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It was a night in late April. Warm enough, I guess, but I wore my coat out, anyway. I always did. Sometimes a suit jacket just wasn't enough to carry all the necessities of life: in my case, a keyring, a wallet, a watch, a pack of smokes, a lighter and, of course, a .44 Magnum. Rule one of being in my line of work was to never go anywhere without your gun. Not everyone I come across on the job is exactly glad I did, which means if I ever run into them again, it's best to be prepared.

I stopped on a street corner to light a fresh cigarette and walked on. I didn't have any destination in mind, but it seemed like my feet were taking me to McCarran's. I wasn't about to argue. All around me, the city was alive with sound. I was tempted to stop for a minute and listen to the tune coming out of the club on my right. Always liked a good jazz number. But I kept on walking. There was booze in there, no doubt, and good music, but McCarran's might just have something more: work.

I hadn't had any of that in a while. Nothing good, anyway. The occasional paranoid housewife wanting to find evidence of some other woman her husband had, or the other way around. If anything was going to bore me to tears, it was taking one more damn picture of one more damn affair. But Pat McCarran was the man to talk to if you were in my position. He never seemed not to know what was going on around town. Plus, he poured a mean Scotch.

McCarran's was like any other Irish bar you'll see. I pushed past the doors and was greeted with the familiar sights: a bunch of guys at the pool table, a handful of sad saps drowning themselves at the bar, and enough cigarette smoke to make you think the place was on fire. Pat was pouring drinks, like he always was, and as soon as he noticed me he set down the beer mug he was wiping and waved at me to have a seat. I took the stool across from him.

"I'd like a word with you, Coney," he said, his droopy, sad-looking bloodhound's eyes fixed in my direction.

"Can you have it while you pour me a scotch and soda?" I asked. "I've had a day."

McCarran shrugged. "Depends. You have cash this time?" he asked.

I sighed. I'd figured this was coming. A week ago, after my tab had run up to eleven dollars and I still hadn't paid, he'd cut off my credit. I dug into my pockets and extracted one of the precious few little green portraits of George Washington I was carrying around. "That work?"

He took the single and tucked it into his apron pocket, then got to work fixing the drink. "So what is it you wanted to say?" I inquired.

"Your name came up in a conversation I had a few days back," he replied. Pat was always enigmatic like this. He was a good source of information, but you always had to wheedle it out of him one slow inch at a time. I expect it's an intentional move on his part. The longer you sit listening to him slowly unraveling his spiel, the more you drink, the more money goes into his pocket. It was a very efficient racket, I reflected as the pool of whiskey in my glass grew steadily shallower; so efficient, really, I had to be more impressed than annoyed.

Three scotch-and-sodas later, I had run to the end of my dollar and dug out all the useful intelligence I could. It seemed that not two nights ago, a rich-looking guy had wandered in in the early hours of the morning, two or so. After he'd got a few drinks in him, he'd gone off on a rant on how he'd been stolen from and how he was a dead man if he couldn't get it back.

"It struck me as the sort of thing you live for, Coney," McCarran had said. "But by then he'd had too many to remember to call your number the next morning."

"So this is all by way of telling me I struck out again?" I asked irritably.

"Not so fast, young man," said the hound. "I'm a little bit smarter than that, thank you. I got his card for you right here."

I took the card. I recognized the name immediately: Douglas Darrow. A household name; New York royalty, really, even if his family was fairly new to money. According to his card, he could be reached at KL-58223. I decided on the spot to get in touch with the man. For one thing, this was the sort of case I lived for. For another thing: this man was rich. Very rich.

Ten minutes later, I was stumping up the three flights of stairs that led to my offices. It wasn't the most attractive locality, right in the heart of Hell's Kitchen, but that just meant the rent was cheap. And cheap I could live with. As I mounted the last few steps, I looked at the door at the end of the hall: my door. The light was shining through the window, which meant Tilly was still there. Good, I thought. I was betting I'd need her tonight.

"You're back early," she said airily when I walked in through the door. She was entirely engrossed with the filing cabinet in front of her, and didn't even look once in my direction.

"You should really look before saying that," I said. "I could have been a client."

She turned around, finally, but with a deprecating look on her face. "A client? Since when?"

"Since now," I said. I showed her the card. "Call him for me, would you? I'll be in my office."

I walked out of the small reception area where Tilly worked and into my equally small office. I hung up my coat and hat and sat down in my worn brown leather chair, waiting for her to put the call through to me. Low-rent as the office was, I could hear every sound on the other side of that wall. The slide of the rotor on the phone. A moment of quiet.

"Yeah, hi, Madge," Tilly said. Madge was the operator, I assumed. "It's Tilly down at Mr. Coney's office. Yeah, but you know how it is. Could you put me through to KL-58223? Thanks, Madge, you're a doll."

