I remembered her as old and complaining, never happy, never satisfied with how anything in her life had turned out. But there was a moment when she had made that move to change her life, was living in sin with that big lug Guernsey, devoting herself to her painting. It was almost romantic, a woman abandoning her placid domestic life for love and art. Like Helen leaving Menelaus for Paris, or Louise Bryant leaving her middle-class life for John Reed, or Pattie Harrison leaving George for Eric Clapton. These were the heroines of epic poems, Oscar-winning films, classic rock ballads. And in that immortal group, at least for a few weeks, was my Grandma Gilda.

I wonder if it would have worked out for her, if a life with Guernsey would have been richer, truer than the one she fell back into. More likely, after a few brief weeks she would have started nagging Guernsey about the dishes in the sink and the clothes on the floor, about his lack of ambition, about the way he never took her out dancing. But she never would know, would she, my Grandma Gilda, because Mrs. Kalakos had taken charge.

The Furies of Greek mythology were three sisters who scoured the earth for sinners to torment. One of them, Megaera, was a shriveled crone with bat wings and a dog’s head. Her harping often drove her victims to suicide. I bet she also drank old tea and kept her shades drawn. I bet she burned incense to hide the scent of death on her breath. I bet she inveighed against freedom and risk, against free will, against any chance to rise and become something other than that which fate had decreed.

“By the way, I got a message for you,” said my father.

I grew suddenly nervous. “From Mrs. Kalakos?”

“No, from that Joey Pride. He wants to talk. He said he’ll pick you up tomorrow morning same time outside your apartment house.”

“He can’t. Call him and tell him he can’t.”

“Tell him yourself. I don’t call him, he calls me.”

“Dad, I’m being followed all the time. I think they followed me to Ralph. And they’re looking for Joey, too. If he picks me up outside my apartment, they’re going to find him.”

“Tough for Joey.”

“Dad.”

“If he calls, I’ll tell him.”

“This is bad.”

“For Joey maybe.”

“Your sympathy for those guys is overwhelming.”

“They were punks,” he said. “Always were, always will be. If they was involved with that robbery, like you said, then they stepped out of their league, and now they’re paying for it. That’s always the way of it. You got to know your limitations.”

“Like your mother.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You know, after she came back like she did, she threw out all her paintings. Never touched a brush again.”

“Were the paintings any good?”

“Nah. But she sure was happy painting them.”

I got to the office early the next morning, fiddled with some paperwork, made some phone calls. Then I headed off to City Hall.

Philadelphia’s City Hall is a grand monstrosity of a building set smack in the very center of William Penn’s plan for the city. Four and a half acres of masonry in the ornate style of the French Second Empire, the building is bigger than any other city hall in the country, but that doesn’t say enough. It is bigger than the United States Capitol. The granite walls on the bottom floor are twenty-two feet thick, the bronze of Billy Penn is the tallest statue atop any building in the world. You want to get an idea of the size of the thing? About ten years ago, they removed thirty-seven tons of pigeon droppings from its roofs and statuary. Seventy-four thousand pounds. Think on that for a moment. That’s a load of guano, even for a building designed for politicians. If you can’t get lost in Philadelphia’s City Hall, you’re not trying very hard.

I entered the doors at the southwest quadrant, climbed the wide granite steps to the second floor, where I headed toward the prothonotary’s office. Prothonotary is our local term for clerk, like cheese steak is our local term for health food and councilman is our local term for crook. I ducked in, looked around, ducked out again, spotted no one suspicious in the hallway. I proceeded to make a grand tour of the building, starting with the mayor’s office. A cop was stationed at the door, to keep the FBI from sneaking inside and bugging it again, no doubt. I took an elevator to the fourth floor and walked past the Marriage License Bureau and the Orphans’ Court, two locales still thankfully foreign to me. I climbed down another huge stairwell to the third floor, walked past City Council offices, felt my sense of morality disappearing into some strange vortex. At the elevator I looked around and went back down to the second floor.

The cop in front of the mayor’s office eyed me as I passed by. “You looking for something, pal?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, “but fortunately I’m not finding it.”

I entered another of the wide stairwells and climbed down to the ground floor again. I was now at the northeast corner of the building, the exact opposite of where I had entered. I slipped out of the building and quickly raised my hand.

A battered old Yellow Cab with its top light off pulled up beside me. I opened the door and slid inside. The cab veered around a few lanes and then headed north on Broad.

“I expect there’s a reason for all this subterfuge and flimflam,” said Joey Pride from behind the wheel.

“Just trying to keep the body count down,” I said.

“Whose body you talking about?”

“Yours.”

“Well, then, boy, flimflam away. And at least you sent me a messenger easy on the eyes.”

“Yes, I did,” I said, smiling at Monica Adair sitting beside me on the backseat, her hair back in a ponytail, her face freshly scrubbed. While I was staying busy at my office, I had sent Monica to intercept Joey in front of my apartment and direct him to our rendezvous. I hadn’t been able to spot who was following me – I was no Phil Skink, who could spy the tail of a mouse at fifty yards – but after what happened with Charlie at Ocean City, I had begun to take precautions.

“So, Joey,” I said, “you wanted to see me?”

“Your boy’s trying to screw my ass,” said Joey Pride, “and I just wanted you to tell him it’s not worthy of our past together.”

“Do I have any idea what you are talking about?”

“Maybe we ought to drop her off before we keep talking.”

“Oh, Monica’s fine,” I said. “Anything I can hear, she can hear, too. Her profession is all about secrets.”

“Okay, then. Remember that fish we was discussing before Ralph got it in the head, the one handing out the Benjamins?”

Lavender Hill. Damn. “Yes, I remember.”

“He got hold of me once again. Said he was close to working out a deal with Chuckles the Clown, and that Chuckles, out of the generosity of his shriveled Greek heart, had decided what my share will be when the deal goes down.”

“And what share is that?”

“Well, he figured, since there was five of us in that long-ago escapade, that I should get a fifth.”

“That makes some sense.”

“Did thirty years ago, don’t make that kind of sense now. Ralph is dead, Teddy has been missing since the painting was took, and considering what he ended up with, he don’t deserve nothing more, and Hugo ain’t going to be begging for his share, I can tell you that.”

“What does that mean?”

“It don’t matter. What matters is that, the way I see it, the split should be fifty-fifty.”

“Fine, but leave me out. I can’t be part of any negotiation.”

“You part of it already, Victor. You the one who set this up.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No other way it could have played out, so don’t pretend you’re wearing a white suit here and glowing like an angel. You get back to our boy and tell him it’s fifty-fifty or there will be trouble.”