Dora Conti was beginning to get a glimmer, just a faint perception of what was going on. She cast Sidney Loftus and the Pierces as the sharks and the Starretts as their wriggling prey. But who was doing what to whom remained murky. Dora even drew a diagram: boxed names linked by straight or squiggly lines. It didn't help.

Then Detective John Wenden called.

"Hey, Red," he said with no preliminary sweet talk, "there's a guy I want you to meet: Terence Ortiz, a detective sergeant. We call him Terrible Terry."

"All right," Dora said, "I'll play straight man: Why do you call him Terrible Terry?"

"He's in Narcotics," Wenden said, "and he shoots people. Listen, can we stop by tonight? Late?"

"How late?"

"Around eight o'clock."

"That's not late," Dora said. "I rarely go to bed before nine."

"Liar!" he said, laughing. "See you tonight."

Terry Ortiz turned out to be a short, wiry man with a droopy black mustache that gave him a melancholic mien. But he was full of ginger and had a habit of snapping his fingers. When he was introduced, he kissed Dora's hand, and the mustache tickled.

"Hey," she said, "would you guys like a beer?"

"The sweetest words of tongue or pen," Ortiz said.

"Except for 'The check is in the mail,' " Wenden said.

"Yeah, except it usually ain't," Ortiz said. "I'll settle for a beer."

He was wearing a black leather biker's jacket and black jeans. When he took off the jacket, Dora saw he was carrying a snub-nosed revolver in a shoulder holster. She brought out cans of beer, a bag of pretzels, and a saucer of hot mustard. They sat around the cocktail table, and Terrible Terry slumped and put his boots up.

"I got maybe an hour," he announced, "and then I gotta split. If I don't get home tonight my old lady is going to split me."

"Where do you live, Sergeant Ortiz?" Dora asked politely.

"Terry," he said. "The East Side barrio-where else?

Let's talk business."

"Yeah," John said, "good idea. Red, tell Terry how you came up with the name of Ramon Schnabl."

She explained again how she asked her boss to run a computer check on the ownership of the premises occupied by Stuttgart Precious Metals on West 54th, and eventually the paper trail led to a Luxembourg holding company headed by Schnabl."

"Uh-huh," John said, "and who was the first owner you turned up-the outfit that leased the place to Stuttgart?"

"Spondex Realty Corporation."

The two detectives looked at each other and laughed.

"What are you guys giggling about?" Dora demanded.

"After you mentioned the name of Ramon Schnabl," Wenden said, "I remembered your telling me about that trip to Boston you made and how the store in Roxbury looked like a deserted dump. So just for the hell of it, I called the Boston PD and asked them to find out who owns the building occupied by Felix Brothers Classic Jewelry. Guess what: It's owned by Spondex Realty Corporation."

Dora smacked her forehead with a palm. "Now why didn't I think to check that out?"

"Because you're an amateur," Wenden said. "Talented and beautiful, but still an amateur."

Dora let that slide by-temporarily. "And who is this Ramon Schnabl," she asked, "and what's his racket?"

"Terry," John said, "that's your department. You tell her."

"Ramon Schnabl is very big in the drug biz," the narc said. "Very, very big. The guy runs a supermarket: boo, horse, snow, opium, crack, hash, designer drugs from his own labs-you name it, he's got it. He's also got a vertical organization; he's a grower, shipper, exporter and importer, distributor, wholesaler, and now we think he's setting up his own retail network in New York, New Orleans, and some of his field reps have been spotted in Tucson, Arizona. The guy's a dope tycoon."

"If you know all this," Dora said, "why haven't you destroyed him?"

Terry snapped his fingers. "Don't think we haven't tried. So has the Treasury, the FBI, and the DEA. Every time we think we have him cornered, he weasels out. Witnesses clam up. He doesn't kill rats, he kills their families: wives, children, parents, relatives. Drug dealers are willing to do hard time rather than double-cross Ramon Schnabl. He is not a nice man."

