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I could hardly see the screen, so I stepped off the sidewalk, into a hat store. They still have hat stores in New York, and this one had a lot of the classics, like the ones Sinatra and Dino used to wear. I always liked hats, but they don’t look good on me. I got a big head, and a hat tends to make it look bigger.

“Can I help you, sir?” Behind the counter was a Latina woman with fancy turquoise fingernails and matching pants. The pants were tight either because they were too small or she was too big or most likely some of both. She seemed nice enough. The walls were lined with lighted display cases of hats, mostly what they call fedoras.

So I says, “What do you got that will make me look like Frank Sinatra?”

So she smiles and says, “Why do you want to look like Frank Sinatra? You way more handsome than him. The right hat will make you look even more handsome, quito.”

Nice lady. Smart lady. “Can I try some hats on while I check an e-mail?”

“Summer hat or winter?”

“I guess winter. It’s almost Halloween.”

She looked at me with one eye and wiggled a turquoise fingernail at me. “We’ll try gray and brown hats first.”

She started pulling out hats, and I stood in front of the mirror and scrolled down through the e-mail.

The gray hats seemed a little too formal, but things got more interesting when she got to the brown hats. Things also got more interesting when I scrolled down past Frank and Kootie’s activities to what Huey had been up to:

Reports for Kootie and Frank were boring. They got up late, ate breakfast or ran errands, went to meet Huey, and then went to the restaurants where they work.

Huey’s movements, though—they had me dancing inside. My grandmother and her schnauzer could figure out what Huey was up to. What you like to see when looking into something like this is what they call commonality. Billy Bank was a commonality. Likely as not there were no “other three guys” out by the van. Huey had a deal with me but then went and found another buyer for the paintings—Ms. French, to be exact. Got paid when he visited her at Billy Bank, put the money in a storage locker. When he handed over the paintings was unknown since he didn’t have anything with him when he went to Billy Bank. Usually you move the goodies in a giant portfolio, without frames, of course. These portfolios are big black flat art briefcases. Don’t believe what you see in the movies—no goofball rolls stolen paintings, and if he does he only does it once and eats cold cereal for his effort. Roll an old painting, you mostly end up with a canvas tube full of pretty paint chips. You don’t cut it from the frame, either. Try that when you’re in a hurry and see what you get. Not exactly like slicing a cheesecake, especially with all that oil paint. Easier to skin an elephant. A pro lifts the whole frame, pops the art out later, then deep-sixes the frame even if it is gilded.

Huey ripped me off. Now I needed to squeeze him for my share of whatever money he got. I was in a much more positive place than when I got the e-mail about the sushi. I began to hum Prado’s version of “Peanut Vendor,” a real peppy little tune.

Now I had to decide how I would squeeze Huey. I could have told Huey either he had to cut me a big slice of the pie or I make trouble for him in the business as a fink. Or better, trouble for him in his home. With his wife.

The green loft at Bond and Union Street?

That’s Bridget’s place.

She goes through a lot of sheets.

Latina hat girl says, “Ooo, mister, I like this brown one on you, it goes with your eyes. For you, nothing too close in color to your hair. The eyes, ah, that’s muy bueno.”

So I says, “You think so?”

I adjusted the hat and looked at the clean-shaven Kirk Douglas in the brown overcoat and brown fedora in the mirror. I tried to ignore the stupid snowflake sweater I was wearing. He didn’t look like what I was used to. Still, chica was right. The brown hat did look good on me, didn’t make my head look like something orange ready for carving and putting on a stoop. I did need to cut my hair, though. The hat would work better with shorter hair.

I looked at her in the mirror. “Do you know Perez Prado? His music?”

A little confused, she said, “My grandfather, he listens to mambo.”

“How much for the hat, chiquita?”

“A hundred and seven.”

