"Don't go anywhere," he declared. "I'll get back to you in five minutes."

I hung up the phone and lay down, flat out on the carpet, trying a breathing exercise to calm down. The problem was, it wasn't working. Having had some experience with being robbed—I once got completely cleaned out when I had a ground-floor apartment down in the Village—I know you go through certain Kubler-Ross-like stages of anger, denial, de­pression, acceptance. You also go through a predictable series of recriminations: I should have had window bars and gates; I should have had a different lock; I should have had two different locks. In the instance just recalled, I'm virtually certain an apartment painter duplicated a set of my keys on his lunch break and then passed them on to a second-story artist. No way to prove that, mind you, but it had to be what happened. I also suspect he checked my appointments cal­endar to see when I was going to be out of town.

But in this case the lock was definitely picked. Nobody had a set of my keys except the super, and Steve. So the guy with the Spanish accent knew how to slip through doors and he had no financial interest in my old VCR. He only had an interest in my film. What had he said there on the sidewalk outside Paula Marks's apartment? Something about how making this picture was a big mistake?

I jumped as the phone erupted by my ear.

"The name Colonel Jose Alvino Ramos Grijalva mean anything to you?" Lou asked.

"How could it? I'm not sure I can even pronounce it."

"Well, Colonel Ramos declares himself to be a military attaché at the Guatemalan Consulate here. You've got a big shot in the Guatemalan Army rummaging through your apartment. This is even worse than I thought. Those guys are killers."

"Jesus." I was still coming to grips with the horrifying fact he'd been in my apartment, in my only refuge. "Think I could bring charges against him?"

"Well, let's consider this a minute. Probably no prints, no credible witness. You'd have a damned hard time proving anything." He sighed. "Truth is, I doubt you could even get a restraining order, given what little you've got to work with."

"The bastard." I sat a moment, feeling the logical, left side of my brain just shut down. My mind went back to its most primitive level, running on adrenaline. "Look, I need to check out something. I'll call you in the morning."