Perhaps he’d been hurt when her number proved phony. Perhaps knowing she didn’t want to see him would keep him from wanting to see her. But wouldn’t his first thought be that the mistake might have been an accident? Then he’d try Information, and might guess that the unobtainable number differed from what she’d given him by no more than a transposed couple of digits. So why wouldn’t he pursue it?

Maybe he never called her in the first place, never even learned that the number was phony. Maybe he’d discarded her number in the airplane washroom on the way home to his wife and kids.

Maybe he had a few guilt-ridden moments now and then, thinking of the art restorer waiting by her telephone for his call. Maybe he would find himself regretting his haste. No need, after all, to have thrown her number away. He might have been able to fit in a date with her from time to time. No reason she had to learn about the wife and kids. The hell, she’d probably be grateful for someone to take her away from her paint tubes and turpentine.

Halfway home I stopped at a deli and had soup and a sandwich and coffee. There was a bizarre story in the Post. Two neighbors in Queens had been arguing for months because of a dog that barked in its owner’s absence. The previous night, the owner was walking the dog when the animal relieved itself on a tree in front of the neighbor’s house. The neighbor happened to be watching and shot at the dog from an upstairs window with a bow and arrow. The dog’s owner ran back into his house and came out with a Walther P-38, a World War II souvenir. The neighbor also ran outside with his bow and arrow, and the dog’s owner shot him dead. The neighbor was eighty-one, the dog’s owner was sixty-two, and the two men had lived side by side in Little Neck for over twenty years. The dog’s age wasn’t given, but there was a picture of him in the paper, straining against a leash in the hands of a uniformed police officer.

Midtown North was a few blocks from my hotel. It was still raining in the same halfhearted fashion when I went over there a little after nine that night. I stopped at the front desk and a young fellow with a moustache and blow-dry hair pointed me to the staircase. I went up a flight and found the detective squad room. There were four plainclothes cops sitting at desks, a couple more down at the far end watching something on television. Three young black males in a holding pen paid some attention when I entered, then lost interest when they saw I wasn’t their lawyer.