McBain's Ladies: The Women of the 87th Precinct

Augusta Blair

The lady was sitting on the living room sofa.

The lady had long red hair and green eyes and a deep suntan. She was wearing a dark green sweater, a short brown skirt, and brown boots. Her legs crossed, she kept staring at the wall as Kling came into the room, and then turned to face him. His first impression was one of total harmony, a casual perfection of color and design, russet and green, hair and eyes, sweater and skirt, boots blending with the smoothness of her tan, the long sleek grace of crossed legs, the inquisitively angled head, the red hair cascading in clean vertical descent. Her face and figure came as residuals to his brief course in art appreciation. High cheekbones, eyes slanting up from them, fiercely green against the tan, tilted nose gently drawing the upper lip away from partially exposed, even white teeth. Her sweater swelled over breasts firm without a bra, the wool cinched tightly at her waist with a brown, brass-studded belt, hip softly carving an arc against the nubby sofa back, skirt revealing a secret thigh as she turned more fully toward him.

He had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.

“I’m Detective Kling,” he said. “How do you do?”

“Hullo,” she said dully. She seemed on the edge of tears. Her green eyes glistened, she extended her hand to him, and he took it clumsily, and they exchanged handshakes, and he could not take his eyes from her face. He realized all at once that he was still holding her hand. He dropped it abruptly, cleared his throat, and reached into his pocket for his pad.

“I don’t believe I have your name, miss,” he said.

“Augusta Blair,” she said. “Did you see the mess inside? In the bedroom?”

“I’ll lake a look in a minute,” Kling said. “When did you discover the theft, Miss Blair?”

“I got home about half an hour ago.”

“From where?”

“Austria.”

“Nice thing to come home to,” Ingersoll said, and shook his head.

“Was the door locked when you got here?” Kling asked.

“Yes.”

“You used your key to get in?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody in the apartment?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anything? Any sound at all?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I came in, and I left the door open behind me because I knew the doorman was coming up with my bags. Then I took off my coat and hung it in the hall closet, and then I went to the John, and then I went into the bedroom. Everything looked all right until then. The minute I stepped in there, I felt… invaded.”

“You’d better take a look at it, Bert,” Ingersoll said. “The guy went sort of berserk.”

“Thai it?” Kling asked, indicating a doorway across the room.

“Yes,” Augusta said, and rose from the couch. She was a tall girl, at least five-seven, perhaps five-eight, and she moved with swift grace, preceding him to the bedroom door, looking inside once again, and then turning away in dismay. Kling went into the room, but she did not follow him. She stood in the doorframe instead, worrying her lip, her shoulder against the jamb.

The burglar had slashed through the room like a hurricane. The dresser drawers had all been pulled out and dumped onto the rug — slips, bras, panties, sweaters, stockings, scarves, blouses, spilling across the room in a dazzle of color. Similarly, the clothes on hangers had been yanked out of the closet and flung helter-skelter — coats, suits, skirts, gowns, robes strewn over the floor, bed, and chairs. A jewelry box had been overturned in the center of the bed, and bracelets, rings, beads, pendants, chokers glittered amid a swirl of chiffon, silk, nylon, and wool. A white kitten sat on the dresser top, mewing.

“Did he find what he was looking for?” Kling asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “My good jewelry was wrapped in a red silk scarf at the back of the top drawer. It’s gone.”

“Anything else?”

“Two furs. A leopard and an otter.”

“He’s selective,” Ingersoll said.

“Mmm,” Kling said. “Any radios, phonographs, stuff like that?”

“No. The hi-fi equipment’s in the living room. He didn’t touch it.”

“I’ll need a list of the jewelry and coats, Miss Blair.”

“What for?”

“Well, so we can get working on it. Also, I’m sure you want to report this to your insurance company.”

“None of it was insured.”

“Oh boy,” Kling said.

“I just never thought anything like this would happen,” Augusta said.

“How long have you been living here?” Kling asked incredulously.

“The city or the apartment?”

“Both.”

“I’ve lived in the city for a year and a half. The apartment for eight months.”

“Where are you from originally?”

“Seattle.”

“Are you presently employed?” Kling said, and took out his pad.

“Yes.”

“Can you give me the name of the firm?”

“I’m a model,” Augusta said. “I’m represented by the Cutler Agency.”

“Were you in Austria on a modeling assignment?”

“No, vacation. Skiing.”

“I thought you looked familiar,” Ingersoll said. “I’ll bet I’ve seen your picture in the magazines.”

“Mmm,” Augusta said without interest.

“How long were you gone?” Kling asked.

“Two weeks. Well, sixteen days, actually.”

“Nice thing to come home to,” Ingersoll said again, and again shook his head.

“I moved here because it had a doorman,” Augusta said. “I thought buildings with doormen were safe.”

“None of the buildings on this side of the city are safe,” Ingersoll said.

“Not many of them, anyway,” Kling said.

“I couldn’t afford anything across the park,” Augusta said. “I haven’t been modeling a very long time, I don’t really get many bookings.” She saw the question on Kling’s face and said, “The furs were gifts from my mother, and the jewelry was left to me by my aunt. I saved six goddamn months for the trip to Austria,” she said, and suddenly burst into tears. “Oh, shit,” she said, “why’d he have to do this?”

Ingersoll and Kling stood by awkwardly. Augusta turned swiftly, walked past Ingersoll to the sofa, and took a handkerchief from her handbag. She noisily blew her nose, dried her eyes, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“If you’ll let me have the complete list…” Kling said.

“Yes, of course.”

“We’ll do what we can to get it back.”

“Sure,” Augusta said, and blew her nose again.

Al ten minutes to one on Wednesday afternoon, Augusta Blair called the squadroom and asked to talk to Detective Kling, who was on his lunch hour and down the hall in the locker room, taking a nap. Meyer asked if Kling could call her back and she breathlessly told him she had only a minute and would appreciate it if he could be called to the phone. It had to do with the burglary, she said. Meyer went down the hall and reluctantly awakened Kling, who did not seem to mind at all. In fact, he hurried to his desk, picked up the receiver, and said, quite cheerfully, “Hello, Miss Blair, how are you?”

“Fine, thank you,” she said. “I’ve been trying to call you all daylong, Mr. Kling, but this is the first break we’ve had. We started at nine this morning, and I didn’t know if you got to work that early.”

“Yes, I was here,” Kling said.

“I guess I should have called then. Anyway, here I am now. And I’ve have to be back in a minute. Do you think you can come down here?”

“Where are you, Miss Blair?”

“Schaeffer Photography at 580 Hall Avenue. The fifth floor.”

“What’s this about?”

“When I was cleaning up the mess in the apartment, I found something that wasn’t mine. I figure the burglar may have dropped it.”

“I’ll be right there,” Kling said. “What was it you found?”

“Well, I’ll show you when you get here,” she said. “I’ve got to run, Mr. Kling.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll…”

But she was gone.

Schaeffer Photography occupied the entire fifth floor of 580 Hall. The receptionist, a pert blonde with a marked German accent, informed Kling that Augusta had said he would be coming, and then directed him to the studio, which was at the end of a long hallway hung with samples of Schaeffer’s work. Judging from the selection, Schaeffer did mostly fashion photography; no avid reader of Vogue, Kling nonetheless recognized the faces of half the models, and searched in vain for a picture of Augusta. Apparently she had been telling the truth when she said she’d been in the business only a short while.

The door to the studio was closed. Kling eased it open, and found himself in an enormous room overhung by a skylight. A platform was at the far end of the room, the wall behind it hung with red backing paper. Four power packs rested on the floor, with cables running to strobe lights on stands, their gray, umbrella-shaped reflectors angled toward the platform. Redheaded Augusta Blair, wearing a red blouse, a short red jumper, red knee socks, and red patent-leather pumps, stood before the red backing paper. A young girl in jeans and a Snoopy sweatshirt stood to the right of the platform, her arms folded across her chest. The photographer and his assistant were hunched over a tripod-mounted Polaroid. They took several pictures, strobe lights flashing for a fraction of a second each time they pressed the shutter release, and then, apparently satisfied with the exposure setting, removed the Polaroid from its mount and replaced it with a Nikon. Augusta spotted Kling standing near the door, grinned, and waggled the fingers of her right hand at him. The photographer turned.

“Yes?” he said.

“He’s a friend of mine,” Augusta said.

“Oh, okay,” the photographer said in dismissal. “Make yourself comfortable, keep it quiet. You ready, honey? Where’s David?”

“David!” the assistant called, and a man rushed over from where he’d been standing at a wall phone, partially hidden by a screen over which was draped a pair of purple panty hose. He went directly to Augusta, combed her hair swiftly, and then stepped off the platform.

“Okay?” the photographer asked.

“Ready,” Augusta said.

“The headline is ‘Red on Red,’ God help us, and the idea—”

“What’s the matter with the headline?” the girl in the Snoopy sweatshirt asked.

“Nothing, Helen, far be it from me to cast aspersions on your magazine. Gussie, the idea is to get this big red feeling, you know what I mean? Everything bursting and screaming and, you know, red as hell, okay? You know what I want?”

“I think so,” Augusta said.

“We want red,” Helen said.

“What the hell’s this proxar doing on here?” the photographer asked.

“I thought we’d be doing close stuff,” his assistant said.

“No, Eddie, get it off here, will you?”

“Sure,” Eddie said, and began unscrewing the lens.

“David, get that hair off her forehead, will you?”

“Where?”

“Right there, hanging over her eye, don’t you see it there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah, that’s it, thank you. Eddie, how we doing?”

“You’ve got it.”

“Gussie?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, then, here we go, now give me that big red, Gussie, that’s what I want, I want this thing to yell red all over town, that’s the girl, more of that, now tilt the head, that’s good, Gussie, smile now, more teeth, honey, red, red, throw your arms wide, good, good, that’s it, now you’re beginning to feel it, let it bubble up, honey, let it burst out of your fingertips, nice, I like that, give me that with a, that’s it, good, now the other side, the head the other way, no, no, keep the arms out, fine, that’s good, all right now come toward me, no, honey, don’t slink, this isn’t blue, it’s red, you’ve got to explode toward, yes, that’s it, yes, yes, good, now with more hip, Gussie, fine, I like that, I like it, eyes wider, toss the hair, good, honey…”

For the next half hour Kling watched as Augusta exhibited to the camera a wide variety of facial expressions, body positions, and acrobatic contortions, looking nothing less than beautiful in every pose she struck. The only sounds in the huge room were the photographer’s voice and the clicking of his camera. Coaxing, scolding, persuading, approving, suggesting, chiding, cajoling, the voice went on and on, barely audible except to Augusta, while the tiny clicking of the camera accompanied the running patter like a soft-shoe routine. Kling was fascinated. In Augusta’s apartment the other night, he had been overwhelmed by her beauty, but had not suspected her vitality. Reacting to the burglary, she had presented a solemn, dispirited façade, so that her beauty seemed unmarred but essentially lifeless. Now, as Kling watched her bursting with energy and ideas to convey the concept of red, the camera clicking, the photographer circling her and talking to her, she seemed another person entirely, and he wondered suddenly how many faces Augusta Blair owned, and how many of them he would get to know.

“Okay, great, Gussie,” the photographer said, “let’s break for ten minutes. Then we’ll do those sailing outfits, Helen. Eddie, can we get sonic coffee?”

“Right away.”

Augusta came down off the platform and walked to where Kling was standing at the back of the room. “Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“I enjoyed it,” Kling said.

“It was kind of fun,” Augusta said. “Most of them aren’t.”

“Which of these do you want her in first, Helen?” the photographer asked.

“The one with the striped top.”

“You do want me to shoot both of them, right?”

“Yes. The two tops. There’s only one pair of pants,” Helen said.

“Okay, both tops, the striped one first. You going to introduce me to your friend, Gussie?” he said, and walked to where Kling and Augusta were standing.

