“Pat interviewed Sheila Ryan,” Velda said, and sat back down. She was looking past me, into thoughts that were forming. “Sheila was with Vincent Colby earlier this evening—all evening.”

I set my cup down, sloshingly. “Is Pat sure? She was at that Olsen girl’s apartment earlier, I thought.”

“No, that was later. Exact time of death is yet to be determined, remember, but rigor had set in…”

“So when Sheila found Gino,” I said, my words in slow motion, “he had been dead at least three or four hours.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Mike…if Vincent Colby didn’t kill that bartender, then somebody is fitting our client’s kid for a frame—elaborate enough to fool Mike Hammer.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe.”

*   *   *

Gansevoort Street – running east to west in downtown Manhattan’s riverfront neighborhood, till the Hudson cut it rudely off—undulated its cobblestone way along the foot of the brick warehouses known as the Meatpacking District. Here animal carcasses began their travel to the kitchens of Manhattan restaurants and residences from considerately distant slaughterhouses. Little had changed for decades in this foreboding, desolate-looking section of the city, though a few galleries and eateries had started popping up, like stubborn mushrooms, to foretell a fashionable future. On this sunshiny but chill November afternoon, a red-trimmed black 1985 Ford Mustang LX pulled out from in front of a warehouse onto an all but deserted Gansevoort. The driver immediately hit the gas, really punching it with a clear straightaway ahead.

Clear, anyway, till a dark green Mercury Capri emerged from an alley and into the Mustang’s path.

Honking his displeasure, the driver swerved around the Mercury, just missing collision, but before any sense of relief came, a mother in jeans and a parka came out from between parked cars, jaywalking a baby in its stroller right in front of the oncoming Mustang.

With a screech of brakes, the red-and-black vehicle wheeled around the obstacle, the woman helping avoid tragedy by running, the cobblestone street giving the stroller and its contents a rough ride, but safely out of harm’s way.

All well and good, but the driver in the Mustang now confronted two town cars coming right at him, taking up both lanes of the one-way street, and he could only avoid them by riding up on the sidewalk, sending a few random pedestrians scurrying.

Swinging back into the street now, the Mustang and its driver were confronted by a pile of construction materials beyond which were heaps of sand. The former acted as a ramp, overturning the vehicle and returning it to the street upside-down, the latter stirring up a hazy cloud to makes things even worse.

The Mustang skidded down the street on its roof, like a turtle some cruel child had uncaringly tossed. It came to a spinning stop, finally, but its tires continued on their ride to nowhere.

“Cut!”