ack in November, Richard and Amanda Thurman had attended a small dinner party on Central Park West. They left the party shortly before midnight. It was a pleasant night; it had been unseasonably warm all week, so they elected to walk home.

Their apartment occupied the entire top floor of a five-story brownstone on West Fifty-second Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The ground floor housed an Italian restaurant, while a travel agent and a theatrical broker shared the second floor. The third and fourth floors were both residential. There were two apartments on the third floor, one housing a retired stage actress, the other a young stockbroker and a male model. The fourth floor held a single apartment; the tenants, a retired attorney and his wife, had flown to Florida on the first of the month and wouldn’t be back until the first week in May.

When the Thurmans got home, somewhere between twelve and twelve-thirty, they reached the fourth-floor landing just as a pair of burglars emerged from the attorney’s empty apartment. The burglars, two large and muscular white males in their late twenties or early thirties, drew guns and herded the Thurmans into the apartment they had just ransacked. There they relieved Richard of his watch and wallet, took Amanda’s jewelry, and told the two that they were a pair of worthless yuppies and they deserved to die.

They gave Richard Thurman a beating, tied him up and taped his mouth. Then they sexually assaulted his wife in front of him. Eventually one of them struck Richard over the head with what he believed was a crowbar or pry bar and he lost consciousness. When he came to the burglars were gone and his wife was lying on the floor across the room, nude and apparently unconscious.

He rolled off the bed onto the floor and tried kicking at the floor, but it was thickly carpeted and he couldn’t make enough noise to attract the attention of the tenant in the apartment below. He knocked over a lamp but no one responded to the noise it made. He made his way over to where his wife was lying, hoping to arouse her, but she did not respond and did not appear to be breathing. Her skin felt cool to him and he was afraid that she was dead.

He couldn’t free his hands and his mouth was still taped. It took some doing to loosen the tape. He tried shouting but no one responded. The windows were closed, of course, and the building was an old one, with thick walls and floors. He finally managed to upend a small table and knock a telephone down onto the floor. Also on the table was a metal tool that the attorney used to tamp down the tobacco in his pipe. Thurman gripped that between his teeth and used it to ring 911. He gave the operator his name and address and said he was afraid his wife was dead or dying. Then he passed out, and that’s how the police found him.

THAT was on the second weekend in November, Saturday night and Sunday morning. On the last Tuesday in January, I was sitting in Jimmy Armstrong’s at two in the afternoon drinking a cup of coffee. Across the table from me sat a man about forty years old. He had short dark hair and a closely trimmed beard that was showing a little gray. He wore a brown tweed jacket over a beige turtleneck. He had an indoor complexion, no rare thing in the middle of a New York winter. His gaze, behind metal-framed eyeglasses, was thoughtful.

“I think that bastard killed my sister,” he said. The words were angry but the voice was cool, the inflection level and neutral. “I think he murdered her and I think he’s getting away with it, and I don’t want that to happen.”

Armstrong’s is at the corner of Tenth and Fifty-seventh. It’s been there a few years now, but before then it was on Ninth Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth, in premises now occupied by a Chinese restaurant. In those days I just about lived in the place. My hotel was right around the corner, and I ate one or more meals a day there, met clients there, and spent most of my evenings at my usual table in the back, talking with people or brooding by myself, drinking my bourbon neat or on the rocks or, as an aid to staying awake, mixing it with coffee.

When I stopped drinking, Armstrong’s was at the top of my unwritten list of people, places, and things to avoid. That became easier to do when Jimmy lost his lease and moved a block west, out of my usual daily traffic pattern. I didn’t go there for a long time, and then a sober friend suggested we stop there for a late bite, and since then I’ve probably had half a dozen meals there. They say it’s a bad idea to hang out in ginmills when you’re trying to stay sober, but Armstrong’s felt more like a restaurant than a ginmill anyway, especially in its current incarnation with its exposed brick walls and potted ferns overhead. The background music was classical, and on weekend afternoons they had live trios playing chamber music. Not exactly your typical Hell’s Kitchen bucket of blood.

When Lyman Warriner said he was down from Boston I suggested we meet at his hotel, but he was staying at a friend’s apartment. My own hotel room is tiny, and my lobby is too shabby to inspire confidence. So once again I had picked Jimmy’s saloon as a place to meet a prospective client. Now a baroque woodwind quintet played on the sound system while I drank coffee and Warriner sipped Earl Grey tea and accused Richard Thurman of murder.