“Rick Schaeffer,” she said, “this is Detective Kling. I’m sorry, I don’t know your first name.”

“Bert,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” Schaeffer said, and extended his hand. The men shook hands briefly, and Schaeffer said, “Is this about the burglary?”

“Yes,” Kling said.

“Well, look, I won’t take up your time,” Schaeffer said. “Gussie, honey, we’ll be shooting the striped top first.”

“Okay.”

“I want to go as soon as we change the no-seam.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“Right. Nice meeting you, Bert.”

He walked off briskly toward where two men were carrying a roll of blue backing paper to the platform.

“What did you find in the apartment?” Kling asked.

“I’ve got it in my bag,” Augusta said. She began walking toward a bench on the side of the room, Kling following. “Listen, I must apologize for the rush act, but they’re paying me twenty-five dollars an hour, and they don’t like me sitting around.”

“I understand,” Kling said.

Augusta dug into her bag and pulled out a ballpoint pen, which she handed to Kling and which, despite the fact that her fingerprints were already all over it, he accepted on a tented handkerchief. The top half of the pen was made of metal, brass-plated to resemble gold. The bottom half of the pen was made of black plastic. The pen was obviously a give-away item. Stamped onto the plastic in white letters were the words:

“You’re sure it isn’t yours?” Kling asked.

“Positive. Will it help you?”

“It’s a start.”

“Good.” She glanced over her shoulder toward where the men were rolling down the blue seamless. “What time is it, Bert?”

Kling looked at his watch. “Almost two. What do I call you? Augusta or Gussie?”

“Depends on what we’re doing,” she said, and smiled.

“What are we doing tonight?” Kling asked immediately.

“I’m busy,” Augusta said.

“How about tomorrow?”

She looked at him for a moment, seemed to make a swift decision, and then said, “Let me check my book.” She reached into her bag for her appointment calendar, opened it, said, “What’s tomorrow, Thursday?” and without waiting for his answer, flipped open to the page marked Thursday, April 22. “No, not tomorrow, either,” she said, and Kling figured he had got the message loud and clear. “I’m free Saturday night, though,” she said, surprising him. “How’s Saturday?”

“Saturday’s fine,” he said quickly. “Dinner?”

“I’d love to.”

“And maybe a movie later.”

“Why don’t we do it the other way around? If you won’t mind how I look, you can pick me up at the studio…”

“Fine…”

“Around six, six-fifteen, and we can catch an early movie, and then maybe grab a hamburger or something later on. What time do you finish work?”

“I’ll certainly be free by six.”

“Okay, the photographer’s name is Jerry Bloom, and he’s at 1204 Concord. The second floor, I think. Aren’t you going to write it down?”

“Jerry Bloom,” Kling said, “1204 Concord, the second floor, at six o’clock.”

“Gussie, let’s go!” Schaeffer shouted.

“Saturday,” she said and, to Kling’s vast amazement, touched her lingers to her lips, blew him an unmistakable kiss, grinned, and walked swiftly to where Rick Schaeffer was waiting.

Kling blinked.

The trouble was, Kling could not stop staring at her.

He had picked up Augusta at six o’clock sharp, and whereas she had warned him about the way she might look after a full day’s shooting, she looked nothing less than radiant. Red hair still a bit damp (she confessed to having caught a quick shower in Jerry Bloom’s own executive washroom), she came into the reception room to meet Kling, extended her hand to him, and then offered her cheek for a kiss he only belatedly realized was expected. Her cheek was cool and smooth, there was not a trace of makeup on her face except for the pale green shadow on her eyelids, the brownish liner just above her lashes. Her hair was brushed straight back from her forehead, falling to her shoulders without a part. She was wearing blue jeans, sandals, and a ribbed jersey top without a bra. A blue leather bag was slung over her right shoulder, but she shifted it immediately to the shoulder opposite, looped her right hand through his arm, and said, “Were you waiting long?”

“No, I just got here.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“The way you’re looking at me.”

“No. No, no, everything’s fine.”

But he could not stop staring at her. The film they went to see was Bullitt, which Kling had seen the first time it played the circuit, but which Augusta was intent on seeing in the presence of a real cop. Kling hesitated to tell her that, real cop or not, the first time he’d seen Bullitt he hadn’t for a moment known what the hell was going on. He had come out of the theater grateful that he hadn’t been the cop assigned to the case, partially because he wouldn’t have known where to begin unraveling it, and partially because fast car rides made him dizzy. He didn’t know what the movie was about this time either, but not because of any devious motivation or complicated plot twists. The simple fact was that he didn’t watch the picture; he watched Augusta instead.

It was dark when they came out into the street. They walked in silence for several moments, and then Augusta said, “Listen, I think we’d better get something straight right away.”

“What’s that?” he said, afraid she would tell him she was married, or engaged, or living with a high-priced photographer.

“I know I’m beautiful,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Bert,” she said, “I’m a model, and I get paid for being beautiful. It makes me very nervous to have you staring at me all the time.”

“Okay, I won’t…”

“No, please let me finish…”

“I thought you were finished.”

“No. I want to get this settled.”

“It’s settled,” he said. “Now we both know you’re beautiful.” He hesitated just an instant, and then added, “And modest besides.”

“Oh boy,” she said. “I’m trying to relate as a goddamn person, and you re…

“I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable,” he said. “But the truth is…”

“Yes, what’s the truth?” Augusta said. “Let’s at least start with the truth, okay?”

“The truth is I’ve never in my life been out with a girl as beautiful as you are, that’s the truth. And I can’t get over it. So I keep staring at you. That’s the truth.”

“Well, you’ll have to get over it.”

“Why?”

“Because I think you’re beautiful, too,” Augusta said, “and we’d have one hell of a relationship if all we did was sit around and stare at each other all the time.”

She stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Kling searched her face, hoping she would recognize that this was not the same as staring.

“I mean,” she said, “I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, and I’d like to think I’m permitted to sweat every now and then. I do sweat, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose you do,” he said, and smiled.

“Okay?” she said.

“Okay.”

“Let’s eat,” she said. “I’m famished.”

In the dim silence of Augusta Blair’s bedroom, they made love.

It was not so good.

“What’s the matter?” Augusta whispered.

“I don’t know,” Kling whispered back.

“Am I doing something wrong?”

“No, no.”

“Because if I am…”

“No, Augusta, really.”

“Then what is it?”

“I think I’m a little afraid of you.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes. I keep thinking, What’s a dumb kid from Riverhead doing in bed with a beautiful model?”

“You’re not a dumb kid,” Augusta said, and smiled, and touched his mouth with her fingertips.

“I feel like a dumb kid.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re so beautiful.”

“Bert, if you start that again, I’ll hit you right on the head with a hammer.”

“How’d you know about a hammer?”

“What?”

“A hammer. About it being the best weapon for a woman.”

“I didn’t know.”

They were both silent for several moments.

“Relax,” she said.

“I think that’s exactly the problem,” Kling said,

“If you want me to be ugly, I can be ugly as hell. Look,” she said, and made a face. “How’s that?”

“Beautiful.”

“Where’s my hammer?” she said, and got out of bed naked and padded out of the room. He heard her rummaging around in the kitchen. When she returned, she was indeed carrying a hammer. “Have you ever been hit with a hammer?” she asked, and sat beside him, pulling her long legs up onto the bed, crossing them Indian fashion, her head and back erect, the hammer clutched in her right hand.

“No,” he said. “Lots of things, but never a hammer.”

“Have you ever been shot?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what this is?” she asked, and pointed with the hammer at the scar on his shoulder.”

“Yes.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Think I’ll kiss it,” she said, and bent over from the waist and kissed his shoulder lightly, and then sat up again. “You’re dealing with the Mad Hammer Hitter here,” she said. “One more word about how good-looking I am and, pow, your friends’ll be investigating a homicide. You got that?”

“Got it,” Kling said.

“This is the obligatory sex scene,” she said. “I’m going to drive you to distraction in the next ten minutes. If you fail to respond, I’ll cleave your skull with a swift single blow. In fact,” she said, “a swift single blow might not be a bad way to start,” and she bent over swiftly, her tongue darting. “I think you’re beginning to get the message,” she murmured. “Must be the goddamn hammer.”

“Must be,” Kling whispered.

Abruptly, she brought her head up to the pillow, stretched her legs, and rolled in tight against him, the hammer still in her right hand. “Listen, you,” she whispered.

“I’m listening.”

“We’re going to be very important to each other.”

“I know that.”

“I’m scared to death,” she said, and caught her breath. “I’ve never felt this way about any man. Do you believe me, Bert?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to make love now.”

“Yes, Augusta.”

“We’re going to make beautiful love.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, touch me,” she said, and the hammer slipped from her grasp.

The telephone rang four times while they were in bed together. Each time, Augusta’s answering service picked it up on the first ring.

“Might be someone important,” Kling whispered after the last call.

“No one’s more important than you,” she whispered back, and immediately got out of bed and went into the kitchen. When she returned, she was carrying a split of champagne.

“Ah, good,” he said. “How’d you know I was thirsty?”

“You open it while I think up a toast.”

“You forgot glasses.”

“Lovers don’t need glasses.”

“My grandmother does. Blind as a bat without them.”

“Is she a lover?”

“Just ask Grandpa.”

Kling popped the cork with his thumbs.

“Got that toast?” he asked.

“You’re getting the bed wet.”

“Come on, think of some people we can drink to.”

“How about John and Martha Mitchell?”

“Why not? Here’s to…”

“How about us?” Augusta said. She gently took the bottle from him, lilted it high, and said, “To Bert and Augusta. And to…” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

Solemnly, she studied his face, the bottle still extended. “And to at least the possibility of always,” she said, and quickly, almost shyly, brought the bottle to her lips, drank from the open top, and handed it back to Kling, he did not take his eyes from her face. Watching her steadily, he said, “To us. And to always,” and drank.

“Excuse me,” Augusta said, and started out of the room.

“Leaving already, huh?” Kling said. “After all that sweet talk about…”

“I’m only going to the bathroom,” Augusta said, and giggled.

“In that case, check the phone on the way back.”

“Why?”

“I’m a cop.”

“Hell with the phone,” Augusta said.

Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man, 1973

“Yeah?” Carella said, surprised.

“Yeah,” Kling said, and nodded.

He was referring to Augusta Blair, a red-headed photographer’s model he had met nine months ago while investigating a burglary. Carella knew better than to make some wise-ass remark when Kling was apparently so serious. The squadroom banter about the frequent calls from “Gussie” (as Kling’s colleagues called her) had achieved almost monumental proportions in the past two months, but they hardly seemed appropriate in the one-to-one intimacy of an automobile whose windows, except for the windshield, were entirely covered with rime. Carella busied himself with the heater.

“What do you think?” Kling asked.

“Well, I don’t know. Do you think she’ll say yes?”

“Oh, yeah, I think she’ll say yes.”

“Well then, ask her.”

“Well,” Kling said, and fell silent.

They had come through the tollbooth. Behind them, Isola thrust its jagged peaks and minarets into a leaden sky. Ahead, the terrain consisted of rolling smoke-colored hills through which the road to Turman snaked its lazy way.

“The thing is,” Kling said at last, “I’m a little scared.”

“Of what?” Carella asked.

“Of getting married. I mean, it’s… well… it’s a very serious commitment, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Carella said. He could not quite understand Kling’s hesitancy. If he really wanted to marry Gussie, why the doubts? And if there were doubts, then did he really want to marry her?

“What’s it like?” Kling asked,

“What’s what like?”

“Being married.”

“I can only tell you what it’s like being married to Teddy,” Carella said.

“Yeah, what’s it like?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“Mmm,” Kling said. “Because, suppose you get married and then you find out it isn’t the same as when you weren’t married?”

“What isn’t the same?”

