Colby was on his feet again, his eyes wide, his mouth making a sex-doll “Oh!”

Revealed also, now that darkness had been banished, was Velda at a table with a cassette tape set-up, and a big microphone pointed at us like a gun. Nearby was a borrowed NYPD video camera that Chris Peters was running—Chris was not here, if anybody asks you. A Homicide captain, say.

“You can go now,” I told Vincent, returning the blanks-filled .45 to the shoulder holster. “You’ll be hearing from the authorities. Now would be a good time to talk to your old man about countries without extradition agreements with the USA.”

Any sane man would have run for the door and taken advantage of that generous offer. But, as we know by now, Vincent Colby wasn’t sane and instead chose to lurch at me, and grab me by my head with both hands, like he was clutching a soccer ball to kick. As he tried to yank me down, to deliver one last crushing knee blow to the chest, my hands gripped his neck and I jerked and twisted. The result was the loudest snap anybody ever heard, its echo rivaling the .45 shots.

He collapsed into a fashionable Armani-clad pile of dead.

“No sensei taught me that,” I told the corpse.

Velda was right there, hugging my arm. “Looks like he really did have a temper.”

Chris called, “Mike—the camera was rolling. It got everything, including…uh, what you just did.”

I shrugged. “Well, it makes backing up my self-defense plea this time a snap.”

Velda didn’t laugh at that—neither did Chris or Thal. Tough crowd.

But I took the opportunity to talk to the camera and offer an embarrassed smile.

“Sorry, Pat. I tried.”

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A white-haired butler in traditional black livery met me at the door to the co-op apartment. He was so ancient that he’d been doing this long enough for such a thing to be common among a certain class. That included the Colbys, of course, although frankly they may have been among the poorer folk housed in one of the twenty-two apartments on these sixteen floors. Billionaires looked down their noses at measly multi-millionaires in these here parts.

I was visiting, after all, an art deco, limestone-fronted monument to wealth on Fifth Avenue between 64th and 65th with a view on Central Park. Built between the wars, this was one of those white-glove palaces sporting a twenty-four-hour doorman at a canopied entrance and uniformed elevator operators waiting inside for those deemed worthy. I was expected, worthy or not, having called ahead. Otherwise, I couldn’t have gotten in without a search warrant.