“Okay, okay,” Herbie said. “I get the picture. I’ll do it your way, on time and everything. What does it pay?”

“Five hundred,” Stone said. “It just went down from a thousand. You want to try for two-fifty?”

“Five hundred’s fine,” Herbie said contritely. “Gimme the pitch.”

Stone handed him a sheet of paper. “The pitch is, you show up at this address at eight o’clock this evening. Can you pick a lock?”

“What kind of lock?”

“The street door of a town house with several apartments.”

“No problem.”

“If you can’t pick the lock, you’ll have to get somebody to buzz you in, or wait for somebody to leave the building so you can get in. If there’s an elevator, take it to the top floor; if not, walk up the stairs.”

“Carrying what?”

“At least two cameras, one wide lens, say a thirty-five-millimeter, one medium telephoto, a hundred-, a hundred-thirty-five-millimeter, in that range. Fast color negative film, no flash. This is strictly existing light. When you get to the top floor, get yourself onto the roof. The sixth-floor apartment has a skylight. There’ll be a man and a woman in the apartment around nine o’clock. I want explicit photographs of whatever they do to each other. Is that clear?”

“Clear as gin.”

“Then get out of there and process the film. Do it yourself; no labs. Got it?”

“Got it. Don’t worry, I got all the equipment. Who are the people?”

“I don’t know, and you don’t want to. I want the negatives and two sets of eight-by-ten prints on my desk, here, no later than ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“I got it,” Herbie said. “I want to be paid now.”

“Forget it. Five hundred, cash on delivery. If you do a clean job, no problems, and I like your work, I’ll give you a thousand. Tell me right now if there’s anything about this you can’t handle; you get only one shot at it.”

“I can handle it all, clean, no problems,” Herbie said.

Stone gave him his cell phone number. “Call me when you’re out of the building safely. Don’t write the number down, memorize it.”

“Got it,” Herbie said.

“Then get this, Herbie: You screw up, and I never heard of you. Don’t call me from a police station and ask me to make bail for you, understand?”

“I got it.”

“You get yourself busted, you’ll have to sit in jail until your uncle Bob gets back from the Virgin Islands.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the picture,” Herbie said, picking up one of Stone’s cards from a tray on his desk.

“Put that back,” Stone said. “You and I have never met and have no connection whatever.”

“Jesus, you’re a hardass,” Herbie said, returning the card.