“I’ll speak to him,” Stone said, then hung up. Then it occurred to him that he had nothing to tell Dino, who had already seen the video from his house. He went downstairs and found Joan at her desk. “You said I had a package?”

“Never mind, Ms. Peace arrived from somewhere or other and relieved me of it, said it contained our new locks. What’s wrong with our old locks?”

“They’ve been picked twice,” Stone said, then explained the situation.

“But what’s the connection between this Jones, you, and Mr. Hayward?”

“We are both baffled.”

“Dino, too?”

“We are all baffled.”

“Add me to the list.” She took her Colt .45 from her desk drawer, popped the magazine, ejected a round, looked it over, then reloaded it, worked the action, and returned it to the drawer. “Okay, I’m ready for him.”

“Please, please, don’t shoot the man. It was so messy last time, what with the carpet and all.”

“Should I offer him coffee and Danish?”

“You may hold him at gunpoint while calling nine-one-one.”

“Not Dino?”

“Dino doesn’t really like taking nine-one-one calls. He’d rather hear about it later.”

“And who can blame him?” She gave Stone his mail and went back to work.

Stone sat down at his desk and reviewed the mail, sorting the real stuff into one pile and the catalogs and begging letters into another. The pile of real mail was much the smaller of the two, and he gave it to Joan to handle.

Bob came in and lobbied for a cookie, and Stone, against his better judgment, gave him one. “I know this isn’t your first of the day,” he said to the dog.

Bob requested another.

“Not I, pal. Try Joan.”

Bob padded into Joan’s office and didn’t come back.

“You’re a pushover!” he called out to her.

“Look who’s talking!” she called back.

—

A LITTLE LATER, Dino called.

“Good morning.”

“You sound tired,” Dino said.

“Don’t start with me.”

“I’ll bet Ms. Heavenly Peace isn’t a bit tired.”

“I said, don’t start.”

“Girls like that never wear out, they just keep going, like that rabbit in the commercials.”

“Dino, I’m too tired to handle this.”

“I thought so.”

“What do you want?”

“There’s news on the Marvin Jones front.”

“Tell me.”

“We’re canvassing all the locksmiths on the East Side, down to Fourteenth Street.”

“Oh, good. Why?”

“Before he went to prison for financial no-no’s, Mr. Jones worked for three years for a locksmith.”

“Surely the terms of his parole would prevent him from working for another locksmith. No locksmith could hire him.”

“He’s not on parole—not anymore, anyway.”

“Has he been out that long?”

“No, I guess you haven’t heard about the overcrowding in the prison population?”

“I did see something about that in the papers. Did he get sprung?”