Then he heard, for the first time, soft laughter from the terrace. The two youths, wine glasses in hand, were standing at the railing, looking down at something on the East River.

When he looked back, he saw Geltman had slid from his perch on the chair arm. Now he was in the chair, sitting sideways, his legs hooked over the opposite arm.

"Yes," he told Delaney, "I knew."

"You didn't tell us," the Chief said flatly.

"Well ..." Geltman sighed, "it's not the kind of thing you like to talk about. Also, I couldn't see how it could possibly help you find the guy who did it. I mean, how could it help?"

Delaney took another sip of beer. From now on, he decided, he would frost his glasses.

"It might help," he said. "It just might. I'm not saying it would help explain other people's actions, but it might help explain Maitland's."

Geltman stared at him a moment, then shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"The doctor says that when he told Maitland he had a fatal illness, Maitland laughed. I believe that. It's in character with what we've learned about the man. But I don't care how hard he was, how cynical, what a lush. Hearing a thing like that would change his life. The life he had left. It had to. He'd do things he wouldn't otherwise do. Make plans maybe. Or try to jam as much into his remaining days as he could. Something. It would result in something. The man was human. Just ask yourself how you'd react if you got heavy news like that. Wouldn't it affect the way you'd live out your days?"

"I suppose so," Geltman said in a low voice. "But I knew about it, and I didn't see any change in him. He was still the same crude, mean son of a bitch he had always been."

"When did you learn about the illness?"

"About five years ago, I think it was. Yes, about then."

"He told you himself?"

"Yes."

"Did he tell anyone else, to your knowledge? His wife, for instance? His son?"

"No," Geltman said. "He told me I was the only one he was telling. He swore me to secrecy. Said if I told anyone, and he learned about it, he'd cut my balls off. And he'd have done it, too."

"Did you tell anyone?" Delaney asked.

"Jesus, no!"

"His mother? His sister? Anyone?"

"I swear I didn't, Chief. It's just not the sort of thing you go around blabbing about."

"No," Delaney said, "I suppose not. You say you saw no change in his conduct? His personality?"

"That's right. No change."

"He didn't, to your knowledge, make any special plans? Men sentenced to death usually tidy up, put their affairs in order."

"He didn't do anything special. Not to my knowledge."

"Well," Delaney sighed, finishing his beer, "he certainly didn't seem to make any effort to leave his wife and son well provided for. They inherit, but not much."

"They'll do all right," Geltman said shortly. "With the sale of the last paintings. Even after taxes, they'll come out with half a million. At least. I'm not shedding any tears for them. Another beer, Chief?"

"No, thank you. That just hit the spot."

He looked out onto the terrace again. The languid youths were draped again in their white wire chairs, lounging comfortably. As Delaney watched, one of them, a golden-haired boy, tilted his head back and, holding the wine glass above him, let the last few drops of wine spill into his mouth and onto his face. The other youth laughed.

"It was some muscle disorder," Delaney said. "As I understand it."

"Yes," Geltman said.

"It didn't affect his painting? For five years?"

"Not noticeably," the art dealer said.

"What does that mean?"

"The buyers didn't notice," Geltman said. "The critics didn't. But Maitland did. And I did."

"How? How did it affect his painting?"

"He said there was a-well, not pain, but a stiffness. That's how he described it-a stiffness. In his hands, arms, shoulders. So he took something that seemed to help."

"Poppers? Snappers?"

"Yes."

"From Belle Sarazen?"

"I don't know where he got them."

"But they helped?"

"That's what Vic told me. He said they loosened him up. You can see it in his last paintings. The stuff he did in, oh, the last year or two. They were looser, the line not as sharp, the colors harsher, brighter. It's a subtle thing. I think only Vic and I could see it. No one else saw any change. They were still the same old Maitlands. Still as wonderful, still as evocative, as stirring."

"Yes," Edward X. Delaney said. "Stirring."

He heaved himself to his feet, cleared his throat.

"I thank you, Mr. Geltman," he said. "For seeing me. The hospitality."

"My pleasure," the little man said. He thrust himself up from the chair, slid over the arm to land agilely on the balls of his feet. "Hope it helped. Getting anywhere, are you?"

"Oh yes," Chief Delaney said. "Definitely."

"Good," Geltman said. "Glad to hear it."

They moved to the entrance hall. Delaney turned back to look around that fabulous room one more time.

"A kind of dream," he said.

"Yes," Saul Geltman said wonderingly, looking at Delaney. "That's exactly what it is-a kind of dream."

Then the Chief glanced out to the terrace. The two youths were standing again at the railing. Their long, fine hair whipped in the breeze like flame. One had his arm around the other's waist.

Again, Delaney had the impression of a remembered photograph. White-clad youths against a china-blue sky. A tomorrow that would never come. No future at all. But an endless now, caught and held.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Saul Geltman said softly.

Edward X. Delaney turned to him, smiling faintly. He quoted: "Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust."

