“Couple of hours.”

“Good luck. And don't worry, everything here's cool. Ms. Castagna lends a nice touch to the place, maybe we'll keep her.”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Sure,” he said, chuckling. “Why not? Woman's touch and all that. Hell, we can keep the beast, too. Put up a picket fence around the lawn. One big happy family.”

New York was as clear as an etching, all corners and windows, vanishing rooflines, skinny strips of blue sky.

I walked to the law firm, heading south on Fifth Avenue, swept along in the midtown tide, comforted, somehow, by the forced intimacy.

The shop windows were as glossy as diamonds. People wearing business faces hurtled toward the next obligation. Three-card monte players shouted invitations, took quick profit, then vaporized into the crowd. Street vendors hawked silly toys, cheap watches, tourist maps, and paperback books stripped of their covers. The homeless squatted in doorways, leaned against buildings. Bearing crudely lettered signs and paper cups, their hands out, their eyes leeched of expectation. So many more of them than in L.A. but yet they seemed to belong, part of the city's rhythm.

Five Hundred Fifth Avenue was a six-hundred-foot limestone tower, the lobby an arena of marble and granite. I arrived with an hour to spare and walked back outside, wondering what to do with the time. I bought a hot dog from a pushcart, ate it watching the throng. Then I spotted the main branch of the public library, just across Forty-second Street, and made my way up the broad, stone stairs.

After a bit of asking and wandering, I located the periodicals room. The hour went fast as I checked four-year-old New York newspapers for obituaries on Harvey Rosenblatt. Nothing.

I thought of the psychiatrist's kind, open manner. The loving way he'd spoken about his wife and children.

A teenaged boy who'd liked hot dogs. The taste of mine was still on my lips, sour and warm.

My thoughts shifted to a twelve-year-old, leaving town on a one-way ticket to Atlanta.

Life had sneak attacked both of them, but Josh Rosenblatt had been much more heavily armed for the ambush. I left to see how well he'd survived.

Schechter, Mohl, and Trimmer's decorator had gone for Tradition: carved, riff-oak panels with laundry-sharp creases, layers of heavy moldings, voluptuous plaster work, wool rugs over herringbone floors. The receptionist's desk was a huge, walnut antique. The receptionist was pure contemporary: midtwenties, white-blonde, Vogue face, hair tied back tight enough to pucker her hairline, breasts sharp enough to make an embrace dangerous.

She checked a ledger and said, “Have a seat and Mr. Rosenblatt will be right with you.”

I waited twenty minutes until the door to the inner offices opened and a tall, good-looking young man stepped into the reception area.