"But why pick on me, Al?"

"Because your business card was on his desk. You coming or do I have to send a SWAT team after you?"

"On my way," I said.

I paused long enough to take one sip of marc (a gulp would have demolished me) and bounced downstairs. I trotted out to the garage to board my pride and joy. It had been a sparkling day, and the night was still dulcet. As I drove, I admired Mother Nature while I pondered who might have stuck a shiv in the throat of Father Hawkin.

People acquainted with my investigative career sometimes ask, "What was your first case?" To which I invariably reply, "A 1986 Haut Brion." Actually, my first Discreet Inquiry that involved criminal behavior turned out to be a debacle because I hadn't yet learned that in addition to lust, we all have murder in our hearts-or if not murder, at least larceny.

So now I could easily come up with a Cast of Characters who might have put down Silas Hawkin, including wife, daughter, maid, gallery agent, and any of his clients. But, as in any homicide investigation, the prime question was Cut bono? Or who benefited from the artist's death?

When I arrived at the Villa Bile the studio building had already been festooned with crime scene tape. The bricked driveway was crowded with official vehicles including an ambulance, indicating they had not yet removed what Al Rogoff enjoys referring to as the corpus delicious.

There was a uniformed officer standing guard at the studio door, inspecting the heavens and dreaming, no doubt, of Madonna.

"Archy McNally," I reported to this stalwart. "Sergeant Rogoff asked me to come over."

"Yeah?" he said, not very interested. "You stay here and I'll go see."

I waited patiently, and in a few minutes the sergeant himself came trundling out, a cold cigar jutting from his meaty face. Al is built like an Ml-Al tank, and when he moves I always expect to hear the clanking of treads.

"What were you doing here this morning?" he demanded, wasting no time on preliminaries.

"Good evening, Al," I said.

"Good evening," he said. "What were you doing here this morning? The maid, wife, and daughter don't know- or maybe they do and aren't saying."

"I'm doing a credit check on a man Hawkin knew," I said. "I stopped by to get his opinion on the subject."

"And who is the subject?"

I had calculated how much I could tell him and how much, in good conscience, I could withhold.

"Hector Johnson," I told him. "The father of one of the late artist's customers."

"And why are you doing a credit check on him?"

"At the request of a client of McNally and Son."

"What client?"

"Nope," I said. "Unethical. Confidentiality."

He looked at me. "You're no lawyer and you know it."

"But I represent my father who is an attorney," I pointed out. "And I can't divulge the information you request without his permission."

"Son," Al said heavily, "you've got more crap than a Christmas goose. All right, I won't push it-for now. Let's go up."

We entered through that oak and etched glass door. I glanced into the ground floor area. Mrs. Louise Hawkin was slumped at one end of a sailcloth-covered couch and Marcia Hawkin was at the other end, both as far apart as ever. We tramped up the cast-iron staircase and walked into the studio. The techs were busy.

Rogoff stopped me. "Wife was out playing bridge. Daughter went to a movie. They say. Silas didn't go over to the main house for dinner, but everyone says that wasn't unusual. When his work was going good he hated to stop. Finally, around nine o'clock, the maid called him to ask if he was coming over to eat or if he wanted her to bring him a plate. No answer. But she could see the lights on up here. So she came over and found him. Let's go take a look."

He was lying supine, naked on that tattered sleigh bed. His eyes were still open. The knife was still in his throat. An assistant from the ME's office was fussing over him. I knew the man. Thomas Bunion. One of the few people I've ever met who are simultaneously cantankerous and timid.

I stared down at the remains of Silas Hawkin. There was an ocean of blood. An ocean. I am not a total stranger to violent death and thought I had learned to view a corpse with some dispassion, without needing to scurry away and upchuck in private. But I admit I was spooked by the sight of the murdered artist. So pale. For some reason his beard looked fake, as if it had been spirit-gummed to his face.

A wooden handle protruded from his neck.

"It looks like a palette knife," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

"Uh-huh," Rogoff said. "We already figured that."

"But a palette knife doesn't have a cutting edge," I said. "And the blade is usually thin and pliable, something like a spatula. It's difficult to believe it was driven in so deeply and killed him."

"Well, it did," Bunion said crossly. "Looks like an artery was severed, but we won't know for sure until we get him on a slab. Thin blade or not, it was a lucky hit."

"Not for Silas," Al said.

"Poor devil," I muttered, turned away, and took a deep breath.

The sergeant inspected me. "Want to go outside, Archy?" he asked quietly.

"No, I'm fine," I told him. "But thanks." I looked around the studio. A plainclothesman was seated behind the decrepit desk, slowly turning pages of the ledger Si had slammed shut when I visited him that morning.

"What is he doing?" I asked.

Rogoff answered: "Hawkin may have been a nutsy artist, but he was a helluva businessman. He kept a record of every painting he did: date started, date finished, and disposition. If it was sold, he wrote down the size of the painting, name and address of the buyer, and the price paid. What we'll do is check his ledger against those finished works stacked against the wall and see if anything is missing."

"That makes sense," I said, but then I thought about it. "Al, are you figuring Hawkin was sleeping naked on that ugly bed and a burglar broke in to grab something he could fence? Then the artist wakes up and the crook grabs the nearest deadly weapon, a palette knife, and shoves it into the victim's throat to keep him quiet?"

He shrugged. "The wife and daughter were away. The maid was in the kitchen at the far side of the maid house with her radio going full blast. She couldn't have heard or seen an intruder. The door to the studio building was unlocked. It could have been a grab-and-run scumbag. Maybe a junkie."

"Do you really believe that?" I asked him.

"No," he said.

We went downstairs together. "Excuse me a moment," I said to the sergeant. I went over to the couch where wife and daughter were still sitting, isolated from each other.

"May I express my sympathy and my deepest sorrow at this horrible tragedy," I said. It came out more floridly than I had intended.

Only Mrs. Louise Hawkin looked up. "Thank you," she said faintly.

Al and I moved outside. He used a wooden kitchen match to light his cold cigar and I borrowed the flame for my third cigarette of the day, resolving it would be the last.

Rogoff jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the ground floor of the studio building. "Not much love lost there," he said.

"No," I agreed, "not much. It was a sex scene, wasn't it, Al?"

He nodded. "That's the way I see it. The guy's in bed with someone, woman or man. There's an argument. She or he grabs up the nearest tool, the palette knife. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Not planned. They started out making love and then things went sour."

"Where do you go from here?"

"Check his inventory of paintings. Check the alibis of wife, daughter, maid, agent, clients, friends, enemies, and everyone connected with him."

"When did it happen-do you know that?"

"Tom Bunion figures it was about an hour before we got the squeal. That would put the time of death around nine o'clock, give or take."