She wiggled a finger with a burgundy-painted nail at the paper. “You’re an eyewitness, quoted and identified.”

“Right. I’m that fabled innocent bystander you hear so much about.”

She grunted a laugh, then reached for her half a Danish and nibbled on it like a mouse at cheese still in the trap. “And you’re identified as, ‘Michael Hammer, venerable private investigator whose numerous self-defense pleas in justifiable homicide cases have vexed the New York State court system for decades.’”

“That should drum up some business anyway,” I said through a mouthful of pastry. “Venerable means older than shit, doesn’t it?”

“Yes it does,” she confirmed. “It also says the hit-and-run victim was seen earlier talking to you and a certain captain of Homicide at the restaurant. What about?”

She was pissed—mildly pissed, but still pissed—because I hadn’t called her last night or first thing this morning to fill her in. She is understanding in ways I could expect no woman ever to be with me, but reading about me in the paper, finding out about something in that fashion and not directly from me, frosted her tail but good.

So I filled her in.

No heat was coming off her at all now, other than what was generated by those good looks that I never got used to or took for granted.

“You really were just a witness,” she said, mildly surprised. “An innocent bystander.”

“Innocent as a new-born babe, that’s me.” I leaned back in the chair, coffee cup in hand. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not on the spot.”

“It doesn’t?” She had this ability to suggest a frown without wrinkling her forehead much, if at all; one of her beauty maintenance secrets. “Why not?”

“Hit-and-run is a crime.”

“Let me write that down.”

“It’s a crime, and I was at the scene. Furthermore, I was observed talking to the victim, in the company of that ‘certain’ captain of the Homicide Division. You may have met him—Patrick Chambers?”

“I believe we have met, yes,” she said archly. “So how does any of that put you on the spot?”

“Somebody important almost got killed, under my nose. I will be expected to do something about it, else look like a chump.”

Her smile would have been as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s if Da Vinci had put some smugness in the picture. “You have a rather rarefied opinion of yourself, Mr. Hammer. This isn’t the old days when you were filling the tabloids so colorfully—mostly red.”

I gestured with my cup toward the paper. “The Penta thing got play.”

“Yes, and after you killed that bastard, both the News and the Post did those nice retrospectives about your ‘wild exploits’ back in the days of Howdy Doody and Milton Berle. You know what that makes you?”

“A celebrity?”

“Nostalgia.” She tapped the page three. “Nobody expects you to solve this. Anyway, it’s an accident. Not attempted murder.”

“We don’t know that.”

She studied me. Velda had me down so well, she didn’t have to study long. She put a dozen words of question into just one: “What?”