"I have no plans."

"I thought I might stop by around eleven, twelve o'clock."

"Excellent. I keep late hours these days." You could hear the Mittel Europa accent over the phone. Face to face, it was barely detectable. "Will your charming friend be with you?"

"Probably."

"I'll provide accordingly. Be well, Bernard."

I hung up. Carolyn was sitting on the bed, one foot tucked beneath her, dutifully cutting the palms out of her own pair of rubber gloves. "Abel's expecting us," I told her.

"He knows I'm coming?"

"He asked specifically. I told him you'd probably show up."

"What's this probably? I love Abel."

She got up from the bed, stuffed the gloves in a back pocket. She was wearing slate-gray brushed-denim jeans and a green velour top, and now she added her navy blazer. She looked terrific, and I told her as much.

She thanked me, then turned to the cats. "Hang in there, guys," she told them. "Just write down the names if anybody calls. Tell 'em I'll get back to 'em."

Herbert and Wanda Colcannon lived on West Eighteenth Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Until fairly recently that was a great neighborhood to visit if you were looking to get mugged, but somewhere along the line Chelsea became a desirable neighborhood. People commenced buying the old brownstones and sprucing them up, converting rooming houses into floor-through apartment buildings and apartment buildings into single-family houses. The streets were lined with newly planted ginkgo and oak and sycamore, and it was getting so that you couldn't see the muggers for the trees.

No. 442 West Eighteenth was an attractive four-story brownstone house with a mansard roof and a bay window on the parlor floor. No. 444, immediately to its left, was the same thing all over again, distinguishable only by a few minor architectural details and the pair of brass carriage lamps that flanked the entrance. But between the two houses there was an archway and a heavy iron gate, and above the gate was the number 422 1/2. There was a bell alongside, and a blue plastic strip with the name Colcannon embossed on it beneath the bell.