“Not that fast. First he told the others they should mess up my place.”

“Others?”

“Three others. They and Benotti come in at the slack time, which is ten in the morning. They lock the door and pull the blind down that says Closed, and then like I said.”

I thought about the three others and wondered whether that would change the picture again.

“These three,” I said to Louie. “Did you know any of them?”

“I have never, and I hope I will never…”

“All right.” Then I wondered how to put it. “Did they-I mean speaking off-hand-did they look like, let’s say, electricians?”

Louie’s good eye looked at me for a moment and then closed. “I don’t know what electricians look like, Jack, but these didn’t look like no electricians.”

“Like what, then?”

“One stunk from liquor,” said Louie, “one stunk from horses…”

“Horses?”

“Horses. And the other-you should pardon the expression-to me he just stunk.”

They had broken some glass in the counter, twisted legs off the tables, had stolen a salami each. And the one who “just stunk” had mixed all the herring salad together with antipasto and two jars of British preserves.

“How would you know what a horse smells like?” I asked Louie.

“Because I was born in Russia. And at the time I was born in Russia…”

“All right, Louie,” and I kept wondering what there was in all this that could add to the picture. Benotti himself, was all I could think. I’d have to go see him.

“Benotti beat you, Louie?”

“Yes. Slow. He wasn’t mad.”

“And the others, wrecking the place?”

“They weren’t mad either.”

“Maybe I should look at the place downstairs. Maybe they dropped something.”

“No. I looked. Just the newspaper.”

“What?”

“One had the Herald in his pocket. There was something, at first, about the newspaper. Should they use the newspaper, one of them said, and kept rolling it up, if you get the picture…”