Tommy wore a ring. A yellow gold band, maybe three-eighths of an inch wide. And he wore a pinkie ring on his right hand, a high-school class ring, I think it must have been. I remembered it, sitting there over coffee in the Red Flame. A class ring with a blue stone on his right pinkie, a yellow gold band on his left ring finger.

I couldn't tell how I felt.

THAT afternoon I went to St. Paul 's and lit a candle for Margaret Tillary. I had discovered churches in my retirement, and while I did not pray or attend services, I dropped in now and then and sat in the darkened silence. Sometimes I lit candles for people who had recently died, or for those longer dead who were on my mind. I don't know why I thought this was something I ought to do, nor do I know why I felt compelled to tuck a tenth of any income I received into the poor box of whatever church I next visited.

I sat in a rear pew and thought a bit about sudden death. When I left the church a light rain was falling. I crossed Ninth Avenue and ducked into Armstrong's. Dennis was behind the bar. I ordered bourbon neat, drank it straight down, and motioned for another and said I'd have a cup of coffee with it.

While I poured the bourbon into the coffee, he asked if I'd heard about Tillary. I said I'd read the story in the News.

"There's a piece in this afternoon's Post, too. Pretty much the same story. It happened the night before last is how they figure it. He evidently didn't make it home and he went straight to the office in the morning, and then after he called a few times to apologize and couldn't get through, he got worried."

"It said that in the paper?"

"Just about. That would have been the night before last. He didn't come in while I was here. Did you see him?"

I tried to remember. "I think so. The night before last, yeah, I think he was here with Carolyn."

"The Dixie Belle."

"That's the one."

"Wonder how she feels about now." He used thumb and forefinger to smooth the points of his wispy moustache. "Probably guilty for having her wish come true."

"You think she wanted the wife dead?"

"I don't know. Isn't that a girl's fantasy when she's running around with a married guy? Look, I'm not married, what do I know about these things?"

THE story faded out of the papers during the next couple of days. There was a death notice in Thursday's News. Margaret Wayland Tillary, beloved wife of Thomas, mother of the late James Alan Tillary, aunt of Mrs. Richard Paulsen. There would be a wake that evening, a funeral service the following afternoon at Walter B. Cooke's, Fourth and Bay Ridge Avenues, in Brooklyn.

That night Billie Keegan said, "I haven't seen Tillary since it happened. I'm not sure we're gonna see him again." He poured himself a glass of JJ&S, the twelve-year-old Jameson that nobody else ever ordered. "I bet we don't see him with her again."

"The girlfriend?"

He nodded. "What's got to be on both their minds is he was with her when his wife was getting knifed to death in Brooklyn. And if he'd only been home where he was supposed to be, di dah di dah di dah. You're fooling around and you want a quick bounce and a couple of laughs, the last thing you need is something to remind you how you got your wife killed by fooling around."

I thought about it, nodded. "The wake was tonight," I said.

"Yeah? You go?"

I shook my head. "I don't know anybody that went."

I left before closing, I had a drink at Polly's and another at Miss Kitty's, Skip was tense and remote, I sat at the bar and tried to ignore the man standing next to me without being actively hostile. He wanted to tell me how all the city's problems were the fault of the former mayor. I didn't necessarily disagree but I didn't want to hear about it.

I finished my drink and headed for the door. Halfway there Skip called my name. I turned and he motioned to me.

I walked back to the bar. He said, "This is the wrong time for it, but I'd like to talk to you soon."

"Oh?"

"Ask your advice, maybe throw a little work your way. You be around Jimmy's tomorrow afternoon?"

"Probably," I said. "If I don't go to the funeral."

"Who died?"

"Tillary's wife."

"Oh, the funeral's tomorrow? Are you thinking about going? I didn't know you were that close to the guy."

"I'm not."

"Then why would you want to go? Forget it, not my business. I'll look for you at Armstrong's around two, two-thirty. If you're not there I'll catch you some other time."

I was there when he came in the next day around two-thirty. I had just finished lunch and was sitting over a cup of coffee when Skip came in and scanned the room from the doorway. He saw me and came on over and sat down.

"You didn't go," he said. "Well, it's no day for a funeral. I was just over at the gym, I felt silly sitting in the sauna after. The whole city's a sauna. What have you got there, some of that famous Kentucky coffee of yours?"

"Just plain coffee."

"That'll never do." He turned, beckoned the waitress. "Let me have a Prior Dark," he told her, "and bring my father here something to put in his coffee."

She brought a shot for me and a beer for him. He poured it slowly against the side of the glass, examined the half-inch head, took a sip, put the glass down.

He said, "I might have a problem."

I didn't say anything.

"This is confidential, okay?"

"Sure."

