"Three," said the Frenchman.

The customer said nothing. He snapped open the clasps on one of the black aluminum briefcases on the desk between them, the first case, the one to his left. He opened the lid and peered inside.

The Frenchman stole a glance at him, at his eyes. Strange eyes. Not cold or cruel or deadly. Just empty. Like a machine's. No, like a mannequin's. The Frenchman felt a chill in his belly.

He went on: "Very wise, very strategic." He knew he was babbling, but he couldn't stop. Those eyes. He needed to hear the sound of a human voice, even if it was his own. "Your ordinary policeman feels a great satisfaction when he finds the first. He thinks himself, oh, very smart. When he finds the second, he is a law-enforcement genius. That is the end of it, almost always. No one searches for three."

The customer said nothing. He lifted the gun from the case. It was a 9mm SIG P210 with a modified mag release, the most accurate 9mm available. The customer turned it over in his hand, letting the daylight play on it.

The light was pouring in through the high windows on the wall behind the Frenchman. It fell in two broad beams on the men and the desk between them. They were in an office on the second story of a red-brick town house. It was small, cluttered. The customer was sitting in a tubular steel chair. The Frenchman sat in an old, tattered green swiveler. The desk was big, wooden, marked with cigarette burns and scars. All around them, broken crates, cardboard boxes, catalogs and mail were jumbled and piled up on carpet the color of static. There were no decorations, no pictures. Just the piled-up garbage against the white plaster walls.

The Frenchman watched the customer for another short while. The chill in his belly grew chillier by the second. Finally, he'd had enough. He swiveled around, his back to the other man. He looked out the window.

Like a ghost, he thought. Despite the cool of the autumn day, he felt his armpits beginning to run under his pearl-buttoned cowboy shirt. He puffed his cheeks, blew out a breath. The man has the eyes of a ghost.