“Nothing there to steal. Not that I looked around, I just did what I went there to do, but I couldn’t help notice there’s no furniture. No chairs, no tables, no rug on the floor. Zip, nada, nothing. It’s not like they moved out, because there’s papers pinned to a bulletin board and clothes in the closets. But there’s no furniture. You know anything about these people?”

“I think he’s an architect.”

“Oh,” the man said. “Well, why didn’t you say so? They never have furniture. They like space. Place has got space, I’ll say that for it. One big room, fills the whole floor, and there’s not a damn thing in it but space.”

“There must be a bed,” Keller said.

“There’s a desk,” the man said. “Built in. Also some bookshelves, also built in. Far as a bed’s concerned, well, you find it, you can sleep in it. Myself, I didn’t happen to see it.”

“Oh.”

“Everything’s white,” the man said, “including the floor. Gotta be an architect. Real practical, huh? A white floor in this town?” He put down his cheeseburger, took a forkful of pie, then bit into the cheeseburger again. “I eat everything at once,” he said, a little defensively. “My whole family’s the same way. You’re going in there, right?”

“How’s that?”

“The apartment, the loft. The white space. Well, you got access. Light key’s for the top lock, but hey, if you get mixed up, what’s the problem? One key don’t work, try the other.” He picked up a french fry. “Keys are all yours, soon as you pay for ’em.”

“Oh, right,” Keller said. He passed the man an envelope, and the little locksmith put down his fork long enough to lift the flap and count the bills it contained.

“I always count,” he said, “in case it’s too much or too little. The count’s off about a third of the time, my experience, and what percentage of the time do you figure it’s in my favor?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Bingo,” the man said. “This time the count’s right, and thanks very much.”

“You’re welcome,” Keller said, picking up the keys. “And thanks for helping me out.”

“What I do,” the man said. “I’m a locksmith, licensed and bonded and on call around the clock. People lose their keys, I let ’ em in. They never had keys in the first place, well, it costs a little more.” He grinned. “You’re in a hurry, and no reason for you to stick around until I’m done. I might try that pecan pie, see if it’s as good as the Boston cream. You go ahead, and the check’s on me. The hell, all you had was coffee. Don’t forget, the bright key’s for the top lock.”

“And I turn it clockwise.”

“Whatever.” He grabbed a french fry. “You want some advice? Wear sunglasses.”

It was a small commercial building converted to residential use, with an artist’s loft taking up each of its five stories. The sculptor on the ground floor lived with his wife in Park Slope, and, according to Maggie, used his space on Crosby Street only for work. “He makes these massive hulking statues,” she had told him, “humanoid, but just barely, and they weigh a ton, so it’s good he’s on the ground floor. It takes him forever to finish a piece, but he never sells anything, so it doesn’t matter.”

“He never sells anything?”

“I was a painter for years,” she’d said, “and I never sold anything. You don’t have to sell to be an artist. In fact it’s probably easier if you don’t.”

There was a painter on the third floor, another painter on the fourth. Keller didn’t know what their work looked like, or if they ever sold any of it. He knew that Maggie occupied the top floor, and that the architect on the second floor was somewhere in Europe and wouldn’t be back for months.

Keller used the new keys, opened the new locks, and stepped into an enormous white room. The floor was white, as the locksmith had told him, and so were the walls and the ceiling, along with the built-in desk and the built-in bookshelves. There were windows at either end of the loft. The ones at the rear were painted white, glass and all, while the ones in the front were out of sight behind white shutters.

With the track lighting on, the whiteness of the room was enough to give you a headache. Keller turned the lights off, and the room was plunged into darkness. He tried opening one of the shutters a few inches, letting in a little daylight, and that was better.

There was furniture, he discovered, although he could see how the locksmith had missed it. White cubes, some of them topped with white cushions, served as chairs, and a big white box on one wall held a Murphy bed. Some of the cube chairs were permanently installed, but others were movable, and he carried one over to the front window, cushion and all, and sat on it.

“I don’t know if you noticed,” Dot said, “but the books on the shelves are white, too. They didn’t start out that way, but somebody took white shelf paper and made individual covers for them.”

“I know.”

“You could lose your color vision around here. Between the ding-a-ling upstairs who only wears black, and this fruitcake with everything white. You want to switch? I’ll watch the street for a while.”

“There’s somebody across the street,” he said.

“Where?” She joined him at the window, squinted through the space between the shutters. “Oh, there he is. In the doorway, with the windbreaker and the cap.”

“I spotted him a few minutes ago. He’s just standing there.”

“Well, he can’t be waiting for a bus, or hoping to flag a cruising taxi. He’s waiting for somebody. Have you got the binoculars?”

“I thought you had them.”

“Here they are. He could look up and spot light glinting off them, if there was any light to glint. I can’t really make out his face. Here, you look.”

He peered through the binoculars, adjusted the focus. The man’s face was in shadow, and indistinct.

“Well, Keller? Is that the guy you saw in Boston?”

“I never really got a good look at him,” he said, “and I don’t even know if the guy I saw was the guy who tried to kill me.”

“And killed your raincoat by mistake.”

“But this guy’s here for a reason,” he said. “He’s either Roger or he’s not.”

“That’s true of everybody, Keller.”

“You know what I mean. He’s here to do a job upstairs, or he’s here to do a job on the guy who does.”

Whoever he was, he was right there on the opposite side of a narrow street. If he had a gun, Keller thought, he could shoot the son of a bitch, and then they could go across the street and take a closer look at him.

“There’s somebody else,” he said. “See?”

“Where?”

“Walking down from the corner.”

“Just a man walking,” she said, “but that’s rare enough on this street, isn’t it? How about this guy, Keller. Does he look familiar?”

Keller tracked him with the binoculars. This one wasn’t in shadows, but he wore a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat and a muffler and glasses, and about all you could say for sure was that he didn’t have a mustache. He was on the tall side, but then so was the lurker, the guy in the doorway.

“He’s turning around,” he said. “I think he’s looking for an address.”

“And look who’s coming.”

“What, in the doorway? He hasn’t moved.”

“Coming down the street, Keller. Is that who I think it is? Dressed all in black, surprise surprise?”

It was Maggie, on her way home. She was coming from the left, and the guy with the hat and muffler was coming from the right, and the guy in the windbreaker and cap was across the street, lurking.

“This is handy,” Dot said. “Everybody on stage at the same time. You want to go downstairs and handle the introductions, Keller?”

“He’s crossing the street,” he said. “He’s walking right toward her.”

“He’s still in the doorway. Oh, the hat and muffler. You think he’s going to do it here and now?”

“How? It’s supposed to look like an accident.”

“Maybe he’ll throw her in front of a truck. There should be a garbage truck coming through sometime after midnight. Maybe he just wants a close look at her. No, he’s stopping her.”