“Everything.”

“Like what?”

“Like, well, for example, suppose, well, that, well, the sex isn’t the same?”

“Why should it be any different?”

“I don’t know,” Kling said, and shrugged.

“What’s the marriage certificate got to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” Kling said, and shrugged again. “Is it the same? The sex?”

“Sure,” Carella said.

“I don’t mean to get personal…”

“No, no.”

“But it’s the same, huh?”

“Sure, it’s the same.”

“And the rest? I mean, you know, do you still have fun?”

“Fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure, we have fun.”

“Like before?”

“Better than before.”

“Because we have a lot of fun together,” Kling said. “Augusta and I. A lot of fun.”

“That’s good,” Carella said.

“Yes, it’s very good. That two people can enjoy things together. I think that’s very good, Steve, don’t you?”

“Yes, I think it’s very good when that happens between two people.”

“Not that we don’t have fights,” Kling said.

“Well, everybody has fights. Any two people…”

“Yes, but not too many.”

“No, no.”

“And our… our personal relationship is very good. We’re very good together.”

“Mmm.”

“The sex I mean,” Kling said quickly, and suddenly seemed very intent on the road ahead. “That’s very good between us.”

“Mmm, well, good. That’s good.”

“Though not always. I mean, sometimes it’s not as good as other times.”

“Yes, well, that’s natural,” Carella said.

“But most of the time…”

“Yes, sure.”

“Most of the time, we really do enjoy it.”

“Sure,” Carella said.

“And we love each other. That’s important.”

“That’s the single most important thing,” Carella said.

“Yes, I think so.”

“No question.”

“It is the single most important thing,” Kling said. “It’s what makes everything else seem right. The decisions we make together, the things we do together, even the fights we have together. It’s the fact that we love each other… well… that’s what makes it work, you see.”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“So you think I should marry her?”

“It sounds like you’re married already,” Carella said.

Kling turned abruptly from the wheel to see whether or not Carella was smiling. Carella was not. He was hunched on the seat with his feet propped up against the clattering heater, and his hands tucked under his arms, and his chin ducked into the upturned collar of his coat.

“I suppose it is sort of like being married,” Kling said, turning his attention to the road again. “But not exactly.”

“Well, how’s it any different?” Carella said.

“Well, I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.”

“Well, I don’t see any difference.”

“Then why should we get married?” Kling asked.

“Jesus, Bert, I don’t know,” Carella said. “If you want to get married, get married. If you don’t, then stay the way you are.”

“Why’d you get married?”

Carella thought for a long time. Then he said, “Because I couldn’t bear the thought of any other man ever touching Teddy.”

Kling nodded.

He said nothing more all the way to Turman.

Kling was about to propose to Augusta Blair.

It was almost nine-thirty, and they had finished their meal and their coffee, and Kling had ordered cognac for both of them, and they were waiting for it to arrive. There was a candle in a red translucent holder on the tabletop, and it cast a gentle glow on Augusta’s face, softening her features, not that she needed any help. There was a time when Kling had been thoroughly flustered by Augusta’s beauty. In her presence he had been speechless, breathless, awkward, stupid, and incapable of doing anything but stare at her in wonder and gratitude. Over the past nine months, however, he had not only grown accustomed to her beauty, and comfortable in its presence, but had also begun to feel somehow responsible for it — like the curator of a museum beginning to think that the rare paintings on the walls had not only been discovered by him, but had in fact been painted by him.

If Kling had been a painter, he would have put Augusta on canvas exactly the way she looked, no improvements, no embellishments; none were necessary. Augusta’s hair was red, or auburn, or russet, depending on the light, but certainly in the red spectrum, and worn long most of the time, usually falling to just below her shoulder blades, but sometimes worn back in a pony tail, or braided into pigtails on either side of her face, or even piled on top of her head like a crown of sparkling rubies. Her eyes were a jade-green, slanting upward from high cheekbones, her exquisite nose gently drawing the upper lip away from partially exposed, even white teeth. She was tall and slender, with good breasts and a narrow waist and wide hips and splendid wheels. She was surely the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life — which is why she was a photographer’s model. She was also the most beautiful person he had ever met in his life — which is why he wanted to marry her.

“Augusta,” he said, “there’s something serious I’d like to ask you.”

“Yes, Bert?” she said, and looked directly into his face, and he felt again what he had first felt nine months ago when he’d walked into her burglarized apartment and seen her sitting on the couch, her eyes glistening with tears about to spill. He had clumsily shaken hands with her, and his heart had stopped.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he said.

“Yes, Bert?” she said.

The waiter brought the cognac. Augusta lifted her snifter and rolled it between her palms. Kling picked up his snifter and almost dropped it, spilling some of the cognac onto the table cloth. He dabbed at it with his napkin, smiled weakly at Augusta, put the napkin back on his lap and the snifter back on the table before he spilled it all over his shirt and his pants and the rug and maybe the silk-brocaded walls of this very fancy French joint he had chosen because he thought it would be a suitably romantic setting for a proposal, even though it was costing him half-a-week’s pay. “Augusta,” he said, and cleared his throat.

“Yes, Bert?”

“Augusta, I have something very serious to ask you.”

“Yes, Bert, you’ve said that already.” There seemed to be a slight smile on her mouth. Her eyes looked exceedingly merry.

“Augusta?”

“Yes, Bert?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Kling,” the waiter said. “There’s a telephone call for you.”

“Oh, sh—” Kling started, and then nodded, and said, “Thank you, thank you.” He shoved his chair back, dropping his napkin to the floor as he rose. He picked up the napkin, said, “Excuse me, Augusta,” and was heading away from the table when she very softly said, “Bert?”

He stopped and turned.

“I will, Bert,” she said.

“You will?” he asked.

“I’ll marry you,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and smiled. “I’ll marry you, too.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

Hail to the Chief, 1973

“If that guy takes one more picture…” Kling said.

“He’s doing a conscientious job,” Augusta said.

They had changed into street clothes and were at the front desk of the hotel now, registering for the room they had reserved. Across the lobby, Pike was standing with his camera to his eye, focusing for a long shot of the couple at the desk.

“Does he plan to sleep with us tonight?” Kling asked.

“Who plans on sleeping?” Augusta asked, and smiled slyly.

“I mean—”

“I’ll gently suggest that maybe he’s taken enough pictures, okay?” Augusta said. “He’s a dear friend, Bert. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“Okay.”

“And it will be nice to have a record afterward.”

“Yes, I know. Gus, are you happy?”

“Yes, darling, I’m very happy.”

“It was a real nice wedding, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, the ceremony itself.”

“Yes, darling, I know.”

“There’s something awesome about those words,” Kling said. “When you come to think of it, that’s one hell of a frightening contract.”

“Are you frightened?”

“Sure, aren’t you? I take this very seriously, Gus.”

“So do I.”

“I mean, I really do want it to last so long as we both shall live.”

“I do, too.”

“So… so let’s just make sure it does last, Gus.”

“Are you worried about it?”

“No, but — well, yes, in a way. I love you so much, Gus, I just want to do everything I can to make you happy and to see you grow and to—”

“Your key, sir,” the night clerk said.

“Thank you,” Kling said.

“That’s room 824, the bellhop will show you up.”

“Thank you,” Kling said again.

Across the lobby, Pike was sitting on one of the sofas, putting a fresh roll of film into his camera. The moment he saw them moving away from the desk, he snapped the back of the camera shut, and rose, and began walking swiftly toward them.

“I just want one more picture,” he said in immediate apology.

“You’ve really been an angel,” Augusta said. “Did you get a chance to enjoy the wedding, or were you just working all day long?”

“I had a marvelous time,” he said. “But I still need another picture.”

“Which one is that?” Kling asked apprehensively.

“I haven’t got a single shot of Augusta and me. Bert, I would appreciate it greatly if you took a picture of Augusta and me.”

Kling smiled broadly. “I’d be happy to,” he said.

“I just put in a fresh roll,” Pike said, and handed Kling the camera and the strobe pack, then looked around the lobby and maneuvered Augusta to a potted palm just inside the revolving entrance doors, where a steady trickle of people moved in and out of the hotel. Kling brought the camera to his eye, focusing from a distance of some three feet, and then held up the strobe as though he were the Statue of Liberty. “Smile,” he said, and pressed the shutter-release button. The shutter clicked, the strobe light flashed. Pike and Augusta blinked.

“That’s got it,” Kling said.

“Thank you,” Pike said.

As Kling handed the camera and strobe back to him, he noticed there were tears in Pike’s eyes.

“Alex,” he said, “we can’t thank you enough for what you did today.”

“It was my pleasure,” Pike said. He kissed Augusta on the cheek, said, “Be happy, darlin’,” and then turned to Kling and took his hand and said, “Take good care of her, Bert.”

“I will,” Kling promised.

“Good night, then, and the best to both of you,” Pike said, and tinned swiftly away.

In the elevator, the bellhop said, “Are you newlyweds or something?”

“That’s right,” Kling said.

“You’re the third newlyweds I had today. Is this some kind of special day or something?”

“What do you mean?” Augusta asked.

“Everybody getting married today. Is it a religious holiday or something? What’s today, anyway? The ninth, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So what’s the ninth? Is it something?”

“It’s our wedding day,” Augusta said.

“Well, I know that, but is it something?”

“That is something,” Augusta said.

“Right, I appreciate that,” the bellhop said, “but you know what I mean, don’t you? I’m trying to figure out, is it a day of some special significance where I’ve already had three couples who got married today, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.” They were on the eighth floor now, and walking down the corridor to room 824. When they reached the room, the bellhop put down their bags, and then unlocked the door and stepped aside for them to enter.

In the room, they both fell suddenly silent.

The bellhop wondered aloud why all the double-bedded rooms were always at the end of the hall, but neither of them said a word in answer, and the bellhop speculated that maybe all the hotels were trying to discourage romance, and still they said nothing in response. He put their bags up on the luggage racks, and showed them the bathroom, and the thermostat, and explained how the red light on the phone would indicate there was a message for them, and made himself generally busy and visible while waiting for his tip. And then he did something rare for a bellhop in that city — he touched his lingers to his cap in a sort of salute and silently left the room. Kling put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the knob and locked the door, and silently he and Augusta hung up their coats, and then began unpacking their bags.

They were neither of them kids. Their silence had nothing to do with virginal apprehension or fears of physical incompatibility or frigidity or impotence or anything even mildly related to sex, which they had been enjoying together and almost incessantly for quite some time now. Instead, their silence was caused by what they both recognized to be a rather serious commitment. They had talked about this peripherally in the lobby, but now they thought about it gravely and solemnly, and decided separately that they’d been speaking the truth when they said they wanted this to last forever. They both knew that no one had forced them into marriage: they could have gone on living together forever. They had each and separately agonized over taking the plunge, in fact, and had each and separately arrived at the same conclusion almost at the same time. When Kling had finally asked her to marry him, Augusta had said yes at once. He’d asked her because he’d decided simply and irrevocably that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. And she’d accepted because she’d made the same decision concerning him. They were now married, the man had spoken the words this afternoon at a little past four o’clock, the man had said, “For as you both have consented in wedlock, and have acknowledged it before this company, I do by virtue of the authority invested in me by the church and the laws of this state now pronounce you husband and wife. And may God bless your union.” The word “union” had thrilled them both. Union. That was what they wanted their marriage to be, a true union, and that was what each was separately thinking now.

There wasn’t much to unpack. They would be here at the hotel only for the night, and would be flying to Guadeloupe in the morning. When Kling finished he asked if he should call down for a nightcap, and Augusta said no, she’d had enough to drink tonight. He asked if she wanted to use the bathroom first, and she said, “No, go ahead, Bert, I want to lay out some clothes for the morning.” She looked at both her bags then, trying to remember in which one she’d packed what she would be wearing on the plane tomorrow, a perplexed look on her face, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she pondered this very serious and weighty problem.

