We talked a little. She said maybe we'd run into each other at a meeting one of these days. I allowed that it was possible. She'd been sober almost six months, she'd qualified a couple of times already. I said it would be interesting sometime to hear her story. She said, 'Hear it? G.o.d, you're in it.'

She was just getting back to sculpture. She'd put it all on hold when she got sober, and it was hard to make the clay do what she wanted it to do. But she was working at it, trying to keep it all in perspective, putting her sobriety first and letting the rest of her life fall into shape at its own pace.

And what about me? Well, I said, I had a case, I was looking into a matter for an acquaintance. I didn't go into detail and she didn't press. The conversation slowed, and there were a few pauses in it, and I said, 'Well, I just thought I'd call and say h.e.l.lo.'

'I'm glad you did, Matthew.'

'Maybe we'll run into each other one of these days.'

'I'd like that.'

I hung up and remembered drinking in her loft on Lispenard Street, warming and mellowing as the booze worked its magic in our veins. What a fine sweet evening that had been.

At meetings you'll hear people say, 'My worst day sober is better than my best day drunk.' And everybody nods like a plastic dog on a Puerto Rican's dashboard. I thought about that night with Jan and looked around my little cell of a room and tried to figure out why this night was better than the other had been.

I looked at my watch. The liquor stores were closed. The bars, though, would be open for hours yet.

I stayed where I was. Outside, a squad car went by with its siren open. The sound died down, the minutes slipped by, and my phone rang.

It was Chance. 'You been working,' he said with approval. 'I've been getting reports. The girls cooperate okay?'

'They've been fine.'

'You getting anywhere?'

'It's hard to tell. You pick up a piece here and a piece there and you never know if they're going to fit together. What did you take from Kim's apartment?'

'Just some money. Why?'

'How much?'

'Couple hundred. She kept cash in the top dresser drawer. It was no secret hiding place, just where she kept it. I looked around some to see if she had any holdout money stashed anywhere, but I couldn't find any. Didn't turn up any bank-books, safe-deposit keys. Did you?'

'No.'

'Or any money? S'pose it's finders keepers if you did, but I'm just asking.'

'No money. That's all you took?'

'And a picture a nightclub photographer took of her and me. Couldn't see any rightful reason to leave that for the police. Why?'

'I just wondered. You went there before the police picked you up?'

'They didn't pick me up. I walked in voluntarily. And yes, I went there first, and it was before they got there, far as that goes. Or the couple hundred would have been gone.'

Maybe, maybe not. I said, 'Did you take the cat?'

'The cat?'

'She had a little black kitten.'

'Right, she did. I never thought about the kitten. No, I didn't take it. I would have put out food for it if I thought. Why? Is it gone?'

I said it was, and its litter box too. I asked if the kitten had been around when he went to the apartment but he didn't know. He hadn't noticed a kitten, but then he hadn't been looking for one.

'And I was moving quickly, you know. I was in and out in five minutes. Kitten could have brushed against my ankles and I might not have paid it any mind. What's it matter? Kitten didn't kill her.'

'No.'

'You don't think she took the kitten to the hotel, do you?'

'Why would she do that?'

'I don't know, man. I don't know why we're talking about the kitten.'

'Somebody must have taken it. Somebody besides you must have gone to her apartment after she died and took the kitten out of there.'

'You sure the kitten wasn't there today? Animals get scared when a stranger comes around. They hide.'

'The kitten wasn't there.'

'Could have walked out when the cops came. Doors open, kitten runs out, goodbye kitty.'

'I never heard of a cat taking its litter pan along.'

'Maybe some neighbor took it. Heard it meowing, like they do, and didn't want it to go hungry.'

'Some neighbor with a key?'

'Some people exchange keys with a neighbor. In case they get locked out. Or the neighbor could have got the key from the doorman.'

'That's probably what happened.'

'Must be.'

'I'll check with the neighbors tomorrow.'

He whistled softly. 'You chase down everything, don't you? Little thing like a kitten, you're at it like a dog at a bone.'

'That's the way it's done. Goyakod.'

'How's that?'

'Goyakod,' I said, and spelled it out. 'It stands for Get Off Your a.s.s and Knock On Doors.'

'Oh, I like that. Say it again?'

I said it again.