He left then, as Saul Geltman was trying to compose some kind of response, his face slack and struggling.

15.

BY WEDNESDAY OF THE following week, copies of a police artist's sketches of the Spanish woman and the young model had gone out to all Manhattan precincts. They had also been distributed to newspapers and TV stations. The Daily News had given them a nice display on page 4, under a two-column head: NEW LEAD IN MAITLAND SLAYING. And the drawings had been shown on the evening news programs of channels 2 and 7, with a phone number that any citizen with information could call.

In addition, Jason T. Jason had been taken off patrol and assigned full-time to the Maitland investigation. He was enthusiastic about his new job and, according to Sergeant Boone, was spending about eighteen hours a day checking out the list of Maitland's known hangouts and just wandering the streets of the Lower East Side, showing pocket-size reproductions of the police sketches to pushcart vendors, bartenders, beauty-parlor operators, shop owners, street peddlers, pimps, prosties, hustlers, bums-anyone who might have seen one or both of the women.

Also during this week, Abner Boone ran another time check and proved to his satisfaction, and that of Chief Delaney, that it would have been no problem for Ted Maitland to get from Cooper Union to the Mott Street studio, zap his father, and return to Cooper Union in time for his two o'clock lecture.

Boone was also able to determine the last name of Martha, the housekeeper of Dora and Emily Maitland up in Nyack. Her last name was Beasely. The sergeant discovered this by calling the Maitland home. The first time he called, Emily Maitland answered and Boone hung up. The second time, a harsh twangy voice said, "Maitland residence."

Boone said, "I'm trying to locate Martha Jones. Is this Martha?"

"Well, it's Martha," the housekeeper said, "but my name ain't Jones; it's Beasely."

"Sorry to bother you," Abner Boone said, and hung up. He then checked the Nyack phone directory and got Martha Beasely's home address.

On Thursday, Deputy Commissioner Thorsen phoned Delaney and told him that Mrs. Dora Maitland's Nyack bank had agreed to cooperate; the Chief could examine her account. But it was all on the q.t., and Delaney was to speak only to an assistant vice-president who would be present during his examination to make certain Delaney did not alter or remove the records. The Chief readily agreed to that.

So, all in all, it was a busy, productive week-lots of phone calls, meetings, writing of reports and new time charts-and as they drove up to Nyack on Friday morning, Chief Delaney and Sergeant Boone sourly agreed they were not one step closer to finding the killer of Victor Maitland. Though neither would admit discouragement, they weren't exactly bubbling over with optimism either.

"Still," Delaney said, "you never know when a break's going to come, or from what direction. I had a partner once in the One-eight Precinct. He had worked the homicide of a young woman raped and strangled in her apartment. All the leads petered out. They chewed on it for weeks and months, and then the file got pushed to the back of the tub. You know how it is: there's so much new stuff coming along, you just can't give any time to the old. So more than a year later, the NYPD gets a letter from a woman out in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana-some place like that. She had signed up for the Peace Corps, got sent to Africa, caught some kind of fever, and was sent home. Now this Peace Corps girl had her mail forwarded to her in Africa-right? And she was a good girlfriend of this girl who got knocked off in New York. And while she's in Africa, a letter is forwarded to her from this girl who got zonked. This letter is all little jokes about a new guy she's met, he's got a red beard, his name is David and how nice he is, and all that, and she's got to close this letter and mail it fast because this David is coming over for dinner. This letter, which the Peace Corps woman had saved and sent to the New York cops, was dated the day the girl got snuffed. The Peace Corps woman didn't know her friend had been killed till she got back to this country. So the dicks go to the old file and find a married guy named David-he's got a red beard, too-who worked in the dead girl's office. They broke him, and that was that. But that's how a break came along that no one counted on."

"We should be so lucky," Boone said mournfully.

"We will be," Edward X. Delaney said confidently. "Our cause is just."

And Sergeant Boone didn't know if he was kidding or not; one of these days he was going to ask the Chief for a blueprint of his sense of humor.

On the drive up, they talked a lot about Victor Maitland's fatal illness. The sergeant couldn't get over it.

"Everyone talks about what a stud he was and how he was pronging everything in sight," Boone said. "And now we find he was dying, and knew it. Chief, you think that's why he was so busy in the sack? Trying to cram in as much as he could before he passed?"

"No," Delaney said, "I don't think so. His reputation as a stallion goes way back. Remember what Saul Geltman said about him in Greenwich Village twenty years ago? He was getting more than his share even then. No, I don't think getting the death sentence from Doc Horowitz turned him on. But I'll bet my bottom dollar that it set him off some other way. Sergeant, it's impossible to hear news like that and not have it affect your life style some way."

"But Geltman told you no," Boone reminded him. "Said Maitland didn't change at all."

"Geltman," Delaney said broodingly. "I like that little guy. I really do. But there's something about him ..." The Chief held his open hand a few inches from his temple, palm cupped, fingers spread. He turned the whole hand a short way, as if he were turning a big dial. "Something just a little off up there. Something too much."

