Abner Boone looked at him intently.

"Anything special, Chief?" he asked.

Delaney shook his head.

"Not a whisper," he said. "Just noodling. But we got to start somewhere."

He saw the sergeant brighten and straighten when he said "we."

Both men stood up. Then Boone hesitated.

"Chief, did they send you the inventory of Maitland's personal effects from the ME's office?"

"Yes, I got it."

"Spot anything unusual?"

"Nooo," Delaney said. "Did I miss something?"

"Not something that was on the list," Boone said. "Something that wasn't." Suddenly, unexpectedly, he blushed. His pale face reddened; the freckles disappeared. "The guy wasn't wearing any underwear."

Delaney looked at him, startled.

"You're sure?"

Boone nodded. "I checked it out with the guys who stripped the corpse at the morgue. No underwear."

"Odd. What do you make of it?"

"Nothing," Boone said. "I had a session with a Department shrink-I guess Thorsen told you about that-and just for the hell of it I asked him what about a guy who didn't wear underwear. He gave me the usual bullshit answer: it might be significant, and it might not."

Delaney nodded and said, "That's the trouble. In a case like this, it's a temptation to see all facts as of equal significance. They're not. But crossing off the meaningless stuff takes just as much time as tracking down what's important. Well, we've got plenty of time. The Department really doesn't expect a break on this. See you in the morning, sergeant."

Boone nodded, and they shook hands again. The sergeant seemed a little more cheerful, or a little less beaten. He left his address and phone number. Delaney saw him out, locked and chained the door behind him.

Monica was motionless in bed, but stirred when Delaney began undressing.

"Well?" she asked.

"Divorced," he reported.

"That's nice," she said drowsily. "I'll call Rebecca in the morning."

4.

THEY PARKED ON HOUSTON Street and got out of the car.

"Aren't you going to show an 'Officer on Duty' card?" Delaney asked.

"Don't think I better, Chief," Abner Boone said. "The last time I displayed it, they stole my hubcaps."

Delaney smiled, then looked around slowly. He told Boone of the tour of duty he had served in this precinct twenty years ago.

"It was all Italian then," he said. "But I guess it's changed."

Boone nodded. "Some blacks. Lots of Puerto Ricans. But mostly Chinese moving up across Canal Street. Mulberry Street is still Italian though. Good restaurants."

"I remember," Delaney said. "I could eat those cannoli like there was no tomorrow."

They sauntered over to Mott Street, then turned south. The Chief looked up at the red-brick tenements.

"It hasn't changed all that much," he said. "The first day I was down here I got hit by airmail. You know what that is?"

"Sure," Boone grinned. "Flying garbage. They throw it out the windows into the street."

When he grinned, the boyishness Monica had noted became more evident. He had big, horsey teeth, but they didn't seem out of place in his long, smooth face. His eyes were pale blue, small and watchful. He walked in a kind of springy, loose-limbed lope, all the more youthful in contrast to Delaney's heavy, splay-footed trundle.

It was a warm, hazy May morning, beginning to heat up. But there was a dark cloud bank hovering over New Jersey; the air smelled of rain.

"Do you remember the weather for that Friday?" Delaney asked. "When Maitland died?"

"Clear, bright, but about ten degrees colder than it is now. It rained on Saturday. When we got there on Sunday, it was grey and overcast. Clammy."

Delaney stopped at Prince Street and looked around.

"Lots of traffic," he said. "Lots of activity."

"One of the problems," Boone said. "So busy that no one saw nothing. The precinct had Italian- and Spanish-speaking cops do the door-to-doors. No one offered anything. I don't think they were covering; they honestly didn't see. Probably one guy in and out in five minutes. Who's to notice?"

"No screams? No thumps or crash when Maitland fell?"

"There are ten apartments in his building. Everyone was at work or out shopping except for a deaf old lady on the third floor, a guy who works nights sleeping on the second, and the super and his wife in the basement. None of them heard anything, didn't see anything. They say."

"No lock on the outside door of the house?"

"Supposed to be, but it had been jimmied so many times, the super gave up trying to fix it. Anyone could have walked right up those stairs."

"What's the break-in rate on the street?"

Boone flipped a palm back and forth.

"About average, sir. Not the best, not the worst."

They crossed Prince Street, walking slowly, looking about.

"Why did he have his studio down here?" Delaney wondered. "He could have afforded something better than this, couldn't he? He had money."

"Oh, he had plenty of money," Boone nodded. "No doubt about that. And spent it as fast as he made it, according to his wife. We asked his agent the same thing-why he worked down here. The answers weren't logical, but I guess they make sense considering the kind of man he was. This was where he lived and worked when he first came to New York and was just getting started. This was where he did the first paintings that sold. He was superstitious and thought the place brought him luck. So he kept it as a studio after he got married and moved uptown. Also, it was off the beaten track. The guy was a loner. He hated the usual art-colony bullshit of Greenwich Village. He got sore when the galleries spread to SoHo, and more and more artists began taking lofts across Lafayette south of Houston, and even on the Bowery. He told his agent the shitheads were surrounding him, and if it got any worse, he'd have to find some place the art-fuckers hadn't discovered yet. That's Maitland's phrase: 'Art-fuckers.' Here, this is the house, Chief."

It was a grimy red-brick building exactly like dozens of others on the street. A stoop of nine grey stone steps leading up to an outer door. The first-floor apartments on either side had rusted iron grilles over their dusty windows.

