Dolan picked up the oxygen tank, turned it over in his hands in the manner of a connoisseur admiring a Grecian vase, and then set it down. “No way in hell to trace this,” he said flatly. “Standardized tanks like this are still produced by several manufacturers for any one of twenty different aircraft models.”

Dolan began to warm to his task. He got down on his knees and examined every square inch of the nose gear. At one point he had Pitt help him roll it to a new position. Five minutes went by and he didn’t utter a word.

Pitt finally broke the silence. “Does it tell you anything?”

“A great deal.” Dolan straightened up. “But not, unfortunately, the jackpot answer.”

“The odds favor the proverbial wild-goose chase,” said Pitt. “I don’t feel right putting you to all this trouble.”

“Nonsense,” Dolan assured him. “This is what John Q. Public pays me for. The FAA has dozens of missing aircraft on file whose fates have never been solved. Any time we have an opportunity to mark a case closed, we jump at it.”

“How do we go about laying our fingers on the make of aircraft?”

“Ordinarily I’d call in research technicians from our engineering division. But I think I’ll take a stab in the dark and try a shortcut. Phil Devine, maintenance chief over at United Airlines, is a walking encyclopedia on aircraft. If anyone can tell us at a glance, he can.”

“He’s that good?” asked Pitt.

“Take my word for it,” Dolan said with a knowing smile. “He’s that good.”

“A photographer you ain’t. Your lighting is lousy.” A nonfiltered cigarette dangled from the lips of Phil Devine as he studied the Polaroid pictures Dolan had taken of the nose gear. Devine

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was a W. C. Fields-type character-heavy through the middle, with a slow, whining voice.

“I didn’t come here for an art review,” replied Dolan. “Can you put a make on the gear or not?”

“It looks vaguely familiar, kind of like the assembly off an old B-twenty-nine.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“What do you expect from a bunch of fuzzy pictures-an absolute, irrefutable ID?”

“I had hoped for something like that, yes,” Dolan replied, unruffled.

Pitt was beginning to wonder if he was about to referee a fight. Devine read the uneasy look in his eyes.

“Relax, Mr. Pitt,” he said, and smiled. “Harvey and I have a standing rule: we’re never civil to each other during working hours. However, as soon as five o’clock rolls around, we cut the hard-assing and go out and have a beer together.”

“Which I usually pay for,” Dolan injected dryly.

“You government guys are in a better position to moonlight,” Devine fired back.

“About the nose gear …” Pitt said, probing quietly.