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angry—threatened to put the cops on him—so he told me he’d take care of me some other way. It would just take a little more time. Finally, he called and said he had better than cash. He’d had a relative die and he’d inherited some stuff and had a watch that was worth a lot more than the balance he owed me. Maybe it was dumb, but I cut him some slack. I was getting sick of it. He came right over, gave me the watch, and that was that.”
    “This all happened when?”
    “He gave me the watch yesterday.”
    “You moved pretty fast to put it on the Net.”
    “I sell a lot of things that way. Been doing it for years.”
    “You still have that phone number?” I asked.
    He shifted his bulk to reach into his back pocket, pulled out a ratty wallet, and removed a small, soiled scrap of paper, which he handed over. “Am I under arrest?”
    I looked at the number. It was a Brattleboro exchange. “No. Did he give you an address?”
    He shook his head.
    “How ’bout a bill of sale or the registration transfer info? That would have it.”
    As if snapping out of a dream, he blinked once and dug into the wallet again, producing what I was after. “What’s going to happen to me?”
    “If you’re telling the truth, nothing. This says it was an ’88 Subaru. What did it look like?”
    “Dark blue where it wasn’t rust. I was asking five hundred for it. I’m really sorry about this. I didn’t mean any harm.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” I said reassuringly, all but convinced by now that he was telling the truth. “At worst, you’re out a car and some money, and if we get lucky—and you don’t hold your breath—maybe you’ll even get the car back.”
    I took a business card from my pocket and gave it to him. “Now that you know what’s up, give it some more thought. Anything comes to mind, even something trivial, call me or leave a message.” I held up my index finger for emphasis. “Remember one thing, though, okay?”
    After a pause, he asked, “What’s that?”
    “I’ve cut you some serious slack here, taking you at your word. If I find out that was a mistake or that you’ve been spreading the word about our visit today, especially to Marty, I’ll be a lot less pleasant the next time. Understand?”
    His eyes widened at the threat. “I won’t say nuthin’. Promise.”
    There was a thud from the other room, followed by a curse.
    “I’ll get him out of here,” I added.

Chapter 4
    “DAMN, BOSS, YOU COULD’VE GOTTEN US A HEATED LOOKOUT.”
    Lester Spinney rose from the chair by the window and walked around the bare, shadowy room, thrashing his sides with his arms like a penguin doing aerobics.
    I kept my eyes on the darkened apartment across the street. “I told you to dress warmly.”
    “I am. I did—to cross the street or something, not stand around inside a freezer.”
    “Oh-one from oh-two,” Sammie’s voice came over the portable radio.
    I picked it up and keyed the mike. “Go ahead.”
    “Anything?”
    I sympathized with everyone’s boredom. We’d been there for six hours already. I only hoped Willy wouldn’t chime in from his position—I doubted he’d be so gentle. “Nope.”
    She didn’t respond. I replaced the radio on the windowsill and resumed watching Marty Gagnon’s windows, curtainless and as blank as they’d been all night.
    We were on Main Street, downtown Brattleboro, Spinney and I on the west side, above the pharmacy, Willy bundled up and dressed like a bum at the back of the alley, near the back door of Gagnon’s building, and Sammie, the only warm one among us, holding tight in an apartment directly above the suspect’s. And none of us with anything to look at.
    We’d been like this since suppertime, hoping Marty Gagnon would reward us by coming home. Following our visit to Walter Skottick’s, we’d discreetly dropped by Gagnon’s place and found the rusty Subaru in a parking space by the railroad tracks nearby, but no Marty.
    The choices after that