Downtown

11

Michael had seen a lot of dead bodies in his short lifetime, but none quite so messily dispatched as this one. Whoever had shot and killed Charlie seemed to have had a difficult time finding him. There were bullet holes in the headboard, bullet holes in the wall behind the bed, and several bullet holes in Charlie himself. If there were awards for sloppy murders, whoever had shot Charlie should start preparing an acceptance speech.

Connie looked as if she was about to throw up.

“You okay?” Michael asked.

She nodded.

He looked at the body again, went to the bed, and was leaning over the corpse when Connie yelled, “No!”

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“Don’t touch him,” she said.

“Why not? Is that a Chinese superstition?”

“No, it’s not a Chinese superstition.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s disgusting.”

“I just want to see if he’s carrying a wallet,” Michael said, and tried the right-hand side pocket in his pants, and found what appeared to be several white rock crystals in a little plastic vial.

“Must collect these, huh?” he said, showing the vial to Connie.

Connie looked at him.

“Rocks, I mean,” Michael said.

“Crack, you mean,” Connie said.

“What?”

“That’s crack.”

“It is?” Michael said, and looked at the vial more closely. “I thought crystallography was perhaps his hobby.”

“Smoking cocaine is perhaps his hobby.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Michael said, “if this turns out to be another goddamn dope plot …”

“A single vial of cocaine doesn’t necessarily …”

“I’ve had dope plots up to here, I mean it. You can’t go to a movie nowadays, you can’t turn on television …”

“There is no reason to believe that this is linked to a dope plot.”

“Then what’s this?” he asked, and showed her the vial again.

“That’s crack.”

“And is crack dope?”

“Crack is dope.”

“And is this man dead?”

“He appears to be dead.”

“There you are,” Michael said, and rolled him over.

“Irrrgh,” Connie said, and covered her eyes with her hands.

Michael was patting down the right hip pocket.

“Here it is,” he said, and reached into the pocket and yanked out a wallet.

Connie still had her hands over her eyes.

“You can look now,” he said, and opened the wallet.

The first thing he saw was a driver’s license with a picture of the man on the bed. The name on the license was Charles Robert Nichols.

“Well, it’s him,” Michael said.

“Good, give him back his wallet.”

“Let’s see what else is in it.”

There were three credit cards in the wallet.

And an Actors Equity card.

And a Screen Actors Guild card.

And an AFTRA card.

And three postage stamps in twenty-five-cent denominations, no longer any good for first-class mail.

And this year’s calendar, small and plastic and soon to expire.

And a TWA Frequent Flight Bonus Program card.

And a slip of paper with what looked like a handwritten telephone number on it.

“Here we go,” he said.

“Good idea,” Connie said. “Let’s.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t like being here with that person on the bed.”

“Is this a New York exchange?” he asked, and showed her the telephone number.

“Yes.”

“Let’s try it.”

“No. Let’s leave.”

“Connie …”

“Michael, that person on the bed is dead.”

“I know.”

“You’re already wanted for one murder …”

“I know.”

“You’ve already been shot …”

“I know.”

“So let’s get out of here, okay? Before …”

“Let’s try this number first.”

“Michael, every time you try a number …”

“Maybe this time we’ll get lucky,” he said, and winked.

Connie did not wink back.

Instead, she followed him sullenly down the hallway and into the study again. He sat at the desk with the wall of black-and-white photographs in front of him, and he dialed the telephone number scrawled in a spidery handwriting on the slip of paper, and he waited, waited, waited …

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice.

“Yes, hello, I’m calling for Charlie Nichols,” he said.

“Sorry, he’s not here,” the woman said.

“I know he isn’t, I’m calling for him. Who’s this, please?”

“Judy Jordan,” she said. “Who’s this?”

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello, Miss Jordan?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Hello?” he said.

“I can hear you,” she said.

“I’ll have to call back,” he said, and hung up.

“Did you get cut off?” Connie asked.

“No,” he said.

He was already looking through Charlie’s address book again. He flipped rapidly through E, F, H …

“Here it is,” he said. “Jordan, Judy.”

Connie looked at the address. “The Seventh Precinct,” she said. “Where they found the body in your car.”

“Then we’d better go see her,” he said.

“Why?” Connie asked.

He looked at her.

