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a nice neat building in a nice neighborhood full of senior citizens. It was the kind of building where apartments don’t stay vacant very long and buzzer tags are kept up-to-date.
    A plaque next to the buzzers said that the building was managed by Blue Spruce Management, Inc., in Montclair, so Gibbons paid them a visit. He purposely waited until lunch hour and predictably scared the shit out of a skinny teenager working in the office for the summer. His broad-nosed, narrow-eyed, hard-ass Aztec deity face scared the shit out of a lot of people. The skinny blonde, who was alone in the office, actually squeaked when he produced his ID. She didn’t dare object when he asked to see the file on Carmella Tozzi, 1005 Broad Street, Bloomfield, Apartment 4K. She nervously apologized and said that all the files were on the computer, then immediately led him to the computer in the boss’s office and called up the file on Mrs. Tozzi.
    According to the management company’s records, Carmella Tozzi’s rent was paid up to date. The apartment hadn’t changed hands in twelve years. As far as Blue Spruce Management was concerned, Carmella Tozzi was still breathing.
    When he politely asked what bank the company used, the skinny girl told him without hesitation. He thanked her for all her help, then walked into the blistering July heat, crossed the street to a Greek coffeeshop, and ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of French apple pie. When he finished his second cup, he called Ivers’s office from the pay phone in the rear between the bathrooms and told the SAC’s assistant that he needed some bank records, the Blue Spruce Management account at First People’s Bank of New Jersey. The next morning at the Manhattan field office, there was a white eight-by-ten envelope waiting for Gibbons, photocopies of all the checks written to Blue Spruce Management from Carmella Tozzi for the past thirty-six months.
    He found a secluded cubicle in the File Room and compared the old lady’s handwriting on the checks. The FBI had handwriting experts in Washington, of course, but over the years Gibbons had picked up enough about handwriting analysis to tell him what he wanted to know. Anyway he hated sending evidence to the labs; when all you wanted was a simple yes or no, they always gave you a goddamn term paper.
    Carmella Tozzi’s handwriting was delicate and florid, slanted very slightly to the right. She crossed her sevens the way most Europeans do. At some time in her life, she must have practiced her penmanship assiduously, perfecting the little serifs she embellished her letters with. Gibbons noticed that the serifs on the checks written last spring and summer weren’t so perfect or so delicate, but by the winter, they were back to their old form. The first check to show sloppy serifs was dated last June 1. The obit in the paper said that Carmella Tozzi died on May 12.
    Not bad for an amateur, Michael. But not good enough.
    It looked like Tozzi was paying the rent out of his aunt’s checking account, forging her signature so that he could use the apartment. Pretty clever.
    But what Gibbons wanted to know was where Tozzi was right now. There was no question that he’d been here, but whether he was living here now was hard to tell. In the bedroom, Gibbons had found two pairs of men’s pants, a few shirts, a dark blue suit, some underwear, athletic socks, and a scuffed pair of Pony high-top leather basketball sneakers. Not much stuff if he really was living here. The refrigerator was depressingly bare too. Gibbons was a little disappointed that there was nothing getting moldy in the fridge; he’d always thought of Tozzi as the type who’d just let things go bad.
    But as dawn became early morning and sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, Gibbons realized that Tozzi could be anywhere right now, possibly somewhere stalking another target.
    Shit . . .
    Gibbons got up, put on his jacket,