He visited the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. Forced himself to take some time. Looked long and hard at a van Gogh, but saw nothing in it. Walked slowly around the gallery, and the paintings might as well have been Snoopy cartoons. A few people wandered past, but none of them met his eye or seemed interested in him. After a half hour, he could stand it no longer, and headed for the exit. He still had some light.

He maneuvered the car out of the parking space and headed home; never saw the gray car, could never find a car that seemed to be tracking him. Had he been wrong? He stopped at a grocery store, bought some sliced turkey and bread, more milk and cereal, finished the drive home. Nothing. Where were they?

By early evening, he was exhausted and bored at the same time. He had convinced himself again that he was being watched, and was afraid to leave the house in the night. He ate cereal again, munching through three bowls of the stuff, and lurched away from the table with a sugar high. He tried television, tried music, tried reading. Nothing worked, but the hours passed.

At midnight, he went to bed. Couldn't sleep, got up and took a pill. Still couldn't sleep, got up and took another one. And slept, but poorly.

But the next morning, on the way to work, he found them again.

"There you are, moron-there you are," he said, as the gray car nosed around a corner two blocks back. They weren't staying tight, but seemed content to follow at a distance. Was it possible that they had put a tracking device on the car? It was possible, he guessed. He went to work, taught a class, went to lunch; went to Marten's Funeral Home to talk about caskets for his mother. The funeral home would arrange to retrieve her body from the medical examiner.

He did it all on remote control. Most of his mind was busy worrying about the rope.

She'd find it; it was only a matter of time. And she'd know who put it there. And if she didn't do something silly, like play with it-if she just called the cops and told them about it-they'd find his prints all over the excellent rubber handle.

He had to get it back.

LUCAS AND WEATHER went to a new French restaurant called Grasses. At the door, Lucas discovered that the owner was named Grass and that they served beer, and felt better about it. "I was afraid we were gonna have a choice between rye and Kentucky Blue," he said. "Fuckin' French."

"Behave yourself. I know you like new restaurants."

It was true, he decided, and he even liked French food, if it wasn't of the two-crossed-carrots-and-a-fried-snail variety. They got menus and looked them over, and Weather said, "Nothing sounds good."

He looked at her over the top of the menu. "You're pregnant."

"No… that's not it. I'm just not particularly hungry," she said.

"That's a first, in a French restaurant. And it looks pretty good to me."

"Maybe a salad," she said. "A glass of wine."

They talked about Randy over the meal. "We've got to get him," Lucas said. "I'm going in tomorrow morning and give it another try."

"What about Miss Porno Queen? Are you going back?"

"Maybe-if Randy doesn't work out, we've got to find something to make him move. But this thing with Barstad… She was a hell of a lot freakier than he was. He was along for the ride."

"I need to see that tape," she said.

"Never happen," Lucas said. "If we ever go into court with that, I'm going to have a line of custody that nobody can shake. The word's gonna get out, and I told the guy at the evidence locker that if I ever see or hear of a piece of that tape getting out, or being played by anyone, he's going to jail. I made him believe me."

"Like that."

"Yeah. We could get murdered if that tape is ever shown to anybody. It'd be like the Los Angeles cops beating up those guys on tape. Can't you see some talking head during the sweeps, screaming about how we used this young woman to do that to get a confession out of the guy? We didn't know what she was going to do, but once she was into it, there was no way to back out. But nobody would believe us if we said so."

"You told Rose Marie."

"Of course."

"What did you say to the girl?" Weather asked.

"I yelled at her a little bit, but we've got to stay on her good side-we may need her again."

"To do the same thing?"

"No. No way. If she did it again, I'd kick the door and take Qatar right there. We won't be doing this again."

AS THEY WERE talking, Qatar was leaving his house.

The decision hadn't come easily. As far as he could tell, there'd been only one car with him during the day. He couldn't imagine that he had a large network around him-probably just somebody to keep track of him. If that was the case, and if he was very, very careful, he might be able to walk away from them. And he'd have to walk: There might be a locator device on the car, and he had no idea of what it might look like or where they'd put it.

He dressed carefully for the trip-in gray and black, with a watch cap. He left the television on, and changed his answering machine so that it would answer on the first ring. If someone were to call, that might leave the impression that he was at home, on the phone. He put a lamp in the study on his vacation timer. The light would go on at eight and go off at nine-thirty. He would have to be back before midnight.

He got his city map, slipped it into his pocket, checked his supply of small bills, said to himself, "This is crazy," and went out through the garage. He could have gone through the garage door into the backyard, but to do that, he would have to put himself in the open, against the white clapboard siding on the house. But a hedge ran down the side…

The garage interior was pitch black. He pulled the door closed behind himself and groped toward the window. He found it, unlocked it, slid the window slowly up, and stepped over the sill into the side yard. If the police did have a network, or whatever they called it, watching from the upper floors of the back neighbor's house, then they might see him: But they would have to be watching closely, because the night felt as black and dense as velvet.

He pulled the window down and stood and listened; he heard nothing but cars. After two minutes of listening, he walked along the hedge all the way to the alley in back. Still heard nothing. He walked down the alley, the long way out, across the street at the end of the block, and into the next alley.

They might be following him, he thought, but he really didn't know how. He could hardly see himself in the night. He turned north, toward a shopping area. He needed a phone and a taxi.

The phone and taxi came easily enough, and Qatar marveled at his own courage as they went north through town to a strip mall above Cleveland Avenue. "There," he said, pointing. "The golf store."

"Want me to wait?"

"No. A friend will take me back," he said.

He made one fast run around the golf store to let the taxi get out of sight, then went back outside himself. He was a mile or two from Barstad's; he didn't know the exact distance, but it didn't matter. He started walking.

What would he do when he got there?

He didn't know, exactly. Love her up? Get the rope afterward? Tell her he lost his ring? He could feel the pinkie ring on his little finger. He could take it off, tell her he lost it, look around, then borrow the bathroom, retrieve the rope. Even get her to drive him back home…

He smiled at the idea: That would take some balls. Have her drop him off on his doorstep. The cop outside would have a heart attack.

He walked, thinking, What to do?

She'd betrayed him, that was for sure. He intertwined his fingers, flexed his hands. All right, he was a little angry. She'd betrayed him and she had that neck… She had that neck and she'd taken him to the cops… A little angry. She'd pretended to love him, had used him, and then had gone to the police…