“You see that Land Rover? That got taken away from the Jamaicans; that little silver car, that was in Lenny Indigo’s driveway before they put him away; that one, that green Winnebago there, that was—”

“You really know your stuff, Eddie, no doubt about it. I think what I’m going to do is, talk to some of the people who’re planning to bid on something, get a bit of color for my story.”

“Oh, good idea. But you need anything else, I’m always here.”

“Don’t you ever go home?” I asked.

He grinned, leaned in toward me. “You knew my wife, you’d know why I’m here all the time. Like to avoid going home as long as possible, you know? You married?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about, right? You know what I’m talking about, oh yeah, I can see it.”

“Well, thanks again,” I said, and broke away.

I’d called The Metropolitan’s photo desk ahead of time to arrange for a photographer to meet me here. I’d been a reporter-photographer myself on another paper a few years back—what they called a two-way—but my new employer was content to limit my skills to writing.

I spotted Stan Wannaker, one of the paper’s most distinguished shooters, who you’d be more likely to run into in Afghanistan or Pakistan or one of the other “stans” where people are always shooting each other and blowing up things because they don’t have access to cable. He was evidently slumming it to be covering something as mundane as a police auction alongside a lowly reporter like me.

“Hey, Stan,” I said, interrupting him as he snapped a couple of frames of a guy inspecting a Lexus.

He glanced away from the viewfinder. “Hey, uh, Zack, right?” He reached into his pocket where he’d stuffed a folded blue assignment sheet, opened it up and confirmed that I was the reporter he was supposed to meet. I was still relatively new on staff, and this was the first time I’d linked up with Stan. Given that I’m not exactly a foreign-correspondent type, what with my aversion to getting sand in my shoes or visiting nations where intense heat is likely to cause me a rash, our paths had not crossed.

“How come they’ve got you doing stuff like this?” I asked.

“I’m in town for a while, catching my breath,” he said. “Until all hell breaks loose someplace else, which shouldn’t be long.” Stan’s in his early forties, unmarried, lives in a tiny apartment someplace in the city, and isn’t saddled with the kinds of obligations that might keep the rest of us from leaving at a moment’s notice for the North Pole or Taiwan or the Falkland Islands. His jeans and multipocketed jacket hung loosely on his thin frame.

“So, what kind of shots you looking for?”