And what a fish. A keeper, Eppick had thought, rich and honest and dedicated to his obsession. Putting every other potential client on hold, changing his answering machine message to deflect other possible business, he'd devoted himself to Mr. Hemlow, even researching that scuzzy band of crooks to handle the actual dirty work without any possibility of double-cross.

And look what he got for it. Time and expenses. He might as well deliver newspapers, for that kind of money; that would also keep him out of the house.

Okay. After the chess set debacle, Eppick changed his answering machine message once more, made another round of soliciting phone calls, and started to receive smaller but at least not irritating offers of work. Here a jealous wife, there a health freak searching, for genome reasons, for his natural father. It kept him on the move.

On a blustery Monday two weeks after the farewell in Mr. Hemlow's apartment, the first Monday in December, Eppick drove to the city, left his Prius in its monthly parking spot in a garage a block from his office, walked the block, took the elevator to his office, entered, and saw in an instant he'd been robbed. Burgled. Cleaned out solid.

Just about everything was gone. Phone, fax, printer, computer, TV, DVD, toaster oven, even the less heavy half of his exercise equipment.

The whole thing had been done with an economy and a professionalism that, even through his outrage, he had to recognize and admire. There was barely a mark on the locks. His three alarm systems, including the one that should have phoned the precinct, had been dismantled or bypassed with casual, almost disdainful, assurance. Everything was gone, and not a footprint was left to mark its passing.

Eppick of course immediately phoned the precinct — on his cell phone, the office phone and answering machine being gone — though he hadn't the slightest expectation anybody would ever track down those crooks. But he needed the report for his insurance, and this haul would certainly lead to a very hefty insurance company check.

And many headaches between now and then, while he replaced everything that had gone away, integrated the new systems, estimated just how much his personal and professional privacy had been violated, and worked out what additional security measures he would have to take to keep the bastards from coming back for a second dip.

The cops who came to make the report were unknown to him, he never having worked in this precinct. They were sympathetic and professional and just a little scornful, exactly as he would be if the roles were reversed. He hated the interview, and ground his teeth in rage once his responders had departed.

Now, the next thing to do was hide this disaster from his two current clients. It would never do for a professional private detective to himself become a crime victim; all credibility would be lost forever. Therefore, after a quick trip farther downtown to an area of electronics stores, he came back with a new telephone — answering machine, which he set up on his ravaged desk and into which, using a much more grating voice than normal, he placed this message:

"Hi. Johnny Eppick here. I came down with something over the weekend I hope isn't flu, so I'm not in the shop today. Leave a message and I hope I'll be here and healthy first thing tomorrow."

The rest of the replacement equipment he'd buy out on the Island, to avoid New York City's sales tax, so he might as well get to it. There was no point hanging around the ransacked office all day.

It was while driving out the LIE, just east of the city line, that the penny finally dropped and one word came into his mind, as though in neon: Dortmunder.

Of course. In the first shock, he hadn't been thinking straight, hadn't connected the dots, but what else could this be? Dortmunder. He had to get even for not scoring anything out of the chess set caper. And, whining all the time about something as minor league as taxi fares, that gave you the measure of the man.

The son of a bitch had waited exactly two weeks, Monday to Monday, just long enough so Eppick wouldn't be able to prove it but he'd have to know it.

And there was more to it than that. All of the other things that were taken were just smoke screen, just icing on the cake. The only theft that really mattered was the computer. That little box where the incriminating pictures of John Dortmunder were stored.

Yes, and when he got back to the office tomorrow and looked in his files — a thing that hadn't occurred to him until just this minute — the copies of those pictures that he'd printed out would also be gone.

I no longer have a handle on John Dortmunder's back, Eppick thought. Dortmunder had needed that handle off of there. Why? Because he's up to something. What is he up to?

Eppick frowned mightily as he drove east toward home.

32

"THEY'RE NEVER COMING back!"

"Nessa," Brady said, over their lunch of nuked frozen fish fingers, nuked frozen french fries, and canned beer, "of course they're coming back. They came all the way up here just to be sure everything was all right."

"Then when they left here," Nessa said, leaning belligerently over her fish fingers in this large elaborate dining room constructed for more diners but less volume, "they must have made sure everything was wrong, because they aren't coming back!"

"Come on, Nessa, you don't have to holler, I'm right here in front of you."

"Yet somehow you don't hear me," she said. "Those bozos are not coming back."

Surprised, almost offended on their behalf, he said, "What do you mean, bozos? Those were very serious people."

"Hah."

"They were up here to discuss hiding a very valuable chess set," Brady reminded her. "And here was where they meant to hide it. They even pointed out the table in the living room."

"Where they were going to hide it."

"Yes."

"Right out on a table in the living room."

"I told you, Nessa, it was the something letter. You remember Edgar Allan Poe."

"We read The Raven," she said, being sulky. "It was very boring."

"Well, he did something else," Brady said, "that said, if you want to hide something, put it right out in plain sight where nobody expects to see it."

"Put it right out in plain sight," Nessa said, "where I won't expect to see it, and guess what happens next."

"Well, Edgar Allan Poe is what they were doing," Brady said, "and they're definitely coming back."

"Brady," she said, around a mouthful of fish fingers, as she waved a melodramatic arm toward the far windows, "it's snowing."

"I know that."

"Again."

"I know that."

"We're in the mountains in New England in December. Brady, on the TV they're talking about accumulations. You know what accumulations are?"

"Listen, Nessa—"

"You wanna wait here till spring? Here?"

The fact was, Brady wouldn't mind if he had to wait here forever. He had this huge house all to himself, he had no responsibilities, he had this really cute girl to go to bed with all the time — though not so much lately, unfortunately — and he had the prospect of this amazingly valuable chess set at the end of the rainbow. So what was the problem?

Well, he'd better not put it that way, because, the truth is, the problem was Nessa. She had some kind of cabin fever or something. She got bored too easily, that's what it came down to. He screwed her as much as he could, or these days as much as she'd put up with, but still she got bored.

He just had to keep his calm, that's all. This was just a phase Nessa was going through, and soon she'd be fine again. Maybe in the spring, when the flowers started to grow, though he sensed it wouldn't be a really smart move to phrase it quite that way.