Nazer or Muhallal must have taken the object with them. Whatever it was that fascinated them so was not here now, so that was the only answer. Was it so precious that they did not dare leave it in the apartment? Perhaps he could intercept one of them and take it from him… make it look like a mugging…

But no… too risky. They might get suspicious… might guess a third party was involved here…

Yoshio sighed and headed for the apartment door. A wasted trip. All he could do was keep watch, just as he had been doing for months.

So frustrating. He wished something would happen. And soon.

8.

8.

Alicia had given up peering through the skylight. She’d dropped into her reading chair and sat among her mending trees and plants, staring at the scanner.

But no word of a fire in Murray Hill.

Had Benny the arsonist scammed her? He didn’t set fires, he just told people he did. Then he took the money and ran.

But then again, maybe he hadn’t found the conditions right. He knew about the security guards Thomas had hired but had told her he could easily slip past them. Maybe it hadn’t been as easy as he’d thought.

Maybe he’d go back tomorrow night.

Alicia shuddered.

“Do it tonight,” she said to the empty room. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this waiting.”

THURSDAY

THURSDAY

1.

1.

“So, did you hear about Benny the Torch?”

Abe’s offhanded question stopped Jack in midbite.

He’d dropped by the shop with some bagels and Philly—the cream cheese was for Abe; Jack ate his dry. Abe supplied the coffee.

“No,” Jack said as a premonition started a slow crawl up his back. “What about him?”

But Abe’s attention had turned to Parabellum, perched on his left shoulder this time. The parakeet was pecking away at the piece of bagel Abe held up to him.

“Look at the little fellow! He loves bagels. A kosher parakeet.”

“I think it’s sesame seeds he likes,” Jack said. “And that one’s coated with them. But what about Benny?”

“Found him dead early this morning under a ramp to the Manhattan Bridge.”

“He fell?”

“No, he burned. To a crisp, I’m told. With his own accelerant.”

The piece of poppy seed bagel Jack was swallowing paused halfway down as his esophagus tightened.

“How’d he manage to do that?”

“Oh, I doubt he had much to do with it. Somebody burned the word ‘firebug’ in the ground next to him.”

“Jeez.”

“And word is he was still alive when he burned.”

Jack shuddered. Benny was a lowlife… but burned alive…

“Oy, Parabellum,” Abe said. “This is the way you show appreciation?”

Jack looked up and saw that the parakeet had dropped a load on Abe’s shoulder. From the look of the stains up there, it wasn’t the first.