A bit more silence. Then: "Hello, is this Matilda Manderly, secretary to Mr. Cain Coney. Can Mr. Douglas Darrow come to the phone for Mr. Coney, please? . . . Wonderful, thank you. I'll put you through."

A buzz on the intercom. "Mr. Darrow on line one for you, Mr. C."

"Thanks, Tilly," I said, disregarding the intercom and projecting through the wall. I picked up the receiver and pressed the button.

"Mr. Darrow?" I asked.

"Speaking."

"Sir, the name's Cain Coney. I understand you have a problem I might be able to help you with."

"And what is that?"

"Well, it's come to my attention you've had something stolen from you. I have some experience in that area. I can help you get it back."

There was a pregnant pause I could almost feel through the speaker grille. Finally, Darrow said, "Are . . . you police?"

"No, sir. I run a private agency."

I could hear him take a deep breath on the other side of the line. "Yes, I think you'll do nicely, Mr. Coney. Would you mind coming to my home at eight o' clock tomorrow morning?"

"Not at all, Mr. Darrow. What's the address?"

After that, we said polite good-byes and I hung up. I looked at the pad on my desk, with a hastily-scrawled "C.P.W. & W.87" on it. Looked like I was going up-market. I walked out of my office, deep in thought. I looked at Tilly. "You were listening to that, weren't you?" I asked her.

"Why would you think that, boss?" she replied.

"You always do."

She didn't even bother to look contrite. "That's true."

"What did you think?"

She furrowed her brow. "Not sure if you're gonna want to hear this or not, Mr. C, but something about that call struck me as fishy."

"No, I'm with you, there. Obviously, whatever it was that got taken was something not completely legal."

"Why's that, 'cause he asked if you were police?"

"Because he asked and then calmed down when I said I wasn't."

"So you think, whatever it was, it was hot merchandise?"

"Maybe. Or it's evidence of something. Maybe it's a blackmail angle. Still," I said, playing distractedly with one of my long ears, "it's no use thinking too hard about it before I've seen the crime scene. I'll make my decisions at eight tomorrow."

Hoofing it from my apartment, a few blocks over from the office, to the Upper West Side was a bit of a commitment. Two miles, maybe a bit more. But I was no stranger to pacing the streets of Manhattan. I'd beaten the streets in a uniform for five years even before moving to the private sector. It wasn't a complicated route, either. I headed east on my street for a while, turning left on Eighth Avenue. Then it was just a matter of following that north until I hit Central Park West. After that, a little further until it met up with West Eighty-seventh Street.

I thought to myself that New York City is a very strange beast. My shabby, three-room apartment, which really was upscale for Hell's Kitchen, was less than three miles from the richness of the neighborhood I found myself in right now. The whole street was lined with gorgeous townhouses, ritzy hotels, restaurants I'd never be able to eat at. Darrow's place was a four-story red-brick townhouse. Completing the picture of a typical rich-family dwelling was green ivy creeping up the sides of the building. I didn't wait long at the door. A butler showed me in, took my hat and coat, and brought me to a parlor.

I'm not the sort of guy that judges a person's worth by how much their stuff cost. Even so, I felt self-conscious standing there in my twenty-dollar suit. I looked around the room, and it seemed like everything there was supposed to intimidate. For all I knew, that could be true. Rich people like strutting around, especially with other rich people. Still, it was hard not to notice certain things: the bearskin rug, the marble fireplace, the liquor cabinet that probably held Scotches older than I was. That last one set my mouth to watering, and I was just starting to wonder if Darrow would notice if I took a quick nip when he appeared at the door.

"Cain Coney, I presume," he said. His terrier's face, covered as it was all in long black fur, was difficult to read; his eyes, dark against a dark face, were almost difficult to spot. When we shook hands, I could feel the rough pads on his palms against my hand.

He waved at me to sit. I decided to cut right to the chase. Darrow didn't seem like the kind of man that liked to mince words. "Why don't you tell me about your problem?" I suggested.

"Right, of course." Finally, his impassive face betrayed some sort of emotion. He was nervous, or I'd gone blind. "Well, it happened two nights ago," he began. "I was at a gala -- nothing of particular importance, only a rubbing-elbows sort of affair. I happened to wear a pair of cufflinks I'm partial to -- very expensive, platinum. I keep them in the safe under the house when not in use. Well, when I got home from the gala that night, I went to put the cufflinks back in the safe . . . Well, the safe was empty! Completely empty! I went down to the cellar, and there it was, door ajar, picked totally clean."

"Any sign of forced entry?" I asked.

"None whatsoever," said Darrow.

