Jack didn’t sit. He spoke while striding the room. “I was at the desk going through auction catalogs online— tracing Chau’s sales history, thanks for asking—when POW! the window exploded. I ducked and covered”—he threw his long arms over his head, to demonstrate—“and waited until it stopped raining glass. When nothing else happened I peeked up to check on the Hasui.” He tapped the Japanese print on the wall as he passed it. “You’re lucky it’s okay. If anything had happened to it I’d have been really pissed.”
“At us?” I protested. “We had nothing to do with it.”
“No? I run a genteel uptown art investigation business for three years with nothing worse than papercuts, then Bill Smith introduces me to his kick-ass Chinese partner and people start shooting at me. Coincidence? I don’t
“Beeg-time Russian gengster.”
“Are you serious? You look like you got run over by the bling truck.”
“What do the police think?”
“About your outfit?”
“About someone shooting at you. Try to stay on point here.”
“Hah! They think it was random. Someone showing off, maybe trying out his new gun, just happened to hit my window.”
“A gangbanger? On Madison Avenue?” I was incredulous.
“Not a gangbanger. A private-school wannabe. Some punk brings Daddy’s gun to St. Snooty’s, shows his goods to a hot cheerleader, has an accident.”
“You’re on the verge of talking dirty,” Bill warned.
“The cops took the slug,” Jack thumbed over his shoulder at the furrow in the ceiling, “which was a twenty-five, by the way. But unless a matching one turns up in a stiff someplace, I don’t expect to hear from them again.” He stopped, rubbing the back of his neck with a scratched hand. “Look, you guys, I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”
“Point, cock, pull,” Bill said.
“Oh, thanks.”
“Did anyone see anything?” I asked. “Gunshots aren’t an everyday thing up here.”
“If they did the cops didn’t find them. No one heard the shot.
“A twenty-five’s pretty quiet,” Bill said. “Relatively speaking.”
“I think it’s a dumb theory,” I said. “About the private-school kid.”
“I happen to agree with you, but the police don’t. Or at least, they’re refusing to budge until I come clean.”
“Come clean about what?”
“The real reason, of course! Which must be related to my shady profession. They jumped all over me. Like getting shot at was my idea.”
“They wanted to know about your enemies, that sort of thing?”
“Me? Enemies?”
“Oh, right, of course. So what did you tell them?”
“What you’re trying subtly to ask is, did I tell them about the case, about Ghost Hero Chau?”
I nodded, admitting it.
“I would’ve, if I’d had an idea how to say it and not sound like a wackjob. ‘This ghost is painting pictures and two clients want to find them, one who wants them to be real and one who doesn’t. I think one of them, or someone else, or the ghost himself, is responsible for this outrage, Inspector Lestrade.’”
“Works for me,” Bill said.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think it would work for the Nineteenth Precinct.”
“That’s why you didn’t tell?” I asked.
Jack stopped crisscrossing the room. He stood for a few moments, looking at me. “No.” He threw himself into a chair, legs splayed out, arms dangling. “I didn’t tell because it’s not just my case. Not that I owe you guys anything, but I thought I ought to wait until we talked.”
“We appreciate that,” I said.
“Besides, I’m a private eye. Don’t we have some kind of code? One for all, all for one, none for the cops? Something like that?”
“Something like that,” Bill said.
“Okay. I waited, we’re talking. So what the hell’s going on?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said. “This case is barely started. Are you sure there’s nothing else you’re working on that could’ve—”
I stopped because he was shaking his head. “I don’t have any other open cases. I’d just started this one and all I’ve done is a little research.”
“It doesn’t have to be an open case. It could be an old case, someone you made unhappy who’s been stewing
