After ten minutes I was fairly certain my place was staked out, although I couldn’t absolutely swear to it. There was a car parked some fifty feet from the front entrance with two men in it, and inside the lobby, where I couldn’t see too clearly, there was what might be a man sitting in a chair reading a newspaper. But it could also have been a shadow, and if it was a man that didn’t mean he was waiting for me.

Still, why take chances? I circled the block and wound up at the service entrance, which was locked and unattended. Mine is not a high-security building. The doorman, handy for receiving packages and discouraging low-level muggers and prowlers, is hardly the Maginot Line. There’s no closed-circuit TV, no electronic security system, and the locks, while decent enough, are a far cry from state-of-the-art. I had opened this one on several occasions, most recently during a stretch when I wasn’t getting along with one of the doormen and refused to use the front entrance when he was on duty. That lasted for a couple of weeks, by which time enough other tenants had complained about him that he’d been let go, and good riddance. But the point is that I was pretty good at zipping through that particular lock, and my sang could hardly have been froider at the prospect of opening it, and why not? A cop who caught me in the act might have given me an awkward moment, but not much more than that; after all, it’s not illegal entry when you live there.

I took the elevator to the floor above mine out of an excess of paranoia, walked down a flight, and had a look at my own door. It’s not the Maginot Line, either, but I’ve replaced the original locks and added some refinements over the years, so it’s reasonably secure.

But it looked as though someone had had a go at it. There were scratches that looked fresh, and someone had mucked about with the jamb, trying to get a purchase with a pry bar. Nothing will keep a person out who is sufficiently determined to get in-a resourceful housebreaker, confronted with an unbreachable door, will simply go through the wall-but whoever had paid me a visit had been unwilling or unable to carry things that far. I let myself in with my keys, reasonably certain no one had entered in my absence, and locked the locks behind me. I checked everything, including my hidey-hole, just to be sure, and everything was fine.

I drew a tub, soaked in it, got out and dried off and lay down on the bed for a minute. I didn’t even realize I was tired, but I must have been gone the minute my head touched the pillow. I don’t know how long I slept, because I don’t know what time I lay down, but when I opened my eyes it was ten after six, and I was sufficiently disoriented that I had to check my calendar watch to be entirely certain it was still that afternoon, not six the following morning.

I called Carolyn and couldn’t reach her at home or at work. I put on clean clothes, tossed some other clothes and sundries into a flight bag from a defunct airline, and rode the elevator to the basement. If it had stopped at the lobby floor I might have been able to get a peek at the man with the newspaper, if he was still there, but he might have been able to get a peek at me at the same time, so I guess it was just as well the trip was nonstop. I let myself out through the service entrance, circled the block to avoid the little reception committee in front of the building, and tried to figure out where to go next.

Was I hungry? I’d had a hot dog and a knish a couple of hours back. I didn’t really feel like sitting down to a meal, but I felt like eating something. But what?

Of course. What else?

Popcorn.

CHAPTER Sixteen

“I think it’s so romantic,” Carolyn said. “I think it’s just about the most romantic thing I ever heard of.”

“It wasn’t romantic,” I said.

“Oh, come on, Bern, how can you even say that? It’s incredibly romantic. Night after night, a man goes to the theater all by himself.”

“What do you mean, night after night?”

“Last night and tonight, that’s night after night.” She shook her head at the wonder of it. “Each time he buys two tickets and saves two seats, always in the same location. Each time he gives one of them to the ticket-taker and tells him that a woman may be joining him later.”

“And each time he buys the largest-size popcorn,” I said. “Don’t forget that. And sits there and eats it all himself. You can’t beat that for romance.”

“ Bern, forget the popcorn.”

“I wish I could. I’ve got a husk stuck between two molars and I can’t budge it. I just hope it’s biodegradable.”

“You’re just trying to be cynical to hide how romantic you are.” She made a fist, punched me playfully on the shoulder. “You son of a gun,” she said, not without admiration. “I didn’t know you were going to the movies tonight.”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

“You just happened to be there when the movie was about to start. Just the way I happened to be out in front when it let out the other night, so I could just happen to catch a glimpse of Ilona.”

“In my case it’s almost literally true,” I said. “I couldn’t reach you, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I was five minutes from the Musette with half an hour until curtain. And I asked myself if I felt like seeing two more Humphrey Bogart films, and I had to admit the answer was yes.”

“So you bought two tickets because it seemed like the hardheaded and sensible thing to do.”

“Maybe that was romantic,” I admitted.

“Maybe?”

“To tell you the truth,” I said. “I thought there was a slight possibility she would show up.”

“Honestly?”

“If she wanted to get in touch with me,” I said, “that was the way to do it. Obviously I didn’t have to leave a ticket for her. But I figured I could afford it. I had twenty bucks from her boyfriend.”

“Mike Todd?”

“Mikhail,” I said, giving the name the full treatment.

“You’re positive that was her in his apartment, Bern?”

“Not necessarily. She could have been in the next apartment, shouting through a hole in the wall.”

“You know what I mean. You’re sure it was her?”

“Positive.”

“Because a lot of women have accents, especially the ones you find hanging out with guys named Mikhail. I mean, what exactly did you have to go by? It’s not as if she said ‘Bear-naaard.’”

“No, it’s as if she said ‘Mikhail,’ and I’m positive it was her. Unless it just happened to be someone else with great tits and an Anatrurian accent.”

“What tits? You didn’t get a look at her, so how do you know what kind of tits she had?”

“I’ve got a good memory for that sort of thing.”

“But the girl in Mikhail’s apartment-”

“Was Ilona. Trust me on this, will you? I recognized her voice, the pitch, the inflection, the accent, everything. If she’d come to the door I would have recognized the rest of her, tits and all. Okay?”

“Whatever you say, Bern.”

“I think it was brilliant of me not to drop my jaw on the floor when I heard her speak up. I just took his twenty dollars and got the hell out of there.”

She frowned. “ Bern,” she said, “I hope you’re not planning on keeping that twenty.”

“Why not?”

“You got it under false pretenses.”

“I get most of my money under false pretenses,” I said. “I felt relatively legitimate for a change. He actually handed me the money. Most of the time I take it out of somebody’s strongbox.”

“This is different, Bern.”

“How do you figure that?”

“That money was a donation. If you keep it, you’re not stealing it from Mike Toddsky, or whatever you want to call him. You’re actually stealing it from the AHDA.”

“The what?”

“The American Hip Dysplasia Association. What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Carolyn,” I said carefully, “I made that up. I didn’t want to pick some popular disease, because for all I knew somebody else in the building had come collecting for it a couple of days ago. So I picked hip dysplasia, because I figured I was safe. There’s no such thing as the American Hip Dysplasia Association.”