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the bedroom opened with a slight squeak. Luther searched his mind. Everything had been picked up or put back in its place. He’d only touched the remote, and he had replaced it right in line with the slight dust pattern. Now Luther could only hear three voices, a man and two women. One of the females sounded drunk, the other was all business. Then Ms. Business disappeared, the door closed but wasn’t locked, and Ms. Drunk and the man were alone. Where were the others? Where had Ms. Business gone? The giggles continued. Footsteps came closer to the mirror. Luther scrunched down in the corner as far as he could, hoping that the chair would shield him from view but knowing that it couldn’t possibly.
    Then a burst of light hit him right in the eyes and he almost gasped at the suddenness of his little world going from inky black to broad daylight. He blinked rapidly to adjust to the new level of brightness, his pupils going from almost full dilation to pinpoints in seconds. But there were no screams, no faces, no guns.
    Finally, after a full minute had passed, Luther peered around the corner of the chair and received another shock. The vault door seemed to have disappeared; he was staring right into the goddamned room. He almost fell backward but caught himself. Luther suddenly understood what the chair was for.
    He recognized both of the people in the room. The woman he had seen tonight already, in the photos: the little wife with the hooker taste in clothes.
    The man he knew for an altogether different reason; he certainly wasn’t the master of this house. Luther slowly shook his head in amazement and let out his breath. His hands shook and a queasiness crept over him. He fought back the grip of nausea and stared into the bedroom.
    The vault door also served as a one-way mirror. With the light on outside and darkness in his little space, it was as though he were watching a giant TV screen.
    Then he saw it and a fist of breath kicked out of his lungs: the diamond necklace on the woman’s neck. Two hundred thou to his practiced eye, maybe more. And just the sort of bauble one would routinely put away in a home vault before retiring for the evening. Then his lungs relaxed as he watched her take the piece off and casually drop it on the floor.
    His fear receded enough to where he rose and inched over to the chair and slowly eased himself into it. So the old man sat here and watched his little woman get her brains screwed out by a procession of men. From the looks of her, Luther figured that some members of that procession included young guys making minimum wage or hanging on to freedom by the width of a green card. But her gentleman caller tonight was in an altogether different class.
    He looked around, his ears focused for any sound of the other inhabitants of the house. But what could he really do? In over thirty years of active larceny, he had never encountered anything like this, so he decided to do the only thing he could. With only an inch of glass separating him from absolute destruction, he settled down quietly into the deep leather and waited.

CHAPTER TWO
    T HREE BLOCKS FROM THE BROAD WHITE BULK OF THE U NITED States Capitol, Jack Graham opened the front door of his apartment, threw his overcoat on the floor and went straight to the fridge. Beer in hand he flopped down on the threadbare couch in his living room. His eyes quickly perused the tiny room as he took a drink. Quite a difference from where he’d just been. He let the beer stand in his mouth and then swallowed. The muscles of his square jaw tensed and then relaxed. The nagging prickles of doubt slowly drained away, but they would reappear; they always did.
    Another important dinner party with Jennifer, his soon-to-be wife, and her family and circle of social and business acquaintances. People at that level of sophistication apparently didn’t have mere friends they hung with. Everyone served a particular function, the whole being greater than the sum of the