"You know much about the bar business?"

"Just from the consumer's point of view."

"I like that. You know it's all cash."

"Of course."

"A lot of places take plastic. We don't. Strictly cash. Oh, if we know you we'll take your check, or if you run a tab, whatever. But it's basically a cash business. I'd say ninety-five percent of our gross is cash. As a matter of fact it's probably higher than that."

"And?"

He took out a cigarette, tapped the end against his thumbnail. "I hate talking about all this," he said.

"Then don't."

He lit the cigarette. "Everybody skims," he said. "A certain percentage of the take comes right off the top before it gets recorded. It doesn't get listed in the books, it doesn't get deposited, it doesn't exist. The dollar you don't declare is worth two dollars that you do, because you don't pay tax on it. You follow me?"

"It's not all that hard to follow, Skip."

"Everybody does it, Matt. The candy store, the newsie, everybody who takes in cash. Christ's sake, it's the American way- the president'd cheat on his taxes if he could get by with it."

"The last one did."

"Don't remind me. That asshole'd give tax fraud a bad name." He sucked hard on the cigarette. "We opened up, couple years ago, John kept the books. I yell at people, do the hiring and firing, he does the buying and keeps the books. Works out about right."

"And?"

"Get to the point, right? Fuck it. From the beginning we keep two sets of books, one for us and one for Uncle." His face darkened and he shook his head. "Never made sense to me. I figured keep one phony set and that's that, but he says you need honest books so you'll know how you're doing. That make sense to you? You count your money and you know how you're doing, you don't need two sets of books to tell you, but he's the guy with the business head, he knows these things, so I say fine, do it."

He picked up his glass, drank some beer. "They're gone," he said.

"The books."

"John comes in Saturday mornings, does the week's bookkeeping. Everything was fine this past Saturday. Day before yesterday he has to check something, looks for the books, no books."

"Both sets gone?"

"Only the dark set, the honest set." He drank some beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "He spent a day taking Valium and going nuts by himself, then told me yesterday. And I been going nuts ever since."

"How bad is it, Skip?"

"Aw, shit," he said. "It's pretty bad. We could go away for it."

"Really?"

He nodded. "It's all our records since we opened, and we been making money from the first week. I don't know why, it's just another joint, but we been pulling 'em in. And we've been stealing with both hands. They come up with the books, we're fucking nailed, you know? You can't call it a mistake, it's all down there in black and white, one set of figures, and there's another completely different set on each year's tax return. You can't even make up a story, all you can do is ask 'em where they want you, Atlanta or Leavenworth."

We sat silent for a few moments. I drank some of my coffee. He lit another cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. Music played on the tape deck, something contrapuntal with woodwinds.

I said, "What would you want me to do?"

"Find out who took 'em. Get 'em back."

"Maybe John got rattled, misplaced them. He could have-"

He was shaking his head. "I turned the office upside down yesterday afternoon. They're fuckin' gone."

"They just disappeared? No signs of forced entry? Where did you keep 'em, under lock and key?"

"They're supposed to be locked up. Sometimes he would forget, leave 'em out, stick 'em in a desk drawer. You get careless, you know what I mean? You never have an incident, you take the whole thing for granted, and if you're rushed, you don't take the trouble to put things away where they belong. He tells me he locked up Saturday but in the next breath he admits maybe he didn't, it's a routine thing, he does the same thing every Saturday, so how do you remember one Saturday from the next? What's the difference? The stuff is capital-G Gone."

"So somebody took it."

"Right."

"If they go to the IRS with it-"

"Then we're dead. That's all. They can plant us next to whatsisname's wife, Tillary's. You miss the funeral, don't worry about it. I'll understand."

"Was anything else missing, Skip?"

"Didn't seem to be."

"So it was a very specific theft. Somebody walked in, took the books, and left."

"Bingo."

I worked it out in my mind. "If it was somebody with a grudge against you, somebody you fired, say-"

"Yeah, I thought of that."

"If they go to the Feds, you'll know about it when a couple of guys in suits come around and show you their ID. They'll take all your records, slap a lien on your bank accounts, and whatever else they do."

"Keep talking, Matt. You're really making my day."

"If it's not somebody who's got a hardon for you, then it's somebody looking to turn a dollar."

"By selling the books."

"Uh-huh."

"To us."

"You're the ideal customers."

"I thought of that. So did Kasabian. Sit tight, he tells me. Sit tight, and whoever took 'em'll get in touch, and we worry about it then. Just sit tight in the meantime. Tight's no problem, it's the sitting that's getting to me. Can you get bail for cheating on taxes?"

"Of course."

"Then I suppose I can get it and run out on it. Leave the country. Live the rest of my life in Nepal selling hash to hippies."