I asked him what the police had said.

“The case is open.” He frowned. “That would seem to suggest that they’re working on it, but I gather it means the reverse, that they’ve largely abandoned hope of solving it.”

“It’s not that cut-and-dried,” I said. “It usually means the investigation is no longer being actively pursued.”

He nodded. “I spoke to a Detective Joseph Durkin. I gather the two of you are friends.”

“We’re friendly.”

He arched an eyebrow. “A nice distinction,” he said. “Detective Durkin didn’t say that he thought Richard was responsible for Amanda’s death, but it was the way he didn’t say it, if you know what I mean.”

“I think so.”

“I asked him if he could think of anything I might do to help resolve the situation. He said that everything that could be done through official channels had been done. It took me a minute before I realized he couldn’t specifically suggest I hire a private detective, but that was where he was leading me. I said, ‘Perhaps someone unofficial, say a private detective—‘ and he grinned as if to say that I’d caught on, that I was playing the game.”

“He couldn’t come right out and say it.”

“No. Nor, I gather, could he come right out and recommend your services. ‘As far as a recommendation’s concerned, all I’m really supposed to do is refer you to the Yellow Pages,’ he said. ‘Except I should say that there’s one fellow right here in the neighborhood who you won’t find in the book, on account of he’s unlicensed, which makes him very unofficial.’ You’re smiling.”

“You do a good Joe Durkin imitation.”

“Thank you. Pity there’s not much call for it. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you sure? Almost everyone’s quit. I quit, but then I started again.” He seemed about to elaborate on that, then took out a Marlboro and lit it. He drew in the smoke as if it were something life-sustaining.

He said, “Detective Durkin said you were unorthodox, even eccentric.”

“Were those his words?”

“They’ll do. He said your rates are arbitrary and capricious, and no, those weren’t his words either. He said you don’t furnish detailed reports or keep track of expenses.” He leaned forward. “I can live with that. He also said when you get your teeth in something you don’t let go, and that’s what I want. If that son of a bitch killed Amanda I want to know it.”

“What makes you think he did?”

“A feeling. I don’t suppose that’s terribly scientific.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“No.” He looked at his cigarette. “I never liked him,” he said. “I tried to, because Amanda loved him, or was in love with him, or whatever you want to call it. But it’s difficult to like someone who clearly dislikes you, or at least I found it difficult.”

“Thurman disliked you?”

“Immediately and automatically. I’m gay.”

“And that’s why he disliked you?”

“He may have had other reasons, but my sexual orientation was enough to place me beyond the pale of his circle of potential friends. Have you ever seen Thurman?”

“Just his photo in the newspapers.”

“You didn’t seem surprised when I told you I was gay. You knew right away, didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say I knew. It seemed likely.”

“On the basis of my appearance. I’m not setting traps for you, Matthew. Is it all right if I call you Matthew?”

“Certainly.”

“Or do you prefer Matt?”

“Either one.”

“And call me Lyman. My point is that I look gay, whatever that means, although to people who haven’t been around many homosexuals my own gayness, if you will, is probably a good deal less evident. Well. My take on Richard Thurman, based on his appearance, is that he’s so deep in the closet he can’t see over the coats.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I don’t know that he’s ever acted out, and he may very well not be consciously aware of it, but I think he prefers men. Sexually. And dislikes openly gay men because he fears we’re sisters under the skin.”

THE waitress came over and poured me more coffee. She asked Warriner if he wanted more hot water for his tea. He told her he would indeed like more hot water, and a fresh tea bag to go with it.

“A pet peeve,” he told me. “Coffee drinkers get free refills. Tea drinkers get free hot water, but if you want another tea bag they charge you for a second cup. Tea costs them less than coffee anyway.” He sighed. “If I were a lawyer,” he said, “I might mount a class-action suit. I’m joking, of course, but somewhere in our litigious society, someone is probably doing just that.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“She was pregnant, you know. Almost two months. She’d been to the doctor.”

“It was in the papers.”

“She’s my only sibling. So the bloodline dies out when I go. I keep thinking that should trouble me, but I don’t know that it does. What does trouble me is the idea of Amanda dying at the hands of her husband, and of him getting away with it. And of not knowing for sure. If I knew for sure—”

“What?”

