Nicholas Palihnic is a natty, tweed-suited hustler who knows every nook and cranny of New Yorkand a thousand ways to break a girls heart. Beatrice Belarus is a Manhattan art dealer with an insatiable appetite for moneyand for anyone who gets in her way. And a painting titled Trampoline Nude, 1972 has neither nudity nor a trampoline. But when Nicholas is hired by an insurance company to find the recently stolen painting, a murdered art thief points him to a trove of gold buried beneath Manhattanand suddenly all roads are leading back to Beatrice. As fortune hunters, lovers, and other strangers gather around him, theres one thing Nicholas must remember above all else: in this business, its better to be crooked than dead....From the Paperback edition.