An orange-haired woman in a short blue dress, oversized olive sweater and army boots stood talking to a platinum blonde with black lipstick and black fingernail polish and a thin young man, closely shaved and barbered, who wore an immaculate white dinner jacket and matching white sneakers trimmed in rhinestones.

"Buntrock at the Friedinger told me they were ready to make a move towardt he new realism soon and that I'd better get in while I could," the orange-haired woman announced importantly.

"I told you that months ago," retorted white sneakers with a covetous glance at Leyden 's wonderful 'Nude on a Cerise Rug,' which his friend had just purchased. "If you'd acted when I told you, you could have picked that up for two thou less."

Sigrid found herself swept on and pushed up against a chalk drawing on pale blue paper. Amid curved lines vaguely suggestive of rounded blue clouds was a single small dark circle with soft lines radiating from the center, rather like a child might draw a starburst. Stylized stars? From a realist like Piers Leyden?

"You have to step back a few feet to get the full impact," said Nauman's voice behind her.

Obediently Sigrid stepped back and it became immediately obvious that the small dark circle was an anal view from pointblank range.

"Oh," she said, and turned to Nauman with a smile.

"You cut your hair."

She felt self-conscious again. "Yes."

"Earrings, a real dress, even silk stockings."

"They tell me gentlemen prefer Hanes," she said, striving for lightness.

"Very nice," he said, but there was an odd quality in his voice.

"Don't you like it?" she asked, puzzled.

"Oscar Nauman!" cried a jovial little Frenchman. "Tell me mon frère, what do you think of Kissie Riddle's new abstracts?"

"Innocuous awning stripes," Oscar said sourly. "Vuzak."

They passed into the gallery's crowded middle room where Doris Quinn, Leyden 's inamorata, presided over the wine punch and toasted brie with a proprietary air. Lovely as ever, she wore a russet-colored jumpsuit and lots of heavy gold bracelets and chains. (In the picture behind her, she knelt on an oriental rug her late husband had given her for an anniversary present and wore nothing except a knowing smile.)

"Lieutenant Harald?" she exclaimed. "Why, I almost didn't recognize you. You look stunning!"

Praise from Caesar was praise indeed, thought Sigrid. She accepted a glass of the wine punch with murmured thanks while the little French gallery owner continued to badger Nauman for a kind word about the show he had currently mounted.

All around them swirled the darting glances, the languid handshakes, the empty kisses, the knowing faces mouthing profound judgments and invidious comparisons between Leyden 's current show, his past shows, his future: "He's ready to take off."

"What a rich complex of architectonic imponderables."

"Notice the resonant ambiguities in the reds."

"His strategies work, darling."

"What panache!' "What presence!

"What energy!"

"What crap!" muttered Nauman as he was carried off by a group that included Elliott Buntrock, perhaps the hottest curator in town at the moment.

"Now, Oscar," Buntrock said sternly. "Stop calling it crotch art and tell me:w ho mentored Leyden? You? Nauman gave a bitter laugh. "Bob Guccione probably, but neither of them will admit it."

While Nauman was trapped, Sigrid drifted around the gallery, conscientiously looking at Leyden 's new pictures. She didn't know the right catch phrases and she didn't care for very much on the current scene, having long since given her heart to the clean, uncluttered purity of the late Gothic.

A craggy Hans Baldung head, for example, spoke volumes more to Sigrid than any Piers Leyden full-figured odalisque.

"Ready to go?" asked Nauman, abruptly reappearing on her second circuit of the rooms.

He was silent in the elevator going down, but once they were out on the sidewalk, he made a great show of looking up and down the street. "What? No battlecruisers to sail you away tonight?"

Sigrid gazed at him a long moment;t hen it came to her and she was incredulous. "You're jealous!"

"You're damn right I'm jealous!" he scowled. "For six months! Didn't I know? A swan hiding under all those prickly gray feathers. Didn't I say? And you fighting every attempt-No matter how much bread I scattered on the water-"

His angry metaphors outran his tongue. "Then little Sammy Sailor comes floating by and hey, presto!"

Others had descended from the Leyden opening and Sigrid became aware of curious faces. "Stop it, Nauman," she said. "You're making a scene."

"And what about Knight? Did he make you beautiful or did he just make you?"

"You're insulting," she said icily. "If there hadn't been a half-bottle of wine to a gallon of soda in that punch upstairs, I'd say you were drunk."

"An excellent suggestion!" he said and stomped away.

30

SIGRID changed her mind as the taxi cruised down the avenue. She didn't want to go home to Roman's curious face, she wasn't hungry enough to have dinner out, and there was no movie she wanted to see. Headquarters might have been an alternative, but dressed like this she would provoke even more curious looks. What she really wanted was a quiet, nonthreatening person who would talk about common unemotional things until she quit feeling as if she wanted to burst into tears.

Half of any solution lies in formulating the problem.

She leaned forward and asked the driver to take her to Metro Medical.

Visiting hours were not over until nine o'clock, so the hospital was still abuzz with daytime chatter, snatches of television music and the rattle of juice carts.

Sigrid had decided that if Tilliew as asleep, she wouldn't disturb him. Happily, she found him awkwardly endeavoring to replace the telephone on the bedside table and his mild blue eyes registered surprise as he recognized her.

"Lieutenant! But he said-I just tried to call you. He said you were out."

"I am," she said dryly.

"I'm glad you came by," he beamed, waving a piece of paper.

The expression on his bruised face was one that Sigrid had come to expect whenever he discovered a significant bit of data that everyone else had overlooked.

"What is it, Tillie? What have you found?"

"You said it would be easier if you knew for sure who the bomb was meant for, right?"

"Right." Sigrid knew he savored the telling so she did not spoil his enjoyment by rushing him.

"Well, look at this pairings roster you got from Graphic Games. Look at Wolferman."

Sigrid looked. "Zachary Wolferman, Number 101," she read.

"Now the commander."

"Commander T. J. Dixon, Number 102."

"And me?"

"Charles Tildon, Number 102."

"Now look at Professor Sutton."

"John Sutton, Number 161?"

"Somebody must have changed the six to a zero. You still have the seating chart from Friday night, don't you?"

"The one that was on that little easel affair? I'm sure we do. It's a bit smudged and crumpled though. It got knocked over and stepped on a few times."

"You should still be able to tell. Somebody had to change Sutton's number to 101 and somebody else's to 161. One of those two numbers ought to be visible."

Sigrid grasped his point. "And that'll tell us if the killer made the change on the pairing print-out or after the hotel's artist had finished making the display chart."

Tilly leafed through the folder till he found a rough sketch of how the tables had been set up and numbered. "Number 161, would have been at Table 7," he said, passing it over to her.