"What are my other choices?"

"Two: You can sell it to me tonight. I'll give you cash, unrecorded fifties and hundreds. You'll leave here with the money in your pocket."

"How much, Abel?"

"Fifteen thousand dollars."

"For a coin worth half a million."

He let that pass. "Three: You can leave the coin with me. I will sell it for what I can and I will give you half of whatever I receive. I'll take my time, but I'll certainly endeavor to move the coin as quickly as possible. Perhaps I'll find a customer. Perhaps the verdammte thing's insured by a carrier with a policy of repurchasing stolen goods. It's a delicate business, dealing with those companies. You can't always trust them. If it was a recent acquisition, Colcannon may not even have insured it yet. Perhaps he never insures his coins, perhaps he regards his safe-deposit box as insurance enough, and intended placing this coin there after he'd had an appropriate case made for it."

He spread his hands, sighed heavily. "Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Dozens of perhapses. I'm an old man, Bernard. Take the coin with you tonight and save me a headache. What do I need with the aggravation? I have enough money."

"What will you try to sell it for?"

"I already told you I don't know. You want a rough estimate? I shall pluck a figure out of the air, then, and say a hundred thousand dollars. A nice round number. The final price might be a great deal more or a great deal less, depending on circumstances, but you ask me to come up with a figure and that is the figure that comes to mind."

"A hundred thousand."

"Perhaps."

"And our half would be fifty thousand."

"And to think you made the calculation without pencil and paper, Bernard."

"And if we take the cash tonight?"

"What sum did I offer? Fifteen thousand. Plus the twenty-five hundred I owe you for the earrings and the watch. That would total seventeen-five." No pencil and paper for him, either. We were a couple of mathematical wizards. "I'll tell you what. Let's deal in round numbers tonight. Twenty thousand dollars for everything."

"Or twenty-five hundred now plus half of what you get for the coin."

"If I get anything for it. If it proves to be genuine, and if I find someone who wants it."

"You wouldn't care to make it three thousand for the watch and earrings plus a split on the coin?"

He thought a moment. "No," he said, "I wouldn't want to do that, Bernard."

I looked at Carolyn. We could walk away with ten thou apiece for the night's work or settle for a little over a tenth of that plus a shot at wealth beyond the etc. I asked her what she thought.

"Up to you, Bern."

"I just wondered what-"

"Uh-uh. Up to you."

Take the money and run, a voice whispered in my head. Take the cash and let the credit go. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The voice that whispers in my head isn't terribly original, but it does tend to cut to the heart of the matter.

But did I want to be known as the man who got a hot ten grand for the Colcannon V-Nickel? And how happy would I be with my ten thousand dollars when I thought of Abel Crowe getting a six-figure price for it?

I could have topped his Spinoza quote. "Pride, Envy and Avarice are the three sparks that have set the hearts of all on fire." From the Sixth Canto of Dante's Inferno.

My heart burned from all three, not to mention the eclair and the Armagnac. "We'll take the twenty-five hundred," I told him.

"If you want more time to think about it-"

"The last thing I want is more time to think about it."

He smiled. He looked like a benevolent grandfather again, honest as any man living. "I'll be just a moment," he said, getting to his feet. "There's more food, more coffee, plenty to drink. Help yourselves."

While he was in the other room Carolyn and I had one short drink apiece to toast the night's work. Then Abel returned and counted out a stack of twenty-five bills. He said he hoped we didn't mind hundreds. Not at all, I assured him; I wished I had a million of them. He chuckled politely.

"Take care of our nickel," I urged. "There's thieves everywhere."

"They could never get in here."

"Gordius thought nobody could untie that knot, remember? And the Trojans were suckers for a horse."

"And pride goeth before a fall, eh?" He laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "The doormen are very security-conscious here. The elevator is always attended. And you have seen the police locks on my doors."

"What about the fire escape?"

"It is on the front of the building, where anyone using it could be seen from the street. The window that opens onto it is secured by steel gates. I can assure you no one could get in that way. I only hope I could get out if there were ever a fire." He smiled. "In any event, Bernard, I shall conceal the nickel where no one will think to look for it. And no one will know I have it in the first place."

CHAPTER Five

I'm not entirely sure why I wound up spending what was left of the night at Carolyn's. All that sugar and caffeine and alcohol, plus enough tension and excitement for your average month, had left us a little wired and a little drunk. It's as well neither of us had any life-or-death decisions to make just then. I wanted her to come up to my place so we could split the money, but she wanted to be downtown because she had a customer coming by early with a Giant Schnauzer, whatever the hell that is. We couldn't get a cab on West End Avenue, walked to Broadway, and ultimately kept the cab clear to the Village, where the driver was unable either to find Arbor Court on his own or to follow Carolyn's directions. We gave up finally and walked a couple of blocks. I hope he didn't squander his tip. Seventy years from now it might be valuable.

In Carolyn's apartment we got the Chagall litho out of my attaché case and held it up to the wall above the wicker chair. (That was another reason I'd accompanied her downtown, come to think of it. So that the picture could travel south in my case.) It looked good but the mat was the wrong color, so she decided to take it to a framer before hanging it. She poured herself a nightcap while I divvied up the cash. I gave her her share and she fanned the bills and whistled soundlessly at them. She said, "Not bad for a night's work, huh? I know it's not much for burglary, but it's different when your frame of reference is dog-grooming. You got any idea how many mutts I'd have to wash for this?"

"Lots."

"Bet your ass. Hey, I think you owe me a couple of bucks. Or are you charging me for the Chagall?"

"Of course not."

"Well, you gave me twelve hundred, and that's fifty dollars short of half. Not to be chintzy, but-"

"You're forgetting our expenses."

"What, cabfare? You paid one way and I paid coming back. What expenses?"

"Spinoza's Ethics."

"I thought it came in with a load of books you bought by the yard. Or are you figuring on the basis of value instead of cost? That's fair, I don't care one way or the other, but-"

"I bought the book at Bartfield's on Fifty-seventh Street. It was a hundred dollars even. I didn't have to pay sales tax because I have a resale number."

She stared at me. "You paid a hundred dollars for that book?"

"Sure. Why? The price wasn't out of line."

"But you told Abel-"

"That I got it for next to nothing. I think he believed me, too. I also think it got us an extra five hundred bucks for the watch and the earrings. It put him in a generous frame of mind."

"Jesus," she said. "There's a lot I don't understand about this business."

"There's a lot nobody understands."

"Whoever heard of buying presents for a fence?"

"Whoever heard of a fence who quotes Spinoza?"