Hope to Die

His wristwatch, set to beep not on the hour but a precise ten minutes before it, tells him it's 12:50. He reads the last of the Bierman posts, clicks Mark All Read, and signs off. His screensaver comes on, showing a city skyline at night, forever changing as lights go on and off, on and off.

He sits back, stretches. His shirt is unbuttoned at the throat, his tie loose. He reaches under his collar and produces a mottled pink disc an inch and a quarter in diameter, perhaps an eighth of an inch thick, holed in the center. It's stone, rhodochrosite, and cool to the touch, and it hangs around his neck on a thin gold chain. He rubs the smooth stone between his thumb and forefinger, savoring the feel of it.

He tucks it inside his shirt, buttons the top button of his shirt, tightens his tie. He checks the knot in the mirror and it's fine, perfect.

And he can feel the pink stone disc, smooth and cool against his chest…

Time to go to work.

SEVENTEEN

"So we got us a client," T J said. "Damn! We on the clock, Doc."

"Well, it's barely ticking," I said. "I think the main reason I took her money was to keep her from giving it to somebody else."

"You clever, though, way you work things out. Girl wants to hire us, thinks her cousin did this bad thing. You put her mind at rest, pat her on the head and send her on her way. Then you turn around and get the rich cousin to hire us. We go

"That's right, I almost forgot. Our client started out as the designated suspect."

"You happen to tell her that?"

"It slipped my mind."

We were at the Morning Star. I'd slept later than usual, and Elaine had left for the gym by the time I'd shaved and showered. There was coffee left, and I poured a cup and called T J. "If you haven't had breakfast," I said, "why don't you meet me downstairs in ten minutes." He'd been up since six, he said, when a couple down the hall had a louder-than-usual drunken argument, and he'd gone out and eaten, then went home and booted up his computer and got on-line. But he'd gladly keep me company.

I was working on an omelet, and he was keeping me company with a side of home fries and a toasted bagel and a large orange juice. He dabbed his lips with a napkin and said, "Slipped your mind. Probably a good thing. There any case left, now that we on it?"

"It's hard to know where to go with it. I wish there was someone with a motive. It's a lot of trouble to go through for no reason."

"Stole some stuff," he said.

"More like borrowing it. Moved it from Manhattan to Brooklyn, where the cops recovered it."

"All of it?"

"There's a thought," I said. "He might have held on to something, our mystery man."

"Might be why he did the job in the first place. Say he wants one thing, but he doesn't want anybody to know he took it."

"Like what?"

"How I know, Beau? Something real valuable, some diamond, some priceless painting."

"It would be on the insurance schedule," I said, "and it would be evident it was missing."

"Something else, then. Some legal papers, some photos or letters, kind of thing people kill to get back."

"Why not just take whatever it was," I said, "and go home? Why kill the Hollanders?"

"To keep everybody from finding out you took whatever it was."

I thought about it. "I don't know," I said. "It sounds too complicated. Whoever did this, he put it together carefully and didn't mind killing four people to carry it off. I can't think what the Hollanders could have had in the house that would have warranted that kind of effort."

"Guess you right," he said. "Just came to me is all."

"I wish something would come to me," I said. "Looking at the victims doesn't seem to lead anywhere. They led a blameless life, everybody adored and respected them, and they loved each other. I wonder."

"Wonder what?"

"Maybe I've been looking at the wrong victims."

"Only victims we got," he said.

"I can think of two more."

It didn't take him long. "In the house in Brooklyn," he said. "Bierman and Ivanko. You sayin' he went through all that to waste those two dudes?"

"No, they weren't the point, just the means to the end."

"Use 'em and lose 'em. But he had to find 'em first- that what you gettin' at?"

"There has to be a co

" 'Bout as passive as it gets," he said. "All Bierman did was get hisself killed."

"Bierman may not have known him at all."

"Dude comes to the door, tells Bierman he's the exterminator, come to spray for roaches. Bierman lets him in and it's a done deal, Bierman's chillin' in the corner and the dude's out the door, wearin' Bierman's shirt an' pants."

"But Ivanko was in on the play," I said. "Even if the last act came as a surprise to him."

"Dude comes to Ivanko, tells him he's got a deal lined up."

" 'Big profit, low risk, here's the key, here's the alarm code…' "

"Can't have that conversation with a dude 'less you know he be down for it. How's he know that about Ivanko?"

"He did three years in Green Haven for burglary. Maybe that's where they met."

"You think the dude's an ex-con?"

I thought about it. "Somehow I don't," I said. "You pick up a few things in prison, but one you tend to lose there is the sense that the law can't touch you, because it already has. The guy who orchestrated all this still thinks he's bulletproof."

"Might have got his hands dirty, though."

"I don't think this was the first time he broke the law. Whether or not he's done time, he could know people who have. Ivanko's got no living relatives, as far as I can tell, and his mother's old apartment's his last known address. He must have been living somewhere when he broke into the Hollanders', but the police found him in Brooklyn before they could find out where he was staying."

"An' then they stopped lookin'."

"That might be a place to start," I said. "If we're looking at Ivanko, you know who we ought to talk to?"

"If you thinkin' same as me, it's too early to call him. He be sleepin'."

"Da

"And between now and then?"

"The gun," I said. "Somebody stole it from a Central Park West psychiatrist's office."

"Maybe the gun was ready to be stolen."

I gave him a look. "The way it appeared on the surface," I said, "Bierman was the shooter, so it seemed logical to assume he brought the gun. Which meant either he stole it himself or someone else stole it and sold it to him."

"But all Bierman really got," he said, "was the bullet."

"Right, so somebody else supplied the gun, and it wouldn't have been Ivanko or it would have been in his hand during the burglary and not his partner's."

"Ivanko coulda had two guns. Didn't need both, so he kept one and gave the other to the mystery man."

"Ivanko didn't have a gun on him when they found him," I said, "but the killer could always have taken it off his body on his way out. Simplest explanation, though, is that there was only one gun, and the man who used it is the man who brought it along."

"The dude himself. Where'd he get it? From the shrink's office?"

"That's where it came from, and he must have been the one who took it."

"Why couldn't he buy it on the street? Not the hardest thing in the world to do, if you know your way around."

"The pillowcases," I said.

"Forgot about them. Same deal in both break-ins, at the shrink's and at the Hollanders'. Stripped the pillows, used the cases to carry off the goods."

"It's a fairly natural thing to do," I said, "and it saves hunting in the closet for tote bags, but when it pops up in both burglaries- "