And felt suddenly foolish.

She was right, of course.

He’d found a telephone number in a dead man’s wallet, and he’d called that number, and the woman who’d answered the phone was named Judy Jordan.

So?

Why go see her?

He was tired. And beginning to feel that perhaps the best thing to do, after all, was run on over to the police station and tell them he was the man they were looking for and could he please make a call to his lawyer, Mr. David Lang in Sarasota, Florida? Connie knew where all the precincts were, they could drive over to the nearest one in Shi Kai’s broken convertible. Or perhaps he should call Dave first, ask him to take the next plane up to New York, hole up in Connie’s apartment until he got here, and then go to the police togeth—

“Judy who, did you say?”

This from Connie.

Who not five minutes ago had been urging him to please get the hell out of here. But who now seemed to have a note of renewed interest in her voice.

“Jordan,” he said, and turned to look up at her.

Connie was looking at the wall.

Specifically, she was looking at a photograph of Charlie Nichols and a teenage girl. Charlie was a much younger man in the photograph; Michael guessed the picture had been taken at least fifteen years ago. The girl couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen. She was wearing a white sweater and a dark skirt and she was grinning up into Charlie’s face. Charlie was holding both her hands between his own.

Written in blue ink across the girl’s sweatered breasts were the words To My Dear Daddy, With Love and beneath that the signature Judy Jordan.

Michael leaned in closer to the picture.

The young girl had long, dark hair.

But aside from that, she was a dead ringer for Helen Parrish.

“Also,” Connie said, “does Benny have to be a person?”

“What?” Michael said.

“Because there’s a place called Benny’s in SoHo, and maybe that’s where Crandall went to meet Charlie’s mother, in which case we should take Crandall’s picture there in case somebody might remember him from last night, don’t you think?”

Michael kissed her.

The bartender’s name was Charlie O’Hare.

“There are lots of Charlies in this city, you know,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” Michael said.

They were sitting at the bar. The place was unusually crowded for Christmas night, but then again Michael had never been in a bar on Christmas night, and maybe they were all this crowded. It was a very Irish bar. No frills. A utilitarian saloon designed for drinkers. Sawdust on the floor. No cut-glass mirrors, no green-shaded lamps like in the place last night where they’d set Michael up for theft and accusation. A nice friendly neighborhood saloon with a handful of people sitting in the booths or at the tables or here at the bar, all of them wearing caps and looking like nice friendly IRA terrorists.

“Here’s his picture,” Michael said, and showed him the eleven-year-old clipping from the Nice newspaper. He had taken it out of its frame. The back of the clipping was a story about a Frenchman who’d leaped into the Mediterranean to save a German tourist who should have known better than to be swimming in the sea in May. Crandall smiled out from his photograph.

“He’s even fatter now,” Michael said.

“No, I don’t know him,” O’Hare said.

“Is this French here?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it say here under the picture?”

“Arthur Crandall before the showing of his film War and Solitude yesterday afternoon.”

“So what is he, an actor?”

“No, he’s a director.”

“Sheesh,” O’Hare said. “And this is a new movie?”

“No, it’s an old one.”

“Then how come they showed it yesterday afternoon?”

“They showed it eleven years ago.”

“I musta missed it.”

“Do you recognize him?”

“No.”

“Take a look at the picture again. He would’ve been here last night at eight o’clock.”

“I don’t remember seeing him.”

“Were you working last night?”

“Yeah, but I don’t remember seeing this guy.”

“He would’ve been meeting somebody’s mother.”

“Well, we get a lot of mothers in here, but I don’t remember this guy sitting with anybody’s mother,” O’Hare said.

“Were you working the bar alone?”

“All alone.”

“So he couldn’t have been sitting at the bar.”

“Not without my noticing him.” O’Hare looked at the newspaper clipping again. “This is a French movie?” he asked.

“No, it’s American.”

“Then why is this written in French?”

“Because that’s where they showed it.”

“I can understand why they never showed it here. That sounds really shitty, don’t it, War and Solitude? Would you go see a movie called War and Solitude?”

“They did show it here.”

“Here? In New York?”

“I think so.”

“I never heard of it. War and Solitude. I never heard of it. It sounds shitty.”

“A lot of people agreed with you,” Michael said.

