“No,” he said. “No, goddamn it, I don’t have any better reasons. What are you getting at? He took it because it could be traced to him?”

“Why not?”

“Then why didn’t he take the fur? We fucking know a boyfriend bought her the fur. Maybe he didn’t use his name, but how can he be sure of what he let slip and what the salesman remembers? He took towels, for Christ’s sake, so he wouldn’t leave a fucking pubic hair behind, but he left the fur. And now you say he took the ring. Where did this ring come from besides left field? Why have I got to hear about this ring tonight when I never heard of it once in the past two and a half weeks?”

I didn’t say anything. He picked up his cigarettes, offered me one. I shook my head. He took one for himself and lit it. He took a drag, blew out a column of smoke, then ran a hand over his head, smoothing down the dark hair that already lay flat upon his scalp.

He said, “Could be there was some engraving. People do that with rings, engraving on the inside. To Kim from Freddie, some shit like that. You think that’s it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You got a theory?”

I remembered what Danny Boy Bell had said. If the boyfriend commanded such muscle, was so well connected, how come he hadn’t shown her off? And if it was someone else with the muscle and the connections and the insufficient words to the wise, how did that someone else fit in with the boyfriend? Who was this accountant type who paid for her mink, and why wasn’t I getting a smell of him from anywhere else?

And why did the killer take the ring?

I reached into my pocket. My fingers touched the gun, felt its cool metal, slipped beneath it to find the little cube of broken green glass that had started all of this. I took it from my pocket and looked at it, and Durkin asked me what it was.

“Green glass,” I said.

“Like the ring.”

I nodded. He took the piece of glass from me, held it to the light, dropped it back in my palm. “We don’t know she wore the ring to the hotel,” he reminded me. “We just said so for the sake of argument.”

“I know.”

“Maybe she left it at the apartment. Maybe someone took it from there.”

“Who?”

“The boyfriend. Let’s say he didn’t kill her, let’s say it was an EDP like I said from the beginning—”

“You really use that expression?”