his daughter, Dora. She was fair skinned, Dora. Her mother must have been milk white. He 
was my favorite shade, caramel.
  
  Suddenly something made him very uneasy. He turned his back to me, eyes quite obviously 
locked to some object that had alarmed him.  Nothing to do with me. I had touched 
nothing. But his alarm had thrown up a wall between my mind and his. He was on full 
alert, which meant he wasn't thinking sequentially.
  
  He was tall, his back very straight, the coat long, his shoes those Savile Row handmade 
kind that takes the English shops forever. He took a step away from me, and I realized 
immediately from a jumble of images that it was the black granite statue that had 
startled him.
  
  It was perfectly obvious. He didn't know what it was or how it had gotten here. He 
approached, very cautious, as though someone might be hiding in the vicinity of the 
thing, then pivoted, scanned the room, and slowly drew out his gun again.
  
  Possibilities were passing through his mind in rather orderly fashion.
  
  He knew one art dealer who was stupid enough to have delivered the thing and left the 
door unlocked, but that dealer would have called him before ever coming.
  
  And this thing? Mesopotamian? Assyrian? Suddenly, impulsively, he forgot all practical 
matters and put his hand out and touched the granite. God, he loved it. He loved it and 
he was acting stupid.
  
  I mean, there could have been one of his enemies here. But then why would a gangster or 
a federal investigator come bearing a gift such as that?
  
  Whatever the case, he was enthralled by the piece. I still couldn't see it clearly. I 
would have slipped off the violet glasses, which would have helped enormously, but I 
didn't dare move. I wanted to see this, this adoration of his for the object that was 
new. I could feel his uncompromising desire for this statue, to own it, to have it here 
... the very sort of desire which had first attracted him to me.
  
  He was thinking only about it, the fine carving, that it was recent, not ancient, for 
obvious stylistic reasons, seventeenth century perhaps, a fleshed-out rendering of a 
fallen angel.
  
  Fallen angel. He did everything but step on tiptoe and kiss the thing. He put his left 
hand up and ran it all over the granite face and the granite hair. Damn, I couldn't see 
it! How could he put up with this darkness? But then he was smack up against it, and I 
was twenty feet away and stuffed between two saints, without a good perspective.
  
  Finally, he turned and switched on one of the halogen lamps.  Thing looked like a 
preying mantis. He moved the thin black iron limb so the beam shone up on the statue's 
face. Now I could see both profiles beautifully!
  
  He made little noises of lust. This was unique! The dealer was of no importance, the 
back door forgiven, the supposed danger fled. He slipped the gun in the holster again, 
almost as if he wasn't even thinking about it, and he did go up on tiptoe, trying to get 
eye level with this appalling graven image. Feathered wings. I could see that now.  Not 
reptilian, feathered. But the face, classical, robust, the long nose, the chin .. . yet 
there was a ferocity in the profile. And why was the statue black? Maybe it was only St. 
Michael pushing devils into hell, angry  righteous. No, the hair was too rank and tangled 
for that.
  
  Armour, breastplate, and then of course I saw the most telling details.
  
  That it had the legs and feet of a goat. Devil.
  
  Again there came a shiver. Like the thing I'd seen. But that was stupid! And I had no 
sense of the Stalker being near me now. No disorientation. I wasn't even really afraid. 
It was just a frisson, nothing more.
  
  I held very still. Now take your time, I thought. Figure this out.  You've got your 
Victim and this statue is just a coincidental detail that further enriches the entire 
scenario. He turned another halogen beam on the thing. It was almost erotic the way he 
studied it. I smiled. Erotic the way I was studying him-this forty-seven-year-old man 
with a youth's health and a criminal's poise. Fearlessly he stood back, having forgotten 
any threat of any kind, and looked at this new acquisition. Where had it come from? Whom? 
He didn't give a damn about the price. If only Dora. No, Dora wouldn't like this thing.  
Dora. Dora, who had cut him to the heart tonight refusing his gift.
  
  His entire posture changed; he didn't want to think about Dora again, and all the 
things Dora had said-that he had to renounce what he did, that she'd never take another 
cent for the church, that she couldn't help but love him and suffer if he did go to 
court, that she didn't want the veil.
  
  What veil? Just a fake, he'd said, but one of the best he'd found so far. Veil? I 
suddenly connected his hot little memory with something hanging on the far wall, a framed 
bit of fabric, a painted Christface.  Veil. Veronica's veil.
  
  And just an hour ago he'd said to Dora, "Thirteenth century, and so beautiful, Dora, 
for the love of heaven. Take it. If I can't leave these things to you, Dora...."
  
  So this Christface had been his precious gift?
  
  "I won't take them anymore, Daddy, I told you. I won't."
  
  He had pressed her with the vague scheme that this new gift could be exhibited for the 
public. So could all his relics. They could raise money for the church.
  
  She had started to cry, and all this had been going on back at the hotel, whilst David 
and I had been in the bar only yards from them.
  
  "And say these bastards do manage to pick me up, some warrant, something I haven't 
covered, you're telling me you won't take these things? You'll let strangers take them?"
  
  "Stolen, Daddy," she had cried. "They are not clean. They are tainted."