“I don’t know. There’s Sunny and Nan and the girl who likes classical music. Maybe there’s one or two others. Maybe more. Chance is very private, you know? He keeps things to himself.”

“The only name you’ve got for him is Chance?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve been with him, what, three years? And you’ve got half a name and no address and the number of his answering service.”

She looked down at her hands.

“How does he pick up the money?”

“From me, you mean? Sometimes he’ll come by for it.”

“Does he call first?”

“Not necessarily. Sometimes. Or he’ll call and tell me to bring it to him. At a coffee shop or a bar or something, or to be on a certain corner and he’ll pick me up.”

“You give him everything you make?”

A nod. “He found me my apartment, he pays the rent, the phone, all the bills. We’ll shop for my clothes and he’ll pay. He likes picking out my clothes. I give him what I make and he gives me back some, you know, for walking-around money.”

“You don’t hold anything out?”

“Sure I do. How do you think I got the thousand dollars? But it’s funny, I don’t hold out much.”

The place was filling up with office workers by the time she left. By then she’d had enough coffee and switched to white wine. She had one glass of the wine and left half of it. I stayed with black coffee. I had her address and phone in my notebook along with Chance’s answering service, but I didn’t have a whole lot more than that.

On the other hand, how much did I need? Sooner or later I would get hold of him, and when I did I would talk to him, and if it broke right I’d throw a bigger scare into him than he’d managed to throw into Kim. And if not, well, I still had five hundred dollars more than I had when I woke up that morning.

After she left I finished my coffee and cracked one of her hundreds to pay my tab. Armstrong’s is on Ninth Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth, and my hotel is around the corner on Fifty-seventh Street. I went to it, checked the desk for mail and messages, then called Chance’s service from the pay phone in the lobby. A woman answered on the third ring, repeating the four final digits of the number and asking if she could help me.

“I want to speak to Mr. Chance,” I said.

“I expect to speak with him soon,” she said. She sounded middle-aged, with a chain smoker’s rasp to her voice. “May I take a message for him?”