Chapter 3

Two security officers came around the stanchions, unhurried, professional. The younger one - Petty, according to the name bar on his jacket - stopped a respectful three feet away. The older one stood slightly behind the old man, not touching him, not close enough to make it a scene.

"Sir," Petty said. "Is there a problem?"

"There's no problem," Walt said.

"There's a problem," Frear said.

He stepped out from behind the stanchion for the first time, and now Walt could see the whole of him: midnight-blue dinner jacket, centennial pin on the lapel, a tablet tucked under his arm like a verdict. He was a man who had spent the evening being important and had enjoyed it.

"This gentleman is in possession of museum property," Frear said. "An old staff badge. He won't say where he's had it."

"I told him," Walt said.

"You told me it was in your house."

"It was."

Frear turned to Petty with the expression of a man presenting a case. "I need him off the carpet. He can wait in the west corridor until after the toast, and then we'll sort it out with the registrar."

"Sir," Petty said to Walt, "would you come with me?"

Walt looked at the stairs. The chairman had both hands on the lectern now, head down, reading something he'd set on the wood. The quartet's second movement had gone quiet under the room's murmur.

"I'd like to speak to Mr. Halloway first," Walt said.

"Not tonight."

"Five minutes."

"No."

"Then I'll leave the badge with you," Walt said. "And I'll come back Monday, when the offices are open."

He held the sleeve out, the photograph up.

Frear took it.

He took it fast, two fingers and a thumb, and the plastic cracked softly in the transfer. Then he closed his fist around it - not gently, the way you hold something you intend to give back, but the way you hold something you intend to keep - and slid it into his jacket pocket.

The pocket was over his heart. The centennial pin sat an inch to the left of it.

"I'll need to log this as recovered property," Frear said. "And I'll need your name and address, and an explanation, and frankly I'd like to know how a badge issued in 1979 ended up in the coat pocket of a man who was never on the payroll."

"I was on the payroll for thirty years."

"Then it'll be easy to prove."

The older officer shifted his weight. Behind them, a photographer in a black vest lowered her camera and watched, unsure whether this was a photograph.

Walt's hand stayed open in the air, exactly where it had been, as if the badge were still in it. He did not raise his voice. He did not step forward. He looked at Frear's pocket and then at Frear's face.

"Mr. Frear," he said. "I'd like that badge back."

"You can have it back Monday. If the story holds."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then we'll be talking about theft of museum property," Frear said. "Which, given the value of the items in this building, is not a small conversation."

Petty's radio murmured. Frear glanced at the landing, at the chairman, and made a small decision he believed would end the matter before anyone important noticed it.

"You can leave now," he said, "or you can be charged before the toast."