Once Louis and Angel were inside, a middle-aged woman moved from behind the counter, locked the door and turned the sign to closed. She then unhurriedly poured two cups of coffee and left through the private staff door without looking at them or the man who sat waiting for them, stinking of cigarette smoke.

The two Japanese tourists laid down their cameras and turned to face the Collector. The younger of the men signaled almost imperceptibly to a pair of his countrymen watching from the southeastern corner of Lexington and 83rd. One of them now crossed the street to cover the front of the store while the other watched the side.

‘You think I didn’t notice them?’ said the Collector. ‘I spotted them before they were even aware of my presence.’

Louis sat at the table facing, but to the right of, the Collector, and Angel took a similar position to the Collector’s left, forming a kind of lethal triangle. By the time they were seated the guns were in their hands, visible to the Collector but not to anyone glancing in casually from the street.

‘We’ve been looking for you,’ said Louis.

‘I’m aware of that. You must be running out of houses to burn down.’

‘You could have saved us a lot of gas money by just showing up here months ago.’

‘And maybe I could have marked the spot on my forehead for the bullet to enter.’

‘You should have been more careful about your choice of victims.’

Louis reached into his coat pocket with his left hand and withdrew Jackie Garner’s bearclaw necklace. The claws rattled like bones as he fed them through his fingers. In his right he held the final claw, broken from the necklace and included with the Collector’s invitation.

‘I might say the same about your late friend,’ said the Collector.

Slowly, precisely, so as not to cause the men before him to react, he picked up his cup and sipped his coffee.

‘We can, if you choose, play the blame game until the sun starts to set, but none of us is that naïve,’ he said. ‘Mr Garner miscalculated, and someone close to me paid the price. I reacted in anger, and Mr Garner died. You’ll forgive me if I refuse to allow someone like you, a man with the blood of both the innocent and the guilty on his hands, to admonish me about the appropriateness or otherwise of killing. Hypocrisy is a particularly galling vice.’

Angel inclined slightly toward Louis.

‘Are we being lectured by a serial killer?’

‘You know, I do believe we are.’

‘It’s a novel experience.’

‘Yes, it is. I still won’t miss him after we kill him.’

‘No, me neither.’

The Collector’s hands were, once again, resting on the table. He showed no sign of unease. It might have been that he was not aware of how close he was to death, or he simply might not have cared.

‘I hear that your friend, the detective, is dying,’ he said.

‘Or still living,’ said Angel. ‘It’s a matter of perspective.’

‘He is an unusual man. I don’t claim to understand him, but I would prefer it if he survived. The world is more colorful for his presence. He draws evil to him like moths to light. It makes the practitioners easier to dispose of.’

‘You come here to deliver a get well soon wish?’ said Louis. ‘We’ll be sure to pass it on. And if he does die, well, you may just be in a position to express your regrets to him personally.’

The Collector stared out the window at the two Japanese men, then took in the second pair in the diner.

‘Where do you find these people?’ he asked.

‘We attract them,’ said Louis. ‘Like moths to light,’ he added, appropriating the Collector’s metaphor for himself.

‘Is that what you are now? The force of light?’

‘In the absence of another.’

‘Yes, I suspect yours is only reflected light,’ said the Collector. ‘You’re looking for the ones who shot him. I can help you.’

‘How?’

‘I can give you their names. I can tell you where to find them.’

‘And why would you do that?’

‘To cut a deal. Eldritch is ill. He needs rest and time to recuperate. The strain of the hunt is telling on him. As for me, it’s interfering with my work. While I try to stay one step ahead of you, vicious men and women go unpunished. So I will give you the names, and as part of the bargain you will abandon the hunt. You must be tiring of it as much as I, and you know that your Mr Garner did wrong. If I had not killed him, he would be spending the rest of his days in a cell. In a way, I did him a favor. He would not have lasted long in prison. He was not as strong as we are.’

Angel’s grip tightened on his gun. For this creature to suggest that Jackie’s murder was some kind of blessing was almost too much for him to bear.

‘At least he’d have received a trial,’ said Angel.

‘I tried him. He confessed. You’re speaking of the trappings of legality, and nothing more.’

Louis spoke. He said only one word, but it was both a warning and an imprecation.

‘Angel.’

After a second or two, Angel relaxed.

‘You mentioned us backing off as “part” of the bargain,’ said Louis. ‘What’s the rest?’

‘I know that your search for the ones who did the shooting has brought you into contact with all kinds of interesting individuals. I’m assuming one of those was Cambion.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, when you’d exhausted all other avenues, he would have been the only one left. I doubt that he gave you the answers you needed.’

‘We met him,’ confirmed Louis.

‘And?’

‘He told us that a couple, a man and a woman, carried out the attack. He promised more.’

‘Of course he did. What did he ask in return for the information?’

‘The same thing that you just did: to call off the dogs. But it’s like this – he may be a freak, but he’s a freak who didn’t kill one of our friends. If it comes down to it, I might be more inclined to take my chances with him.’

‘You’d be disappointed. He’s going to feed you to the shooters, you and your boyfriend. They’re potentially more valuable to him than you are. You’ll never do his bidding, but they’ll owe him a favor, and they’re very, very good at what they do.’

And Louis understood that the Collector was right. It simply confirmed what Louis had suspected: there would be more benefits to Cambion in siding with the shooters.

‘Go on.’

‘Here is what I’m offering,’ said the Collector. ‘I give you the names. In return, I want a truce between us, and I want to know where Cambion is. He is long overdue a blade.’

‘And if we don’t agree?’ said Louis ‘What if we just decide to kill you here?’

The gun in his hand moved so that it was aiming at the Collector beneath the table. The first shots would take him in the gut, the last in the back of the head as he fell forward and Louis delivered the coup de grâce from above.

The Collector gestured with his right hand to the chair beside him. On it, unnoticed by Angel and Louis until now, was a green cardboard folder.

‘Open it,’ he said, as he restored his hands to the table.

Louis stood, never taking his eyes off the Collector as he went to retrieve the folder. The two Asian men in the diner moved too, their guns now visible. The Collector remained very still, his gaze fixed on the table top before him. He remained like that as Louis flipped through the file. It contained typewritten sheets, photographs, even transcripts of telephone conversations.

‘It’s your history,’ said the Collector. ‘The story of your life: every killing we could trace, every piece of evidence we could accumulate against you. By good fortune, it was one of a handful of records for which Eldritch retained secure copies. There’s enough in there to have damned you, should I have chosen to take the knife to you. If I don’t walk safely out of here today, Eldritch will ensure that a copy of it goes to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the New York County District Attorney, twelve different police departments throughout the nation, and the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI. It should fill in any annoying gaps in their own research.’