If someone was going to blow my head off with a sniper bullet, I might as well have a hat on to hold the pieces together. I was so deep in shit with the pink monkey, what did another hundred matter? Besides, I was dancing inside because I knew who’d ripped me off and that I was close to making Huey hand over whatever he’d been paid so my problem with Scanlon would go away and Yvette would be completely out of my life.

I handed the Latina hat girl my credit card and replied to Blaise’s e-mail.

My new hat and me were headed to lunch with Max when I got a reply.

I sent back:

SUSHI OLé WAS ALL DONE
in blond wood, with blond tables and chairs very close together. Max was easy to spot in a lunchtime crowd. He was as tall as I was with short black hair and a white complexion. It was like when we were kids there’d be some lad who suddenly got taller but not wider. A beanpole. Maxie was an adult beanpole. Like you saw from the way he talks, though, Max is all about precision and economy. I’ve never seen him dressed in anything other than dark suits and white button-down shirts.

Given how Max was, I guess sushi fit his personality. The food is neat, compact, perfectly arranged. I noticed he consumed his sashimi from left to right, back to front, at regular forty-second intervals. His eyes always stayed on me.

I’m not sure what Maxie would have done with a pork chop, peas, and mashed potatoes with gravy. I’d like to have seen that sometime.

The corner table meant I had to sit next to the wall, and had to wade through a row of people trying to enjoy their lunch to get there. I just said excuse me a thousand times, bulldozed my way in, and sat backward on the little chair, which made a loud creak like it was complaining I wasn’t a little Japanese guy.

“Max.”

“Tom.”

“Museum?”

“Yeah, interviewed the kitchen help.”

“McCracken?” He was talking about Sheila, the museum director I had dated.

“Just for a second. Atkins, too.”

“Progress?”

“Some.”

“Some?”

“I know who took the paintings.”

“And?”

“I’m waiting for some leverage to make one flip.”

“Leverage?”

“He likes girls. His wife wouldn’t like it.”

“When?”

“Today, probably.”

“Probably?”

“Like I said, I’m waiting. For a photo.”

“Photo a sure thing?”

“I haven’t seen it, but I commissioned it. Anyway, I don’t have to have the photo to talk to the goofball.”

“So not probably.”

“Today. Is fifty really all you can do?”

“Fifty.”

“That’s not a lot for three pips. They comp on the Web much higher than that.”

I had done my homework and comped the goodies prior to arranging them to be gigged. There’s an art auction Web site where you can look up auction sales, how much works by various artists have gone for at Sotheby’s and other houses. Appraisers use the site. I have to pay for access, but that’s an easy write-off. All together the Hoffman, Le Marr, and Ramirez would have cost a million five to replace with comparable works by the same artist. A fence would pay at most ten cents to the dollar and like I said low-ball the value. With insurers the appraisals are aboveboard and verifiable, so I expect fifteen percent to settle an item. I should have been getting a hundred fifty grand, or even a hundred at the low end. My part of that would be forty, so after I paid Scanlon’s monkey I’d still be keeping my head above water.

“Fifty.”

“Max, that’s not a lot of incentive for the businessman with the goodies. He can maybe get that in swag without risking exposure.”

“The industry is cutting fees. Looking at alternatives.”

“What kind of alternatives?”

“New deterrents. New recovery methods.”

“Is my part in this being phased out? I’d like to know.”

“You’re cozy.”

“Cozy?”

“Too cozy.”

“I’m a clever guy, but not always smart. I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“The missing Henris stank.”

“Max, I had hoped we were past that.”

“USA is not past having to do a partial settlement. We don’t pay so they can swag.”

“Like I said, they only took four. Somebody at the museum must have taken the other three.”

“Believe a thief?”

“I do. They’re just people, Max. They’re business people who are interested in making money through mutual benefit, profitable relationships, and trust.”

“You succeed because you are embedded with thieves.”

“Unless the collectors and museums are magically able to protect their goodies, and keep some kind of proper inventory, the art is going to be stolen. How are you going to get the goodies back if you don’t find the goofballs who took them?”

