"Actually, Martin saw the second writ," Edith was saying on the periphery of his hearing. "Herbert saw the first one. Well, the first prediction in years, and I don't remember making it. The words that Herbert saw were "Death is close by time and space"."

"Have you spoken to Herbert recently?"

"Not for a few days, no. He was quite concerned about poor Martin."

"Poor Martin?"

"Well, Martin is a bit touched, isn't he." It was not a question. She made the spinning motion of finger to temple to indicate that Martin's mind might have stripped a few gears. And he found that odd, because Martin was not the least bit insane. Henrietta, a practising psychiatrist had never used that word. Sensitive, she called him, and fragile, but not insane.

Martin had designed a life to complement his art. True, he had organized his private world within extraordinary parameters. Like Henry Cathery, he had opted for simplicity, even striking the noise of color from his surroundings, keeping to the hush of white, the better to listen. Martin would be sensitive to every nuance against the pure white background of his life.

Charles suspected Henrietta kept a protective watch on Martin for a reason other than impending breakdown. Might Henrietta be watching over Martin in the way a miner kept one eye to the canary's cage suspended from the rafters at the lower levels of the earth? When the fragile canary gasped and fluttered and struck its weak wings against the bars of its cage, the miner would know the air had gone foul, and Henrietta would know that Edith was active again.

Edith's gifts did not extend to following the rush of an intellect that worked in microseconds. And as he picked her brains for the critical details, she mistook it all for polite conversation. Leaving his sandwich and tea untouched, he bid her goodbye and took his hurried leave.

Mallory cut the ignition and her lights while the car was still in motion. She pulled silently to the curb. "This is the building Redwing calls home this week." Leaning across Riker, she looked out the passenger-side window. "Keep an eye on the television screen in that first-floor apartment." Riker stared into the lighted rectangle of the tenement building and the interior poverty which made a burglar gate on the window a bad investment. An old black-and-white television set was sitting on a card table. The wall behind it was a mosaic of cracks and peeling paint. A battered-to-stuffings easy chair sat to one side of the television, and all that showed above the chair's back was a balding head and tufts of dingy white hair.

Mallory was lifting her laptop computer out of its case. "Tell me when the TV's picture breaks up."

Riker noted that Mallory had added a few new toys to her car. The antenna on the front fender was not made for ordinary radio reception. And he now recognized the black phone-set in her left hand as telephone-company equipment. "No you don't, kid. You're not doing a phone tap without a warrant."

"No, I'm not. I won't hear one human voice. I'm going to pull an electronic scramble out of the air and reassemble it on my computer. Cite me the federal code for that one." Riker turned back to the apartment window, the better to avoid witnessing. "So what happens when the TV's picture breaks up?"

"The old man sitting in front of the set will get up and start banging on it."

Riker nudged her arm. The set's screen was gone to zigzags and lost vertical hold. The old man got up from his easy chair and began pounding on the set. There was no anger in the pounder's face, but Riker thought the old man might be crying.

The screen on Mallory's laptop came to life.

"We're in. The wiring in this building is the pits. Redwing doesn't know her computer busts up the old man's reception, and the old man doesn't know what a computer is. Look at the set."

Riker turned back to the window. The television set's reception had returned to normal. The old man walked back to his chair.

"There," said Mallory. "Now you got me on unlicensed TV repair."

How many times had she done this trick?

"I want you to promise me you won't come back here again. You can't just go into surveillance work without training." How could he explain to Mallory that she could never do covert surveillance, even with the training, because she had glorious blonde hair and a face that tended to linger in memory, for years or a lifetime. "You never put in the time wet-nursing sources – pimps and junkies, thieves and dealers, prostitutes – all the eyes and ears you need on the street just to get through a day on the job. A beat cop has more to work with than you do."

"Yeah, right. What about all the SEC documents from Markowitz's side of the bulletin board? All the background checks? He got that from me, not from any of your damn street people. And who gave you the seance connection? I didn't have to pressure a pimp or roll a sick junkie to get any of it."

True, Mallory was the best source Markowitz had ever had.

"Coffey can't use the stock-market material," he said. "If he calls the SEC into this too early, we'll all be up to our tails in feds. He won't let go of Lou's murder, not to them. He wants to keep it in the family, you know?"

"I know."

"But you and I need an understanding about Redwing. You could get killed pulling a stunt like this – "

"I'm not a rookie – "

"When it comes to fieldwork, you are. Markowitz screwed up, that's a fact. And you're following him into the same hole, running a surveillance with no backup."

He was talking to the air. She was staring at the screen of her computer. "So what kind of setup does Redwing have? Is she stealing money by computer hacking?"

"She wouldn't know how. Redwing is an adequate technician. She can run a computer program, but she could never design one. The past few days I've watched her scanning message centers. She's waiting for something. I'm guessing they use different message centers every time she talks to whoever's running the scam. That gives me at least one player above Redwing's level."

He looked down at the screen of her laptop computer. "Okay, what're we looking at?"

"The same thing Redwing's looking at. It's an electronic bulletin-board system. Anyone in the world with a telephone can log on and leave a message. The one she's lifting off the board is in code. Kid's stuff. I'll break it down in another minute."

Riker looked back to the old man's window. Whatever Redwing was into, it didn't pay well. Not that the interior of one apartment was a sure indication of a bad neighborhood. And it wasn't the rats dancing on the garbage-can lid; he'd seen them uptown and down. But the condoms on the sidewalk told him it was a hooker block. The next block over might be straight middle-class working stiffs. That was New York. Turn any corner and the atmosphere changed. On the next street over, a storefront window displayed toys; on this block it was adult books and peepshows.

"I like this," said Mallory. "I like it a lot. She's not picking up background checks on victims. She's gathering stock information on mergers and takeovers. If this is non-public, if it doesn't tally with SEC filings, it's insider trading."

"Mallory, can you break this into simple English? I'm not a stocks-and-bonds kinda guy. I guess you didn't know that."

"Your niece works for a law firm, right?"

"Gloria, yeah. She's a paralegal."

"Let's say Gloria is working up the contract for a merger between two companies. She has a little lead time before the paperwork on the merger is filed with the SEC. Now she knows the stock will go up in value the minute the merger is made public. Suppose Gloria gives that information to a friend before it goes public? The friend makes a fortune on stock purchases and gives your niece a cut of the profits. The original stockholders are cheated because they've sold their shares to Gloria's friend, and sold them for a song. The feds really hate that."