“I love you,” Kling said suddenly.

She turned to look at him, a slight smile of surprise on her face. “I love you, too,” she said.

“I mean, I really love you.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, and went into his arms and held him close. They stood that way for several moments, locked in silent embrace, not kissing, just standing very close to each other, hugging each other Fiercely. Then Augusta looked up into his face, and touched his lips gently with her fingers, and he nodded, and they broke apart. “Now go take your shower,” Augusta said, and Kling smiled and went into the bathroom, and closed the door behind him. When he came out ten minutes later, Augusta was gone.

He had planned something of a big male macho entrance, and he stood now in the bathroom doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist, and saw immediately that she was not in the room, and then saw that the door to the corridor was open. He assumed Augusta had gone out into the corridor for something, perhaps in search of a chambermaid, though he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t simply picked up the phone if she needed anything. He went to the door and looked out into the corridor, and saw no trace of her. Puzzled, he closed the door to the room and then went to the closet where he’d hung his robe. He didn’t expect to find Augusta hiding in there or anything stupid like that; Augusta just wasn’t the type to play such childish games. He went to the closet only because he felt suddenly naked with just the towel around his waist, and he wanted to put on his robe. He had begun thinking, in fact, that perhaps the boys of the 87th were up to some mischief. As Parker had explained, a traditional wedding-night prank was to spirit a bride away from her groom and return her later when a ransom was paid, the ransom usually consisting of a nightcap shared with the newlyweds amidst much guffawing and slapping on the back. Kling had never heard of a bride being kidnapped from her honeymoon suite, but the boys of the 87th were professionals, after all, and could be expected to come up with something more inventive than simply snatching a girl from a wedding reception. As Kling grabbed the knob on the closet door, it all began to seem not only possible but likely. They had undoubtedly found out which room Kling and Augusta were in, and then either loided the door lock with the plastic “Do Not Disturb” sign, or actually used a pick and tension bar on it, cops being just as good as burglars when it came to such matters. Wearily he opened the closet door. He liked the guys on the squad a lot, but he and Augusta had to get up early in the morning to catch their plane, and he considered the prank not only foolish but inconsiderate as well. As he reached for his robe he realized that he’d now have to sit around here twiddling his thumbs till those crazy bastards decided to call with their ransom demand. And then, when they finally did bring Augusta back, there’d be another half hour of drinking and laughing before he finally got rid of them. He noticed then that Augusta’s overcoat was still on the clothes bar, just where she’d hung it when they first entered the room.

He was still not alarmed — but a quiet, reasoning, deductive part of his mind told him that this was November and the temperature outside was somewhere in the low thirties, and whereas the boys of the 87th might be spirited, they certainly weren’t stupid or cruel; they would never have taken Augusta out of the hotel without a coat. Well, now, wait a minute, he thought. Who says they had to take her out of the hotel? They may be sitting in the lobby, or better yet, the bar, right this very minute, having a few drinks with her, laughing it up while they watch the clock till it’s time to call me. Very funny, he thought. You’ve got some sense of humor, fellows. He went to the phone, picked up the receiver, and then sat on the edge of the bed while he dialed the front desk. He told the clerk who answered that this was Mr. Kling in 824, he’d just checked in with his wife, a tall girl with auburn hair…

“Yes, sir, I remember,” the clerk said.

“You don’t see her anywhere in the lobby, do you?” Kling asked.

“Sir?”

“My wife. Mrs. Kling. She isn’t down there in the lobby, is she?”

“I don’t see her anywhere in the lobby, sir.”

“We were expecting some friends, you see, and I thought she might have gone down to meet them.”

“No, sir, she’s not in the lobby.”

“Would you have seen her if she’d come down to the lobby?”

“Well, yes, sir, I suppose so. The elevators are just opposite the desk, I suppose I would have seen her if she’d taken the elevator down.”

“What about the fire stairs? Suppose she’d taken those down?”

“The fire stairs are at the rear of the building, sir. No, I wouldn’t have seen her if she’d taken those down. Unless she crossed the lobby to leave the building.”

“Any other way to leave the building?” Kling asked.

“Well, yes, there’s the service entrance.”

“Fire stairs come anywhere near that?”

“Yes, sir, they feed into both the lobby and the service courtyard.”

“What floor’s the bar on?”

“The lobby floor, sir.”

“Can you see the bar from the front desk?”

“No, sir. It’s at the other end of the lobby. Opposite the fire stairs.”

“Thank you,” Kling said, and hung up, and immediately dialed the bar. He described Augusta to the bartender and said she might be sitting there with some fellows who looked like detectives. He was a detective himself, he explained, and these friends of his, these colleagues, might be playing a joke on him, this being his wedding night and all. So would the bartender please take a look around and see if they were down there with his wife? “And, listen, if they are there, don’t say a word to them, okay? I’ll just come down and surprise them, okay?”

“I don’t have to take a look around, sir,” the bartender said. “There’s only two people in here, and they’re both old men, and they don’t look nothing like what you described your wife to me.”

“Okay,” Kling said.

“They kidnapped my wife on our wedding night, too,” the bartender said dryly. “I wish now they woulda kept her.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” Kling said, and hung up.

It was then that he saw Augusta’s shoe. Just the one shoe. Lying alongside the wastebasket on the floor there. Near the dresser. Just to the left of the door, near one of the dressers. The pair she’d put on when she changed out of her bridal costume. But no longer a pair. Just one of them. One high-heeled pump lying on its side near the wash-basket. He went to it and picked it up. As he looked at the shoe (telling himself there was still no reason to become alarmed, this was just a prank, this had to be just a prank) he was suddenly aware of a cloying scent that seemed to be coming from the wastebasket at his feet. He put the shoe on the dresser top, and then knelt and looked into the wastebasket. The aroma was sickeningly sweet. He immediately turned his head away, but not before he’d seen a large wad of absorbent cotton on the bottom of the otherwise empty basket. He realized at once the smell was emanating from the cotton, and suddenly recognized it for what it was: chloroform.

It was then that he became alarmed.

She had lost all track of time and did not know how long she’d been conscious; she suspected, though, that hours and hours had passed since the moment he’d clamped the chloroform-soaked piece of cotton over her nose and mouth. She lay on the floor with her wrists bound behind her back, her ankles bound together. Her eyes were closed, she could feel what she supposed were balls of absorbent cotton pressing against the lids, held firmly in place by either adhesive tape or a bandage of some kind. A rag had been stuffed into her mouth (she could taste it, she hoped she would not choke on it), and then a gag, again either adhesive tape or bandage, had been wound over it. She could neither see nor speak, and though she listened intently for the slightest sound, she could hear nothing at all.

She remembered… he had a scalpel in his right hand. She turned when she heard the hotel door clicking open, and saw him striding toward her across the room, the scalpel glittering in the light of the lamp on the dresser. He was wearing a green surgical mask, and his eyes above the mask scanned the room swiftly as he crossed to where she was already moving from the suitcase toward the bathroom door, intercepting her, grabbing her from behind and pulling her in against him. She opened her mouth to scream, but his left arm was tight around her waist now, and suddenly his right hand, the hand holding the scalpel, moved to her throat, circling up from behind. She felt the blade against her flesh and heard him whisper just the single word “Silence,” and the formative scream became only a terrified whimper drowned by the roar of the shower.

He was pulling her backward toward the door, and then suddenly he swung her around and shoved her against the wall, the scalpel coming up against her throat again, his left hand reaching into his coat pocket. She saw the wad of absorbent cotton an instant before he clamped it over her nose and mouth. She had detested the stench of chloroform ever since she was six and had her tonsils removed. She twisted her head to escape the smothering aroma, and then felt the scalpel nudging her flesh, insistently reminding her that it was there and that it could cut. She became fearful that if she lost consciousness, she might fall forward onto the sharp blade, and she tried to keep from becoming dizzy, but the sound of the shower seemed magnified, an ocean surf pounding against some desolate shore, waves crashing and receding in endless repetition, foam bubbles dissolving, and far overhead, so distant it could scarcely be heard, the cry of a gull that might have been only her own strangled scream.

She listened now.

She could hear nothing, she suspected she was alone. But she could not be certain. Behind the blindfold, she began to weep soundlessly.

His voice startled her.

She had not known he was in the room until she heard him speak, and she reacted sharply to the sound of his voice, almost as though someone had suddenly slapped her in the dark.

“You must be hungry,” he said. “It is almost three-thirty.”

She wondered instantly whether it was three-thirty in the morning or three-thirty in the afternoon, and then she wondered how long he had been standing there, watching her silently.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

There was a faint foreign accent to his speech; she suspected his first language was German. In response to his question, she shook her head from side to side. She was violently hungry, but she dared not eat anything he might offer her.

“Well, then,” he said.

She listened. She could not hear him breathing. She did not know whether he had left the room or not. She waited.

“I will have something to eat,” he said.

Again there was silence. Not a board creaked, not a footfall sounded. She assumed he had left the room, but she did not know for certain. In a while she smelled the aroma of coffee perking. She listened more intently, detected sounds she associated with bacon crisping in a pan, heard a click that might have been a toaster popping, and then a sound she identified positively as that of a refrigerator door being opened and then closed again not a moment later. There was another click, and then a hum, and then a man’s voice saying, “… in the low thirties, dropping to below freezing tonight. The present temperature here on Hall Avenue is thirty-four degrees.” There was a brief, static-riddled pause, and then the sound of canned music, and then another click that cut off the music abruptly — he had apparently been hoping to catch the three-thirty news report, had only got the last few seconds of it, and had now turned off the radio. From the kitchen (she assumed it was the kitchen), she heard the sound of cutlery clinking against china. He was eating. She suddenly became furious with him. Struggling against her bonds, she tried to twist free of them. The air in the room was stale, and the cooking smells from the kitchen, so tantalizing a few minutes before, now began to sicken her. She warned herself against becoming nauseated; she did not want to choke on her own vomit. She heard dishes clattering in the kitchen; he was cleaning up after himself. There, yes, the sound of water running. She waited, certain he would come into the room again.

She did not hear his approach. She assumed that he walked lightly and that the apartment or the house or the hotel suite (or whatever it was) had thickly carpeted floors. Again, she did not know how long he’d been standing there. She had heard the water being turned off, and then silence, and now, suddenly, his voice again.

“Are you sure you are not hungry? Well, you will be hungry sooner or later,” he said.

She visualized a smile on his face. She hated him intensely, and could think only that Bert would kill him when he found them. Bert would draw his revolver and shoot the man dead. Lying on her back sightless and speechless, she drew strength from the knowledge that bert would kill him. But she could not stop trembling because his unseen presence frightened her, and she did not know what he might do next, and she could remember the fanatic intensity in those blue eyes above the green surgical mask, and the speed with which he had crossed the room and put the scalpel to her throat. She kept listening for his breathing. His silence was almost supernatural, he appeared and disappeared as soundlessly as a vampire. Was he still there watching her? Or had he left the room again?

“Would you like to talk?” he said.

She was ready to shake her head; the last thing on earth she wanted was to talk to him. But she realized that he would have to remove the gag it he expected her to speak, and once her mouth was free…

She nodded.

“If you plan to scream…” he said, and let the warning dangle.

She shook her head in a vigorous lie; she planned to scream the moment he took off the gag.

“I still have the scalpel,” he said. “Feel?” he said, and put the cold blade against her cheek. The touch was sudden and unexpected, and she twisted her head away sharply, but he followed her with the blade, laying it flat against her cheek and saying again, “Feel?”

She nodded.

“I do not want to cut you, Augusta. It would be a pity to cut you.”

He knew her name.

“Do you understand, Augusta? I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth now, I’m going to allow you to speak. But if you scream, Augusta, I will use the scalpel not only on the tape but on you as well. Is that clear?”