"I know the layout," Delaney said. "And this wasn't in the file; I've seen hundreds of tenements like this. Two apartments on each floor. Railroad flats running front to back. The super's apartment in the basement. He can enter through that door in the areaway under the steps, but he usually keeps it locked and goes in through the hallway and down a flight of backstairs to the basement. In addition to his apartment, the cellar's got the boiler, heater, fuse boxes, and so forth. Storage space. And a back door that opens out into a little paved courtyard. Maitland's studio on the fifth floor was one big room-the whole floor. Sink and tub, but toilet in a little closet on the top stairway landing. How's that?"

"You got it, sir," Boone said admiringly. "The door in the basement, the one to the backyard, is kept locked. It's got iron bars with a chain and a padlock on it. It wasn't touched. Our guy didn't get out that way. Besides, the super and his wife were in their apartment. They said they'd have heard someone in the basement. They didn't."

"Let's go," Delaney said.

They trudged up the steps. The outer door was not only unlocked but unlatched; it swung open a few inches. Delaney paused to look at the names on the mailboxes.

"Mostly Italians," he noted. "One Spanish. One Chinese. One 'Smith' that could be anything."

The inner door was also unlocked, the handle missing.

"He said he'd replace it," Boone said.

"Maybe he did," Delaney said mildly. "Maybe someone busted the new one."

There were two short flights of stairs between floors. They went up slowly. They were on the third-floor landing when one of the doors jerked open to the length of its chain, and an angry woman poked her face out at them. She had a head of bright red hair wound around beer-can curlers. She was wearing a wrapper of hellish design she kept clutched to her scrawny neck.

"I seen you staring at the house," she accused them. "Watcha want? I'll call the cops."

"We are the cops, ma'am," Boone said softly. He showed the woman his ID. "Nothing to fret about. Just taking another look upstairs."

"You catch him yet?" the woman demanded.

"Not yet."

"Shit!" the woman said disgustedly, and slammed her door shut. They heard the sound of locks being turned and bolts being closed. They continued their climb.

"Where was she when we needed her?" Delaney growled.

They paused on the top landing, both of them breathing heavily. Delaney looked into the WC. Nothing but a stained toilet. The tank was up near the ceiling, flushed by pulling a wooden handle attached to a tarnished brass chain. There was one small window of frosted glass, cracked.

"Unheated," Delaney remarked. "In winter, a place like this could make it a pleasure to be constipated."

Boone looked at him, startled by the Chief's levity. They moved over to stand before the door of Victor Maitland's studio. There was a shiny new hasp and padlock. There was also a sign tacked to the door: THESE PREMISES HAVE BEEN SEALED BY THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, AN AGENCY OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. In smaller type, the sign detailed what an interloper might expect in the way of imprisonment, a fine, or both.

"Ah, hell," Boone said. "What's this about?"

"He died intestate," Delaney said. "No will. That means the IRS wants to make sure it gets its share of the goodies. Also, the IRS had a back claim he'd been fighting for years. Well ... what do we do now?"

Boone glanced around.

"Uh, Chief ..." he said in a low voice. "Uh, I got a set of picks. Okay?"

Delaney stared at him.

"Sergeant," he said, "you're looking better to me every minute. Sure okay."

Abner Boone took a flat pouch of black suede from his inside jacket pocket. He inspected the heavy padlock, then selected one of the picks-a long, thin sliver of stainless steel with a tiny hook at one end. Boone inserted the hook end into the keyhole of the padlock. He probed delicately, staring up at the ceiling. The pick caught. Boone turned his wrist slowly. The lock popped open.

"Very nice," Delaney said. "And the first time you've done it, too."

Boone smiled and put his picks away. He pushed the door open. They entered, closed the door behind them.

"Stand right here," Delaney commanded. "Take a good look around. See if it's all about the same as it was when the body was found. Anything out of place? Anything missing? Take your time."

He waited patiently while Boone inspected the interior of the studio. Sunshine was flooding through the overhead skylight. One of the panes of glass was broken and had been stuffed with a blue rag. There was a wire mesh over the skylight. But no ventilator. The room smelled musty, spoiled.

Delaney glanced at his watch.

"About ten-thirty," he said. "It must have looked like this six weeks ago. You said it was a bright, clear day, so he wouldn't be using the lamps. The sun is higher now, of course, but it should be just about as it was."

"I don't see anything missing or out of place," Boone said. "I have the feeling that glass on the drainboard was closer to the sink than it is now. They moved it after dusting. And the mattress on the cot was flipped. Old semen stains on the top side. Nothing fresh. Otherwise, it looks exactly the same to me."

"Were the windows open?"

"No, sir. Shut, like they are now."

"Radio on?"

"No. Switched off. That stuff at the far end, all his paints and brushes and rolls of canvas, all that mess, that's not in the original position because we went through it. But as far as I know, nothing was taken. We left it all right here."

"No paintings?"

"No. The agent said he had just finished a series and brought the last to the Geltman Galleries. There's a couple of rough sketches on the floor. The agent wanted to take them, but we wouldn't let him. He said they might have been Maitland's last work and belonged to the estate."

Delaney walked over to the chalked outline on the floor and stared down. The wood around it was stained a dark brown, almost black in patches.

"The outline about right?" he asked Boone.

"About. The right arm, here, wasn't exactly straight. More bent at the elbow. And the knees were bent a little. But he went down flat on his face and spread out."

Delaney knelt by the rude outline of the dead painter, staring at it through half-closed eyes.

"Was his face right down on the floor?"

"Turned a little to the left maybe, but mostly straight down."

"Do you know where he carried his wallet?"