I couldn’t get anywhere with his answering service. They were happy to take my message but wouldn’t disclose whether Chance had called in recently. “I expect to hear from him shortly,” a woman told me, “and I will see that he receives your message.”

I called Brooklyn information and got the number for the house in Greenpoint. I dialed it and let it ring for a dozen times. I’d remembered what he’d told me about removing the clappers from the bells of his telephones, but I thought it was worth a check.

I called Parke Bernet. The sale of African and Oceanic art and artifacts was scheduled for two o’clock.

I had a shower and a shave, had a roll and a cup of coffee and read the paper. The Post managed to keep the Motel Ripper on the front page, but it took some stretching to do it. A man in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx had stabbed his wife three times with a kitchen knife, then called the police to tell them what he’d done. This normally would have rated two paragraphs on the back page at the most, but the Post put it on the front page and topped it with a teaser headline that wondered, did the motel ripper inspire him?

I went to a meeting at twelve-thirty and got to Parke Bernet a few minutes after two. The auction was being held in a different room from the one where the sale lots had been displayed. You had to have a sale catalog to get a seat, and the catalogs cost five dollars. I explained I was just looking for someone and scanned the room. Chance wasn’t there.

The attendant didn’t want me to hang around unless I bought a catalog, and it was easier to do that than argue with him. I gave him the five dollars and wound up registering and getting a bidder’s number while I was at it. I didn’t want to register, I didn’t want a bidder’s number, I didn’t want the goddamned catalog.

I sat there for almost two hours while one lot after another went under the hammer. By two-thirty I was fairly certain he wasn’t going to show but I stayed in my seat because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. I paid minimal attention to the auction and looked around every couple of minutes for Chance. At twenty to four the Benin bronze was offered for bids and sold for $65,000, which was just a little higher than the estimate. It was the star of the sale and quite a few bidders left once it had been sold. I hung on a few minutes longer, knowing he wasn’t coming, just trying to grapple with the same thing I’d been grappling with for days.