She nodded.

“I hope that is clear, Augusta. Sincerely, I do not want to cut you.”

She nodded again.

“Very well, then. But please remember, yes?”

She felt the scalpel sliding under the gag. He twisted the blade and she heard the tape tearing, and suddenly the pressure on her mouth was gone, the tape was cut through, he was ripping the ends of it loose. As he lifted her head and pulled the remainder of the tape free, she spat out the cotton wad that had been in her mouth.

“Now, do not scream,” he said. “Here. Feel the blade,” he said, and put it against her throat. “That is so you will not scream, Augusta.”

“I won’t scream,” she said very softly.

“Ah,” he said. “That is the first time I hear your voice. It is a lovely voice, Augusta. As lovely as I knew it would be.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Ah,” he said.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “My husband’s a policeman, do you know that?”

“Yes, I know.”

“A detective.”

“I know.”

“Do you know what happens when a cop or his family is injured or threatened or…?”

“Yes, I can imagine. Augusta, you are raising your voice,” he chided, and she felt him increase the pressure against her throat, moving his hand so that it and not the scalpel exerted the force, but the gesture nonetheless threatening in that she knew what was in his hand, and knew how sharp the instrument was — it had sliced through the tape with a simple twist of the blade.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t realize…”

“Yes, you must be more calm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” he said. “Augusta, I know your husband is a detective, that is what it said in the newspaper article announcing your wedding. Detective Third/Grade Bertram A. Kling. That is his name, is it not?”

“Yes,” Augusta said.

“Yes. Bertram A. Kling. I was very distressed when I read that in the newspaper, Augusta. That was in October, do you remember?”

“Yes,” she said.

“October the fifth. It said you were to be wed the following month. To this man Bertram A. Kling. This policeman. This detective. I was very distressed. I did not know what to do, Augusta. It took me a long while to understand what I must do. Even to yesterday morning, I was not sure I would do it. And then, at the church, I knew it was right what I wished to do. And now you are here. With me. Now you are going to be mine,” he said, and she suddenly realized he was insane.

He was sitting just inside the door.

Augusta had heard him entering the room some ten minutes ago. He had not said anything in all that time, but she knew he was sitting there, watching her. When his voice came, it startled her.

“Your husband has blond hair,” he said.

She nodded. She could not answer him because he had replaced the gag the moment they’d concluded their earlier conversation, though he had not bothered to stuff anything into her mouth this time, had only wrapped the thick adhesive tape tightly across it and around the back of her head. That had been sometime after three-thirty; he had mentioned the time to her. She was ravenously hungry now, and knew she would accept food if he offered it to her. She made a sound deep in her throat to let him know she wished him to remove the gag again. He either did not hear her or pretended not to.

“What color do you think my hair is?” he asked.

She shook her head. She knew what color his hair was, of course; she had seen it when he’d burst hatless into the hotel room. His hair was blond. And his eyes above the surgical mask…

“You do not know?” he asked.

Again she shook her head.

“Ah, but you saw me,” he chided gently. “At the hotel. Surely you noticed the color of my hair.”

She made a sound behind the gag again.

“Something?” he asked.

She lilted her chin, twisted her head, tried to indicate to him that she wished the gag removed from her mouth. And in doing so, felt completely dependent upon him, and felt again a helpless rage.

“Ah, the adhesive,” he said. “Do you wish the adhesive removed? Is that it?”

She nodded.

“You wish to talk to me?”

She nodded again.

“I will not talk to you if you continue to lie,” he said, and she heard him rising from the chair. A moment later she heard him closing and locking the door to the room.

He did not return for what seemed like a very long time.

“Augusta?” he whispered. “Are you asleep?”

She shook her head again.

“It’s two o’clock in the morning. You should try to sleep, Augusta. Or would you prefer to talk?”

She nodded.

“But you must not lie to me again. You lied to me earlier. You said you didn’t know what color my hair is. You do know what color it is, don’t you?”

Wearily, she nodded.

“Shall I remove the adhesive? You must promise not to scream. Here,” he said, “feel.” He had moved to her side, and she felt now the cold steel of the scalpel against her throat. “You know what this is,” he said. “I will use it if you scream. So,” he said, and slid the blade flat under the adhesive, and then twisted it, and cut the tape, and pulled it free.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re quite welcome,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you might be. You need not be afraid of me, Augusta.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she lied.

“I shall prepare you something to eat in a moment.”

“Thank you.”

“What color is my hair, Augusta? Please don’t lie this time.”

“Blond,” she said.

“Yes. And my eyes?”

“Blue.”

“You had a very good look at me.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you lie? Were you worried that if you could identify me, I might harm you?”

“Why would you want to harm me?” she asked.

“Is that what you thought? That I might harm you?”

“Why am I here?” she asked.

“Augusta, please, you are making me angry again,” he said. “When I ask you something, please answer it. I know you have many questions, but my questions come first, do you understand that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Why do my questions come first?” he asked.

“Because…” She shook her head. She did not know what answer he wanted from her.

“Because I am the one who has the scalpel,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you are the one who is helplessly bound.”

“Yes.”

“Do you realize just how helpless you are, Augusta?”

“Yes.”

“I could in fact harm you if I wished to.”

“But you said…”

“Yes, what did I say?”

“That you wouldn’t harm me.”

“No, I did not say that, Augusta.”

“I thought…”

“You must listen more carefully.”

“I thought that was what you said.”

“No. If you weren’t so intent on asking questions of your own, then perhaps you would listen more carefully.”

“Yes, I’ll try to listen,” she said.

“You must.”

“Yes.”

“I did not say I wouldn’t harm you. I asked if you thought I might harm you. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, I remember now.”

“And you did not answer my question. Would you like to answer it now? I’ll repeat it for you. I asked if—”

“I remember what you asked.”

“Please don’t interrupt, Augusta. You make me very impatient.”

“I’m sorry, I …”

“Augusta, do you want me to put the adhesive on again?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Then please speak only when I ask you to speak. All right?”

“Yes, all right.”

“I asked you why you lied to me. I asked whether you were worried that I might harm you if you could identify me.”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“Is that why you lied to me, Augusta?”

“Yes.”

“But surely I had to know you’d seen me.”

“Yes, but you were wearing a surgical mask. I still don’t really know what you look like. The mask covered—”

“You’re trying to protect yourself again, aren’t you?” he said. “By saying you still don’t know what I look like?”

“I suppose so, yes. But it’s true, you know. There are lots of people with blond hair and…”

“But you are trying to protect yourself?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Yes.”

“Because you still feel I might harm you.”

“Yes.”

“I might indeed,” he said, and laughed. He seized her chin then, and taped her mouth again, and swiftly left the room. On the floor, Augusta began trembling violently.

She heard the key turning in the lock, and then the door opened. He came to where she was lying near the wall, and stood there silently for what seemed like a very long time.

“Augusta,” he said at last, “I do not wish to keep you gagged. Perhaps if I explain your situation, you will realize how foolish it would be to scream. We are in a three-story brownstone, Augusta, on the top floor of the building. The first two floors are rented by a retired optometrist and his wife. They go to Florida at the beginning of November each year. We are quite alone in the building, Augusta. The room we are in was a very large pantry at one time. I have used it for storage ever since I moved into the apartment. It is quite empty now. I emptied it last month, after I decided what had to be done. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Fine,” he said, and cut the tape and pulled it free. She did not scream, but only because she was afraid of the scalpel. She did not believe for a moment that they were alone together in a three-story brownstone; if indeed he did not gag her again, she would scream as soon as he left her alone in the room.

“I’ve made you some soup,” he said. “You shall have to sit up. I shall have to untie your hands.”

“Good,” she said.

“You wish your hands untied?”

“Yes.”

“And your feet, too?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said, and laughed. “Your feet will stay as they are. I’m going to cut the adhesive that is holding your hands behind your back. Please don’t try to strike out at me when your hands are free. Seriously, I will use the scalpel if I have to. I want your promise. Otherwise, I’ll throw the soup in the toilet bowl and forget about feeding you.”

“I promise,” she said.

“And about screaming. Seriously, no one will hear you but me. I advise you not to scream. I become violent.”

He said the words so earnestly, so matter-of-factly that she believed him at once.

“I won’t scream,” she said.

“It will be better,” he said, and cut the tape on her hands. She was tempted to reach up for the blindfold at once, pull the blindfold loose — but she remembered the scalpel again.

“Is that better?” he said.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Come,” he said, and pulled her to the wall, and propped her against it. She sat with her hands in her lap while he spoon-fed her. The soup was delicious. She did not know what kind of soup it was, but she tasted what she thought were meatballs in it, and noodles, and celery. She kept her hands folded in her lap, opening her mouth to accept the spoon each time it touched her lips. He made small sounds of satisfaction as she ate the soup, and when at last he said, “All gone, Augusta,” it was rather like a father talking to a small child.

“Thank you,” she said. “That was very good.”

“Am I taking good care of you, Augusta?”

“Yes, you are. The soup was very good,” she said.

“Thank you. I’m trying to take very good care of you.”

“You are. But…”

“But you would like to be free.”

She hesitated. Then, very softly, she said, “Yes.”

“Then I will free you,” he said.

“What?”

“Did you not hear me?”

“Yes, but…”

“I will free you, Augusta.”

“You’re joking,” she said. “You’re trying to torment me.”

“No, no, I will indeed free you.”

“Please, will you?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Oh God, thank you. And when you let me go, I promise I won’t—”

“Let you go?” he said.

“Yes, you—”

“No, I didn’t say I would let you go.”

“You said—”

“I said I would free you. I meant I would untie your feet.”

“I thought—”

“You’re interrupting again, Augusta.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Why did you marry him, Augusta?”

“I… please, I… please, let me go. I promise I won’t tell anyone what you—”

“I’m going to untie your feet,” he said. “The door has a dead bolt on it. From either side, it can be opened only with a key. Do not run for the door when I untie you.”

“No. No, I won’t,” she said.

She heard the tape tearing, and suddenly her ankles were free.

“I’m going to take off the blindfold now,” he said. “There are no windows in the room, there is only the door, that is all. It would be foolish for you to try to escape before the ceremony, Augusta, but—”

“What ceremony?” she asked at once.

“You constantly interrupt,” he said.

“I’m sorry. But what—”

“I don’t think you will try to escape,” he said.

“That’s right, I won’t try to escape. But what cere—”

“Still, I must be gone part of the day, you know. I’m a working man, you know. And though the door will be locked, I could not risk your somehow opening it, and getting out of the room, and running down to the street.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Really,” she said, “I—”

“Still, I must protect myself against that possibility,” he said, and laughed.

She smelled a familiar aroma, and started to back away from the sound of his voice, and collided with the wall, and was trying to rip the tape from her eyes when he pulled her hands away and clapped the chloroform-soaked rag over her nose and her mouth again. She screamed. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

But no one came to help her.

There were no windows in the room, just as he had promised.

The only source of illumination was a light bulb screwed into a ceiling fixture and operated from a switch just inside the door. The light was on now. The lock on the door was a key-operated dead bolt; it could not be unlocked from either side without a key. She walked to the door and examined the lock, and realized it had been installed only recently; there were jagged splinters of unpainted wood around the lock in the otherwise white-painted door. Against the wall opposite the door, a plastic bowl of water rested on the floor, and alongside that a bowl with what appeared to be some sort of hash in it. She went to the bowl, picked it up, sniffed at the contents, and then put the bowl down on the floor again. It was cold in the room, there was no visible source of heat. She shivered with a sudden chill and crossed her arms over her breasts, hugging herself. In the apartment outside, she heard footsteps approaching the door. She backed away from it.

“Augusta?” he called.

