It seemed to me that I already had all the pieces. It was just a question of fitting them together.

Kim. Kim’s ring and Kim’s mink jacket. Cojones. Maricón. The towels. The warning. Calderón. Cookie Blue.

I got up and left. I was crossing the lobby when a table full of catalogs of past sales caught my eye. I picked up a catalog of a jewelry auction held that spring and leafed through it. It didn’t tell me anything. I put it back and asked the lobby attendant if the gallery had a resident expert on gems and jewelry. “You want Mr. Hillquist,” he said, and told me what room to go to and pointed me in the right direction.

Mr. Hillquist sat at an uncluttered desk as if he’d been waiting all day for me to consult him. I gave him my name and told him I wanted some vague approximation of the value of an emerald. He asked if he could see the stone, and I explained that I didn’t have it with me.

“You would have to bring it in,” he explained. “The value of a gem depends upon so many variables. Size, cut, color, brilliance—”

I put my hand in my pocket, touched the .32, felt around for the bit of green glass. “It’s about this size,” I said, and he fitted a jeweler’s loupe into one eye and took the piece of glass from me. He looked at it, went absolutely rigid for an instant, then fixed his other eye warily upon me.

“This is not an emerald,” he said carefully. He might have been talking to a small child, or to a lunatic.

“I know that. It’s a piece of glass.”

“Yes.”

“It’s the approximate size of the stone I’m talking about. I’m a detective, I’m trying to get some idea of the value of a ring that has disappeared since I saw it, I—”

“Oh,” he said, and sighed. “For a moment I thought—”

“I know what you thought.”

He took the loupe from his eye, set it on the desk in front of him. “When you sit here,” he said, “you are at the absolute mercy of the public. You wouldn’t believe the people who come here, the things they show me, the questions they ask.”

“I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t.” He picked up the bit of green glass and shook his head at it. “I still can’t tell you the value. Size is only one of several considerations. There’s also color, there’s clarity, there’s brilliance. Do you even know that the stone is an emerald? Did you test it for hardness?”

“No.”

“So it could even be colored glass. Like the, uh, treasure you’ve given me here.”