"No," Dora said. "But if he's such a big shot in drugs, what's his interest in precious metals and jewelry stores?"

"Beats me," Wenden said. "I thought about gold smuggling, but that doesn't make sense; gold is available everywhere, and the market sets the price. Also, gold is too heavy to smuggle in bars and ingots. Got any ideas, Terry?"

"Nada," Ortiz said, and finished his beer. "I thought maybe he might be bringing in gold bars with the insides hollowed out and stuffed with dope. But that wouldn't work because, like you said, gold is heavy stuff and someone would spot the difference."

"So?" John said. "Where do we go from here?"

"This is too juicy to drop," Ortiz said. "I think maybe I should take a look at Stuttgart Precious Metals. It could be just a front, and instead of gold, their vault is jammed with kilos of happy dust. I'll case the joint, and if it looks halfway doable, maybe we should pull a B and E. John?"

"I'm game," Wenden said.

Ortiz turned suddenly to Dora. "You got wheels?" he asked.

"A rented Ford Escort," she said.

"Lovely. We may ask for a loan."

"If you need a lookout," she said, "I'm willing."

"I love this woman," Terry said to Wenden. "Love her." He stood up, pulled on his jacket and a black leather cap. "I'll check out Stuttgart and let you know. Thanks for the refreshments. You coming, John?"

"I think I'll hang around awhile," Wenden said.

The narc raised his hand in benediction. "Bless you, my children," he said. He took two pretzels from the bag and left.

Dora laughed. "He thinks we have a thing going," she said.

"I thought we had," John said. "May I have another beer?"

She brought him a cold can. "John, I didn't want to say anything while Terry was here, but you look awful. You've lost weight, and even the bags under your eyes have bags. Aren't you getting any sleep?"

"Not enough. I have to go for a physical next month, and the doc will probably stick me in Intensive Care."

"I worry about you," she said.

"Do you?" he said with a boyish smile. "That's nice. Listen, enough about me; let's talk about the big enchilada: the three guys who got capped. You hear anything new?"

Dora told him about her conversations with Felicia and Eleanor, and how the former planned to marry Turner Pierce. She told him nothing of what she had learned from Gregor Pinchik and his merry band of hackers.

"You think Felicia is hooked?" Wenden asked.

"Definitely. She should be under treatment right now."

"Where is she getting her supply?"

"Eleanor says Turner Pierce is her candyman. But Eleanor is so bitter about the divorce, I don't know if she's telling the truth."

John shook his head. "We find coke under the floorboards in Father Callaway's pad, Felicia is snorting the stuff, and now Ramon Schnabl, a drug biggie, turns out to have some connection with Starrett's gold trading. Maybe it all fits together, but I don't see it. Do you?"

"Not yet," Dora said. "Do you have anything new on the three homicides?"

He brightened. "Yeah-we finally got a break. At least I hope it's a break. Remember I told you we were checking out all the stores, bars, and restaurants in the neighborhood of the Church of the Holy Oneness, to see if Loftus-Callaway had been in the night he was offed. We finally got to a scruffy French restaurant on East Twenty-eighth Street, and an old waiter there says he thinks the good Father was in that night."

"John, it's taken a long time, hasn't it?"

"You think it's an easy job, that you just walk into a joint, flash a photo of the dear departed and ask if he was there at a certain time on a certain date, and then people tell you? It's not that simple, Red. Clerks and bartenders and waiters have so many customers, they forget individual faces. And also, it's hard to find out who was on duty that particular night. And then it turns out that one of the waiters has been fired, or quit for another job, or maybe moved out of the state. And then he's got to be tracked down. Believe me, it's a long, ass-breaking job, and chances are good it'll turn out to be a dead end. But it's got to be done. So as I said, we finally found this restaurant on East Twenty-eighth where a waiter remembers Callaway being in the night he was killed. The reason the waiter remembers him was that the noble padre didn't leave a tip. The moral of that story is: Never stiff a waiter."