She did not answer. She debated lying on the floor again, pretending to be still unconscious so that she could make a run for the door when he unlocked it. But would he enter the room without the scalpel in his hand? She doubted it. She knew the sharpness of that blade, and she feared it. But she feared he might use it, anyway, whether she attempted escape or not. She waited. She was beginning to tremble already, and she knew it was not from the cold.

“May I come in, Augusta? I know you’re conscious, I heard you moving about.”

His idiotic politeness infuriated her. She was his prisoner, he could do with her whatever he wished, and yet he asked permission to enter the room.

“You know you can come in, why do you bother asking?” she said.

“Ah,” he said, and she heard a key being inserted into the lock. The door opened. He stepped into the room and closed and locked the door behind him. “How are you?” he asked pleasantly. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. She was studying his face more closely than she had in the hotel room. She was memorizing the straight blond hair, and the slight scar in the blond eyebrow over his left eye, and the white flecks in the blue eyes, and the bump on the bridge of his nose, where perhaps the nose had once been broken, and the small mole at the right-hand corner of his mouth. He was wearing dark blue trousers and a pale blue turtleneck shirt. There was a gold ring on his right hand, with a violet-colored stone that might have been amethyst; it appeared to be either a college or a high school graduation ring. He wore a wristwatch on his left wrist. His feet were encased in while socks and sneakers.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said, and smiled. He turned abruptly then, and left the room without explanation, locking the door behind him. She moved into a corner of the room the moment he was gone, as though her position was more protected there in the right angle of two joining walls. In a little while she heard the key turning in the lock again. She watched the knob apprehensively. It turned, the door opened. He came into the room carrying a half-dozen or more garments on wire hangers. Holding these in his left hand, he extricated the key from the outside of the lock, and then closed the door and locked it from the inside. The clothing looked familiar. He saw her studying the garments, and smiled.

“Do you recognize them?” he asked.

“I’m… not sure.”

“These were some of my favorites,” he said. “I want you to put them on for me.”

“What are they?” she asked.

“You’ll remember.”

“I’ve worn them before, haven’t I?” she said.

“Yes. Yes, you have.”

“I’ve modeled them.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly.”

She recognized most of the clothing now — the chambray-blue safari jacket and matching shorts she had modeled for Mademoiselle, the ruffle-edged cotton T-shirt and matching wraparound skirt she had posed in for Vogue, yes, and wasn’t that the high-yoked chemise she had worn for Harper’s Bazaar? And there, the robe that—

“Would you hold these, please?” he asked. “The floor is clean, I scrubbed it before you came, but I would rather not put them down.” He shrugged apologetically and extended the clothes to her. “It will only be for a moment,” he said.

She held out her arms and he draped the garments across them, and turned and went to the door. She watched as he unlocked it again. He left the key in the keyway this time, and he left the door open behind him. But he did not go very far from the room. Just outside the door, Augusta could see a standing clothes rack and a straight-backed wooden chair. He carried the clothes rack into the room first, taking it to the far corner where Augusta had earlier retreated. Then he carried the chair in, and closed and locked the door, and set the chair down just inside it, and was preparing to sit when he said abruptly, “Oh, I almost forgot.” He moved the chair away from the door again, and again inserted his key into the lock. “Would you hang the clothes on the rack, please?” he said. “I won’t be a moment.” He unlocked the door, opened it, and went out. She heard him locking the door again from the other side.

The clothes rack was painted white, a simple standing rack with one vertical post to which were attached, at slanting angles and at varying heights, a series of pegs. She carried the clothes to the rack and hung them on the pegs. She noticed as she did so that at least one of the garments — the safari jacket — was in her size, and she quickly checked the others and learned that all of them were exactly her size. She wondered how he had known the size, and guessed he had got it from the suit she’d been wearing — but had he bought all this clothing after he’d taken her from the hotel room? One of the garments on the rack was a robe she had modeled for Town & Country. She took it down, and was putting it on when the door opened again.

“What are you doing?” he said. He spoke the words very softly. “Take that off.”

“I was a little chilly, I thought—”

“Take it off!” he said, his voice rising. “Take it off this instant!”

Silently, she took off the robe, put it back on the hanger, and hung it on the rack. He was standing just inside the open door now. In his left hand he was holding a paper bag with the logo of one of the city’s most expensive department stores on it.

“I did not give you permission,” he said.

“I didn’t know I needed permission,” Augusta said. “I was cold. It’s cold in here.”

“You will do only what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. Is that clear?”

She did not answer.

“Is it?”

“Yes, yes,” she said.

“I don’t believe I like that note of impatience in your voice, Augusta.”

“I’m sorry.”

He locked the door behind him, put the key into his pocket, moved the chair so that its back was against the door again, and then said, “We are to have a fashion show.” He smiled and extended the small parcel he was holding. “Here,” he said. “Take it.”

She walked to where he was sitting, and took the paper bag from his hands. Inside the bag, she found a pair of pale blue bikini panties and a blue bra. The panties were a size 5, the bra was a 34B.

“How did you know my sizes?” she asked.

“They were in Vogue,” he said. “The April issue. Last year, don’t you remember? ‘All About Augusta.’ Don’t you remember?”

“Yes.”

“That was a very good article, Augusta.”

“Yes, it was.”

“It didn’t mention Detective Bert Kling, though.”

“Well…”

“In an article titled ‘All About Augusta,” it would hardly seem honest to neglect mentioning—”

“I guess the agency felt—”

“You’re interrupting, Augusta.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That is truly a vile habit. In my home, if I ever interrupted, I was severely thrashed.”

“I won’t interrupt again. I was only trying to explain why the article didn’t mention Bert.”

“Ah, is that what you call him? Bert?”

“Yes.”

“And what does he call you?”

“Augusta. Or sometimes Gus. Or Gussie.”

“I prefer Augusta.”

“Actually, I do, too.”

“Good. We are at least in agreement on something. Blue is your favorite color, the article said. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Does the blue please you?”

“Yes, it’s fine. When did you buy these clothes?”

“Last month,” he said. “When I knew what had to be done.”

“You still haven’t told me—”

“The ceremony will take place tomorrow evening,” he said.

“What ceremony?”

“You will see,” he said. “My mother was a model, you know. In Europe, of course. But she was quite well known.”

“What was her name?” Augusta said.

“You would not know it,” he said. “This was long before your time. She was murdered,” he said. “Yes. I was a small boy at the time. Someone broke into the house, a burglar, a rapist, who knows? I awakened to the sounds of my mother screaming.”

Augusta watched him. He seemed unaware of her presence now, seemed to be talking only to himself. His eyes were somewhat out of focus, as though he were drifting off to another place, a place he knew only too well — and dreaded.

“My father was a leather-goods salesman, he was away from home. I leaped out of bed, she was screaming, screaming. I ran across the parlor toward her bedroom — and the screaming stopped.” He nodded. “Yes.” He nodded again. “Yes,” he said, and fell silent for several moments, and then said, “She was on the floor in a pool of her own blood. He had slit her throat.” He closed his eyes abruptly, squeezed them shut, and then opened them almost immediately. “Well, that was a long time ago,” he said. “I was just a small boy.”

“It must have been horrible for you.”

“Yes,” he said, and then shrugged, seemingly dismissing the entire matter. “I think the pants suit will suit you nicely,” he said, and grinned. “Do you understand the pun, Augusta?”

“What? I…”

“The suit. The suit will suit you,” he said, and laughed. “That’s good, don’t you think? The hardest thing to do in a second language is to make a pun.”

“What’s your first language?” she asked.

“I come from Austria,” he said.

“Where in Austria?”

“Vienna. Do you know Austria?”

“I’ve skied there.”

“Yes, of course, how stupid of me! In the article—”

“Yes.”

“—it said you skied in Zurs one time. Yes, I remember now.”

“Do you ski?”

“No. No, I have never skied. Augusta,” he said, “I wish you to take off the clothes you are now wearing and put on first the panties and brassiere, and then the suit.”

“If you’ll leave the room…”

“No,” he said, “I’ll stay here while you change. It will be more intime, n’est-ce pas? Do you speak French?”

“A little. I’ll put on the clothes only if you—”

“No, no,” he said, and laughed. “Really, Augusta, you are being quite ridiculous. I could have done to you whatever I wished while you were unconscious. You’ll be pleased to learn I took no liberties. So now, when you—”

“I would like to go to the toilet,” she said.

“What?”

“I have to move my bowels,” she said.

A look of total revulsion crossed his face. He kept staring at her in utter disbelief, and then he rose abruptly and shoved the chair aside, and unlocked the door and went out of the room. She heard the lock clicking shut again, and rather suspected the fashion show had suddenly been canceled. Smiling, she went to the wall opposite the door, and sat on the floor with her back against it. She felt a bit warmer now.

There was no time in the room.

He was her clock, she realized.

She dozed and awakened again. She sipped water from the bowl. She nibbled at the meat in the other bowl. When she grew cold again, she put on the long white robe over her clothes, and sat huddled on the floor, hugging herself. She dozed again.

When he came into the room again, he left the door open. He was wearing a dark brown overcoat, and in the open V of the coat, she could see the collar of a white shirt, and a dark tie with a narrow knot. Behind him, from a window somewhere in the apartment, there was the faint wintry light of early morning.

“I must go to work now,” he said. His tone was colder than it had been.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“It’s six thirty A.M.”

“You go to work early,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“What sort of work do you do?”

“That is no concern of yours,” he said. “I will return by three-thirty at the latest. I will prepare you for the ceremony then.”

“What sort of ceremony is it to be?” she asked.

“I see no harm in telling you,” he said.

“Yes, I’d really like to know.”

“We are to be married, Augusta,” he said.

“I’m already married.”

“Your marriage has not taken effect.”

“What do you mean?”

“It has not been consummated.”

She said nothing.

“Do you remember the wedding gown you wore in Brides magazine?”

“Yes.”

“I have it. I bought it for you.”

“Look I… I appreciate what—”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t think you do appreciate the trouble I’ve gone to.”

“I do, really I do. But…”

“I didn’t know your shoe size, that’s why I didn’t buy any shoes. The article about you didn’t mention your shoe size.”

“Probably because I have such big feet,” she said, and smiled.

“You shall have to be married barefoot,” he said.

“But, you see,” she said, refusing to enter into his delusion, “I’m already married. I got married on Sunday afternoon. I’m Mrs. Bertram…”

“I was there at the church, you don’t have to tell me.”

“Then you know I’m married.”

“Are you angry about the shoes?”

“You have a trick,” she said.

“Oh? What trick is that?”

“Of refusing to face reality.”

“There is only one reality,” he said. “You are here, and you are mine. That is reality.”

“I’m here, that’s reality, yes. But I’m not yours.”

“I’ll be late for work,” he said, and looked at his watch.

“There’s your trick again. I’m mine,” she said. “I belong to me.”

“You were yours. You are no longer yours. You are mine. This afternoon, after the ceremony, I will demonstrate that to you.”

“Let’s talk about reality again, okay?”

“Augusta, that is the reality. I will be home at three-thirty. I will take you to the bathroom, where you will bathe yourself and anoint yourself with the perfume I’ve purchased — L’Oriel is your favorite, am I correct? That’s what the article said. And then you will put on the white undergarments I bought, and the blue garter, and the gown you modeled in Brides. And then we shall have a simple wedding ceremony, uniting us in the eyes of God.”

“No,” she said, “I’m already—”

“Yes,” he insisted. “And then we shall make love, Augusta. I have been waiting a long time to make love to you. I have been waiting since I first saw your photograph in a magazine. That was more than two years ago, Augusta, you should not have dared give yourself to another man. Two long years, Augusta! I’ve loved you all that time, I’ve been waiting all that time to possess you, yes, Augusta. When I saw you on television doing a hair commercial — do you remember the Clairol commercial? — saw you moving, Augusta, saw your photographs suddenly coming to life, your hair floating on the wind as you ran, how beautiful you looked, Augusta — I waited for the commercial again. I sat before the set, waiting for you to appear again, and finally I was rewarded — but ah, how brief the commercial was, how long are I hose commercials? Thirty seconds? Sixty seconds?”

