"I understand you're out lookin for the place." I am.

"Even though we got the delay and all."

"Well, the weather's nice, so why not take advantage."

"You want company?"

"What, to walk?"

"Well, yeah, to look around, see what's happening."

What is he up to? Kelp asked himself. "I don't know," he said, deliberately not using any of Dortmunder's names, not out in public like this, "I seem to be doing pretty good as a solo here. You're at kinda loose ends, I guess."

"Well, kinda. Except, naturally, I gotta go have a word with our friend."

Kelp immediately saw what was what. "Our friend" was Arnie Albright, and Dortmunder had volunteered to have a word with him, Dortmunder and nobody else. Hence, "Ah hah!" said Kelp.

"Whadaya mean, 'ah hah'? I just said."

"You want you should come with me so then I should go with you."

"Well, it seems kinda the thing, you know, we went there together last time, worked out okay."

"I don't think so."

"He'd probly expect us to show up together."

"He'd be wrong."

"You said yourself how much he improved."

"Not that much."

"Well, anyway."

"Get it over with," Kelp advised. "It's one of those things better looked back on than forward to."

"Sure," Dortmunder said, and grumpily hung up.

By that point, walking and talking, Kelp had almost circled the construction site that had caught his eye, and was being stopped by a tall chain-link fence where there used to be, more than likely, all three of the city's basic elements: street, sidewalk, building. There was quite a dropoff beyond a low metal barrier to his right, with the West Side Highway rushing back and forth below, and the Hudson sparkling all the way from there over to the squat towers of New Jersey.

The Hudson is a tidal river for up to a hundred miles inland, and the tide at the moment was coming in, which was slightly disorienting. It was a little weird to know that upriver was to your right, and yet the strong flow of water was headed up that way. He knew it didn't actually slop over the sides when it reached the top up in the Adirondacks, but it felt that way.

Anyway, this chain-link fence. Kelp turned and ambled back alongside it, and here was a broad gate kept open during work hours because cement mixers and other large workhorses were pretty steadily passing in and out. Inside, a temporary dirt road led down to a cellar level, where the work was going on. Far over to the left, down there, half a dozen trailers were set up as site offices. Guys and vehicles moved in constant random motion, like a disturbed anthill.

Kelp waited while an empty flatbed truck groaned up and out of there; then he entered and walked down the slope, because it seemed to him some unused vehicles were parked behind the office trailers. Would they like a playmate?

"Where's your hard hat?"

A guy called that from over to the right, just as Kelp reached the foot of the slope. With a big smile and wave, Kelp pointed leftward at the trailers. "Just going to get it!" And he moved on, striding pretty fast.

Yes, as he approached the trailers he could better see the other things parked back there, and they were tow trucks, a couple of pickups, and some other things, including a dump truck with its forward-tilting hood standing up like a parrot's nose.

"Where's your hard hat?"

This safety expert was a guy coming out of one of the trailers. "Just going to get it!" Kelp assured him, with a big smile, and pointed the direction he was going.

Definitely this was the place. The parked vehicles were not all jammed in together like a parking lot, but just left here and there in the empty space behind the trailers as the drivers had no more immediate use for them. The truck Stan would bring here after the visit to the penthouse would fit in perfectly right there, between the hook-nosed dump truck and a red pickup with a see-through Confederate flag covering its entire rear window.

Having seen enough, Kelp turned about and headed back for the ramp.

"Where's your hard hat?"

"Just going to get it!"

Kelp kept moving, kept smiling, kept looking around at everything there was to be seen. They wouldn't be able to move their truck in or out at night, because that big gate would be locked and there would be night watchmen in here, but that was okay. The penthouse was a day job, and they could finish it up and get the truck over here long before the end of the workday. Then, once again, when Arnie was ready, they could move the thing out during the day. No problem.

The only thing was, before he came back here, he'd really have to get a hard hat.

36

PRESTON DIDN'T APPEAR for lunch. That never happened; Preston was not a man to miss a meal. Alan looked around the half-full dining hall, and Pam, this week's tootsie, was also not present. Had they chosen to lunch together, in his room or hers? Not entirely like him, but not impossible, either. Still, Alan didn't like this nonappearance, so after lunch he went looking.

Nobody home at Preston's place. Door locked, shades drawn, nobody home. Alan called through the glass door just to be certain, calling Preston's name and his own, but no response.

At Pam Broussard's place, though, the situation was quite different. Alan knocked on her door, and when almost immediately she opened it, he reacted first to her clothing — she was wearing clothing, all over, even shoes — and then to what she said: "They're on — Oh." Surprised, but not awkwardly or guiltily so. "I thought you were the bellboy," she explained.

In the dimness of her room, he could see two rather large suitcases on the bed, closed and ready to go. The less a woman wears, the more luggage she needs to carry it in. Feeling a sudden apprehension, he said, "You're leaving us?"

"The office here got an e-mail for me," she said. "My mother just died, very unexpectedly." Said with no more emotion than if she were saying, "I'll have the fish."

She doesn't care if I believe her or not, he thought. "That's terrible," he said, matching her emotional level. "I was wondering if you knew where Preston was." She does know, he thought, she does know, and something has gone dreadfully wrong.

But she said, "I have no idea, I haven't seen Pres since breakfast. I went sailing, and you know how he never wants to go sailing. Then I came back from my sail, and there was the message about my poor mother."

"Of course." There would actually be such an e-mail message — he had no doubt of that — but if this ice statue had ever possessed a mother, that mother had not unexpectedly fallen down dead today. What has she done? Alan thought. Where is Preston? What on earth can I do about it?

"Oh, good, here's the bellboy now. Very nice to have met you, Alan," she said, and extended a steady hand.

What else could he do? He shook her hand, a cold hard thing like a falconer's glove. "We'll miss you," he said, and gave her back her hand.

The bellboy, young, thin, French, and leering, stripped the clothing from Pam with his eyes, then went on inside to get the luggage, while Alan's brain spun madly, searching for something to grasp onto, something to make sense. They wouldn't kill him; no one would kill him; everybody wanted Preston Fareweather alive. He was the goose that lays the golden eggs, safe here on this remote island in the Caribbean, so where was he?

"I'm so sorry not to say good-bye to Pres," Pam said, already turning away. "Would you say it for me?"

What has she done? "The next time I see him."

She smiled; something about that amused her. "Yes, that's when I meant," she said. "Good-bye, Alan." And she followed the bellboy away, down the curving path.