“Don’t she speak English?” O’Hare asked, jerking his head toward Connie.

“I speak English,” she said.

“‘Cause I thought maybe you spoke only Chinese, sitting there like a dummy.”

“I don’t have anything to say,” Connie said.

“You’re a very pretty lady,” O’Hare said.

“Thank you,” Connie said.

“She’s very pretty,” O’Hare said to Michael.

“Thank you,” Michael said. “Who would’ve been working the booths last night? And the tables.”

“Molly.”

Michael looked around. He didn’t see any waitresses in the place.

“Is she here now?”

“She was here a minute ago,” O’Hare said. He craned his neck, looking. The door to the ladies’ room opened. A woman who looked like Detective O’Brien, except that she was fully clothed, came out and walked directly toward where someone signaled to her from one of the booths. She had flaming red hair like O’Brien’s and she was short and stout like O’Brien, and she waddled toward the bar now with a sort of cop swagger that made Michael think maybe she was O’Brien in another disguise.

“Two Red Eyes,” she said. “Water chasers.”

O’Hare took from the shelf behind him a bottle of what looked like house whiskey, the label unfamiliar to Michael. He poured liberally into two glasses, filled two taller glasses with water, and put everything onto Molly’s tray.

“When you got a minute,” he said, “this gentleman would like a few words with you.”

Molly looked Michael up and down.

“Sure,” she said, and swaggered over to the booth.

“Molly used to wrestle in Jersey,” O’Hare said.

“Really?”

“They called her the Red Menace.”

“I see.”

“Because of the red hair.”

“Yes.”

“Which is real, by the way,” O’Hare said, and winked.

Molly came back to the bar.

“So?” she said. “What now?”

Michael showed her the newspaper clipping. “Ever see this man in here?” he asked.

“You a cop?” Molly asked.

“No,” Michael said.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“‘Cause I was thinking of calling the cops.”

“No, I don’t think we need …”

“Last night, I mean. When I heard what the two of them were talking about.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Mr. Crandall. And the Spanish guy with him.”

“You mean you know him?”

“No, I don’t know him. I only recognize him.”

“Arthur Crandall?”

“I don’t know his first name. I only know he’s Mr. Crandall.”

“How do you happen to know that?”

“Because of the phone call.”

“What phone call?”

“The phone call that came in the phone booth over there. For Mr. Crandall.”

“Who turned out to be the man in this picture, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Arthur Crandall.”

“If that’s his first name.”

“That’s his first name.”

“Then that’s who it was.”

“What about this phone call?”

“Don’t rush me. That was later. Earlier, they were sitting at that table over there,” she said, and gestured vaguely, “which is when I heard them talking.”

“What time was this?”

“Around eight-fifteen.”

“And you’re sure this is the man?” Michael asked, and showed her the clipping again.

“Yeah, that’s him all right. Though he’s fatter now.”

“But you say he was with another man? Not a woman?”

“Not unless she had a thick black mustache,” Molly said.

“Why’d you want to call the cops?” Connie asked.

“Who’s this?” Molly said, and looked her up and down.

“Connie Kee,” Michael said.

“Is she Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so,” Molly said. “Is it okay to talk in front of her?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Because Chinese people are funny, you know,” Molly said.

“Funny how?” Connie asked, truly interested.

“They’re always yelling,” Molly said.

“That’s true,” Connie said. “But that’s because they’re not sure of the language. If they yell, they think you’ll understand them better.”

“Well, I wish they wouldn’t yell all the time.”

“Me, too,” Connie said.

“It makes me feel like I did something wrong.”

“Japanese people never yell, did you notice that?” O’Hare said.

“Excuse me,” Michael said, “but why did you …?”

“Yes, they’re very quiet and polite,” Molly said.

“Why did you want to …?”

“Well, they’re two very different cultures,” Connie said.

“Oh, certainly,” Molly said. “The Korean, too. And also the Vietna …”

“Excuse me,” Michael said, “but why did you want to call the police?”

“What?”

“Last night.”

“Oh. Well, because of what they were talking about, why do you think?”

“What were they talking about?”

“A body,” Molly said, lowering her voice. “A dead body.”

“Who?” Michael asked.

“The two of them in the booth. Mr. Crandall and the Spanish guy with the mustache.”

“I mean, the body. Who was it?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Well, what did you hear them …?”

