It was closer to the truth that he had liked every version of it he had ever seen, and that he liked this one, too, at least as it appeared in the morning. That was the trouble with New York, as far as he was concerned. It never stayed the same from one visit to the next. Of course, it didn’t help that the city had a thousand hotels or more, so that he never found himself staying in the same one. The one for this trip was in Greenwich Village, and he was here because Bennis picked it out for him. “My publisher is always trying to check me into the Hilton,” she’d told him when she printed out the reservation confirmation on her computer, “but I prefer the Village. It’s calmer, for one thing. And it’s manageable. Of course, in a way, it’s a bit like Paris. You think you’re walking into a world of great writers and genius painters, and what you find is tourists and lawyers.” Gregor didn’t know about the tourists and lawyers, but his appointment at the FBI wasn’t until afternoon, and what he wanted to do more than anything was walk around.