"The young boys on the balcony?"

"No. Well ... that's part of it maybe. But his apartment. The beautiful things he owns. The things! He loves them. You should have seen him touch them. Did everything but kiss the tables. I've never seen such a passion for things. They were magnificent, I admit it. But still, they were just things. When he's as old as I am, he'll realize you spend the first half of your life accumulating things, and the second half getting rid of them. I think if I had broken his crystal tulip glass, he'd have cried."

"Things never turned me on," the sergeant said.

"No?" Delaney said. "I never would have guessed it from the luxury of your apartment."

Boone grinned, but resolved to visit his local Woolworth's and buy some decent glasses.

The sergeant dropped Delaney off in front of the bank. The Chief told him to take his time finding and talking to Martha Beasely. When he was finished, he could pick Delaney up at the bank or, if he wasn't there, to try the tavern across the street. The bar had a big sign in the window reading: YES, WE HAVE COORS!

The assistant vice-president of the bank turned out to be young, wistful, with a blonde mustache that didn't quite make it. He ensconced Delaney in one of the small, private rooms in the safe-deposit vault. On the desk was a stack of folded computer printouts, two small reels of microfilm in labeled boxes, and a microfilm-reading device.

"Know how to work this thing?" he asked the Chief.

"Sure," Delaney said. "Start. Stop. Advance. Rewind. I can handle it."

"Right," the banker said. "Well ... uh ..."

Then he asked a few eager questions about police work. ("Must be a fascinating life. Tell me do you ... ?") But when he realized this New York City cop was going to answer only in grunts, or not at all, he finally gave up, disregarded the agreement, and said, "Just tell the man outside when you're finished." Then he departed, leaving behind the faint scent of Canoe.

Chief Delaney closed the door and locked it. He put on his reading glasses, took off his jacket, and settled down in a tubular steel chair with a meagerly padded seat cushion. He laid out notebook and pen. He started on the stack of computer printouts, and had worked barely fifteen minutes when he knew he wasn't going to need notebook or pen. Zilch.

The printout was a record of Mrs. Dora Maitland's checking and saving accounts for the previous six months. The microfilm carried similar information for the past seven years. When Chief Delaney realized he was going to find no startling revelations, he began going faster and faster, flipping microfilm through the electric viewer almost as fast as he could press the Advance button. He finished everything in a little more than an hour.

Dora Maitland had a savings account that began with a total of slightly more than six thousand dollars and was gradually reduced by small withdrawals (usually fifty or a hundred dollars) to a current total of slightly less than four thousand dollars. The withdrawals showed no periodic pattern. During the period covered by the records, no deposits other than accumulated interest had been made.

The records of the checking account did show patterns but they seemed entirely innocent to Delaney. For instance, there were quarterly deposits of precisely the same sum: $117.50. That was probably a stock dividend. And regular semi-annual deposits of $375 were probably municipal-bond coupons.

There were weekly checks written in the amount of $125, which, the Chief guessed, could be Martha Beasely's salary. And there were odd-cents sums for electricity, telephone and, he assumed, living expenses.

There was a check written annually for more than two thousand dollars, and Delaney thought that was the property tax. He could find no monthly schedule of disbursements large enough to be mortgage payments, so he assumed the Maitland home was free and clear.

When he had finished, he sat there a few moments, shoulders drooping, staring balefully at the unmarked page of his notebook. What he had been hoping for, of course, were large deposits or withdrawals. A single big withdrawal, for instance, might indicate payment to a hired killer. Hefty checks drawn at regular intervals sometimes signaled payments to a blackmailer. But what Delaney was particularly looking for was a record of big deposits. It would then be a reasonable assumption that Victor Maitland, a very successful artist, was contributing handsomely to the support of his mother and sister, with whom he was on friendly terms. But apparently Dora and Emily had been telling the truth. Victor gave them nothing. At least the bank accounts revealed nothing.

From all indications, Dora and Emily Maitland were getting by-but just. They owned their home and grounds, but their total net worth-their cash worth-rarely ran over five thousand dollars, according to these records. It just didn't make sense, when the loving son was selling paintings at 100 G's, and Edward X. Delaney didn't believe it for a minute. Something smelled-and it wasn't Canoe.

The Chief told the vault attendant he was leaving, and tramped across the sun-baked street to the tavern. It was a hot, steamy afternoon, and he carried his jacket and a straw skimmer. The bar was just as desolate as Delaney's mood-a big, empty barn of a place, reeking of stale beer and a creosote disinfectant, with sawdust on the floor and a piebald cat yawning around. There were two silent customers at the bar, slumped over their beers, and a bartender just as silent. He was sucking on a toothpick, staring out the flyblown window and waiting patiently for the end of the world.

The Chief ordered a Budweiser. He paid for it and took bottle and glass to a back booth. The place was dim enough, and cool, and quiet. He drank the beer slowly, taking little sips, sitting stolidly and avoiding unnecessary movement.