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we’ll kick a little ass, show ‘em how it’s done.”
    “My eyes are tired. I’m getting a cold.”
    “I’ve got a feeling that people are going to be mad as hell at us.” Ozzie’s mood darkened too quickly. Thorny saw the signs, wondered what to do: could he use Ozzie’s state of mind? God, what a thought. …
    “I wouldn’t be surprised, Oz.” He took a swig of coffee. With a glass of ice water he washed down three Excedrin. “Goddamn stroke books,” he mused. “He could have mailed it to somebody … He could have given it to somebody in Boston, it was the Park Street car—”
    “If he got off at Park Street.”
    “What we’ve got here, Oz, is a shitload of imponderables.”
    “He could have left it with Chandler … If he had the stroke books in the bag we wouldn’t have noticed if the picture was gone.”
    They sat quietly, staring into the almost empty, discouragingly cold and dirty street beyond the huge naked windows. A truck rumbled by and drenched the Pinto with clinging gray crud.
    “You know,” Thorny said, tapping his fingers on the stack of magazines, “I sometimes wonder what the hell is so important about the picture … what makes them want it.”
    “Hell, I wonder who’s putting up the money for the job—ten grand for a snatch like this.” He sighed deep in his vast chest. “And now we got a dead guy and no picture—”
    “I don’t know about you but I’m scared to tell them.” Thorny seemed to be shrinking inside his coat. He blew his nose and stared into the Kleenex.
    “What else can we do?” He pleaded with his eyes, like a dog. “I need this payday, Thorny, y’know?”
    “Well, let’s think of something …”
    “How mad are they gonna be? Really?”
    “Mad. But they’ll forget it when we find the stuff … But, Ozzie, for Chrissakes, we gotta be careful. You dig? Careful …”
    In the upper reaches of the bedeviled John Hancock Building, towering over the genteel antiquity of Copley Square like a frozen shaft of silver-blue ice, three men sat around a stark table which fit perfectly with the spirit of the building. The slab of glass forming the tabletop was an inch thick, fifteen feet long, anchored well off center to a massive, squat cylinder of marble. There were three leather-and-chrome armchairs drawn up, each occupied by a tweedy gentleman who would have looked more at home at the Harvard Club on Commonwealth Avenue. Other than a chrome lamp reflecting the scene in its conical reflector, the room was empty but for some scraps of lumber, a sprinkling of sawdust, and two large sheets of plywood. As it was, there was only one remaining pane of glass, floor to ceiling; as was so common in the sixty-two-story building, the others had been blown out by the wind and replaced with plywood. From the outside it gave the building a visage not unlike that of a gap-toothed village idiot.
    The oldest gentleman rubbed his palms on the bowl of his tan Dunhill Bruyere, warming them. It was cold in the naked room. Their breath hung in the air before them.
    “Do you have the foggiest idea what’s going on?”
    “I must, Andrew. I called the meeting.”
    “Well, what is it? I’ve got to get back to Washington tonight … We do work for our living down there.”
    “You won’t make it tonight. I have plans for you—and Logan’s fogged in. Look …” He pointed out the single window. The moon shone brightly through a partly cloudy sky. “Up here, clear … but on the ground, rain and dense fog. We’ll put you up at the Ritz.” He puffed, clicking the stem against his teeth. “Liam, you too.”
    “The Ritz is fine.” Liam had once had a full head of red hair, though now it was a rusty-gray fringe of memory riding low over his ears like a dust ruffle.
    “So tell us what’s up …”
    “I don’t actually know what’s up, of course, but there are some disturbing alarums going off in odd places … most curiously here, Boston. Two mercenaries—that is, no