“What if there were no more goofballs?”

I shrugged. “I don’t follow.”

“If the stealing stops, the payouts stop.”

“How’s that going to happen?”

“Alternatives.”

I don’t know if you noticed, but we’d come in a circle, which meant to me he had told me as much as he was going to.

“Well, in this case, your alternatives may be very limited by the fifty figure. This goofball already has a buyer, and the art may already have changed hands, meaning I may have to step beyond my target and go after whoever he sold it to. My costs go up with that, not down. And here you want to pay less.”

“A fence?”

“Probably.”

“I hear there’s one less.”

“One less?”

“One less fence.”

I’d forgotten to look in the paper about Jo-Ball’s head explosion, and was sure that they would have reported that he was the beloved maître d’ of Dominic’s, Brooklyn’s favorite Italian eatery. Max, of course, knew better.

“That’s true.”

“I hear you were there.”

“I was.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Keeping my ear to the ground. That’s what I do.”

“So do we.”

I didn’t know if he was implying anything, like that they’d heard I was shopping and settling. To have asked him what he meant might tip my mitt, so I brushed aside the remark.

“I’ll do my best with the fifty, but that figure is a low percentage play.”

“Maybe your percentage is too high.”

I wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of imposing his negativity, even though I had a brief fantasy of folding the little Japanese table in half on his head.

“My percentage is what it is. Like yours.”

His chopsticks actually paused, causing his eating interval to change from forty seconds to forty-five.

“Mine?”

“Everybody has their percentage. I earn mine, so I get mine. My fees are based on the comps and save you guys big bucks.”

I couldn’t believe it, but his eyes showed what I can only describe as curiosity. He’s a client, and you always let your client keep the upper hand, or let them think they have it over on you. Right up until the point they start hinting they don’t need you. Or that you need them. At that point you become the whipping boy.

Tommy Davin is nobody’s whipping boy.

I took that opportunity to stand up over my doll chair and leave. I think what I left unsaid was clear enough. If he wouldn’t pay what the price was, I’d find somebody else who would.

EXITING THE CARROLL STREET SUBWAY
station back in Brooklyn, I still had reason to be hopeful that in a week I’d have the fifteen grand if not more. Hopeful that all I had to do was lean on Huey with the photo of him going into and coming out of that green loft. I’d take a healthy percentage of whatever he got from Ms. French and price Max out even if he offered more.

I checked my e-mail, but the incriminating photos hadn’t come through. As soon as they did, I’d go visit the bistro and show Huey the pix on my phone, make the goofball give me the money or have his meal ticket punched. The bistro was named after his wife; Ariel owned it. Huey was her employee. For now.

You’d think I had enough to worry about, like that it was windy on Smith Street and I had to make sure my hundred-dollar hat didn’t fly off.

I was still worried about the cats, though—whether Tigsy had his shot and Herman had eaten. I had hopes that Snuggles and Lady were bringing projectile vomiting and shitting to a new, unprecedented level at the expense of Gustav’s wits.

Without the incriminating Bridget photo, I didn’t even want to stroll by the bistro and maybe run into Huey smoking out front. I could have walked around the block to my place and checked out the progress on my new front door. Until I caught a reflection of myself in the window of the Neapolitan Barber Shop. Of the new hat. Of my hair.

I’d never walked into the Neapolitan Barber Shop but decided to give it a shot. There are faded red curtains framing the shop window, and a mural of Capri fills the back wall. The wall to the right of the mural was mirrors and giant red and chrome barber chairs. Standing next to and about as tall as one of the chairs was a golden brown man. He was in a smock, sixties, with a golden brown pompadour. It wasn’t a toupee, but a work of his own art crafted from hair dye and probably six pounds of hair spray. The artist’s toothy smile showed obvious pride in his creation. I’d of course seen this guy and his hair around the neighborhood, and through the shop window, but like Sammy he didn’t know me from nobody.