Craig bent over and gripped his brother beneath the arms. Digging in his heels, he began to pull the dead weight that had been Jack.

If Jack were still alive, he’d understand.

By the time he’d returned to the apartment, Craig thought he was as depressed as possible.

That was when Ida told him she’d called the police. About Boomerang the missing cat, not the bracelet, she assured him.

She thought he took it well.

May 6, 8:15 p.m.

They were in the office late. Pearl and her daughter, Jody Jason, had come by to wait for Quinn to finish up so they could leave together and have a light supper and wine.

But Quinn wasn’t interested in only finishing paperwork. He had something to say.

Pearl looked at Quinn, not knowing if he was kidding. “You’re serious? This is a case for Q&A Investigations? You want me, personally, to look for someone’s missing cat?”

Her jet black hair hung to her shoulders, framing a pale face and dark, dark eyes. Her teeth were large and white and perfect. Quinn thought, as he often did, that everything about her was perfect. She was a small woman somehow writ large, as vivid as poster art.

He nodded. “Boomerang.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s the cat’s name—Boomerang.”

“Is this cat an Aussie?”

Quinn made a face and shrugged.

“I was just wondering if this case was going to require international travel,” Pearl said.

Quinn sat quietly. It was the thing to do when Pearl was in this kind of mood. Ignore her. Best not to be in any way assertive. It was pointless to goad her.

Pearl said, “This cat business is coming to Q&A by way of Renz, right?”

“Well, yes.” It didn’t do to lie to Pearl.

“You regard this as women’s work, looking for a missing cat?”

“In this case, yes. Yours and Jody’s.”

Something in his voice made Pearl understand that she’d bitched enough about this one.

Pearl’s long-lost daughter, with whom she’d been reunited only recently, looked like a slimmer Pearl only with springy red hair. She lived with them in the West Seventy-fifth Street brownstone that Quinn was rehabbing. Jody had a mid-level bedroom, bath, and sitting room, where she spent much of her time when she was home. She had inherited a streak of independence from her mother.

“It’s your case because you have a cat,” Quinn said. “You and Jody.”

“Snitch is your cat, too.”

“Come off it,” Quinn said. “The cat hardly looks at me. Tries to scratch me if I pick it up.”

“Cats are like that.”

“I don’t see Snitch trying to scratch you or Jody.”

“We pick him up right. He knows we like him.”

“You think I don’t like him?”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Whatever, the job is yours and Jody’s. Feds and I are working the Hoffermuth bracelet case, and Sal and Mishkin are doing field work in Stamford on that truck hijacking.”

A missing bracelet and a truck hijacking, Pearl thought. Times were hard.

And now a missing cat case.

“I thought we were working the Hoffermuth case.”

“We are. How much time can a missing cat case take?”

“Did Boomerang just run away, or was he catna—stolen?” Pearl asked.

“All we know is that he’s missing.”

“A male cat. It figures, name like Boomerang.”

Quinn didn’t know what she meant by that and didn’t want to get into it. “We’re not sure yet. He’s simply missing.”

“Maybe run over by a truck,” Pearl said.

“Damn it, Pearl!”

“Okay. But if the cat doesn’t return in seven years, do we declare it legally dead?”

“Seven times nine,” Quinn said.

“Who’s our client? Other than Renz?”

“A couple. Craig Clairmont and Ida French. They’re the cat’s owners.”

“Usually it’s the other way around,” Pearl said.

Quinn sighed, losing his patience with her, insomuch as he ever really lost his patience. “We’d be wise to keep Renz happy.”

“You can’t keep him happy unless he already is,” Pearl said. “And he isn’t, ever.”

“Except when he’s involved in something unethical, immoral, and contagiously corrupt.”

“You would stand up for him,” Pearl said.

Quinn reached into his top desk drawer, drew out a yellow file folder, and tossed it on the desk near Pearl. “For you and Jody to read.”

“The Boomerang file, no doubt.”

“Treat this like any other missing person case,” Quinn said without smiling.

She rolled the folder into a tight cylinder. “Renz give you this?”

Quinn nodded.

“I’d like to return it to him in a special way.”

“Behave, Pearl. Same goes for Jody.”

“We will,” Pearl said. “How, I won’t promise.”

“This is weird,” Jody said.

She was slouching on the sofa in the living room of Quinn’s brownstone. She and Pearl could have waited until morning, or returned to the office after dinner, to study the Boomerang files, but they didn’t. That was Pearl’s idea, making the Boomerang investigation a home project. Pearl didn’t want to defile the office by using it as headquarters for a cat hunt.

Pearl agreed with Jody—the case was weird. Reading the file made that apparent.

The clients, the married couple—if they actually were married—used different names. The woman kept her maiden name. Ida French. The husband was Craig Clairmont. They lived in the West Eighties with their eight-year-old daughter, Eloise. They had faxed a photo of the errant Boomerang. He was a black cat with long whiskers and a direct stare into the camera that could only be described as haughty.

The clients themselves hadn’t yet visited the office (or faxed photos of themselves). It turned out that Fedderman had interviewed them initially. He’d talked to them in their apartment, then phoned Quinn. Q&A had accepted the case, and just like that they were cat hunters.

Thinking about it, Pearl yawned and absently shook her head. The things a tight economy begot.

May 7, 2:06 a.m.

They were here to search.

Otto Berger and Arthur Shoulders carefully approached the passageway where they’d killed Jack Clairmont. Willard Ord, the fence and their boss, had a nose to smell a rat. He also had a multitude of sources, and years of experience in such transactions. A tongue had wagged; a word had been dropped. He knew Jack was going to try to pass off a paste imitation bracelet to them. In Willard’s line of work, there was only one way to deal with that kind of betrayal.

Betray first.

That had worked out okay, for the most part.

So here were Otto and Arthur, sent to search the passageway to dispose of Jack Clairmont’s body, and to make sure Clairmont’s finger went with it. All under cover of darkness.

Clairmont’s severed right forefinger was important. It might provide a print, which could lead to trouble. Of course the finger might have fallen into the trash truck, where it almost certainly wouldn’t be noticed. But there was no guarantee of that.

Their first problem was Clairmont’s body. It was gone. Someone seemed to have moved it.

They were secretly relieved. They might be killers, but neither man was fond of handling people once they’d been dead for a while. Otto wouldn’t even touch raw hamburger.

There was nothing to do about this state of affairs except find what they’d come for, and let Willard Ord figure out what to do about the missing corpse. Willard would still want the severed finger. Its fingerprint might lead to Craig Clairmont, and then to Willard. It was also possible someone other than the law had taken the body. Like the brother. Craig might do their work for them and dispose of the body permanently. They hoped whoever had taken Jack Clairmont had also found and concealed his finger. It wouldn’t do for it to turn up someplace when least expected.