“Well, you don’t go ahead and commit a burglary if you have to step over a corpse to get to the jewels, Ray. And I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

“Maybe.”

“More than maybe.”

He gave his head a dogged shake. “Nope,” he said. “Maybe’s as far as I’d go on that one. Because you know what you got? You got the guts of a burglar, Bernie. I remember how cool you were when me and that crud Loren Kramer walked in on you over in the East Sixties, and there’s a dead body in the bedroom and you’re actin’ like the apartment’s empty.”

“That’s because I didn’t know there was a body in the bedroom. Remember?”

He shrugged. “Same difference. You got the guts of a burglar and all bets are off. Why else would you fix yourself an alibi?”

“Maybe I actually went to the fights, Ray. Ever think of that?”

“Not for very long.”

“And maybe I set up an alibi-which I didn’t because I really was at the fights-”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“-because I was working some other job. I’m not that crazy about jewels. They’re getting tougher and tougher to sell, the fences are turning vicious, you know that. Maybe I was out lifting somebody’s coin collection and I established an alibi just as a matter of course, because I know you people always come knocking on my door when a coin collection walks out of its owner’s house.”

“I didn’t hear nothin’ about a coin collection stolen the other night.”

“Maybe the owner was out of town. Maybe he hasn’t missed it yet.”

“And maybe what you robbed was a kid’s piggy bank and he’s too busy cryin’ to tell the cops about it.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe shit don’t stink, Bernie. I think you got the Sheldrake woman’s jewels.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, you gotta say that. That don’t mean I gotta believe it.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Yeah, sure. You spent the night with Sheldrake’s nurse because you didn’t have no better place to stay. I believe everything you tell me, Bernie. That’s why I’m still in a blue uniform.”

I didn’t answer him and he didn’t say anything more. We drove around for a while. The UPS truck had long since gotten out of the way and we were drifting in the stream of traffic, turning now and then, taking a leisurely ride around the streets of midtown Manhattan. If all you noticed was the weather, then you might have mistaken it for a nice fall day.

I said, “Ray?”

“Yeah, Bern?”

“There’s something you want?”

“There always is. There’s this book, they ran a hunk of it in the Post. Looking Out for Number One. Here’s a whole book tellin’ people to be selfish and let the other guy watch out for his own ass. Imagine anybody has to buy a book to learn what we all grew up knowin’.”

“What is it you want, Ray?”

“You care for a smoke, Bernie? Oh, hell, you already told me you quit. It bother you if I smoke?”

“I can stand it.”

He lit a cigarette. “Those jewels,” he said. “Sheldrake’s jewels that you took from her apartment.”

“I didn’t get them.”

“Well, let’s suppose you did. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Well,” he said, “I never been greedy, Bern. All I want is half.”

Chapter Eleven

Spyder’s Parlor was dark and empty. The chairs perched on top of the tables. The stools had been inverted and set up on the bar. A menu in the window indicated that they opened for lunch during the week, but today was Saturday and they wouldn’t turn the lights on until mid-afternoon. I stayed with Lexington a block or two uptown to a hole in the wall where the counterman mugged and winked and called his female patrons dear and darling and sweets. They ate it up. I ate up a sandwich, cream cheese on date-nut bread, and drank two cups of so-so coffee.

Grabow, Grabow, Grabow. In a hotel lobby I went through the Manhattan telephone directory and came up with eight Grabows plus two who spelled it without the final letter. I bought dimes from the cashier and tried all ten numbers. Six of them didn’t answer. The other four didn’t know anything about any artist named Grabow. One woman said her husband’s brother was a painter, exteriors and interiors, but he lived upstate in Orchard Park. “It’s a suburb of Buffalo,” she said. “Anyway he didn’t change his name, it’s still Grabowski. I don’t suppose that helps you.”

I told her I didn’t see how it could but thanked her anyway. I started to leave the hotel and then something registered in my mind and I went back to the directory and started calling Grabowskis. It would have been cute if it worked but of course it didn’t, it just cost me a lot of dimes, and I called all seventeen Grabowskis and reached I don’t know how many, fourteen or fifteen, and of course none of them painted anything, pictures or interiors or exteriors, none of them even colored in coloring books or painted by number, and that was the end of that particular blind alley.

The nearest bank was a block east on Third Avenue. I bought a roll of dimes-you can still get fifty of them for five dollars, it’s one of the few remaining bargains-and I carried all fifty of them to another hotel lobby. I passed some outdoor phone booths on the way but they don’t have phone books anymore. I don’t know why. I called Spyder’s Parlor to make sure it was still closed and it was. I hauled out the Yellow Pages and looked up Attorneys. See Lawyers, said the book, so I did. I don’t know what I expected to find. There were eighteen pages of lawyers and plenty of them were named John, but so what? I couldn’t see any reason to call any of them. I sort of flipped through the listings, hoping something would strike me, and a listing for a firm called Carson, Kidder and Diehl made me flip to the V’s. I called Carson Verrill, Craig’s personal attorney, and managed to get through to him. He hadn’t heard anything since he’d referred Craig to Errol Blankenship and he wanted to know who I was and what I wanted. I told him I was a dentist myself and a personal friend of Craig’s. I didn’t bother inventing a name and he didn’t press the point.

I called Errol Blankenship. He was out, I was told, and would I care to leave a name and a number?

Grabow, Grabow, Grabow. The listing for artists filled a couple of pages. No Grabow. I looked under art galleries to see if he happened to own his own gallery. If he did, he’d named it something other than Grabow.

I invested a dime and called Narrowback Gallery, on West Broadway in SoHo. A woman with a sort of scratchy voice answered the phone just when I was about to give up and try somebody else. I said, “Perhaps you’ll be able to help me. I saw a painting about a month ago and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. The thing is, I don’t know anything about the artist.”

“I see. Let me light a cigarette. There. Now let’s see, you saw a painting here at our gallery?”

“No.”

“No? Where did you see it?”

Where indeed? “At an apartment. A friend of a friend, and it turns out they bought it at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Show a year ago, or maybe it was the year before. It’s all sort of vague.”

“I see.”

She did? Remarkable. “The only thing I know is the artist’s name,” I said. “Grabow.”

“Grabow?”

“Grabow,” I agreed, and spelled it.

“Is that a first name or a last name?”

“It’s what he signed on the bottom of the canvas,” I said. “For all I know it’s his cat’s name, but I suppose it’s his last name.”

“And you want to find him?”

“Right, I don’t know anything about art-”

“But I’ll bet you know what you like.”

“Sometimes. I don’t like that many paintings, but I liked this one, so much so that I can’t get it out of my mind. The owners say they don’t want to sell it, and then it occurred to me that I could find the artist and see what else he’s done, but how would I go about it? He’s not in the phone book, Grabow that is, and I don’t know how to get hold of him.”