“The Spanish guy was saying he already had the corpse. That’s when I almost called the police.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. Because I figured the man had to be an embalmer.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or one of those people who does autopsies at the hospital.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But then Mr. Crandall said if Charlie could de …”

“Charlie!” Michael shouted and almost leaped off the stool.

“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” Molly said, backing away.

“Did you say Charlie?”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“What about Charlie?”

“I think this guy’s crazy,” Molly said to O’Hare.

“Nah, he’s okay,” O’Hare said, indicating with a shrug that in his lifetime as a bartender he had served many, many nutcases picking at the coverlet.

“Tell me about Charlie,” Michael said.

Molly sighed and rolled her eyes.

“He said if Charlie could deliver what they needed …”

“Crandall said?”

“Yes. Said if Charlie could deliver what they needed, then they could plant the stiff before midnight.”

“Plant the stiff.”

“He meant the corpse.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He meant they could bury the corpse before midnight.”

“That’s what you think,” Connie said knowingly.

“Which is when I almost called the cops again,” Molly said. “Because even if the man was an undertaker, why would he be burying anybody at midnight? On Christmas Eve, no less.”

“Before midnight,” O’Hare corrected.

“Right,” Molly said, “on Christmas Eve. But then the Spanish guy told Mr. Crandall there wasn’t any hurry, the body would keep, it was on ice, so I guessed he was a legitimate undertaker, after all.”

“Did you happen to catch his name?”

“No.”

“What this was,” O’Hare said, “this Spanish undertaker was waiting for Charlie to bring the dead man’s suit and underwear or whatever, his stuff, you know, so they could dress him all up before they buried him.”

“That’s what you think,” Connie said again.

“Which is another thing I don’t like about Chinese people,” Molly said.

“What’s that?” Connie asked, truly interested again.

“They think they’re so fucking smart,” Molly said.

“Yes, that’s true,” Connie said.

“That’s ‘cause they are so fucking smart,” O’Hare said.

“That’s true, too,” Connie said.

“Excuse me,” Michael said, “but did either of them say what Charlie was supposed to deliver?”

“Your I.D., of course,” Connie said. “So when they planted the corpse with Crandall’s I.D. on it …”

“They could also drop …”

“Do you know what these two are talking about?” Molly asked O’Hare.

“Sure,” O’Hare said.

“What?”

“The stiff’s dog tags.”

“What dog tags?”

“To put in his mouth. The stiff’s.”

“I think you’re crazy, too,” Molly said, shaking her head.

“What else did they say?” Michael asked.

“Mr. Crandall said he wanted to get moving on it, and he wished Charlie would hurry up and do what he had to do.”

“Did he mention Charlie’s last name?” Michael asked.

“No.”

“He didn’t say Charlie Nichols?”

“I just told you he didn’t mention his last name, so why are you asking me Charlie this or Charlie that? What’s the matter with this guy?” she asked O’Hare.

“He’s okay,” O’Hare said, indicating with a shrug that in his many, many years as a bartender he had encountered many a fruitcake who had escaped from this or that mental institution.

“It goes right back to Charlie again,” Michael said to Connie. “And the pair working with him. The phony cop and …”

“All cops are phonies, you want to know,” O’Hare said.

“Tell me about the phone call,” Michael said.

“The phone in the booth rang, I went to answer it, and a woman on the other end …”

“A woman!” Michael shouted.

“Listen, if you’re gonna keep yelling like that …”

“I’m sorry. Did she give you her name?”

“No.”

“Helen Parrish,” Michael said to Connie.

“I just told you she didn’t give me her name,” Molly said.

“Or Judy Jordan,” Connie said.

“Who’s Judy Jordan?” Molly asked.

“Tell me exactly what she said,” Michael said.

“She asked to talk to Mr. Crandall. So I yelled out was there a Mr. Crandall here, and the guy in your picture gets up and goes to the phone booth.”

“Then what?”

“Then the Spanish guy ordered another beer.”

“And then what?”

“Then Mr. Crandall comes back to the table all smiles and tells the Spanish guy everything’s okay, they got it.”

“Got what?” Michael asked.

“Your license and your credit cards,” Connie said.

“What time was this?” Michael asked.

“Around eight-thirty,” Molly said.

