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it they would have seen it."
    "What about the tape?"
    "Ordinary adhesive tape, white, kind you'd find in your medicine chest."
    "Not in mine," I said. "In mine you'd find a bottle of Rexall aspirin and a thing of dental floss."
    "Well, the kind you'd find in your medicine chest if you happened to live like a human being. Gottschalk said he thought they had adhesive tape, and there wasn't any in the bathroom. They didn't leave the roll behind, or the twine either."
    "I wonder why not."
    "I don't know. String savers, I guess. They took the pry bar, too. If I just left a woman dead in an apartment, I don't think I'd want to walk down the street carrying burglar's tools, but if they were geniuses-"
    "They'd be in some other line of work."
    "Right. Why take the stuff? If Thurman was in on it, and if he was the one who bought the stuff, maybe they were afraid it could be traced. If they used what they found in the apartment... I don't know, Matt, the whole thing's so fucking speculative, you know?"
    "I know. You bat around the whys and what ifs, though, and sometimes something shakes loose."
    "Which is why we're batting them around."
    "Did he describe the burglars?"
    "Oh, sure. A little hazy on the details, but consistent from one interrogation to another. He didn't contradict himself enough to amount to anything. The descriptions are in the files, you'll see them for yourself. What they were, they were two big white guys about the same age as Thurman and his wife. They both had mustaches, and the bigger one had his hair long in the back, the way some of them wear it, with like a little tail growing down there?"
    "I know how you mean."
    "A really classy style, marks you right away as a member of the upper crust. Like the spades with those high flattops, looks like they got a fez stuck on their heads, like they trim it with hedge clippers. Class all the way. What was I saying?"
    "The two burglars."
    "Yeah, right. He went through the books of mug shots, very cooperative, very eager, but he didn't spot them. I sat him down with a police artist. I think you know him. Ray Galindez?"
    "Sure."
    "He's good, but his sketches always come out looking Hispanic to me. There's copies in the file. I think one of the papers ran them."
    "I must have missed it."
    "I think it was Newsday. We got a couple calls and wasted a little time checking them out. Nothing. You know what I think?"
    "What?"
    "I don't think he did it all by himself."
    "No, neither do I."
    "I mean you can't positively rule it out, because he could have found a way to tie himself up, and he could have managed to lose the pry bar and the tape and the twine. But I don't think that's what happened. I think he had help."
    "I think you're right."
    "He makes arrangements with a couple of skells, says here's a key to the front door, make it easy on yourselves, walk on in and go up three flights and bust into the fourth-floor apartment. Not to worry, there's nobody home, there won't be anybody home upstairs either. Make yourselves at home, dump the drawers, throw the books on the floor, and help yourselves to all the cash and jewelry you can find. Just so you're ready to go at twelve-thirty or one, whatever time we get home from the party."
    "And they walk home because he doesn't want to get there too early."
    "Maybe, or maybe they just walk home because it's a nice night. Who knows? They get to the Gottschalks' floor and she says, 'Oh, look, Ruth and Alfred's door is open,' and he shoves her through it and they grab her and knock her out and fuck her and kill her. Then he says, 'Hey, asshole, you don't want to walk down the street middle of the night carrying a television set, you can buy ten TVs with what I'm paying you for this.' So they leave the set, but they take the twine and tape and pry bar because maybe they can be traced. No, that's bullshit, how do you trace drugstore and hardware store shit like that?"
    "They take the stuff because that way we'll know he couldn't have done it