“What makes you so sure of that, Ray?”

“You sayin’ so right off the bat, tellin’ my wife so’s she can pass it on to me. If you was really in New Hampshire, Bernie, that’s the last thing you’d do. No, I take that back. It’s the second-last thing.”

“What’s the last?”

“Placin’ the call altogether. You’d wait until you got back. You ask me, you spent the night with that sawed-off morphodyke buddy of yours, for all the good either of you could have got out of the experience. An’ then you figured you better call me, an’ you went someplace out of the way in case I trace the call, which how am I gonna do anyway from my home phone?”

“How you do go on,” I said.

“I had to guess,” he said, “I’d say you’re across the bridge in Brooklyn Heights. Can you see the Promenade from where you’re standin’, Bernie?”

“Yes,” I said. “And it looks lovely in the morning mist.”

“It’s a beautiful day, an’ if there was any mist you missed it, ’cause it burned off hours ago. Anyway, I take it back. There ain’t enough background noise for Brooklyn. It’s Sunday mornin’, right? Be my guess you’re down in Wall Street. You can’t see the Promenade, but I bet you a dollar you can see the Stock Exchange.”

“You’re amazing, Ray. I swear I don’t know how you do it.”

“An’ that’s to make me think I’m wrong, but I think I’m right, for all the good it does me. You really want to know how I done it, Bernie, it’s just a case of us knowin’ each other a long time. Not surprisin’ I know you pretty good by now, thinkin’ of all we been through.”

“The mist hasn’t all burned off, Ray. Some of it’s in my eyes, to go with the lump in my throat.”

“Got you all choked up, huh, Bernie? Maybe this’ll unchoke you. Couple of uniforms are walkin’ a beat the other day on the Lower East Side, an’ one of the neighborhood kids takes ’em to this boarded-up buildin’ at the corner of Pitt and Madison. That’s Madison Street, not Madison Avenue, by the way.”

“That explains what it was doing on the Lower East Side.”

“Yeah, but does it explain what they found when the kid showed ’em which board was loose an’ how to get in? Three guesses, Bernie.”

“Even if I don’t guess,” I said, “you’ll probably tell me.”

“A dead body.”

“Not mine, thank God,” I said, “but it’s good of you to voice concern, Ray. I didn’t think you cared.”

“You want to guess who?”

“If it’s not Judge Crater,” I said, “it would pretty much have to be Jimmy Hoffa, wouldn’t it?”

“The watch an’ wallet was gone,” he went on, “which you’d expect, seein’ as kids an’ God knows who else was in an’ out of the buildin’ all along. But under his clothes the guy was wearin’ a money belt, although there wasn’t a whole lot of money in it.”

“Unless the uniforms helped themselves.”

He made that sound with his tongue and his teeth, but I don’t think he was trying to say “Tsarnoff.” “Bernie,” he said, “you got a low opinion of the NYPD, which you oughta be ashamed of yourself. If they took a dime off the stiff, I got no way of knowin’ about it, so I’ll just tell you what they didn’t take. How’s that?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fascinating.”

“First thing was a passport. Had the guy’s picture on it, so you could tell right off he didn’t lift it off of somebody else. Had his name right there, too.”

“Passports usually do.”

“They’d have to, wouldn’t they? Accordin’ to the passport, his name was Jean-Claude Marmotte.”

“Sounds French.”

“Belgian,” he said. “Least he was carryin’ a Belgian passport, only it don’t hardly matter what country gave it to him, on account of they didn’t.”

“Huh?”

“It was a phony,” he said. “A good phony, or so they tell me, but one thing’s sure and that’s that the Belgians never heard of him.”

He started to say something else, but the recording cut in, inviting me to deposit more money or hang up.

“Gimme your number there,” Ray said, “an’ I’ll call you back.”

I gave that the only answer it required, dropping a fresh quarter in the slot.

“Now why’d you go an’ do that, Bernie? I was all set to call you back. How often do I get to call anybody in Pig’s Eye, New Hampshire?”

“How often do I get to hear about dead Belgians in boarded-up buildings?”

“You didn’t ask how he died.”

“I didn’t even ask who he was. Sooner or later I’ll get around to asking why you’re telling me all this.”

“Sooner or later you won’t need to. He died on account of bein’ shot once at close range in the side of the head. Entry was through the ear, matter of fact. Slug was a twenty-two. Very professional job, all in all.”

“Killed where you found him?”

“Probably not, but that’s inconclusive because of the mess the kids made of the crime scene. Wherever he bought it, he was a long ways from Belgium when he died. A long ways from New Hampshire, too, but aren’t we all?”

“There’s a point here somewhere.”

“There is,” he agreed, “an’ I’m gettin’ to it. Nothin’ in his pockets but lint. No keys, no subway tokens, no nail clipper, no Swiss Army knife. But he’s wearin’ this nice tweed suit, an’ it turns out there’s a secret pocket in the jacket.”

“A secret pocket?”

“I don’t know what else you’d call it, bein’ as it ain’t where you’d expect to find a pocket, down near the bottom and around in the back. An’ it’s hard to spot unless you’re lookin’ for it, and it zips open an’ shut, an’ we found it an’ unzipped it, an’ you want to take a guess what we found?”

“Another passport.”

“Mind tellin’ me how you happened to know that?”

“You mean I got it right? It was a guess, Ray. I swear it was.”

“This one’s Italian, and the name on it is Vassily Souslik.”

“That doesn’t sound Italian,” I said. “Spell it.” He did, and it still didn’t sound Italian. “Vassily’s a Russian name, or Slavic, anyway. And Souslik sounds like something you’d order at the Russian Tea Room.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, “not goin’ to fancy places myself. Anyway, it don’t matter, on account of it’s a fake, too. The Belgians never heard of Marmotte an’ the guineas never heard of Souslik. Same likeness an’ description on both of ’em, Bern, an’ they match the dead guy to a T. Who knows, maybe it’ll remind you of somebody you know. Five-nine, one-thirty, DOB fifteen October 1926, hair white, eyes hazel. That’s off the Belgian passport, an’ the Italian’s close enough. They got his eyes as brown, but maybe they haven’t got a word for hazel. Narrow face, little white mustache-this ringing any kind of a bell for you?”

“Not yet. Why should it?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” he said. “See, once we found the one secret pocket, we checked on the other side, and wouldn’t you know there was another secret pocket to match?”

“And to think some people doubt the existence of God.”

“An’ this one’s got a passport in it, too, an’ this one’s Canadian, an’ it’s no more legit than the other two. Issued at Winnipeg, it says in good old American English, except it was never issued at all, it was made by somebody with no official standing. Same face on the photo, though, an’ whyntcha see if you can tell me the name on the passport?”

“You tell me, Ray.”

“Hugo Candlemas,” he said. “Now what do you call that if it ain’t a big coincidence? I mean, the average person lives a lifetime without ever meetin’ up with a single Hugo Candlemas, an’ here I went an’ met up with two of ’em, both in the space of a couple of days. An’ both of ’em deader’n Kelsey’s nuts, too.”

“If Ripley were still alive,” I said, “and if he were still turning out ‘Believe It or Not’…”

“This guy don’t look a bit like the Candlemas we got on ice, Bernie.”

“Not even a faint family resemblance?”

“Not even related by marriage. You want to explain it to me, Bernie? How you took a good long look at the stiff at the morgue and ID’d him as a guy who turned up dead himself the next day?”