“It would trouble me less.”

The waitress brought his tea. He dunked the fresh tea bag. I asked him what might have motivated Thurman to kill Amanda.

“Money,” he said. “She had some.”

“How much?”

“Our father made a lot of money. In real estate. Mother found ways to piss away a good deal of it, but there was still some left when she died.”

“When was that?”

“Eight years ago. When the will cleared probate Amanda and I each inherited slightly in excess of six hundred thousand dollars. I rather doubt that she spent it all.”

BY the time we were through it was getting close to five o’clock and the bar business was beginning to pick up as the first of the Happy Hour set arrived. I had filled several pages in my pocket notebook and had begun turning down coffee refills. Lyman Warriner had switched from tea to beer and was halfway through a tall glass of Prior dark.

It was time to set a fee, and as always I didn’t know how much to ask for. I gathered that he could afford whatever I charged him but that didn’t really enter into my calculations. The number I settled on was $2500, and he didn’t ask me how I’d arrived there, just took out a checkbook and uncapped a fountain pen. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one.

He said, “Matthew Scudder? Two t’s, two d’s?” I nodded and he wrote out the check and waved it to dry the ink. I told him that he might have a refund coming if things went faster than I expected, or that I might ask for more money if it seemed appropriate. He nodded. He didn’t seem terribly concerned about this.

I took the check, and he said, “I just want to know, that’s all.”

“That might be the most you can hope for. Finding out that he did it and turning up something that’ll stand up in court are two different things. You could wind up with your suspicions confirmed and your brother-in-law still getting away with it.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to a jury, Matthew. Just prove it to me.”

I didn’t feel that I could let that go. I said, “It sounds as though you’re thinking of taking matters into your own hands.”

“I’ve already done that, haven’t I? Hiring a private detective. Not letting matters take their own course, not allowing the mills of God to grind in their traditionally slow fashion.”

“I wouldn’t want to be part of something that winds up with you on trial for Richard Thurman’s murder.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I won’t pretend it hasn’t occurred to me. But I honestly don’t think I would do it. I don’t think it’s my style.”

“That’s just as well.”

“Is it? I wonder.” He motioned for the waitress, gave her twenty dollars and waved away change. Our check couldn’t have come to more than a quarter of that, but we’d taken up a table for three hours. He said, “If he killed her, he was exceedingly stupid.”

“Murder is always stupid.”

“Do you really think so? I’m not sure I agree, but you’re more the expert than I. No, my point is that he acted prematurely. He should have waited.”

“Why?”

“More money. Don’t forget, I inherited the same amount Amanda did, and I can assure you I haven’t pissed it away. Amanda would have been my heir, and the beneficiary of my insurance.” He took out a cigarette, put it back in the pack. “I wouldn’t have had anyone else to leave it to,” he said. “My lover died a year and a half ago, of a four-letter disease.” He smiled thinly. “Not gout. The other one.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m HIV-positive,” he said. “I’ve known for several years. I lied to Amanda. I told her I’d been tested and I was negative, so I had nothing to worry about.” His eyes sought mine. “That seemed like an ethical lie, don’t you think? Since I wasn’t about to have sex with her, why burden her with the truth?” He took out the cigarette but didn’t light it. “Besides,” he said, “there was a chance I might not get sick. Having the antibody may not necessarily mean having the virus. Well, scratch that. The first telltale purple blotch appeared this past August. KS. That’s Kaposi’s sarcoma.”

“I know.”

“It’s not the short-term death sentence it was a year or two ago. I could live a long time. I could live ten years, even more.” He lit the cigarette. “But,” he said, “somehow I have a feeling that’s not going to happen.”

He stood up, got his topcoat from the rack. I reached for mine and followed him out to the street. A cab came along right away and he hailed it. He opened the rear door, then turned to me once more.

“I hadn’t got around to telling Amanda,” he said. “I thought I’d tell her at Thanksgiving, but of course by then it was too late. So she didn’t know, and of course he wouldn’t have known, so he couldn’t have realized the financial advantage in delaying her murder.” He threw his cigarette away. “It’s ironic,” he said, “isn’t it? If I’d told her I was dying, she might be alive today.”