, Mardi. Tell him to follow the hall to the far end."

There are no straight lines in the life or labors of the private detective.

In gumshoe fiction, the PI gets on the case at about page six and follows it through without a pause or distraction from his, or her, personal life. He certainly doesn't have to deal with accountants who have been charged by their bosses with the ouster of a suspect tenant: me.

At least he knocked.

"Come in."

Though I had not seen his face clearly, I knew Aura's lover by his height and weight, pinstriped suit, and oxblood briefcase.

The only hint revealing my murderous heart was a momentary flutter of my eyelashes.

"Mr. McGill?" he asked.

I nodded and started counting breaths again.

"My name is George Toller," he said. "I'm the new chief financial officer of the Tesla."

"Oh? I thought CFOs ran corporations," I said.

"May I have a seat?"

I gestured toward one of the blue and chrome visitor's chairs, and Toller sat down.

"You are correct, of course. I run the entire company for Hyman and Schultz. They own nearly three dozen New York properties-thirty-three, to be exact. They have sent me here to clear up some messes left by the previous owners and their representatives."

That was another thing about mystery novels: at the end of the story the crime is solved and that's that. The crook is caught, or maybe just found out. But, regardless, the crime is never carried on to the next book in the series. You rarely find the stalwart and self-possessed dick looking for a perpetrator from the previous story.

I wasn't so lucky. The crimes I dealt with lagged on for years, sometimes decades.

And in this case Toller was the investigator and I was the elusive criminal.

The previous manager of the Tesla, Terry Swain, had embezzled a large sum of money over twenty-some years. The new owners looked a little closer than the previous ones and tumbled to the misappropriations. Around the same time, I was between offices and had found out that there was a beautiful suite recently vacated on the seventy-second floor. I offered to muddy the waters of the investigation for a rock-bottom price on a fifteen-year lease. Terry leapt at the deal and I got him off, even saved his retirement fund for him.

Ever since that time the owners have had it in for me. First they sent Aura to get me evicted but instead we became lovers. Now they sent my ex-lover's lover.

There had to be some kind of meaning to that.

"How can I help you, Mr. Toller?"

"You could pack your things and move out," he said. "I'd be happy to tear up your lease."

He smiled without showing any teeth.

It struck me that he had no idea about the relationship between me and Aura.

"I couldn't give up this view," I confessed.

"Eight rooms and only one employee? Mr. McGill, this is a waste of space."

We hated each other without having ever met. What was interesting to me was that our reasons were so far apart. His sense of propriety was bent out of shape by my shadowy dealings with his masters' property. College had taught him contempt for me. Conversely, my abhorrence for him had a genetic basis. This man had stolen my woman. I wanted to cut out his heart right there on my African-wood table.