“Around midnight,” she said, not arguing.

*   *   *

The mist kept promising rain while the sky’s occasional rumble made a threat out of it. Only the glowing signs of chain retailers (B. Dalton) and fast-food (Nathan’s) burned through the haze to break the spell of the old Bohemian Village that lingered on tree-lined streets where the buildings were too low-slung to create a skyline. The wet night would not dissuade the dealers and muggers from frequenting Washington Square Park, though the former had the decency to set up shop on benches, while the latter clung to the darkness, the cops a no-show in an area mostly left to its own devices.

Yet the Village remained a state of mind, where rebels and outsiders, artists and scribblers, hustlers and dreamers, converged on disorganized streets that turned the grid of Manhattan into a game of pick-up sticks. You could still play chess here, catch a foreign film, groove to jazz, eat midnight pizza, and get hopelessly lost.

I was neither tourist nor newcomer to a part of town that said, “Go screw yourself,” and, “Welcome,” all at once. And knowing the growls and looks and downright refusals from cabbies who hated Village fares because of those goddamn streets down there, I drove myself—my black Ford always spooked residents into thinking it was an unmarked car, which only amused me.

The apartment I was looking for was on Morton Street, in a brick mid-block five-story with a fire escape riding its face. The trees along here were skimpy with autumn making way for winter, and parking on the street was scarce, but I found a spot two blocks down from my destination.

When I’d used the phone at the pub, I got the Ryan girl’s friend, who she was staying with, who said Sheila was out but expected back shortly. The friend said I could come around, her voice chirpy and sociable and vaguely familiar. It still seemed that way, when she buzzed me up.

On the third floor, at number 302, I saw why: the blonde in her early twenties who answered the door – with her hair all permed and teased, as if Marilyn Monroe’s hair had exploded but in a good way—was the Red Riding Hood receptionist/secretary from Colby, Daltree & Levine.

She wasn’t wearing the big-lensed glasses tonight, but the eyes themselves were plenty big, their deep blue emphasized by a lot of darker blue eye shadow. She wore a form-fitting black dress with a pattern that it took me a while to discern was little gray screwdrivers, pointing up and pointing down alternately.

“Mr. Hammer,” she said, the words emerging from a mouth so dark-red lipsticked it was damn near black, “you’re lucky you caught me! I just got back from a date and I’d have been in bed.”

That seemed a little ambiguous, but I didn’t ask for an explanation. Was she on something? Maybe a little tipsy?