“The mob,” she echoed mockingly. “You sound like a bad fifties movie. People are freaked on the street, Lenny, really. This friend of mine, she wouldn’t even tell me much about it, except she saw this guy bubbling on the linoleum. It’s the wiseguys, all right. People are scared shitless.”

“Damn,” Lenny breathed. He scribbled furiously, tongue working in his cheek. “I’ll get right over to the News and see what they’ve got in the files. Maybe make a couple of calls to some police friends. Great. This is great. Mafia torches rivals. Great.”

“Yeah, great.” Velvet had already lost interest. The three hundred was warming up in her shirt, getting hot enough to spend. She needed some decent makeup, a good thick breakfast steak, a really fine piece of French Silk Chocolate Pie. Then she’d decide what to do next.

“Uh, I’ll need your friend’s name. For the records, you know.”

“Yeah,” Velvet nodded absently. “Robby MacReady. Hey, what is today?”

“Today?” Lenny sounded more mystified than usual. He tapped his pencil on his lips. “Friday.”

Friday. Something about Friday. Something—

“Friday,” she said out loud, sitting up straight. Lenny stopped writing and looked up at her warily, like it was “Jeopardy” and he didn’t know the question. “Jesus, isn’t Burt Marshall’s funeral today?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Two o’clock.” He continued to look mystified as she dug in the pockets of her coat, came up with three colored condoms, a stick of Cinnaburst gum, two pennies, and a nickel.

“Quarter,” she demanded. He dug in his pants and found one. “Great. I’ll owe you.”

She left him still asking questions, and hobbled up the steps as fast as her aching ribs would let her move. Damn, they’d seemed a lot shorter going down. Once she’d made it to the top, she stopped and pressed a hand against her side before starting across the big marble wasteland in front of the building. Some idiot had left the fountains turned on, and a spray of ice-cold water lashed across her bruised face. The pain would have made her sick if she’d had any food to be sick with and, always perverse, her stomach rumbled.

The rotunda in front of the building was thick expensive-looking glass. It looked kind of like a greenhouse, growing more marble. She pushed through two sets of revolving doors and entered a lobby with—surprise—more marble, and a big engraved metal sign that said SECURITY and pointed a discreet but urgent arrow left.

She went right.

She got about fifty feet before a guy in a blue polyester blazer and tan pants fell in beside her, looking pleasant except around the eyes. He had a cheap-looking gold badge pinned on his jacket. There was a bulge under his jacket that she hoped was a paper-back book, but he didn’t look like much of a reader.