“Right after Crandall stole my car,” Michael said.

“She probably told him that, too. That they also had your car.”

“So now the Spanish guy could plant the corpse in my car …”

“With Crandall’s I.D. on it …”

“And my stuff alongside the body …”

“And set the whole thing in motion.”

“What whole thing?” O’Hare asked.

“This is giving me a headache,” Molly said, and walked off.

The real headache began at eight o’clock that night, as they were approaching Connie’s building. That was when the shots came.

Michael had developed a sixth sense in Vietnam, you didn’t survive unless you did. You learned to know when something was coming your way, you heard that tiny oiled click somewhere out there in the jungle, and you knew someone had squeezed a trigger and a round was right then speeding out of a rifle barrel, or a dozen rounds, you didn’t wait to find out, you threw yourself flat on the ground. They said in Vietnam that the only grunts who survived were the ones who got good at humping mud. Michael had survived.

There was no mud to hump on Pell Street that Wednesday night, there was only a lot of virgin white snow heaped against the curbs on either side of the street. The plows had been through, and the banks they’d left were three, four feet high. In the bright moonlight, Connie and Michael came walking up the middle of the street, which was clearer than the sidewalks, and were about to climb over the bank in front of her building when Michael heard the click.

The same oiled click he’d come to know and love in dear old Vietnam, a click only a trained bird dog might have heard, so soft and so tiny was it, but he knew at once what that click meant.

In Vietnam, he’d have thought only of his own skin.

Hear the click, hump the mud.

Here, there was Connie.

He threw himself at her sideways, knocking her off her feet and down, man, out of the path of that bullet or bullets that would be coming their way in about one-one hundredth of a—

There!

A sharp crack on the air.

And another one.

First the click, and then the crack.

If you hadn’t heard the click, you never heard the crack, because by then you were stone-cold dead in the market.

For a tall, slender girl, Connie went down like a sack of iron rivets. Whammo, on her back in the snow, legs flying. “Hey!” she yelled, getting angry. Another crack, and then another, little spurts of snow erupting on the ridge of snow above their heads, better snow spurts than blood spurts, Charlie.

“Keep down!” he yelled.

She was struggling to get up, cursing in Chinese.

He kept her pinned.

Listened.

Nothing.

But wait … wait … wait …

“Are you crazy?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

Wait … wait …

He knew the shooter was still up there. Sensed it with every fiber in his being.

“Stay here,” he said. “And stay down. There’s someone up there trying to kill us.”

“What?”

“On the roof. Don’t even lift your head. I’ll be right back.”

“Michael,” she said. Softly.

“Yes?” he said.

“I love you, Michael, but you are crazy.”

It was the first time she’d said that.

The loving him part.

He smiled.

“I love you, too,” he said.

The street ran like a wide trench between the banks of moonlit snow on either side of it. Connie lay huddled close to the bank on the northern side of the street, hidden from the roof. Up there was where the shooter was. Michael began wiggling his way up the street, on his belly, using his elbows, dragging his legs. Working his way toward the corner of Pell and Mott, where he planned to make a right turn, out of the shooter’s line of fire. Then he would get up to those rooftops up there, and see what there was to see. It was such a beautiful night.

Long Foot Howell, the only Indian guy in the platoon—an American Indian whose great-great grandfather had ridden the Plains with Sitting Bull—always used to say, “It’s a good day for dying.”

His people lived on a reservation out West someplace. Arizona, maybe, Michael couldn’t remember.

Long Foot told him that his people used to say that before they rode into battle.

It’s a good day for dying.

Meaning God alone knew what.

Maybe that if you were going to die, you might as well do it on a nice day instead of a shitty one.

Or maybe it referred to the enemy. A good day for killing the enemy. A good day for the enemy to die.

Or maybe it was a reverse sort of charm.

The Indian’s way of wishing himself good luck.

If he said it was a good day for dying, then maybe he wouldn’t get killed. Maybe whichever god or gods the Indian prayed to would hear what he’d said and spare him. If that was it, the charm hadn’t worked too well for Long Foot.

On a very good day in Vietnam, with the sun shining bright on his shiny black hair, Long Foot took a full mortar hit and went to join his ancestors in a hundred little pieces.

This was a beautiful night.

But not for dying.

Not here and not now.

