"GG?"

"As in GurlyGurl. In fact she's pretty desirable all across the board."

"No whiny voice, huh?"

"A nice voice. Kind of throaty."

"She could live in Manhattan and still be a long ways away. Washington Heights, say."

" Washington Heights isn't that far. I had a girlfriend in Washington Heights."

"That's what I was referring to."

"Well, it was a disaster, but you couldn't blame it on the neighborhood. It was just a disaster. Anyway, she lives closer than that, because she walks to work, and it only takes her fifteen minutes."

"Where does she work?"

"Forty-fifth and Madison. That's why she picked the Algonquin. Why?"

"I just wondered. So if she lives fifteen minutes from there, she could live in the East Sixties."

"I suppose."

"Or the West Fifties."

"So?"

"Or the East Thirties."

"What are you getting at, Bern?"

"I just want to make sure," I said.

"You want to make sure of what?"

"That she's not who I'm afraid she is."

"Huh?"

"Because it would be a coincidence," I said, "but coincidences happen all the time, and I've had the feeling one's on its way right about now. And if it turns out that she's who I think she is-"

"Who do you think she is?"

"This would be a lot easier," I said, "if the two of you had told each other your names, but as it stands-"

"We did."

"You did?"

"Of course we did, Bern. You only keep it anonymous until you actually meet. We told each other our names right away. Before the old guy brought the drinks, even."

"What did you say your name was?"

"I said it was Carolyn, Bern. Carolyn Kaiser. Not very imaginative, I know, but I just went and pulled a name out of the air, and-"

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'Hi, Carolyn.' Taking me at my word, not suspecting for a moment that I'd lie about a thing like that, and-"

"What did she say her name was?"

"Lacey Kavinoky," she said, "which rhymes with okie-dokey."

"You're sure?"

"That it rhymes? Positive, Bern. No question in my mind."

"I mean-"

"I know what you mean. Am I sure it's her name? I'm sure it's what she said. Was I supposed to ask to see her driver's license? Are you gonna tell me who you were afraid she was?"

"Barbara Creeley."

"Barbara Creeley. The one who got-"

"Burgled and date-raped. Yeah, you don't have to tell me. I know it's ridiculous."

"I think it would have to make a lot more sense," she said, "in order to be no worse than ridiculous. There are eight million people in New York, Bern. What are the odds?"

"Eight million in the five boroughs," I said. "Only two million in Manhattan, if that many."

"One in two million?"

"Half of the two million are male," I said. "Of the one million left, by the time you cross out the ones who are under twenty and over fifty, and the married ones, and-"

"I see where you're going with this," she said, "and you're still nuts."

"You're right."

"Anyway, forget it. Lacey's not Barbara."

"I know."

"It would not only be a coincidence, it'd be a dumb one."

"I know."

"I sound like I'm pissed off, don't I? I'm not. I'm just sort of incredulous, that's all."

"Whatever you say."

"Her name's Lacey Kavinoky," she said, "and she's cute and bright and genuinely nice. And she's gay, Bern, and she knows it. She's not one of those oh-I-always-thought-it-might-be-interesting-to-try-being-with-a-woman women. She's not one of those variety's-the-spice-of-life women, either. She's like me, she's got nothing against men, and high on the list of things she doesn't hold against them is her beautiful body. You remember that song?"

"I remember."

" 'If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?' Well, if you told her, Bern, she wouldn't."

"Great."

"But she might hold it against me. We'll see. But there's one thing I can tell you for sure, and that's that she's not Barbara Creeley. She's Lacey, Lacey Kavinoky, and if anybody date-rapes her it's gonna be me."

Twenty-One

We stayed with the West Side Drive while it became the Henry Hudson Parkway, and we kept going north and crossed the Harlem River into the Bronx. I took the 232nd Street exit and wound up on Palisade Avenue. The long narrow green strip of Riverdale Park was on our left, with the Metro North tracks between the park and the Hudson River.

I'd studied the route on the map, but there were enough one-way streets to get me disoriented, and it took a little while to find Devonshire Close. While I drove around looking for it, I told her about my mission Wednesday night, scouting the terrain and probing the Mapes defenses. The doors were out, I said, because the alarm system was one I couldn't sabotage from outside, and all the windows were wired into it, and the coal chute, my old ace in the hole, had been trumped by bricks and cement.

"I give up," she said. "How are you gonna get in?"

I told her I'd show her when we got there, and shortly thereafter we did just that. Before I made the turn into Devonshire Close I got out my cell phone and tried the number again, and got the machine again. This time I waited for the beep and said, "Dr. Mapes? Are you there? Please pick up if you are. It's pretty important."

No one did, and I broke the connection. "In case he was screening his calls," I said.

"That's great," she said, "but now your voice is on his answering machine. How smart is that?"

"If it's still on there when I leave," I said, "then it could be a problem."

"You're going to erase it. That's fine if it's digital, but the old machines that use tape don't really erase anything. When you tell them to, you just program them to record over the old message when somebody leaves a new one. So what if it's a tape machine?"

"I'll steal the tape," I said.

I drove into Devonshire Close and spotted Mapes's house right away. While I couldn't have sworn to it, it looked to have the same lights on as it had two nights ago. There was a parking spot open in front of the house, and another across the street, but I did what I'd already decided to do and made the turn into Mapes's driveway. I drove all the way to the back and parked in front of the garage, leaving the motor running.

Carolyn was saying something, but I ignored her and got out of the car. The garage door was down, and didn't budge when I tried to lift it. There was a little door on the side of the garage. It hadn't been locked Wednesday night and it wasn't locked now, though the kind of lock it was likely to have wouldn't have delayed me long. Unlocked, it delayed me not at all, and I went inside and found first a light switch and then the button to raise the garage door. I killed the light once the door was up, got back in the car, drove into the garage, pulled up alongside (and felt insignificant next to) the Lexus SUV, and cut the engine.

I started to get out of the car. Carolyn hadn't moved. She said, " Bern, are you sure about this? We're in the belly of the beast."

"Not the belly. The house, where I'm going, that's the belly."

"So what's this? The jaw, and we're wedged here like a wad of tobacco, with nothing to look forward to but a lot of chewing and spitting. We're parked in the garage of the house you're gonna break into. What if somebody comes?"

"Nobody's going to come."

"What if somebody passes by and sees the car in here, and knows it's not their car?"

"Nobody can see anything once the garage door's closed."

"You're gonna close the garage door? Then if anything does happen, we're trapped."

"No," I said. "We're not trapped. The car is."

"But that's where you're leaving me, the last I heard."