He was introduced to Arthur Mordred. Clive gave him a curt nod and asked of the three, "Do you think you can tell me what in G.o.d's name happened this afternoon?"-Clive nodded in the general direction of where they'd been-"out there?"

Candy pressed his hands to his chest, his eyebrows bolting to his hairline. "You asking us? Us? What about you? It sure looked to me like you had that piece aimed at me."

Karl said, "It couldn't've been him, C. The shot didn't come from that direction."

"What shot?"

Candy leaned toward Clive, tapping the Band-Aids with his finger. "This shot."

"That's a scratch."

"Okay, so a bullet scratched me. What were you doing with a gun, Clive-O?"

"I've always carried a gun. I live in New York; you almost have to." Clive pawed the little dish of nuts, taking out the cashews, which he popped in his mouth one after the other.

"In a book? You always shoot the book, too?"

Clive found two more cashews and held on to them, thinking. He said, "I was just copying Robert De Niro. In that movie with Eddie Murphy? De Niro's a cop. In this one scene he's gotten himself a twenty-four-ounce paper cup of soda at a Seven-Eleven and walks into the dope dealers' place holding it. Only what he's really done is pushed a gun up the bottom. He sips through the straw; I guess the straw's there to lend it greater verisimilitude."

"You're full of s.h.i.t, Clive," said Candy.

Arthur plucked a peanut from the dish. "You all seem to lead such interesting lives." He ate the peanut, and asked Clive, "What line of work are you in?"

"I'm an editor. Senior book editor at Mackenzie-Haack. If you're writing a book, please keep it to yourself."

Arthur's laugh was a little on the trill side of hearty. "Not to worry on that score."

Clive looked at him. "Why not? Everybody else is doing it."

"But it must be fascinating, working with all kinds of writers."

"Oh, it's all kinds all right. All kinds. Here comes one of the kinds now, lucky us."

Dwight Staines bade them a hearty h.e.l.lo and shouldered his way in between Clive and Karl. "Terrific book signing," he said, "as per usual, right?" and he cuffed Clive on the shoulder. "Line stretched all the way into the street."

Clive cuffed him back, as hard as he could, and Dwight nearly fell over.

In the lobby, Ned cast a glance at the attractive blonde in the Buddy Holly gla.s.ses, wondering why she looked familiar. That was it: he'd seen her in Schenley Park that morning. Or had she been one of the people on the pavement that afternoon, part of that queer scene that had dissolved just as Ned had turned to look at what sounded like some kind of shootout, or what he'd first thought was possibly a TV show being filmed? Maybe a movie.

But then in the next ten minutes the police had come and the fire trucks and the omnipresent TV news teams (as if they'd all been stationed behind bushes and down alleys). Their anchors or field reporters were being brushed and brightened by their on-the-run makeup artists before the newscasters faced the cameras. Customers came out of shops, cafes, and bookstores, restlessly milling and watching as police looked for the place to cordon off the crime scene. Unfortunately for their purposes there wasn't one.

Watching all of this, Ned doubled back on the pavement, licking his ice cream cone. He stood where one of the cops was listening to a group who swore there'd been shots.

"How many?"

"Oh a lot," said a fat woman with incandescent orange hair who'd hurried out of a beauty parlor.

The officer looked dubious.

"And farther along the pavement," another woman said, pointing at the place imagination selected as the crime scene, "some woman was abducting a baby-right out of its carriage!"

The group more or less swept the officer along to the dark blue carriage. "Look, see, it's empty! This baby's been kidnapped!" She was close to tears.

Ned had gone along with them, all in a bunch with a single mind, from what would now be a crime scene (police spooling out their yellow tape) to where one television crew was ensconced before an antiquarian bookstore. You could tell Miss Channel 5 was bursting with a news-nugget "exclusive" (which is how she put it), the one concrete piece of evidence found. The field reporter was very pretty in her powder blue suit. (Why did all women TV presenters look like Nicole Kidman? wondered Ned.) She had a man in tow, apparently the owner or manager of the bookshop. "What has been found, and Mr. Stooley will confirm this, is a book sold by him to a customer that was later discovered in the street with a bullet hole through it!"