However much whoever was on the roof might have wished it.

Michael had reached the corner now, the two narrow streets intersecting the way he imagined country roads did in England, where he’d never been. The hedgerows here, however, were made of snow, high enough to keep Michael hidden from the sniper on the roof, who was still up there silent and waiting.

On his hands and knees, Michael came around the corner.

The building immediately on his right had the inevitable Chinese restaurant on the ground floor, a blue door to the right of it. The door had a sign on it reading TAIWAN NOODLE FACTORY.

Michael figured the door to a business would be locked shut on Christmas Day. He could not afford fiddling with a locked door after he climbed over the snowbank and onto the sidewalk where he would be seen if the sniper was roaming around up there.

He crawled to a spot paralleling the next building in line.

Lifted his head quickly.

Saw a door painted green.

Ducked his head.

Waited.

Lifted it again. Saw numerals over the door, nothing else, no sign, no anything. An apartment building. Meaning steps going up to the roof. He hoped.

Ducked again.

Waited.

He crawled several buildings down the street, staying close to the snowbank, and then he took a deep breath, counted to three, and scrambled over the side of the bank as if it were a suspect hill in Vietnam except that over there he’d have had a hand grenade in his fist. He landed on his feet and on the run, sprinting for the green door, which he now saw was slightly ajar, flattening himself against the side of the building to the right of the door. He shot a quick, almost unconscious glance upward toward the roof, saw nothing in the moonlight, and shoved the door fully open.

The entrance vestibule was dark and cold.

He closed the door behind him.

Or, at least, tried to close it. There was something wrong with the hinge, the door would not fully seat itself in the jamb. He gave it up for a lost cause, went to the closed inner door just past the doorbells and mailboxes, and tried the knob.

The door was locked. He backed away from it at once, raised his knee, and kicked out flatfooted at a point just above the knob.

“Ow!” he yelled. “You son of a bitch!”

The door hadn’t budged an inch.

Still swearing, he moved over to where the doorbells were set under the mailboxes. At random, he selected the doorbell for apartment 2A, rang the doorbell, waited, waited, waited and got nothing. The sole of his foot was sending out flashing signals of pain. He wondered if it was possible to break the sole of your foot. He rang another doorbell. A voice came instantly from a speaker on the wall. The voice said something in Chinese. Michael said, “Police, open the door, please.” An answering buzz sounded at once.

Pleased with himself, Michael opened the door and was starting toward the steps when another door opened at the end of the little cul de sac to the right of the staircase. A short, very fat Chinese man wearing a tank-top undershirt, black trousers, and black slippers, stepped out into the hallway, squinted toward where Michael was standing, and yelled, “Wassa motta?”

“Nothing,” Michael said.

“You police?” the man yelled.

“Yes.”

“Me supahtennin.”

“Go back to sleep,” Michael said. “This is routine.”

“Where you badge?”

“I’m undercover,” Michael said.

The man blinked.

“Wah you wann here?” he asked.

“There’s a sniper on the roof,” Michael said.

“I go get key,” the man said, nodding.

“What key?”

“For loof,” the man said, and went back into his apartment.

Michael waited. He did not want a partner. On the other hand, his foot still hurt and he didn’t want to have to try kicking in another door. He suddenly wondered if in real life it was possible to kick in a door the way detectives did in the movies and on television. He knew it wasn’t possible in real life to slam a car into another car and just go on your merry way. Teenagers saw a car chase in a movie, they thought, Hey terrific, I can run into el pillars and concrete mixers and I’ll just bounce right off them like a rubber ball, that should be great fun. That same teenager got a drink or two in him, he decided he was a big-city detective in a car chase. He rammed his car into a bus, expecting either the bus would roll over on its back or else his car would bounce off it like in the movies and the next thing you knew a real-life steering wheel was crushing his chest or his head was going through a real-life windshield. Michael suddenly wondered if Sylvester Stallone had ever been to Vietnam.

“Okay, I gotta key,” the man said, and came out into the hallway, and pulled the door to his apartment shut behind him. To Michael’s dismay, the man had taken off his slippers and put on socks and high-topped boots that looked like combat boots. He had also put on a shirt and a heavy Mackinaw and a woolen stocking cap.