“They vary,” she answered automatically, and was suddenly aware of the lunatic nightmare proportions of the conversation. She was discussing the length of television commercials with a man who planned to marry her today in a fantasy ceremony…

“I abuse myself with your photographs,” he said suddenly. “Does that excite you? The thought of my doing such things with your pictures?”

She did not answer him.

“But this afternoon I will actually possess you. We will be married, Augusta, and then we will make love together.”

“No, we—”

“Yes,” he said. “And then I will slit your throat.”

She was alone in the apartment.

The entire place was still.

She had listened very carefully after he’d gone out of the room and locked the door. She had gone to the door instantly, and put her ear against it, listening the way Bert had told her he listened before entering a suspect premises. She had heard the front door of the apartment closing behind him, and then she had continued listening, her ear pressed to the wooden door, listening for footsteps approaching the storage room again, suspecting a trick. She did not have a watch, he had taken that from her, but she counted to sixty, and then to sixty again, and again, and over again until she estimated that she’d been standing inside the door with her ear pressed to the wood for about fifteen minutes. In all that time, she heard nothing. She had to assume he was really and truly gone.

He had left the clothing behind.

More important than that, he had left the wire hangers and the wooden clothes rack. He was a very careful man, he had installed a double key way dead bolt on the door as soon as he’d decided to abduct her, a most methodical, most fastidious, foresighted person. But he had forgotten that he was dealing with a cop’s wife, and he had neglected to notice that the door opened into the room, and that the hinge pins were on Augusta’s side of the door. Quickly, she removed all the clothing from the rack and tossed it into one corner of the room. Then she dragged the rack over to the door, and opened up one of the wire hangers by twisting the curved hook away from the body.

She was ready to go to work.

The hinge pins had been painted into the hinges.

Augusta had broken off one of the pegs on the clothes rack, and tried using that as a makeshift mallet, hoping to chip away the paint. But the peg wasn’t heavy enough, and however hard she struck at the hinge, the paint remained solidly caked to it. She had no idea what time it was, but she’d been working on just that single hinge for what seemed like hours. She had made no headway, and there were three hinges on the door, and he had told her he would be back in the apartment by three-thirty. She picked up the clothes rack now, picked it up in both hands, and using it like a battering ram, she began smashing at the middle hinge on the door. A chip of paint flaked off.

She stepped out of the storage room into a narrow corridor painted white. She turned to her left and walked into a kitchen similarly painted white, its single window slanting wintry sunlight onto the white vinyl-tile floor. There was a swinging door at the opposite end of the kitchen, just to the right of the refrigerator, and she walked to that now, and pushed it open, and that was when the sterile whiteness ended.

She almost backed away into the kitchen again.

She was inside a shrine.

The entire apartment was a shrine. Augusta was the wallpaper and Augusta was the floor covering and Augusta was the ceiling decoration and Augusta obliterated any light that ordinarily might have filtered through the windows because Augusta covered all the windows as well. It was impossible to look anywhere without seeing Augusta. Standing there in the corridor just outside the kitchen door, she felt as though she were being reflected by thousands upon thousands of mirrors, tiny mirrors and large ones, mirrors that threw back images in color or in black and white, mirrors that caught her in action or in repose. The corridor, and the living room beyond that, and the bedroom at the far end of the hall together formed a massive collage of photographs snipped from every magazine in which she’d ever appeared, some of them going back to the very beginning of her career. She could not possibly estimate how many copies of each edition of each magazine had been purchased and scrutinized and finally cut apart to create this cubistic monument. There were photographs everywhere. Those on the walls alone would have sufficed to create an overwhelming effect, meticulously pasted up to cover every inch of space, forming an interlocking, overlapping, overflowing vertical scrapbook. But the pictures devoured the walls, and then consumed the ceilings and dripped onto the floors as well, photographs of Augusta running rampant overhead and below, and flanking her on every side. Some of the photographs were duplicates, she saw, triplicates, quadruplicates, so that the concept of a myriad reflecting mirrors now seemed to multiply dangerously — there were mirrors reflecting other mirrors and Augusta stood in the midst of this visual reverberating photographic chamber and suddenly doubted her own reality, suddenly wondered whether she herself, standing there at the center of an Augusta-echoing-Augusta universe, was not simply an echo of another Augusta somewhere on the walls. The entire display had been shellacked, and the artificial illumination in the apartment cast a glow onto the shiny surfaces, pinpoint pricks of light seeming to brighten a photographed eye as she moved past it, hair as dead as the paper upon which it was printed suddenly seeming to shimmer with life.

There was a king-sized bed in the bedroom. It was covered with white sheets; there were white pillowcases on the pillows. A white lacquered dresser was against one wall, and a chair covered with white vinyl stood against the adjoining wall. There was no other furniture in the bedroom. Just the bed, the dresser, and the chair — stark and white against the photographs that rampaged across the floor and up the walls and over the ceilings.

She wondered suddenly what time it was.

She had lost all track of time while working on the door, but she surmised it was a little past noon now. She went quickly to the front door, ascertained that the lock on it was a key-operated dead bolt, and then went immediately into the kitchen. The unadorned white of the room came as a cool oasis in a blazing desert. She was moving toward the wall telephone when she saw the clock above the refrigerator. The time came as a shock, as chilling as the touch of the scalpel had been on her throat. She could not possibly imagine the hours having gone by that swiftly, and yet the hands of the clock told her it was now three twenty five… was it possible the clock had stopped? But no, she could hear it humming on the wall, could see the minute hand moving almost imperceptibly as she stared at it. The clock was working; it was three twenty-five and he’d told her he would return at three-thirty.

She immediately lifted the telephone receiver from the hook, waited for a dial tone, and then jiggled the bar impatiently, lifted it again, listened for a dial tone again, and got one just as she heard the lock turning in the front door. She dropped the phone, reached for the latch over the kitchen window, and discovered at once that the window was painted shut.

She turned, moved swiftly to the kitchen table, pulled a chair from under it, lilted the chair, and was swinging it toward the window when she heard his footsteps coming through the apartment. The glass shattered, exploding into the shaftway and cascading in shards to the interior courtyard below. He was running through the apartment now. She remembered his admonition about screaming, remembered his admonition about screaming, remembered that it made him violent. But he was running through the apartment toward her, and he had promised her a wedding ceremony, and a nuptial consummation, and a slit throat — and at the moment she couldn’t think of anything more violent than a slit throat.

She screamed.

He was in the kitchen now. She did not see his face until he pulled her from the window and twisted her toward him and slapped her with all the force of his arm and shoulder behind the blow. His face was distorted, the blue eyes wide and staring, the mouth hanging open. He kept striking her repeatedly as she screamed, the blows becoming more and more fierce until she feared he would break her jaw or her cheekbones. She cut off a scream just as it was bubbling onto her lips, strangled it, but he kept striking her, his arm flailing as though he were no longer conscious of its action, the hand swinging to collide with her face, and then returning to catch her backhanded just as she reeled away from the earlier blow. “Stop,” she said, “please,” scarcely daring to give voice to the words lest they infuriate him further and cause him to lose control completely. She tried to cover her face with her hands, but he yanked first one hand away and then the other, and he kept striking her till she felt she would lose consciousness if he hit her one more time. But she did not faint, she sank deliberately to the floor instead, breaking the pattern of his blows, crouching on all fours with her head bent, gasping for breath. He pulled her to her feet immediately, but he did not strike her again. Instead, he dragged her out of the kitchen and across the corridor into the living room, where he hurled her angrily onto the floor again. Her lip was beginning to swell from the repeated blows. She touched her mouth to see if it was bleeding. Standing in the doorway, he watched her calmly now, and took off his overcoat, and placed it neatly over the arm of the sofa. There was only one light burning in the room, a floor lamp that cast faint illumination on the shellacked pictures that covered the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. Augusta lay on her own photographs like a protectively colored jungled creature hoping to fade out against a sympathetic background.

“This was to be a surprise,” he said. “You spoiled the surprise.”

He made no mention of the fact that she had broken the window and screamed for help. As she had done earlier, she insisted now on bringing him back to reality. “You’d better let me go,” she said. “While there’s still time. This may be the goddamn city, but someone’s sure to have heard—”

“I wanted to be with you when you saw it for the first time. Do you like what I’ve done?”

“Somebody’s going to report those screams to the police, and they’ll come busting in here—”

“I’m sorry I struck you,” he said. “I warned you about screaming, though. It truly does make me violent.”

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, you’re staying someone will have heard you.”

“Yes, and they’ll come looking for this apartment, and once they find you—”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“The ceremony will be brief. By the time they locate the apartment, we’ll have finished.”

“They’ll find it sooner than you think,” Augusta said. “The kitchen window is broken. They’ll look for a broken window, and once they locate it on the outside of the building—”

“Who, Augusta?”

“Whoever heard me screaming. There’s a building right across the way, I saw windows on the wall there…”

“Yes, it used to be a hat factory. And, until recently, an artist was living there. But he moved out six months ago. The loft has been empty since.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“No.”

“You want me to think no one heard me.”

“Someone may have heard you, Augusta, it’s quite possible. But it really doesn’t matter. As I say, it will be quite some time before we’re found, even it you were heard. Augusta, do you like what I’ve done with your photographs? This didn’t just happen overnight, you know, I’ve been working on it for quite some time. Do you like it?”

“Why did you do all this?” she asked.

“Because I love you,” he said simply.

“Then let me go.”

“No.”

“Please. Please let me go. I promise I won’t—”

“No, Augusta, that’s impossible. Really, it’s quite impossible. We mustn’t even discuss it. Besides, it’s almost time for the ceremony, and it someone heard you screaming, as you pointed out—”

“If you really love me…”

“Ah, but I do.”

“Then let me go.”

“Why? So you can go back to him? No, Augusta. Come now. It’s time for your bath.”

“I don’t want a bath.”

“The article about you—”

“The hell with the article about me!”

“It said you bathed twice daily. You haven’t had a bath since I brought you here, Augusta.”

“I don’t want a goddamn bath!”

“Don’t you feel dirty, Augusta?”

“No.”

“You must bathe, anyway.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You must be clean for the ceremony. Get up, Augusta.”

“No.”

“Get off the floor.”

“Go fuck yourself,” she said.

The scalpel appeared suddenly in his hand. He smiled.

“Go ahead, use it,” she said. “You’re going to kill me, anyway, so what difference—?”

“If I use it now,” he said, “it will not be pleasant. I prefer not to use it in anger, Augusta. Believe me, if you provoke me further, I can make it very painful for you. I love you, Augusta, don’t force me to hurt you.”

They stared at each other across the length of the room.

“Please believe me,” he said.

“But however you kill me—”

“I do not wish to talk about killing you.”

“You said you were going to kill me.”

“Yes. I do not want to talk about it.”

“Why? Why are you going to kill me?”

“To punish you.”

“Punish me? I thought you loved me.”

“I do love you.”

“Then why do you want to punish me?”

“For what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“This is pointless. You are angering me. You should not have screamed. You frightened me.”

“When?”

“When? Just now. When I came into the apartment. You were Screaming. You frightened me. I thought someone—”

“Yes, what did you think?”

“I thought someone had got in here and was… was trying to harm you.”

“But you yourself are going to harm me.”

“No,” he said, and shook his head.

“You’re going to kill me. You said you’re—”

“I want to bathe you now,” he said. “Come.” He held out his left hand. In the right hand he was holding the scalpel. “Come, Augusta.”