This was probably the single piece of evidence police would choose to withhold. Ned had read enough of Jamie's novels to know that. Too late now.

The disaster scene-though short a doc.u.mented disaster-was in fact becoming a block party, with the cafe owner distributing coffee and bottled water to whoever wanted it.

"A red Porsche was seen speeding away from the scene; there is speculation as to whether it was a failed drive-by shooting or if the Porsche transported the missing child, whose mother, described as a redhead in her midthirties, has not come forward."

Ned wandered on to another clutch of people, the onlookers dying to be interviewed, claiming to have witnessed one thing or another. Here was another newscaster (Nicole in sea green with a frothy collar) from another channel, this one Channel 13, according to the print on the big white van stationed near her.

"-blonde in dark gla.s.ses and a trench coat who appeared to have shoved this carriage-" Here she gave the empty baby carriage a poignant look before returning to her brisk manner.

Ned moved around with his pistachio ice cream cone and made his way to a police officer to tell him he, too, had seen the red Porsche, which struck him as acting suspiciously. "It was at Schenley Park, driving around slowly, you know, circling around more than once."

"You didn't see the driver?" The officer had his small notebook out, taking down what Ned said.

"No."

"Nothing else you can tell me?"

Ned shook his head. "No. Nothing. Are you sure there was a baby in that carriage?"

The policeman frowned. "Why wouldn't there be? It was a baby carriage."

Ned shrugged. "Just a thought. I mean did anyone actually see the baby?"

The officer studied Ned for five seconds and then said, "What kind of ice cream is that? I've never seen green before."

"Pistachio. Isaly's."

"Oh."

"You want some, there's a store just three doors down."

The policeman nodded and returned his notebook to his pocket.

"That's my name, Ned Isaly."

"No kidding?"

"It's my family. I'm from here, from Pittsburgh."

The officer nodded, not terribly interested in this personal history. He looked toward the ice cream shop. "Did they have any Rocky Road?"

"Oh, they must have."

"You're visiting your family, then?"

"Not really. My mother and father are dead."

"But there must be a lot of other Isalys."

"Well, yes. I don't know any I'm directly related to, though."

"Oh." The policeman looked puzzled by this obscure relationship. "Well, I guess I'll go check, see if they have any Rocky Road."

"Probably, they do."

"Nice talking to you."

Ned pondered the scene that had taken place that afternoon and which he had a hard time believing was an honest to G.o.d crime scene. It struck him as an event-no, a nonevent-he might want to write into his novel. He stopped halfway to the bar and thought of the possible implications of such a thing happening to Nathalie in the Jardin des Plantes. In the hands of a Camus or a Kafka, the blackness of the comedy would shine like ink.

But think (he walked on, giving the blonde on the lobby sofa an absentminded smile): Nathalie . . . couldn't it be used to show her self-delusion? Why not? Certainly not in the last part of the story, but in the first part? Nathalie with an ice cream cone. What was that famous ice cream you used to be able to get only on the Ile St.-Louis? He remembered that ice cream vividly-Bertelsmann's? No, that was the German conglomerate that was eating up publishing houses. This ice cream-Berthillon, that was it!-had the most nuanced selection he had ever tasted, far more subtle than Isaly's. It was the fine print of ice cream, the slow sunrise of ice cream: "Maron glace," "Grand Marnier," "Amandine." Stuff like that.

He was leaning against the bar and registered some conversational buzz before he realized the talk was directed at him. "What? Sorry. I was thinking." He was being introduced to Clive.

Ned gave Clive a sort of smiling frown. "Aren't you with Mackenzie-Haack?"

"I am. I've never had a chance to talk with you, though. You're always jammed up (Clive was getting somewhere with the argot) with Tom Kidd."

Ned asked the bartender for a beer. "Yes. Well, he's my editor."

As if everybody at Mackenzie-Haack, indeed of all of New York publishing, didn't know. "I admire your work. I really do."