They climbed the steps to the fourth floor and then up another short flight of steps to a metal door. Nodding, flapping his hands, turning the key on the air, shaping his other hand into a gun, Michael’s guide and new partner indicated that this was indeed the door to the roof and that he was now going to open the door to the roof, so if Michael was a real cop and there was a real sniper out there maybe he should take out a gun or something. Obligingly, Michael took out a gun. The one he had taken from Crandall, which upon inspection had turned out to be a .32 caliber Harrington and Richardson Model 4, double-action revolver.

“Ahhhhhh,” the man said, and nodded. He liked the gun. He showed Michael the key again, and then inserted it into the padlock that hung from a hinge and hasp on the metal door, and as if performing a magic trick, he turned the key and opened the padlock, and grinned and nodded at Michael. Michael nodded back. The Chinese man took the padlock off the hasp, and then moved aside. If there really was a sniper out there, he wasn’t going to be the first one to step out onto the roof. He almost bowed Michael out ahead of him.

“You stay here,” Michael said.

“More cops,” the man said, and nodded. “I call more cops.”

“No!” Michael said. “No more cops. This is undercover.”

The man looked at him.

“What’s your name?” Michael asked.

“Peter Chen,” the man said.

“Mr. Chen, thank you very much,” Michael said, “the city is proud of you. But you can go back down, thank you,” Michael said. “Good-bye, Mr. Chen, thank you.”

“I come with you,” Chen said.

Michael looked at him.

Chen smiled.

Michael sighed in resignation, opened the door, and stepped quickly out onto the roof. He paused for a moment, getting his new bearings, trying to work out where he was in relationship to Connie’s building, where the sniper was. Because once he did that, the rest would be simple. The buildings here were all joined side by side, there were no airshafts to leap, it would merely be a matter of climbing the parapets that separated one rooftop from the next. So if the cross street was here, then Connie’s street was there, and he’d have to go over this rooftop and then the next one to the corner—

“What you do?” Chen asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“Ahhhhh.”

—and then make a left turn and continue on over the rooftops till he came to the middle of the block somewhere. Long before then, on a clear moonlit night like tonight, he’d have seen the sniper. The trick was to make sure the sniper didn’t see him. Or his new friend, Chen, who was now behind him and staying very close as he made his way across the roof toward—

“I see nobody,” Chen said.

“Give it time,” Michael whispered. “And keep it down.”

The snow had drifted some four feet high in places. It was almost impossible to tell where one rooftop ended and the next began. He discovered the first parapet only by banging into it. He climbed over it, Chen close behind him, and was working his way laboriously through the snow toward the corner where the buildings joined at a right angle when he saw up ahead—

He signaled with his hand, palm down and patting the air.

Chen got the meaning at once, and dropped immediately flat to the snow.

Michael raised his head.

There.

He squinted into the distance. Someone in black. Crouching behind the parapet facing the street. Rifle in his hands.

“Stay here,” he whispered to Chen.

Chen nodded.

Michael began creeping forward.

He did not want to kill anyone. He had Crandall’s .32 in his right hand and Frankie Zeppelin’s .45 in the left-hand pocket of his bomber jacket, but he did not want to use either of those guns to kill anyone. He’d already been accused of killing one person, and he did not want to add to that list the actual murder of yet another person. It was too bad, of course, that the person lying on the roof up ahead was armed with a rifle he’d already fired at Michael.

Because if that person wanted to kill him, as seemed to be the case, then he certainly wasn’t going to put down his rifle and come along like a nice little boy. In which case Michael might very well have to shoot him. Perhaps kill him. The way he’d killed people in Vietnam, where it hadn’t seemed to matter much. Kill or be killed. Like tonight. Maybe.

He suddenly wondered why this person wanted him dead.

Crawling across the snow—closer and closer, keeping his eyes on the man as he advanced steadily toward him, ready to fire if he had to, if he was spotted, if the man turned that rifle on him—the question assumed paramount importance in his mind.

Why does this person want to kill me? And then another question followed on its heels, so fierce in its intensity that it stopped Michael dead in his tracks.

Who is the person they’ve already killed?

The corpse wasn’t Crandall’s, that was for sure, even though Crandall’s identification had been found on it.

But there was a corpse, there was no mistake about that, the police of the Seventh Precinct had found a dead man in the car Michael had rented, so who was that man?

