Some of the sunlight fell through a stand of trees cloistering a low knoll deeper into the park and flashed on something and reflected brightly for a moment. A mirror? More like a magnifying lens. I lunged toward the doorway next to me and rolled in against the door as a bullet smacked into the limestone frame of the entryway. The whining sound of the ricochet blended with the bang of the original.

I got the short Smith Wesson.38 off my hip. It was about as useful as a tennis racquet at this distance. I waited a moment. There was no second shot. I got my feet under me and burst out of the doorway, bent as low as I could get. I ran straight across Fifth Avenue, getting honked at by the taxis, and zigzagged through the Seventy-sixth Street pedestrian entrance, going as hard as I could go.

I varied the zigzag so as not to give the shooter a pattern. A target running straight at you and moving erratically was quite hard to hit, especially with a rifle and a scope, which, I was pretty sure, was what the shooter had. My hope was that I would zig when the shooter was aiming zag, and vice versa.

I must have raced past people, and some of them must have seen the gun in my hand, but I was so focused on the knoll ahead that I was not even aware of them. I was vaguely aware that a couple of people were staring up at the knoll as I got closer. It was flanked with some of the big stone outcroppings that add character to the park, and as I scrambled up them, I knew my breath was rasping and my heart was galloping in my chest.

I moved from outcropping to outcropping, staying as low as I could, keeping the rocks between me and the top of the knoll. Then I was at the top, crouched behind the last sheltering rock, gasping air into my lungs. There had been no further shots after the first one. It could mean the shooter had left. It could mean that the shooter had stayed where he was and allowed me to get close enough to take me out point blank. It would have taken a lot of self-discipline, but if the shooter was who I thought he was, he probably had self-discipline.

I took in more air. Okay, I thought, let's see. I cocked the.38, took a last deep breath, and dove over the rock. I landed in the grove of trees rolling. I kept rolling, and as I rolled I kept my gun sort of gyroscopically leveled, looking for someone to shoot, and there was no one there. I came to my feet. The grove of trees was completely still. I looked down the knoll. There was nothing unusual. No one was running, no one was carrying a rifle. No passersby were pointing or paying much attention. I could see several blocks down Fifth Avenue.

At Seventy-fourth Street a man in a gray overcoat got into a cab. He was carrying what looked at that distance like a trombone case. The cab pulled away into the traffic. It was too far to get a number. I looked around the wooded knoll a little and scuffed the leaves and in a while I found the shell casing. It was a.458 Magnum. I was surprised it left the building standing.

I dropped the shell in my jacket pocket, put my.38 back on my hip, and started back down the knoll. A couple of people looked at me briefly and went on about their business. I could feel the sweat soaking through my shirt. But my breathing was beginning to regulate, and my heart rate was probably down under a hundred and fifty by now.

I walked back to the Seventy-sixth Street entrance and crossed, waiting for the light this time, and strolled back down to the doorway I'd ducked into. There was a deep pock mark about chest high in the limestone where I would have been had I not seen the flare off the scope. I didn't see the slug and didn't look for it. It wouldn't tell me anything.

The doorman came out of the building. "What's going on?" he said.

"I don't know," I said. "Something took a bite out of your building."

He looked at the pock mark and looked around and shrugged.

"Got me," he said and went back inside.

"Got me too," I said aloud to no one and turned back up to Seventy-sixth Street and walked the block east to the Carlyle.

The East Side was going about its upscale business just as if someone hadn't tried to shoot me. There were neat little signs in the minuscule patches of plant life along the sidewalk. The signs asked you to please curb your dog. In my memory, I had never, in any city, seen a dog being curbed. Still I liked the flicker of urban optimism that the signs embodied. Without hope, what are we?

I had no doubt who the shooter was, and he was good. The bullet would have nailed me right in the middle of the chest if I hadn't flopped at the right time. The Gray Man had known I was in New York and known where I was in New York and been able to set up and wait for me in New York. And when it hadn't worked out, he'd calmly put the rifle away and walked off and hailed a cab. The only people who knew I was in New York were Susan, and Hawk, and Don and Dina Stapleton. Only Don and Dina had known the hour of my appointment. This put them above Hawk and Susan on my list of suspects.

Plus they had lied to me. People often lied to me, but usually they had a reason and sometimes the reason mattered. Don had known the killing was sex related though he professed no knowledge of it and I hadn't mentioned it. Dina had been startled when Don said he didn't know Hunt McMartin and Glenda Baker. She didn't have much affect, but there had been enough to tell me that. Hunt and Glenda had both gone to Andover, Glenda during the time Clint Stapleton would have been there. Clint Stapleton was the black child of white parents. Saved from a life of depravity.

I turned into the small elegant lobby of the Carlyle and everyone was nice to me just as if I could afford to stay there. Maybe they thought I could. I had my blue suit on, and there were no bullet holes in it.

Chapter 28

I HAD A problem. Obviously there was something wrong with the Ellis Alves case. I needed to keep plowing at that until it was passable. Also, obviously, somebody had hired the Gray Man to kill me. And I probably ought to do something about that. Except that I didn't know what to do about that. I didn't know who had hired the Gray Man and I didn't know who the Gray Man was. Which made it hard to find him. The best I could do was to keep at the Ellis Alves case and assume that the Gray Man would find me, and that when he did, I could out-quick him.

That decided, I acted promptly. I drove across the river and picked up a green pepper and mushroom pizza from Bertucci's in Harvard Square and took it to Susan's house along with a bottle of Merlot. It was 5:30 and she was with her last patient of the day when I went in the front door. When I opened the front door, Pearl the Wonder Dog charged out of the library and capered about in the front hall. Her eyes had the slitty look they got when she'd been sleeping on a couch. I bent over and gave her a kiss. She was returning it wetly when she got a whiff of the pizza and redirected her affections toward it. I held it up out of her reach.

Lee Farrell appeared in the open door across the hall, his body partly concealed behind the half-open door. When he saw it was me, he stepped away from the door and shoved a Glock 9-mm. back into his belt holster, butt forward.

"I guess you're okay," he said.

"There's some doubt about that," I said. "But I'm no threat to Susan."

Belson appeared behind Farrell. He was in his shirtsleeves, his gun holstered on his right hip. He was very lean with a narrow face, and a blue shadow of beard always showing no matter how recently he had shaved.

"That for us?" he said.

I went into the library and put the pizza on the sideboard, right beside two boxes of shotgun shells stacked one on top of the other. I didn't bother to answer the question. Pearl came back in with me and sat in front of the sideboard and focused on the pizza.