“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Ask your father.”

“My father?”

“This has been so pleasant,” said Lavender Hill as he stood from the chair. “We should do this again. Maybe over a cocktail. I do adore a stiff cocktail.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“I can see myself out, Victor. Thank you for your hospitality.”

Just as he stepped out my door, I said, “Six figures won’t be enough.”

He stopped, swiveled his hips to face me, put an expression of amusement on his face. “Are we negotiating now?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t negotiate such a deal. But, knowing the value of the painting, I couldn’t advise my client to take anything less than seven.”

“So we’ve both done our research. Very, very good. I’ll discuss it with my client.”

“And lawyers generally get a third.”

“Yes, and auctioneers generally only get a tenth. Somewhere in the middle seems more than fair. But this is all so promising. I’ve made an offer, you’ve made a counteroffer, we’re haggling over percentages. I know you can’t be part of this, Victor, but already it feels like a negotiation to me. Ciao, dear one. I’ll be waiting for a call. But don’t keep me waiting long.”

When he vanished from the doorway, I was left with his lingering scent and the throb of my pulse that always accompanies the flash of big money. He hadn’t even blinked when I told him six figures wasn’t enough. Hadn’t even blinked.

I sat at my desk, rubbing my hands together and thinking it through. To sell the painting would be illegal, and a lawyer really can’t be involved in anything illegal. Really. And yet Lav might have been right when he said his offer would be the best for Charlie and maybe for Charlie’s mother, too. I could imagine the tearful reunion on a lovely cay off the coast of Venezuela, mother and son, together again, under a bright Caribbean sky. And passing on a mere phone number surely wouldn’t violate any of my legal oaths. Surely. And what about the law of either/or? If I wasn’t going to be able to bank the retainer, I should at least get something out of this whole mess, don’t you think? Either/or.

This favor for my father was getting more interesting by the moment, and more troubling, too. Who did this Lavender Hill represent, and how did he know so much about Charlie Kalakos and his situation? And what the hell did my father have to do with any of it? I needed some answers, and I knew who could get them for me. So I made a call and set up a meeting with Phil Skink, my private investigator, for the very next morning and then walked out of my office.

Beth was gone, Ellie was gone, the place was sadly deserted as dusk crept in. I was already dog tired, but I had no great desire to head to my ruined home. A drink, I decided, would be the perfect thing. Only one, maybe two, nothing much, just enough. And off I went, toward Chaucer’s, my usual tavern, and toward what must have been a hell of a night, if only I could remember it.

“You look like a beaten dog,” said Phil Skink, staring down on me as I lay on the old leather couch in his dusty outer office.

“I feel worse,” I said.

“Impossible, mate. If you felt worse than you look, you’d be dead. I’ve eaten mutton what looked more alive than you. What the devil were you up to last night?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sounds like trouble, it does. A dame involved?”

“I think.”

“Sounds like more than trouble. Next time you give me a call before it gets out of hand.”

“And you’ll pull me out?”

“Don’t be daft,” said Skink. “I’ll be joining in. No reason you should be having all the fun.”

Go to your butcher, ask for all the gristle and bone he can scrape off his floor. Pile it onto a roasting pan, dress it up in a natty brown suit with thick pinstripes, a brown fedora, a bright tie. Give it high cholesterol and pearly teeth. Add the brains of a mathematician, an irrational fear of canines, a weakness for wine-soaked women. Throw in a squeeze of violence and a dash of charm, season with sea salt, bake to hardboiled, and right there you’d pretty much have cooked yourself Phil Skink, private eye.

I had set up a meeting in his office after my interview with Lavender Hill, and now I had arrived, late and limping from the night before, with my eyes still red and my jaw still slack.

“Your head hurt?” he asked.

“Is there a thunderstorm roiling through your office?”

“No.”

“Then it hurts.”

“You take anything?”

“Two Advil. Like shooting a woolly mammoth with a BB gun.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll take care of you.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again, there he stood, in one hand a glass with some thick brown sludge that was bubbling and belching, in the other a long green pickle.

“Sit up,” he said. “Doctor’s orders.”

I did as he said and felt my consciousness slip as the blood drained from my swollen head.

“Drink this and eat this,” said Skink. “A sip, a bite, a sip, a bite. You get the idea.”

“I don’t think so, Phil.”

“Do as I say and you’ll be good as new.”

“Really, I’m okay.”

“Look, mate, it hurts me just to look at you. Do it or I’ll pour the drink down your throat and then stuff the pickle in after.”

“Hell of a bedside manner,” I said even as I grabbed hold of the drink and the pickle. With my eyes closed, I took a sip. Not terrible, actually, spicy and sour all at once, and with a bite of the pickle to chase it down, it was almost palatable. “What is it, hair of the dog?”

“The only thing you lose by chasing alcohol with alcohol is sobriety, and you lost enough of that already. Finish it up.”

“All of it?”

“Well, hell, I don’t want none of it.”

“And if I throw it all up on the rug?”

“Be sure to miss my shoes.”

I finished it all, closed my eyes, belched loudly, tasted it all again, and gagged twice. But strangely, when I opened my eyes, I did feel better, almost renewed.

“What’s in that?” I said.

“A secret recipe taught me by a hostess name of Carlotta I was seeing in Salinas.”

“Carlotta, huh?”

“She had tricks, she did.”

“Oh, I bet.”

“Hey, strictly management, she was. I still gots all my choppers. So what did you want to meet me about? This thing what’s got you all over the news, this Charlie the Greek with the painting?”

“That’s right,” I said.

I handed him the card Lavender Hill had left with my secretary. He looked at it for a moment, brought it to his nose and took a sniff, raised his eyebrows.

“He came to me with an offer to buy the painting. But he knew enough about what was going on to leave me uncomfortable. Find out who he is and who he’s working for.”

“Lavender Hill.”

“His friends call him Lav.”

Skink took another sniff of the card. “Sweet guy?”

“Apparently, if a purple suit says anything anymore, although I got a sense not to take him lightly.”

“He’s got a Savannah area code.” Skink took a notepad from a pocket, a pen from another, clicked the pen, started writing. “Anything else on him?”

“That’s all I got.”

“All right, mate,” he said as he tapped the point of his pen on the pad. “Usual rates. It might necessitate a quick jaunt to Georgia to track down his story.”

“Whatever you need to do. Oh, and Phil. He should know we’re looking. Don’t be too discreet. Let’s rattle his chain a bit and see how he reacts.”

“I’ll be a regular bull in his china shop, I will. That it?”

“Something else,” I said. “I want you to look into a guy name of Bradley Hewitt, a fixer of sorts. He has an in with the mayor and uses it for all sorts of business affairs. Find out what you can about him.”

Skink again started scribbling on his pad. “Any details. Addresses? Phone numbers?”