Perhaps it was just intimidated by its surroundings. The apartment looked like a spread in Architectural Digest, with not much furniture and a lot of carpeted platforms and such. The only picture on the wall was a mural and it was all loops and swirls without a single right angle to be found in it. Mondrian would have hated it, and you’d have had to take the whole wall to steal it.

“Ah, Donald-”

I’d hoped she might dim out with all that whiskey, but it didn’t seem to be affecting her at all. And I wasn’t getting a whole lot more sober with the passage of time. I thought, Oh, what the hell, and I said, “Eve!” and we went into a clinch.

There was no bed in her bedroom, just another carpeted platform with a mattress on it. It did the job. And so, much to my surprise, did I.

It was odd. At first I just concentrated on not thinking about my mother’s younger sister, which should have been a cinch in view of the fact that she’d never had one. Then I tried to build a fantasy incorporating our age differences, imagining myself as an eager youth of seventeen and Eve as a ripe, knowing woman of thirty-six. That didn’t work too well because I imagined myself right back into a state of coltish clumsiness and embarrassment.

Finally I just gave up and forgot who either of us was, and that worked. I don’t know if the whiskey helped or hindered, but one way or another I stopped thinking about what was going on and just let it happen, and damned if it didn’t.

Go figure.

CHAPTER Twenty-two

Afterward, the hardest part was staying awake long enough for her to fall asleep. I kept catching myself just as my mind was starting to drift, following some abstruse line of thought along one of those tangled paths that lead to Dreamland. Each time I yanked myself conscious, and each time it felt like a narrow escape.

When her breathing changed I stayed put for a minute or two, then slipped off the mattress and dropped from the sleeping platform to the floor. The carpet was deep and I padded silently across it, reclaimed my clothes, and put them on in the living room. I was almost to the door when I remembered my five-foot tube and went back for it. “I’ll bet you’re an architect,” Eve had said, “and I’ll bet you’ve got blueprints in there.” I’d asked her how she’d guessed. “Those glasses,” she said, “and that hat. And those sensible sensible shoes. Hell, Donald, you look like an architect.”

I squinted through the judas, unlocked the door, cracked it and checked the hallway. Outside, I thought of using my picks to lock the door behind me and decided against it. Eve’s lifestyle was such that she probably slept behind unlocked doors as a regular thing. For that matter, it wasn’t inconceivable that departing guests often went through her purse on the way out, or that she considered such actions not theft but a quid pro quo. A fair exchange, they say, is no robbery.

I used the fire stairs to reach the eleventh floor. For a moment I couldn’t remember which door led to the Appling apartment, and then I spied the telltale burglar alarm keyhole, the one to which no alarm system was attached. I had my ring of picks in hand and one slim piece of steel probing the innards of the Poulard lock when something stopped me.

And a good thing, too, because there were people inside that apartment. I must have heard something that made me put my ear to the door, and when I did that I heard what must have been the laugh track of a television situation comedy. I put my eye where my pick had been, and, surprise! Light showed through the keyhole.

The Applings were home. Even now, as I stood lemminglike on the brink of their apartment, Mr. A. might be paging idly through his plundered stamp collection. At any moment he might let out a great bellow, doubtless startling his wife and driving Mary Tyler Moore reruns clear out of her head. Whereupon he might reflexively dash to the door, yank it open, and find-what?

An empty hallway, because by the time I’d reached this stage in my thoughts I was already through the fire door and on the stairs again. I climbed three flights, which put me back on Fifteen where I’d left Eve DeGrasse, hesitated for a moment in front of the fire door, then climbed another flight of stairs and opened the door with my picks.

There was an argument going on behind a closed door, but it was another door than Onderdonk’s. His had a piece of paper taped to it proclaiming that the premises within were ordered sealed by the New York Police Department. The seal was symbolic rather than literal; Onderdonk’s lock provided the only tangible barrier to Onderdonk’s apartment. It was a Segal drop-bolt, a good enough lock, but I’d already picked it open once and it held no secrets for me.

But I didn’t open it at once. First I listened, ear to door, and then I put my eye to the keyhole and stooped lower to see if any light issued forth from beneath the door. Nothing, no light, no sound, nothing.

I let myself in.

Other than mine, there were no bodies, living or otherwise, in the Onderdonk apartment. I checked everywhere, even the kitchen cupboards, to establish as much. Then I let the tapwater run until it was hot enough to make instant coffee. The resultant beverage wouldn’t have thrilled El Exigente, nor would it get me sober, but at least I’d be a wide-awake drunk instead of a falling-down one. I drank it, shuddering, and then I got on the phone.

“Bernie, thank God. I was worried sick. I was afraid something happened. You’re not calling from jail, are you?”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

“Not in jail. I’m all right. You and Alison got out okay?”

“Sure, no problem. What a scene! I think we coulda grabbed the Mona Lisa on the way out, except it’s in the Louvre. But I’ve gotta tell you the big news-the cat’s back!”

“Archie?”

“Archie. We went and had a drink, and then we had another drink, and then we came home and Ubi rushed over to be petted, which isn’t like him, and I was petting him and I looked up and there was Ubi on the other side of the room, so I looked down at the cat I was petting and damned if it wasn’t old Archie Goodwin himself. Whoever broke in to take him broke in again to return him, and left the locks just the way I left them, same as the other time.”

“Amazing. The Nazi kept her word.”

“Kept her word?”

“I gave her the painting and she returned the cat.”

“How’d you find her?”

“She found me. It’s too complicated to explain right now. The important thing is he’s back. How are his whiskers?”

“Gone on one side. His balance is sort of weirded out, like he’s very unsure of himself when it comes to leaps and pounces. I can’t make up my mind whether to trim ’em on the other side or just wait for ’em to grow back in.”

“Well, take your time deciding. You don’t have to do anything tonight.”

“Right. Alison was amazed to see him. I think she was as amazed as I was.”

“I can believe it.”

“Bernie, what do you think you’re doin’, collectin’ Moondrains? Because I understand they got a couple at the Guggenheim and I wondered if that’s where you’re gonna strike next.”

“Always a pleasure to talk to you, Ray.”

“The pleasure’s mine. Are you crazy or somethin’? And don’t tell me it wasn’t you because I saw you on television. That’s about the dumbest lookin’ hat I ever saw in my life. I think I recognized the hat more’n I recognized you.”

“Makes a good disguise, doesn’t it?”

“But you weren’t carryin’ anythin’, Bern. What did you do with the Moondrain?”

“Folded it very small and tucked it inside my hat.”

“What I figured. Where are you?”

“In the belly of the beast. Listen, I’ve got a job for you, Ray.”