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could spark a shooting war out on your streets. And innocent people could die.”
    â€œAnd that troubles you, doesn’t it, Michael?”
    â€œDon’t kid yourself, Father. This is just a job to me. I have a big payday coming if I pull this off. This is one valuable book.”
    â€œIn my line of work, Michael,” he said, “there is only one book of real value.”
    Wilcox in Suffolk County was a prosperous-looking little beach burg with a single industry: tourism. In a month the population would swell from seven-thousand to who-the-hell-knew, and the business district would be alive and jumping till all hours. Right now, at eight-thirty p.m., it was a ghost town.
    Sheila Burrows lived in a two-bedroom brick bungalow on a side street, perched on a small but nicely landscaped yard against a wooded backdrop. The place was probably built in the fifties, nothing fancy, but well-maintained. A free-standing matching brick one-car garage was just behind the house. We pulled in up front. The light was on over the front door. We were expected.
    I got out of the car and came around to play gentleman for Velda but she was already climbing out. She had changed into a black pants suit with a gray silk blouse and looked very business-like, or as much as her curves, long legs and all that shoulders-brushing raven hair allowed. She carried a good-size black purse with a shoulder strap. Plenty of room for various female accouterments, including a .22 revolver.
    She was looking back the way we came. “I can’t shake the feeling we were followed,” she said.
    â€œHard to tell on a damn expressway,” I admitted. “But I didn’t pick up on anything on that county road.”
    â€œMaybe I should stay out here and keep watch.”
    â€œNo. I can use you inside. I remember you hitting it off with this broad. She was scared of me, as I recall.”
    Now Velda was looking at the brick house. “Well, for all she knew you were one of Don Giraldi’s thugs and she was getting a one-way ride. And maybe something about your manner said that a ‘broad’ is what you thought she was.”
    â€œI wasn’t so cultured then.”
    â€œYeah,” she said sarcastically, as we started up the walk. “You’ve come a long way, baby.”
    Twenty years ago, more or less, Velda and I had moved Sheila Burrows out to these Long Island hinterlands. That hadn’t been her name then, and she’d had to leave a Park Avenue penthouse to make the move. The exact circumstances of why Don Giraldi had wanted his mistress to disappear had not been made known to us. But we had suspected.
    The woman who met us at the door was barely recognizable as the former Broadway chorus girl we had helped relocate back when LBJ was still president. She had been petite and curvy and platinum blonde. Now she was stout and bulgy and mousy brunette. Her pretty Connie Stevens-ish features, lightly made up, were trapped inside a ball of a face.
    â€œNice to see you two again,” she said as she ushered us inside. She wore a pink top, blue jeans and sandals.
    There was no entryway. You were just suddenly in the living room, a formal area with lots of plastic-covered furniture. A spinet piano against the right wall was overseen by a big gilt-framed pastel portrait of our hostess back in all her busty blond glory.
    She quickly moved us into a small family room area just off a smallish kitchen with wooden cabinets and up-to-date appliances; a short hallway to the bedrooms was at the rear. She sat us down at a round maple table with captain’s chairs and a spring-theme centerpiece of plastic flowers.
    She had coffee ready for us. As I stirred milk and sugar into mine, I glanced at the nearby wall where rough-hewn paneling was arrayed with framed pictures. They charted two things: her descent into near obesity, and the birth, adolescence and young manhood of a son. It was all there, from playpen to