Duncan seemed to debate for a moment. Then he said. “I’ve been checking out somebody at the diner. The man at the end of the counter. Remember him? He was in the dark suit.”

Vincent nodded.

“I’ve been following him for the past month. I’m going to kill him.”

Vincent smiled. “You’re kidding.”

“I don’t really kid.”

And Vincent had learned that was true. There was no Clever Gerald. Or Hungry Gerald. There was just one: Calm and Meticulous Gerald, who expressed his intention that night to kill the man in the diner—Walter somebody—in the same matter-of-fact way that he’d made good on that promise by cutting the son of a bitch’s wrists and watching him struggle until he fell from a pier into the freezing brown water of the Hudson River.

The Watchmaker had gone on to tell Vincent that he was in town to kill other people too. Among them were some women. As long as Vincent was careful and didn’t spend more than twenty or thirty minutes, he could have their bodies after they were dead—to do what he wished. In exchange, Vincent would help him—as a guide to the city and its roads and transportation system, and to stand guard and sometimes drive the getaway car.

“So. You interested?”

“I guess,” Vincent said, though his private response was a lot more enthusiastic than that.

And Vincent was now hard at work on this job, following the third victim: Joanne Harper, their flower girl, Clever Vincent had dubbed her. He watched her take out a key and disappear through the service door to her workshop. He eased to a stop, ate a candy bar and leaned against a lamp pole, looking through the shop’s grimy window.

His hand touched the bulge at his waistband, where the Buck knife rested. Staring at the vague form of Joanne, turning on lights, taking her coat off, moving around the workshop. She was alone.

Gripping the knife.

He wondered if she had freckles, he wondered what her perfume smelled like. He wondered if she whimpered when she was in pain. Did she—

But, no, he shouldn’t think like this! He was here only to get information. He couldn’t break the rules, couldn’t disappoint Gerald Duncan. Vincent inhaled the painfully cold air. He should wait.

But then Joanne walked near the window. He got a good look at her. Oh, she’s pretty . . .

Vincent’s palms began to sweat. Of course, he could simply take her now and leave her tied up for Duncan to kill later. That would be something that a friend would understand. They’d both get what they wanted.

After all, sometimes you just can’t wait.

The hunger does that to you. . . .

Next time, pack warm. What were you thinking?

Riding in a pungent cab, thirty-something Kathryn Dance held her hands out in front of a backseat heater exhaling air that wasn’t hot, wasn’t even warm; at best, she decided, it was uncold. She rubbed together her fingers, tipped in dark red nails, and then gave her black-stockinged knees a chance at the air.