"I'd like to think it wasn't thewhole point of lunch. After all, we're friends. Don't you suppose he figured he'd enjoy my company?"

"Goes without saying, Bern. If I ever join a fancy club I'll invite you for lunch all the time. Right now I'm afraid this is as fancy as it gets."

We were at the Poodle Factory, Carolyn's place of business, just two doors down from my bookstore on East 11th Street between University Place and Broadway. This was a Wednesday, and ordinarily we'd be eating our sandwiches at Barnegat Books, having lunched at her dog grooming salon the day before. But instead I'd joined Marty on Tuesday, and we'd been at the bookstore Monday, so it was her turn to play host and mine to show up with the food. Accordingly I'd picked up a couple of stuffed pitas and two portions of an indeterminate side dish at Two Guys from Kandahar, the latest incarnation of the hole-in-the-wall around the corner on Broadway. The only soft drink they carried was a hideous blue-green thing flavored with pistachio nuts, so I'd stopped next door for a couple of Cokes.

"These are good," she said, "but how authentic do you figure they are? I mean, do they even have pita bread in Afghanistan?"

"Does it matter? I mean, do they have tacos in Beijing? Or cal-zone in Tirana?"

She saw my point. We were, after all, in New York, where half the taco stands are run by Chinese, and most of the pizzerias by Albanians. "You're right," she said. "But getting back to Marty. This is something different for him, isn't it? The jobs he steers you to are usually friends of his who want to be burgled so they can collect the insurance. This Mapes doesn't sound like a friend-"

"Not unless you considershitheel a term of endearment."

"-and I don't suppose he's going to be in on the burglary. What's in the safe?"