So this evening, though they were both home before six, and moving cribbage pegs inexorably onward by half past, he waited until that game was finished — she won — to even broach the subject. "Guess what's happening this weekend," he said.

She gave him a funny look. Nothing happened on the weekend in March, as all the world knew. Unless St. Patrick's Day came on any day remotely close to the weekend, being any day except Wednesday, as everyone also knew, and as at the moment was not the case. So, "Happening?" she inquired.

"It's the March Madness party at the station," he told her, with a big happy grin.

So there was to be an occurrence on the weekend in March after all, though it didn't actually occur in, or anywhere near, New York City. It was Spring Break, the annual pilgrimage of all America's undergraduate scholars to Florida to take seminars on noncommitment.

Spring Break was a big deal for Brian's station, GRODY, because it homed right in on their target audience. One time, Fiona had asked him, "Who does watch that station?" and he'd answered, "The eighteen-to-nineteen-and-a-half-year-old males, an extremely important advertising demographic," and she'd said, "That explains it," whatever that meant.

In any event, GRODY annually marked Spring Break with its March Madness party, at a rented party place down in Soho, limited to station staff and advertisers and local press and cable company minor employees and good friends and whoever else happened to hear about it. All attendees were encouraged to come costumed as one of the cartoon characters from the station, and many did. Brian's Reverend Twisted costume was kept in the back of the closet to be brought out lovingly and hilariously every year, an old if unusual friend. "Oh, I hope it still fits," he always said, which was his March Madness joke.

But now Fiona began to throw cold water on his idea even before she'd heard it, saying, with an exaggerated sigh, "Oh. I suppose we have to go."

"Have to go? Come on, Fiona, it's fun, you know it is."

"The first couple of times," she said, "it was fun, like visiting a tribe way up the Amazon that had never been marked by civilization."

"Listen—"

"But after a while, Brian," she said, "it becomes just a teeny little bit less fun."

"You never—"

"I'm not saying we won't go," she said. "I'm just saying I'm not as excited about it as I used to be. Brian, March Madness at GRODY does not hold many surprises for me any more."

He knew an opening when he heard one. "Listen," he said, very eager, as though the thought had just this second come to him. "I know how to put the zing back in the old March Madness."

The look she gave him was labeled Skepticism. "How?"

"Invite Mrs. W."

She stared at him as though he'd suddenly grown bat wings on the sides of his head. "Do what?"

"Watch her watching them," he explained, waving his arms here and there. "You know she's never seen anything like that in her life."

"Yes, I do know that," Fiona said.

"Come on, Fiona," he said. "You know I want to meet her, and there's never a place that's just right."

"And March Madness is just right?"

"It is. She'll know ahead of time it's a freak show, you'll explain the whole thing to her, a world she never even suspected existed."

"And wouldn't want to know exists."

"Fiona, invite her." Brian spread his hands above the cribbage board, a supplicant. "That's all I'm asking. Explain what it is, explain how your friend — that's me — wants to meet her, explain it's a goof and we promise to leave the instant she's had enough."

"Any of it would be more than enough, Brian."

Brian did an elaborate shrug. "If she says no," he said, "then that's that. I won't ever mention it again. But at least ask her. Will you do that much?"

"She would think," Fiona said, "I'd lost my mind."

"You'll say it was my idea, your goofy boyfriend's idea. Come on, Fiona. Ask her, will you? Please?"

Fiona sat back, frowning into the middle distance, her fingers tap-tapping on the table beside the cribbage board. Brian waited, afraid to push any more, and at last she gave a kind of resigned sigh and said, "I'll try."

Delighted, he said, "You will? Fiona, you'll really ask her?"

"I said I would," Fiona said, sounding weary.

"Thank you, Fiona," Brian said.

37

ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, two days after his lunch with Jay Tumbril, Jacques Perly completed a very encouraging conference with two international art thieves and a sometime producer for the Discovery Channel, then drove back to the city from Fairfield County in bucolic Connecticut. The West Side Highway deposited him onto Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, and a few deft maneuvers later he steered the Lamborghini onto Gansevoort Street, thumbing the beeper on his visor as he did so. The battered old green garage door that obediently lifted in response was in a low squat structure that perfectly suited the neighborhood; an old stone industrial building converted to more upscale uses without losing its original rough appearance.

Perly steered into the building, beeped the door shut, and drove up the curving concrete ramp to where the conversion began. The high stone exterior walls up here were painted a creamy white, and ceiling spotlights pinpointed the potted evergreens in front of his office door. This space was large enough for two cars to park, though usually, as now, it contained only Perly's. Leaving the Lamborghini, he crossed to the faux Tudor interior wall and stepped into his reception room, where Delia looked up from her typing to say, "Hi, Chief. How'd it go?"

"Well, Delia," Perly said, with justifiable pride, "I believe we'll have an amphora on our hands in very short order. And thirty minutes of airtime."

"I knew you'd do it, Chief," she said. She'd never tell him, but she loved him madly.

"I thought I might," he admitted. "What's doing here?"

"The crew's reported on that Fiona Hemlow matter," she said. "Jerry sent his stuff over by messenger, Margo e-mailed it in, and Herkimer stopped by with it. Fritz says he'll have pix for you by the end of the day. It's all on your desk."

"Good girl. Man the barricades."

"Always, Chief."

He went into his inner office, a large room with tall windows across the back and a big domed skylight in thick glass, framed in steel. The furniture was clubby and quietly expensive, the wall decorations mostly pictures of recovered art. His desk, large and old and dark wood, had come from one of the daily New York newspapers that had gone under during the final newspaper strike of 1978. He sat at it now and drew to himself the three packets of information delivered by his crew.

Fifteen minutes later, he thumbed the intercom. "Delia, get me Jay Tumbril."

"Right, Chief."

It took another six minutes, while he skimmed the reports once more, before he got the buzz, picked up his phone, and said, "Jay."

"I'll put Mr. Tumbril right on," said a girl whose English accent was probably real.

"Fine." Perly had forgotten that Jay Tumbril was one of those people who scored points for himself in some obscure game if he made you get on the line first.

"Jacques."

"Jay."

"That was quick."

"It doesn't take long when there's nothing there."

"Nothing?"

"Well, not much. There's one little— But we'll get to that. The girl first. Fiona Hemlow."

"Yes."

"She's clean, Jay. A good student, conscientious, as obedient as a nun."

Jay, sounding faintly displeased, said, "Well, that's fine, then."

"Comes from money," Perly went on. "Her grandfather, still alive, was an inventor, a chemist, came up with some patents made him and the rest of the family rich."