Corey waited a few minutes. Then he crossed Addison, tossed a dollar bill to the winos, and rounded the corner onto Second. Carp was sitting on a doorstep a few houses down on Second. The little man had picked up a rag from the littered pavement and was using it to polish his rummage-sale shoes. The leather was cracked and, in places, torn wide, and his socks showed through. He continued to polish industriously, meticulously, as though the shoes were the finest quality and merited the best care. As Corey’s shadow fell over him, he didn’t look up. His complete attention was on the shoes.

“You do what I told you to do?” Corey asked.

“Exactly as specified,” the little man murmured, not looking up. “Where’d she go?”

“First a meat market on Seventh Street,” the little man said, rubbing the rag across his left shoe. He raised the rag, examined the shoe, wasn’t satisfied, and resumed the rubbing. “Then back to Addison and into a grocery. After that she went home.”

“You sure it was home? She might have been visiting someone.”

“No,” Carp said. “I checked that possibility. I checked it quite thoroughly. She entered her own place of residence.”

Corey frowned slightly. “Whaddya mean you checked it?”

“I watched through the window,” Carp said. “She put the meat in the icebox. She opened some cans of vegetables, peas and creamed corn, then unwrapped a loaf of bread—”

“Was she alone?”

Carp nodded.

“All right,” Corey said. “Gimme the address.”

“Six-seventeen Ingersoll Street,” the little man said. “First floor back.”

“Thanks,” Corey said. And then, without thinking, he put his hand in his pocket, his fingers going for paper money. Carp looked up at that moment and his eyes said, Please don’t insult me. Corey’s hand came out of the trousers pocket empty, and the little man smiled with approval. He looked down again and went back to polishing his shoes. Corey walked away.

Six-seventeen Ingersoll, Corey was thinking. He was in his room, getting into a clean shirt. He decided to take it all the way, and put on clean shorts and socks, then opened the closet and took out the only suit he owned. It was a $19.50 rayon acetate that needed pressing badly. He wished he had time to get it pressed. There were four neckties dangling from a nail on the inside of the closet door. He reached for the dark-green one, got it under the shirt collar, started to tie it and then realized what color it was. You don’t want that color, he told himself.

He pulled off the dark-green tie and put it back on the nail. For some moments he stood looking at it. What’s all this see-saw routine? he wondered, and tried to back away from it, thinking. It’s just that you don’t like that color—