"As a matter of fact, yeah."

"You're missing some files."

The naked Mrs. Kingsbury said, "Frankie, you didn't tell me." Her arms were impressively steady with the gun.

Kingsbury took his hands out of his underwear and folded them in a superior way across his breasts, which were larger than those of a few women whom Danny Pogue had known.

"Not exactly the Brink's job," Kingsbury remarked.

"Well, we got your damn files," said Bud Schwartz.

"That was you? Bullshit."

"Maybe you need some proof. Maybe you need to see some credit-card slips."

Kingsbury hesitated. "Selling them back, is that the idea?"

Some genius businessman, thought Bud Schwartz. The guy was a bum, a con. You could tell right away.

"Tell your wife to drop the piece."

"Penny, you heard the man."

"And tell her to go lock herself in the John."

"What?"

The wife said, "Frankie, I don't like this." Carefully she placed the gun on the nightstand next to a bottle of Lavoris mouthwash. A tremor of relief passed through Danny Pogue, starting at the shoulders. He hopped across the room and sat down on the corner of the bed.

"It's better if she's in the john," Bud Schwartz said to Francis X. Kingsbury. "Or maybe you don't care."

Kingsbury gnawed his upper lip. He was thinking about the files, and what was in them.

His wife wrapped herself in a sheet. "Frank?"

"Do what he said," Kingsbury told her. "Take a magazine, something. A book if you can find one."

"Fuck you," said Penny Kingsbury. On her way to the bathroom, she waved a copy of GQ in his face.

"At Doral is where I met her. Selling golf shoes."

"How nice," said Bud Schwartz.

"Fuzzy Zoeller, Tom Kite, I'm not kidding. Penny's customers." Kingsbury had put on a red bathrobe and turned up the television, in case his wife was at the door trying to eavesdrop. Bud Schwartz lifted the handgun from the nightstand and slipped it into his pocket; the cold weight of the thing in his pants, so close to his privates, made him shudder. God, how he hated guns.

Kingsbury said, "The painting in the big room – you guys get a look at it?"

"Yeah, boy," answered Danny Pogue.

"We did that up on the Biltmore. Number seven or ten, I can't remember. Some par three. Anyway, I had to lease the whole fucking course for a day, that's how long it took. Must've been two hundred guys standing around, staring at her boobs. Penny didn't mind, she's proud of 'em."

"And who wouldn't be," said Bud Schwartz, tight as a knot. "Can we get to it, please? We got plenty to talk about."

Francis X. Kingsbury said, Tm trying to remember. You got the Ramex Global file. Jersey Premium. What else?"

"You know what else."

Kingsbury nodded. "Start with the American Express. Give me a number."

Bud Schwartz sat down in a high-backed colonial chair. From memory he gave Kingsbury an inventory: "We got a diamond tennis necklace in New York, earrings in Chicago. Yeah, and an emerald stickpin in Nassau of all places, for like three grand." He motioned to Danny Pogue, who hobbled over to Mrs. Kingsbury's dresser and began to look through the boxes.

Dispiritedly, Kingsbury said, "Forget it, you won't find it there."

"So who got it all?"

"Friends. It's not important."

"Not to us, maybe." Bud Schwartz nodded toward the bathroom. "I got a feeling your old lady might be interested."

Kingsbury lowered his voice. "The reason I use the credit card, hell, who carries that much cash?"

"Plus the insurance," said Danny Pogue, pawing through Mrs. Kingsbury's jewelry. "Stuff gets broke or stolen, they replace it, no questions. It's a new thing."

Great, Bud Schwartz thought; now he's doing commercials.

"There's some excellent shit here. Very nice." Danny Pogue held up a diamond solitaire and played it off the light. "I'm guessin" two carats."

"Try one-point-five," said Kingsbury.

"There were some dinners on your card," Bud Schwartz said. "And plane tickets, too. It's handy how they put it all together at the end of the year where you can check it."

Kingsbury asked him how much.

"Five grand," Bud Schwartz said, "and we won't say a word to the wife."

"The file, Jesus, I need it back."

"No problem. Now let's talk about serious money."

Kingsbury frowned. He pulled on the tip of his nose with a thumb and forefinger, as if he were straightening it.

Bud Schwartz said, "The Gotti file, Mr. King."

"Mother of Christ."

" 'Frankie, The Ferret, King.' That's what the indictment said."

"You got me by surprise," Kingsbury said.

Danny Pogue looked up from an opal bracelet he was admiring. "So who's this Gotti dude again? Some kinda gangster is what Bud said."

"How much?" said Kingsbury. He leaned forward and put his hands on his bare knees. "Don't make it, like...a game."

Bud Schwartz detected visceral fear in the man's voice; it gave him an unfamiliar feeling of power. On the other side of the bathroom door, Francis Kingsbury's wife shouted something about wanting to get out. Kingsbury ignored her.

"The banks that made the loans on Falcon Trace, do they know who you are?" Bud Schwartz affected a curious tone. "Do they know you're a government witness? A mob guy?"

Kingsbury didn't bother to reply.

"I imagine they gave you shitloads a money, Bud Schwartz went on, "and I imagine they could call it back."

Francis Kingsbury went to the bathroom door and told Penny to shut up and sit her sweet ass on the can. He turned back to the burglars and said: "So what's the number, the grand total? For Gotti, I mean."

Danny Pogue resisted the urge to enter the negotiation; expectantly he looked at his partner. Bud Schwartz smoothed his hair, pursed his mouth. He wanted to hear what kind of bullshit offer Kingsbury would make on his own.

"I'm trying to think what's fair."

"Give me a fucking number," said Kingsbury, "and I'll goddamn tell you if it's fair."

What the hell, thought Bud Schwartz. "Fifty grand," he said calmly. "And we toss in Ramex and the rest for free."

Excitedly Danny Pogue began excavating a new pimple.

Kingsbury eyed the men suspiciously. "Fifty, you said? As in five-oh?"

"Right." Bud Schwartz gave half a grin. "That's fifty to give back the Gotti file..."

"And?"

"Two hundred more to forget what was in it."

Kingsbury chuckled bitterly. "So I was wrong," he said. "You're not such a putz."

Danny Pogue was so overjoyed that he could barely control himself on the ride back to Molly's condominium. "We're gonna be rich," he said, pounding both hands on the upholstery. "You're a genius, man, that's what you are."

"It went good," Bud Schwartz agreed. Better than he had ever imagined. As he drove, he did the arithmetic in his head. Five thousand for the American Express file, fifty for the Gotti stuff, another two hundred in hush money...rich was the word for it. "Early retirement," he said to Danny Pogue. "No more damn b-and-e's."

"You don't think he'll call the cops?"

"That's the last place he'd call. Guy's a scammer, Danny."

They stopped at a U-Tote-Em and bought two six-packs of Coors and a box of jelly doughnuts. In the parking lot they rolled down the windows and turned up the radio and stuffed themselves in jubilation. It was an hour until curfew; if they weren't back by midnight, Molly had said, she would call the FBI and say her memory had returned.

"I bet she'll cut us some slack," said Danny Pogue, "if we're a little late."

"Maybe." Bud Schwartz opened the door and rolled an empty beer can under the car. He said, "I'm sure getting' tired of being her pet burglar."

"Well, then, let's go to a tittie bar and celebrate." Danny Pogue said he knew of a place where the girls danced naked on the tables, and let you grab their ankles for five bucks.