"And you don't suspect anyone who works for you?"

"No, not at all," he replied. "No one knows the combination to that safe except my wife and I."

"Your wife?" I asked.

"It wasn't her, if that's what you're thinking, Mr. Coney," said Darrow. "She was with me all night, and she has no reason to steal from me."

"Why's that?" I asked.

Darrow shook his head. "She's from very old money," he said. "She's worth almost twice as much as I am. This house was her father's, you know. I wanted to remove somewhere even nicer than this, maybe out of the city, but she wouldn't hear of it."

"I'll have to see the safe, if you don't mind, Mr. Darrow."

"Not at all. It isn't as if there's anything in there anymore."

He led me down to the basement. It was still nicer than my apartment.

"I haven't touched a thing since I came back to find it empty," he said. "I'm keeping the cufflinks in my safe deposit box. A bit paranoid, maybe, but nothing's too secure."

Taking my first quick look around the room, nothing in particular struck me as being of too much use. There was a small window high up on one wall. Someone thin enough could have gotten in without too much trouble, but they'd had to have been incredibly acrobatic to get back out. Not impossible, though. I examined the safe; nothing extraordinary there, except that, like Darrow had said, it was wide open with no sign of being forced. Whoever had been here, it looked like, had left no distinguishing marks at all. I still wasn't counting out the possibility of an inside job.

But it was looking more and more to me like this was done by a professional. A very, very good one. He . . . no, she. It's possible a man could have got in and out through that one tiny window, but much more likely a woman did it. She'd been watching this house for a while, knew where the best valuables were kept, knew when the house would be empty, or near empty. A very clean job, by the looks of it. In and out in fifteen minutes, at most. I relayed this information to Darrow, who looked genuinely distressed at this news.

"So what are the chances of my getting my belongings back?" he asked.

"Well, if I can find some indication as to who might have done this . . ." I said distractedly, still looking around for that very thing. "I have contacts on the force. I can track them down."

"The force?" he asked. I noticed a definite rise in the pitch of his voice. Even further evidence he didn't want the police involved. I stopped looking for a moment.

"Mr. Darrow, I want you to be honest with me. Is -- or was -- there something in this safe that shouldn't be?"

Silence. "Mr. Darrow, I'm not a police officer. I can't arrest you for anything, and to be honest, in my line of work, discretion is key -- I'm not going to say anything, either. Now, the more I know, the easier it will be to find out who did this and get your valuables back."

Darrow sighed, ruffling the overlong hairs hanging down past his snout. "Very well. I visited India not long ago. A couple months back. I happened to acquire there a diamond of considerable size and quality, under -- shall we say -- spurious circumstances. When I returned to the States, I realized that I didn't very much want to keep it."

"You were going to fence it?" I asked.

"I was approached two weeks ago," he said. "A man named Tosetti."

"Not Vincenzo Tosetti?" I asked.

"That's the one," he affirmed. "Do you know him?"

I shook my head. Know him? No, I didn't know him, fortunately, at least not personally. Vincenzo Tosetti was a capo for Rinaldo Rossini, a brutal mob boss that ran any number of operations in Brooklyn. Rumor had it he had some delusion of grandeur, thought he was a gentleman. Was he buying the diamond for himself, or just acting as the middle man? No, I thought. That wasn't the important thing.

"And Tosetti approached you?" I asked.

"That's what I said."

"So Rossini knew you had it," I mused. "Which means he wasn't the only one. Tell me, did you and Rossini agree on a price for the diamond at all?"

"I had it appraised, quietly, when I came back. Someone I trust. He valued it at nearly five hundred thousand. I wanted to get rid of it, though -- I let Rossini take it for four."

I had to fight not to make an indignant splutter at that amount.

"But no payment actually changed hands?"

"Well, there's the trouble," he said. "He paid half up front, half on delivery, which was meant to be the day after tomorrow. If I don't have it . . ."

There was no need to finish the sentence. He was dead, no doubt about it. Even if he returned the two hundred grand he'd already been paid, there was no way Rossini was going to let him renege on a deal. That made things interesting.

The thing is, there were only a few people in town capable of the feat that it would have been to crack that safe. It wasn't any of Rossini's people. For one thing, he didn't have any people capable of it. For another, psychotic lowlife though he was, Rossini was a straightforward sort of guy. Either he paid the agreed-upon price for something, or he didn't pay anything at all. And it wasn't a different organization butting horns with Rossini. That would be too dangerous, even for the other mob families. No, there was some third, independent party at play, and I couldn't help but think it wouldn't be that hard to find out who, for one reason. These freelancer types, they all had one weakness: they could never get over how smart they were. They would have left some sort of calling card behind. It was just a matter of finding it.