"I got another piece of the puzzle today. It was Spike Logan who came to my house on the Vineyard. He was working for Hoyt."

Mike let go of my neck and came around to sit in front of me, waiting while I inhaled some of the coffee. "What?"

"Figure it out. Hoyt gave money to the Schomburg. You think it was an accident that Spike Logan was interviewing Queenie Ransome? Graham Hoyt knew exactly who she was, from his interest in Farouk. He hires Logan to get inside, to gain the poor old dame's trust. He hires Logan mainly to learn whether that precious piece of gold was actually one of the things she spirited out of the palace."

"Will Logan talk to us, you think?" Mike asked.

I looked over at Mercer. "Call Chip Streeter. When Logan showed up empty-handed after ransacking my house during the hurricane, Hoyt realized he already knew too much. Tell Streeter to expect what's left of Logan to wash up on South Beach, near Stonewall, any day now."

"You think Hoyt sent Logan to spook you during the storm?"

"Worse than that. It was Hoyt who set me up all week, telling me how bad the hurricane was going to be, why I needed to get to the house. You see," I said, "I think he really believes I knew what Paige gave me. He thinks she confided in me-since she had been so candid in telling me about accidentally killing the man in her father's house. Hoyt's sure I had this priceless piece of paper from the Treasury Department, and that once Paige was dead, I would have kept it with me for safekeeping, even if I wasn't entirely sure what it was."

"He sent Logan to the house to get the document, and get rid of you," Mercer said.

"So then there's Hoyt's competition," I said.

Mike was gnawing on one of the sandwiches. "That would be Peter Robelon. He knew about the coin because his father was top dog in the British Secret Service, attached to Farouk's group when the king was living in exile. Lionel Webster-the guy who pretended to be Harry Strait-he's a mercenary who was hired by Robelon."

"So you had two professional teams working against poor, whacky Andrew Tripping, who knew the whole story from his own Agency experience but just couldn't put together a plan that worked," Mercer said. "You think his effort to meet and date Paige Vallis was a setup?"

"From the get-go. Same with Lionel's 'Harry Strait' character." I was certain that was no chance meeting.

"And Paige?" Mike asked. "You think she knew the whole story?"

"I can't imagine she did. I'll give you some more homework, guys. You remember the burglar who died in the struggle, the one she confronted when she got home after her father's funeral?"

"Yeah."

"Get phone records and bank records and anything else that left a paper trail. Bet you almost anything that guy was hired by Graham Hoyt. Smart enough to pick an Arab to do the dirty work. That way, if the plan failed, it would look like the break-in was related to the consulting job on terrorism that Mr. Vallis was involved in when he died."

"You think he went in to steal the document that made the Double Eagle a legal coin?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then you also think…" Mike was mulling my theory over as he chewed.

"I'll bet that Paige found the paper on the burglar's body-maybe they even fought over it when she interrupted him."

"She realized what it was?"

"I'm not sure that she knew its value or meaning, but she was smart enough to figure out it was so important that someone might kill for it. Who knows, maybe her father had explained its significance, figuring the stolen coin that it referred to would eventually surface somewhere in the world. And that he-and then Paige-was the only person who held the key to turning twenty dollars' worth of gold into seven or eight million."

"Assuming we find the document in Dulles's jacket, why do you think Paige gave it to you, Alex?" Mercer asked.

I shrugged. "I don't think she had anyone else in her life she could trust at that point. The evening before she testified, she got a phone call from Harry Strait. So the morning she came to my office, she was scared enough to tell me something about him. But she didn't give me the baseball jacket then."

"Wasn't Strait in the courtroom, too?"

"Yeah. She gets on the stand and not only is she facing Andrew Tripping, who was way too interested in her father and his career for it to be coincidental, and there's Strait again."

"That ratchets up her fear factor," Mike said.

"So then we went back to my office, and before she left, she made her decision to pull out the Yankees jacket from her bag and give it to me."

"But didn't even give you a hint that she's hidden something in it."

"She was frightened, Mike, but I don't think most people cope with the fact that their lives might actually be in imminent peril. She had been flirting with this particular danger for months."

"Besides," Mercer added, "she was never too direct with Alex unless she was pressed to be. She let everything come out piece by piece, when she was ready to tell it. Right up to the minute she testified."

"Step one was giving me the jacket for safekeeping. Getting it out of her possession and into the hands of the law. Step two would be swearing that she no longer had it to anyone who tried to get it from her over the weekend."

"Not too successfully, obviously," Mike said.

"You know, when Hoyt lured her out of her apartment by telling her she could see Dulles, and then waylaid her in the laundry room," I thought aloud, "I'll bet she pleaded for her life by telling him she had given me-sent me is what he thought-the paper."

"Once she admitted that," Mike went on, "she was as good as dead. He didn't need her anymore."

"I think she figured if someone hassled her over the weekend, she had a chance to unload the whole story to me on Monday. She just didn't know how very dangerous Hoyt was."

Mercer's phone rang and he took the call. It was a short conversation but it confirmed what we had already guessed. Paige Vallis had sewn the mistakenly issued 1944 document that made the second Double Eagle legitimate legal tender into the lining of the pocket of Dulles Tripping's favorite Yankees jacket.

"That Polaroid photo of Queenie and Dulles that Mrs. Gatts gave me today, Alex," Mercer asked. "Did Hoyt talk about that?"

I smiled at him. "Me and my big mouth. Hoyt overheard me talking to you about Fabian and the picture. That's what almost bought me a piece of muddy real estate at the bottom of the Kills."

Mike hadn't heard Mercer's news yet.

"Get somebody good to sit down with Dulles, as soon as possible. I think whenever Hoyt had a visitation period with him, they were keeping a little secret between themselves. Hoyt was taking the boy to visit McQueen Ransome."

"But why?"

"She was a sucker for kids. We know that from the neighborhood. Here comes Hoyt, pretending to be a great admirer of her career, full of stories he knew about Farouk, ready to dignify her glory days by funding an exhibit at the Schomburg. And he brings along a fair-haired boy-the exact age of her son when he died-with a sad story to go with the kid. Who does Queenie have to leave her few belongings to? Why not this deserving child, who had no mother?"

"Something misfired, though."

"Yeah, I think Queenie was every bit as smart as Graham Hoyt, and even tougher. I don't think she liked the smell of his offer. She probably realized that what he wanted from her had more value than he was telling her."

I could barely hear Mike when he spoke. "So he killed the old lady."

"And was ready to let Kevin Bessemer take the weight. After all, who's going to believe a convicted felon-and a crackhead to boot-that Queenie was already dead when he got there?"

"He even controlled all the legal proceedings, all the players."