Maybe the man in black over there would have the answers to both questions.

Michael began moving toward him again.

He could see the man clearly in the moonlight now. Forty yards away from him now. Black watch cap. Black leather jacket. Black jeans. Black boots. Black gloves.

Crouched behind the parapet facing the street, hunched over a rifle, Michael couldn’t tell what kind at this distance. Telescopic sight on it. The man suddenly got to his feet.

Michael froze.

In an instant, the man would spot him, and turn the rifle on him.

In an instant, Michael would have to shoot him. But no, the man—

Huh?

The man was taking the telescopic sight off the rifle. He was putting the rifle and the scope into a gun case. He was snapping the case shut. He was, for Christ’s sake, quitting! Giving the whole thing up as a botched job!

He rested the gun case against the parapet. Angled it against the parapet so that the wider butt end of the case was on the snow, the muzzle end up. He reached into his jacket pocket. Took out a package of cigarettes. Lighted one. Nice moonlit night, might as well enjoy a cigarette here on the rooftops overlooking downtown New York. His back to Michael. Looking out over the lights of the city. Enjoying his little smoke. So he’d bungled the job, so what? Plenty of time to get the dumb orange-grower later on.

Unless the dumb orange-grower had something to say about it.

It was not easy moving across the snow-covered roof. Silence was the only advantage the snow gave Michael. He glanced behind him once to make sure Chen was still glued in place and out of sight. He saw no sign of the fat little Chinese. At the parapet, the man in black was still enjoying his moonlight smoke, his back to Michael, one foot on the parapet, knee bent, elbow on the knee. Not five feet separated them now. Michael hoped the cigarette was a king-sized one.

The man suddenly flipped the cigarette over the edge of the roof.

And reached for the gun case.

And was starting to turn when Michael leaped on him.

He caught the man from behind, yanking at the collar of his jacket, trying to pull him over backward onto the snow, but he was too fast and too slippery for Michael. He turned, saw the gun in Michael’s hand, knew that his own weapon was already cased and essentially useless, and used his knee instead, exactly the way Michael had used his knee on Charlie Wong last night, going for the money but coming up a little short, catching Michael on the upper thigh instead of the groin, and then looking utterly surprised when Michael threw a punch at him instead of firing his gun.

Michael went straight for the nose, the way he’d gone for Charlie Wong’s nose yesterday, because a hit on the nose hurt more than a hit anyplace else, even sharks didn’t like to get hit on their noses, ask any shark. The man all in black looked like a sixteen-year-old kid up close, but Michael had killed fourteen-year-old Vietnamese soldiers and this kid’s age didn’t mean a damn to him, the only thing that mattered was that he’d tried to kill Michael not twenty minutes ago. Peachfuzz oval face, slitted blue eyes, a very delicate Michael Jackson nose, which Michael figured wouldn’t look so delicate after he made it bleed, which was another nice thing about going for the nose. Noses bled easily, whereas if you hit a guy on the jaw, for example, with the same power behind the punch, he wouldn’t bleed at all.

The kid slipped the punch.

Ducked low and to the side and slipped it.

Michael’s momentum almost caused him to fall. He grabbed for the kid, trying to keep his balance, clutched for the kid’s shoulders, and that was when the kid got him good, right in the balls this time, square on. Michael dropped the .32.

Caught his breath in pain. The kid was turning, the kid was starting to run for the door of the roof. Michael reached out for him, clutched for his jacket, his head, anything, caught the black watch cap instead, felt it pulling free in his hands, and the kid was off and loping through the thick snow like an antelope.

Michael fell to his knees in pain.

Grabbed for his balls.

Moaned.

Did not even try to find the .32 where it had sunk below the snow some two feet away from him. Did not even try to reach for the .45 in his jacket pocket.

The person running away from him across the rooftop was not Helen Parrish.

Nor was she Jessica Wales.

But she was a tall, long-legged, slender woman with blonde hair that glistened like gold in the silvery moonlight now that it was no longer contained by the black watch cap Michael still clutched in his hands close to his balls.

Maybe he didn’t try shooting her because he was in such pain himself.

Or maybe he’d shot and killed too many women.

In Vietnam.

Where anyone in black pajamas was Charlie.

The roof door slammed shut behind her.

And he was alone in pain in the moonlight.