“I don't think so, Mrs. Mercier. I really need to speak to your husband.”

There was a pause in the conversation long enough to make our feelings about each other clear, and then Deborah Mercier concluded: “In that case, perhaps you'd be kind enough not to phone the house again. Jack is not available at present, but I'll make sure he hears that you called.”

With that she hung up, and I got the feeling that Jack Mercier would never know that I had called him.

I had never spoken to Rabbi Yossi Epstein and knew nothing more about him than what I had just read, but his activities had awakened something, something that lay curled in its web until Epstein caused one of the strands to twitch and the sleeping thing roused itself and came after him, then tore him apart before it returned to the dark place in which it lived.

In time, I would find that place.

I RETURNED TO RACHEL'S APARTMENT, showered, and in an effort to cheer myself up for the evening ahead, put on some of my sharp new purchases: a black Joseph Abboud coat that made me look like I was auditioning for the second remake of Nosferatu, black gabardine pants and a black DKNY V neck. Screaming “fashion victim,” I walked down to the Copley Plaza Hotel and into the Oak Bar.

Outside, the traffic on Copley melted away, the sound of horns and engines smothered by the red curtains of the Oak. The four big ceiling fans scythed the air and the ice in the raw bar glittered in the dim light. Louis was already sitting at a table by the window, his long frame folded into one of the bar's comfortable red chairs. He was wearing a black wool suit with a white shirt and black shoes. His dark head was no longer shaven and he had grown a small, vaguely satanic beard, which, if anything, rendered him even more intimidating than before. In the past, when he had been bald and devoid of facial hair, people crossed the street to avoid him. Now they probably felt the urge to book a trip somewhere safe and quiet, like Somalia or Sierra Leone.

There was a presidential martini on the table before him, and he was smoking a Montecristo No. 2. That was about $55 worth of vices. He blew a stream of blue smoke at me in greeting. I ordered a virgin cocktail and shrugged off my coat, ostentatiously showing Louis the label as I did so.

“Yeah, very impressive,” he said unconvincingly. “Not even last season's. You so cheap, your hourly rate probably got ninety-nine cents at the end.”

“Where's the insignificant other?” I asked, ignoring him.

“Buying some clothes. Airline lost his bag.”

“They're doing him a favor. You pay them to lose it?”

“Didn't have to. Baggage handlers probably refused to touch it. Piece of shit practically walked to La Guardia by itself. How you doin'?”

“Pretty good.”

“Still huntin' pen pushers?” Louis didn't entirely approve of my move into the area of white-collar criminals. He felt that I was wasting my talents. I decided to let him go on thinking it for a while.

“The money's okay and they don't tend to kick up a fuss,” I replied, “although one of them called me a bad name once.”

Close to the door, heads began to turn and one of the waiters almost dropped a tray of drinks in shock. Angel entered, dressed in a yellow-and-green Hawaiian shirt, a yellow tie, a powder blue jacket, stonewashed jeans, and a pair of red boots so bright they throbbed. Conversations died as he passed by, and a few people tried to shield their eyes.

“Off to see the wizard?” I asked when the red boots finally reached us.

Louis looked like someone had just splashed paint on his car.

“Shit, Angel, the hell you think you are? Mardi Gras?”

Angel calmly took a seat, ordered a Beck's from a distressed-looking waiter, then stretched out his legs to admire his new boots. He straightened his tie, which did nothing to help in the long term but obscured some of his shirt for a while.

“You look like a used car salesman on acid,” I told him.

“Man, I didn't even know Filene's Basement had a basement,” said Louis. “Must be where they keep the real shit.”

Angel shook his head and smiled. “I'm making a statement,” he said, like a teacher explaining a lesson to a pair of slow children.

“I know the kind of statement you makin',” replied Louis as Angel's beer arrived. “You sayin', ‘Kill me, I got no taste.’ ”

“You should carry a sign,” I advised. “ ‘I will work for fashion tips.’ ”

It felt good to be here with them. Angel and Louis were just about the closest friends I had. They had stood by me as the confrontation with the Traveling Man drew closer, and had faced down the guns of a Boston scumbag named Tony Celli in order to save the life of a girl they had never met. Their gray morality, tempered by expediency, was closer to goodness than most people's virtue.

“How's life in the sticks?” asked Angel. “Still living in the rural slum?”

“My house is not a slum.”

“It don't even have carpets.”

“It's got timber floors.”

“It's got timbers. Just 'cause they fell on the ground don't make them a floor.”

He paused to sip his beer, allowing me to change the subject.

“Anything new in the city?” I asked.

“Mel Valentine died,” said Angel.

“Psycho Mel?” Psycho Mel Valentine had been working his way through the A-to-Z of crime: arson, burglary, counterfeiting, drugs… If he hadn't died, then pretty soon the Bronx Zoo would have been mounting a guard on its zebras.

Angel nodded. “Always thought the ‘Psycho Mel’ thing was unfair. Maybe he'd have been psychotic if they quietened him down some, but ‘Psycho’ seemed like kind of an underestimation of his abilities.”

“How'd he die?”

“Gardening accident in Buffalo. He was trying to break into a house when the owner killed him with a rake.”

He raised his glass to the memory of Psycho Mel Valentine, gardening victim.

Rachel appeared a few minutes later, much earlier than expected, wearing a yellow coat that hung to her ankles. Her long red hair was tied up at the back of her head and held in place by a pair of wooden skewers.

“Nice hair,” said Angel. “You pick up all the channels with those things, or just local?”

“Tuning must be off,” she replied. “I can still hear you.”

She pulled the sticks from her hair and let it hang loose on her shoulders. It brushed my face as she kissed me gently before ordering a mimosa and taking a seat beside me. I hadn't seen her in almost two weeks and I felt a pang of desire for her as she folded one stockinged leg over the other, her short black skirt rising above midthigh level. She wore a man's shirt, white and with only one button undone. She always wore her shirts that way: if any more buttons were opened, the scars left by the Traveling Man on her chest became visible. As she sat, she placed a large Neiman Marcus bag by her feet. Inside was something red and expensive.

“Needless Markup,” whistled Louis. “You givin' away money, can I have some?”

“Style costs,” she replied.

“That's the truth,” he said. “Try telling it to the other fifty percent of the group.”

The 25 percent that was Angel searched through the big NM bag until he found the receipt, then dropped it quickly and rubbed his fingers like they'd just been burned.

“What she buy?” asked Louis.

“A house,” he said. “Maybe two.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“You're early,” I said.

“You sound disappointed. I disturb a conversation on football or monster trucks?”

“Stereotyping,” I replied. “And you a psychologist.”

We talked for a time, then crossed the street to Anago at the Lenox and spoke about nothing and everything for a couple of hours over venison and beef and oven roast salmon. Then, when the coffee arrived and while the other three sipped Armagnacs, I told them about Grace Peltier, Jack Mercier, and the death of Yossi Epstein.