Hollis Burns had begun hiking out of the Aurora Junction Terminal just after dusk. The "staff" at the quote unquote airport -- a mechanic in an oil-stained parka, and his wife, who ran the coffee counter -- had long since gone home. They were so used to the oddball visitor to their Arctic clime -- National Geographic Society research teams, ABC Wide World of Sports sled-dog mushers, comet-watchers and other astronomy types scanning the polar heavens -- that, as out of place as Hollis Burns seemed, he didn't cost them a second thought past closing time. They just figured he was some "science" type on some sort of grant -- or a nut. Maybe both.

It was onto the tundra and into the middle of nowhere that Hollis hiked, his as-it-turned-out inadequate boots sinking into the early-season snow a little deeper with every step. By the light of a three-quarter moon and a Swiss Army penlight, Hollis looked down occasionally at his map -- although he seemed to know precisely where he was headed. In truth, Hollis had been here several times before.

As he reached the beginning of a rise in the land, which gradually ascended to a plateau 50 feet above the surrounding topography, Hollis stopped. With an air of having arrived somewhere, he loosened the rucksack on his back, let it slip down his arms, and laid it gently on the frozen ground. He kneeled down beside his pack, opened a zippered pocket, and removed a rock-hard Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, which he unwrapped and popped casually in his mouth. Except for the eerie and unsettling moaning of a distant wolf pack, and the darkness for countless hundreds of miles around him, Hollis Burns might have been waiting for a bus.

Polar puzzle. "What?!" the reader is thinking. Has the meandering plot of "475 Madison Avenue" veered in -- dare we say it? -- a supernatural direction? "The X Files" it's not. But things are escalating to a new level of ... complexity. Stay tuned.

Suddenly, and without warning, a bright yet diffuse light appeared in the sky above the spot where Hollis was standing. Hollis quickly tossed the candy wrapper aside, reached down for his pack, and slipped it on. He put the synthetic-fur ski-gloves he'd taken off back on his quickly-stiffening hands, and stood as if at the ready -- for something. Within 20 seconds, the area around Hollis Burns for at least a quarter-mile's radius was illuminated by the brightest daylight imaginable. Hollis stood in the geometric center, like the needle-point of a compass scribing a perfect circle. And just when it seemed that the light couldn't get any brighter, all went dark. And Hollis was gone.

The wrapper to his Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, like a dead leaf fallen in midwinter, blew away into the Arctic night.

Detective Jane Berkowitz sat opposite Lucien Brandt in her dingy cubicle in the Midtown North police precinct. The evening traffic noises from the clogged Manhattan streets below echoed angrily off the sides of the buildings lining either side of the street, and bounced through the open window next to the chair in which Lucien perched uncomfortably. And guiltily.

"Mr. Brandt," the hardened lady detective -- who, Lucien, a product of pop culture even at times like this, couldn't help thinking looked like the actress Kathy Bates in "Misery" -- "how could you think that I wouldn't know that Artemis Bagley was your brother. Your twin brother! I'd have to be a complete moron."

Lucien took a sip of the Snapple diet iced tea that Berkowitz had offered him from the tiny refrigerator under her desk. It was the only perk, apparently, that came with her "Detective," title, Lucien thought to himself, almost feeling sorry for the life of this civil servant. The poor woman didn't even have an office.

"Look, I panicked. Yes, he's my brother. Yes, I changed my name and moved to New York and haven't seen him for years. But no, I didn't strangle him in some tragic hotel room on the West side. I wouldn't be caught dead in a place like that!"

"No, Mr. Brandt," Jane Berkowitz calmly responded. "But Artemis was. Caught dead, that is."

"What do you want me to say?" Lucien asked, stupidly. He knew as well as anyone that what Jane Berkowitz wanted was a confession. But he wasn't about to give it to her. He looked down at the scuffs on his black Bally loafers, and, for a minute, Detective Berkowitz saw a frightened little boy sitting before her.

"Lucien," she said, calling him by his first name for the first time, "you're going to have to be straight with me here if we're going to get anywhere. The facts are that there's no hard evidence -- no fingerprints, hair samples, nothing -- that would point a finger at you. But you clearly had some involvement with him -- or why would your name be on the notepad in his hotel room?"

"I didn't deny we had contact," Lucien barked. "He looked me up. He hounded me. He wanted money from me because he was broke. He was all over me."

Lucien carefully avoided any reference to the fact that Artemis had been blackmailing him. "Did you give him what he wanted?" "No. I don't have the kind of money he thought I had." "Did he threaten you?" "Absolutely not," Lucien lied. "Did he have enemies, to your knowledge?" Berkowitz questioned.

Deny it, Lucien! When in doubt, just act dumb. But maybe Lucien isn't acting. Maybe he IS dumb. Dear reader, are you confused at this point as to whether or not Lucien did, in fact, kill Artemis? You should be. So is Lucien himself.

Lucien hesitated a moment. "None that I could name," Lucien answered, measuring his words, and questioning their credibility as he heard them echoing within his own head.

"Why did you wait a few seconds before answering that last question?" Berkowitz barked, standing up and going to the window.

"I didn't mean to," Lucien said defensively. "It's just that . . . I mean, who doesn't have an enemy or two, you know?"

"I don't," Berkowitz answered snidely.

Lucien looked at her.

"Honestly. I don't," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "Lots of people don't."

"Well, anyway," Lucien said, defeated by the woman's honesty -- a quality he would get used to in Detective Berkowitz, and come to admire -- "I suspect he had some enemies. He was that kind of a guy."

"What kind of a guy?" Berkowitz pressed, turning toward Lucien.

She works hard for the money. Detective Berkowitz usually sees through people as clearly as she does through the plate-glass window of the Chock Full o' Nuts where, each morning, she has her morning coffee and cream-cheese on date nut bread sandwich. She's thinking: Lucien's either very smart, very stupid, or very psychotic

"Rough and tumble. Been around the block, probably gotten into some . . . situations," Lucien answered vaguely, taking another nervous sip of Snapple. "Lucien, were you in a 'situation' with Artemis?" Berkowitz pointedly asked. "No, Detective, I wasn't," Lucien lied, again. "No." Jane Berkowitz unbuttoned, and began to roll up, the sleeves on the white cotton man-tailored shirt she was wearing. As she did so, she walked toward Lucien's chair and sat on the side of the desk, her face perhaps two feet from his. "Mr. Brandt," she said, suddenly formal again, "did you kill your brother?"

Lucien didn't miss a beat.

"No. No, as a matter of absolute fact, I didn't. Negative." He met her gaze with an intensity equal to her own, and perhaps seven seconds of silence passed between them before she looked away. Lucien assumed that this inquisition had come to an end.

As Berkowitz walked back to her desk chair, Lucien stood up and, for the first time that day, he stuck his two hands in the pockets of the Tommy Hilfiger quilted car-coat he was wearing. Strangely, in each pocket, he felt a folded leather glove that -- for the life of him -- he couldn't remember putting there.