"Thanks. What are you doing in Pittsburgh? Bobby trying to nab some writer?"

Clive was surprised that Ned had any consciousness at all of the underground (not to mention underhanded) workings of his publishing house. "Nab" didn't necessarily mean "steal." Except where Bobby was concerned, it did.

Clive smiled; since he couldn't use the Dwight Staines excuse for being here, he'd have to find another reason, but let it go for the moment, saying, "Do you know Dwight Staines?"

Dwight turned toward Ned, eager to meet anyone famous, or, rather, eager to have the anyone meet him. Dwight knew that Ned Isaly wasn't in the same ballpark-h.e.l.l, wasn't in the same hemisphere-when it came to royalties. "Me, I'm here on a book tour. This is my first stop. Tomorrow it's Chicago."

Having nothing to say about book tours, Ned simply nodded. Clive was sure you couldn't get Ned on a book tour at gunpoint. Well, he didn't care much for that a.n.a.logy. Clive always thought there were two kinds of writers: public and private. He preferred the private ones. On the other hand, didn't readers deserve to see a writer they were paying out a good bit of money to read over the years?

"It's already on the TBR," said Dwight.

"No," said Clive, "it isn't. It can't be because the pub date was only four days ago." Why was he arguing with this idiot?

Dwight brushed that aside. "I meant it will be. Have you read it?"

The question was addressed to Candy and Karl.

"No. I'm reading Ned's." Karl held up Solace.

Dwight brushed that aside as he had the TBR. "h.e.l.l, that's five years old." He said this as if quality could rub off the book like dust from a b.u.t.terfly's wing. "My new one is a megamonster! Creepy as h.e.l.l!"

Arthur said, "I can believe it," and drank his bourbon.

While Dwight was monopolizing the conversation, Blaze appeared at Clive's elbow, burnished hair glowing like cognac. "Oh, Bla-" Wait. Was he supposed to know her? "Uh, sorry, have you met-?" Clive waved his hand around.

Blaze said, "It's Betty. Betty Bunting. People call me Baby." She moved over to Ned's part of the bar, laid her hand on his arm, and ordered herself a martini.

Sally squinted toward the people at the bar. These drugstore gla.s.ses were killing her, the magnification was so strong. But she certainly knew the woman with the fiery hair. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," she said, slapping down her copy of Architectural Digest. She rose, flounced across the lobby to the elevator bank, and fairly threw herself into one.

Ned turned to Candy and Karl. "What're you guys doing here?" He laughed as if their presence were outlandishly amusing.

"Remember?" said Karl. "We're from here."

"Yeah," said Candy, "the both of us. Funny running into you. And here's another pal of ours-" He introduced Arthur.

Ned started to shake hands at the same time he felt a hand on his shoulder. "What the h.e.l.l-? Saul! Where in h.e.l.l did you pop up from?"

Saul shrugged, smiled. "Manhattan. I got bored."

"You could've gone to the Bahamas for that."

Saul ordered a Dewar's for himself and another round for everyone else, tossing a hundred-dollar bill on the bar.

Clive was simply stunned. "You're Saul Prouil. I'm an editor at Mackenzie-Haack. I'm a great admirer of your work. I feel honored."

Saul thanked him. "There's no honor in it, believe me."

Ned shook his head. "The only person missing is-Sally?"

Saul turned and stared for here she came walking across the lobby as if she were perfectly at home in it, even wigless and minus her dark-rimmed gla.s.ses.

"Sally!"

"Well," she said, "aren't you going to introduce me to your friends?" It was the one friend, Blaze, she had her eye trained on.

"Betty," said Blaze. "My friends call me Baby."

Sally nodded at the half circle of people around the bar, realizing too late she hadn't made up an excuse for being there. "For G.o.d's sakes," she said with a little laugh. "We might as well be in Swill's."

"Yeah," said Candy, snickering. "When are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow," Sally answered.

"Tomorrow," said Saul.

"Tomorrow," said Clive.

"Tomorrow," said Blaze.

"Tomorrow," Candy, Karl, and Arthur said in unison.