She took his hand, and he helped her to her feet. As they went through the apartment to the bathroom, she thought she should not have broken the window, she should not have screamed, she should not have done either of those things. The only thing to do with this man was humor him, listen to everything he said, nod, smile pleasantly, agree with him, tell him how nice it was to be in an apartment papered with pictures of herself. Stall for time, wait for Bert to get a line on him, because surely they were working on it right this minute. Wait it out, that was all. Patience. Forbearance. They’d be here eventually. She knew them well enough to know they’d be here.

“I could so easily hurt you,” he said.

She did not answer him. Calm and easy, she thought. Cool. Wait it out. Humor him.

“It is so easy to hurt someone,” he said. “Did I tell you my mother was killed by an intruder?”

“Yes.”

“That was a long time ago, of course. Come, we must bathe you, Augusta.”

In the bathroom, he poured bubble bath into the tub, and she watched the bubbles foaming up, and heard him behind her, tapping

The blade of the scalpel against the edge of the sink.

“Do you know why I bought the bubble bath?” he asked.

“Yes, because of the magazine article.”

“Is it true that you like bubble baths?”

“Yes.”

“I am going to bathe you now,” he said.

She suffered his hands upon her.

There were six buttons on the bodice of the gown, spaced between the square neckline and the Empire waist. The gown was made of cotton, with rows and rows of tucked white lace, and more lace on the inside of the full sleeves. A silk-illusion veil crowned Augusta’s auburn hair, and she was carrying a small bouquet of red roses. He had dressed her himself, fumbling with the delicate lace-edged panties and bra, sliding the lacy blue garter up over her left thigh, adjusting the veil on her head, and then presenting her with the bouquet. He led her barefoot into the living room now, and asked her to sit on the sofa, facing him. She sat, and he told her to clasp both hands around the shaft on the bouquet, and to hold the flowers on her lap and to lock straight ahead of her, neither to the right nor to the left, but straight ahead. He was standing directly in front of her, some six feet away, as he began his recitation.

“We are witnesses here,” he said, “the two of us alone, we are witnesses to this holy sacrament, we are witnesses. You and I, man and woman, and child asleep in innocence, we are witnesses. We are witnesses to the act, we have seen, we have seen. I have seen her before, yes, I have witnessed her before, I have seen photographs, yes, she knew this, she was a famous model, there would be roses at the door, roses from strangers, they would often arrive without warning. I have seen photographs of her, yes, she was quite famous, I have seen her dressing too, I have sometimes witnessed — the bedroom door ajar, I have sometimes in her underthings, yes, she was quite beautiful, I have witnessed, but never naked, never that way, das Blut, ach!”

He shook his head. Though Augusta knew no German, she instantly understood the word “Blut.” He repeated the word in English now, still shaking his head, his eyes on the roses in Augusta’s lap.

“Blood. So much blood. Everywhere. On the floor, on her legs, nackt und offen, do you understand? My own mother, meine Mutter. To expose herself that way, but ah, it was so very long ago, we must forget, nein? And in fairness, she was dead, you know, he had cut her throat, you know, forgive them their trespasses, they know not what they do. So much blood, though… so much. He had cut her so bad, yes, even before her throat, she was so… so many cuts… she… everywhere she had touched, there was blood. Running away from him, you know. Touching the walls, and the bureau, and the closet door, and the chairs, blood everywhere. Screaming, Ach, ach, I covered my ears with my hands, Bitte, bitte, she kept screaming again and again, Please, please, Bitte, bitte, where is my father to let this happen to her, where? There is blood everywhere I look. Her legs are open wide when I go into the bedroom, there is blood on the inside of her legs, shameless, like a cheap whore, to let him do this to her? Why did she allow it, why? Always so careful with me, of course, always so modest and chaste — Now, now, Klaus, you must not stay in the bedroom when I am dressing, you must not peek on your mother, eh? Run along now, run along, there’s a good boy — petticoats and lace, and once in her bloomers, with nothing on top, smelling of perfume, I wanted so much to touch you that day, Augusta, but of course I am too small — you are too small, Augusta, your breasts. You are really quite a disappointment to me, I don’t know why I bother loving you at all, when you give yourself so freely to another. Ah, well, it was a long time ago, nein? Forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones, we are here today to change all that, we are here today as witnesses.”

He smiled abruptly, and looked up from the roses, directly into Augusta’s face.

“Johanna, my love,” he said, “we are here to be married today, you and I, we are here to celebrate our wedding. We are here to sanctify our union that will be, we are here to witness and to obliterate. The other, I mean. Your union with another, we will obliterate that, Johanna, we will forget that shameless performance — why did you let him do it?” he shouted, and then immediately said, “Forgive me, Augusta,” and walked to where she was sitting on the sofa, and took the bouquet from her hands and placed it on the floor. Then, kneeling before her, he took both her hands between his own, and said, simply, “I take you for my wife, I take you for my own.”

He kissed her hands then, first one and then the other, and rose, and gently lifted her from the couch and led her into the bedroom.

The scalpel was in his hand.

He had tried to make love to her, and had failed, and now he rose from the bed angrily, and said, “Put on your underthings! Are you a whore? Is that what you are?” and watched as she lifted the long bridal gown and put on the white lace-edged panties, the only garment he had earlier asked her to remove.

“You do not have to answer,” he said. “I know what you are, I have known for a long time.”

She said nothing.

“I suppose you are disappointed in me,” he said. “Someone like you, who knows so many men. I suppose my performance was less than satisfying.”

Still, she said nothing.

“Have you known others like me?” he asked. “In your experience, have you known others who could not perform?”

“I want you to let me go,” she said.

“Answer me! Have you known others like me?”

“Please let me go. Give me the key to the front door, and—”

“I’m sure you have known a great many men who had medical problems such as mine. This is entirely a medical problem, I will see a doctor one day, he will prescribe a pill, it will vanish. I myself was a doctor, did you know that? I was Phi Beta Kappa at Ramsey University, did you know that? Yes. I was an undergraduate there, Phi Beta Kappa. And I was accepted at one of the finest medical schools in the country. Yes. I went for two years to medical school. Would you like to know what happened? Would you like to know why I am not a doctor today? I could have been a doctor, you know.”

“I want to leave here,” she said. “Please give me the key.”

“Augusta, you are being absurd,” he said. “You cannot leave. You will never leave. I am going to kill you, Augusta.”

“Why?”

“I told you why. Would you like to know what happened in medical school, Augusta? Would you like to know why I was expelled? I mutilated a cadaver,” he said. “I mutilated a female cadaver. With a scalpel.”

She backed away from him.

He was coming for her with the scalpel in his hand. He was between her and the doorway. The bed was in the center of the room, she backed toward it, and then climbed onto the mattress, and stood in the middle of the bed, ready to leap to the floor on the side opposite, whichever one he approached.

“I urge you not to do this,” he said.

She did not answer. She watched him, waiting for his move, poised to leap. She would use the bed as a wall between them. If he approached it from the side closest to the door, the right-hand side, she would jump off onto the floor on the left. If he crawled onto the bed in an attempt to cross it, she would run around the end of it to the other side. She would keep the bed between them forever if she had to, use it as a barrier and a—

He thrust the scalpel at her, and seemed about to reach across the bed, and she jumped to the floor away from him, and realized too late that his move had been a feint. He was coming around the side of the bed, it was too late for her to maneuver her way to the door, she backed into the corner as he came toward her.

She would remember always the sound of the door being kicked in, would remember, too, the swift shock of recognition that darted into his eyes and the way his head turned sharply away from her. She could see past him to the front door, could see the bolt shattering inward, and Steve Carella bursting into the room, a very fat man behind him, and then Bert — and the scalpel came up, the scalpel came toward her.

They were all holding guns, but the fat man was the only one who fired. Steve and Bert, they just stood there looking into the room, they saw the scalpel in his hand, they saw her in a wedding gown, crouched in the corner of the room, the scalpel coming toward her face — I mutilated a female cadaver — the fat man taking in the situation at once, his gun coming level, and two explosions erupting from the muzzle.

She would realize later that the fat man was the only one who did not love her. And she would vow never to ask either Steve or Bert why they had not fired instantly, why they had left it to Fat Ollie Weeks to pump the two slugs into the man who was about to slit her throat.

WEEKS: We just told you your rights, and you just told us you understood your rights and didn’t need no lawyer here to tell us what this whole thing is about. Now, I just want you to understand one more thing, you shithead, and that’s you’re in no danger of dying, the doctor says you’re gonna be fine. So I don’t want no trouble later, I want it clear on the record when we get to court that nobody said you were going to die or anything. We didn’t get you to make a statement by saying you were a dying man or nothing like that.

SCHEINER: That’s true.

WEEKS: So that’s why the stenographer’s taking all this down if you want to tell us about it.

SCHEINER: What do you want to know?

WEEKS: Why’d you kidnap the lady?

SCHEINER: Because I love her.

WEEKS: You love her, huh? You were ready to f’Christ’s sake kill her when we—

SCHEINER: And myself.

WEEKS: You were going to kill yourself, too?

SCHEINER: Yes.

WEEKS: Why?

SCHEINER: With her dead, what would be the sense of living?

WEEKS: You’re crazier’n a fuckin’ bedbug, you know that? You’re the one was gonna kill her. To punish her for what she did. What’d she do?

SCHEINER: She allowed him.

WEEKS: She allowed him, huh? You fuckin’ lunatic, you’re a fuckin’ lunatic, you know that? How’d you know what hotel they were at?

SCHEINER: I followed them from the church.

WEEKS: Were you at the reception?

SCHEINER: No. I waited downstairs for them.

WEEKS: All the while the reception was going on?

SCHEINER: Yes. Except for when I moved the ambulance.

WEEKS: When was that?

SCHEINER: About eleven o’clock, I think it was. I moved it into the alley behind the hotel. That was after I learned where the service courtyard was.

WEEKS: Then what?

SCHEINER: Then I came around to the front again — because the alley door was locked, I couldn’t get in that way. And I was just coming through the revolving doors when I saw them standing there, just inside the doors — he was taking a picture of her and another man. I turned away, I walked toward the phone booths.

WEEKS: How’d you find out what room they were in?

SCHEINER: I picked up a house phone in the lobby, and asked.

WEEKS: You see that? You see what they’ll tell you? You walk in any hotel in this city, you ask them what room Mr. so-and-so is in, they’ll tell you. Unless he’s a celebrity. How’d you get into the room, Scheiner?

SCHEINER: I used a slat from a Venetian blind.

WEEKS: How come you know how to do that? What are you, a burglar?

SCHEINER: No, no. I drive an ambulance.

WEEKS: Then how’d you learn about that?

SCHEINER: I have read books.

WEEKS: And you learned how to loid a door, huh?

SCHEINER: I learned how to force a door, to push back the bolt.

WEEKS: That’s loiding.

SCHEINER: I don’t know what you call it.

WEEKS: But you know how to do it pretty good, don’t you, you

shithead? Didn’t you know there was a cop in that room? He could’ve blown your head off the minute you opened the door.

SCHEINER: I did not think he would have a gun on his wedding day. Besides, I was prepared.

WEEKS: For what?

SCHEINER: To kill him.

WEEKS: Why?

SCHEINER: For taking her from me.

They put Kling and Augusta into a taxi, and then they went out for hamburgers and coffee. Fat Ollie Weeks ate six hamburgers. He did not say a word all the while he was eating. He had finished his six hamburgers and three cups of coffee before Meyer and Carella finished what they had ordered, and then he sat back against the red Leatherette booth, and belched, and said, “That man was a fuckin’ lunatic. I’da cracked the case earlier if only we hadn’t been dealing with a lunatic. Lunatics are very hard to fathom.” He belched again. “I’ll bet old Augusta ain’t gonna forget this for a while, huh?”

“I guess not,” Meyer said.

“I wonder if he got in her pants,” Ollie said.

“Ollie,” Carella said very softly, “if I were you, I wouldn’t ever again wonder anything like that aloud. Ever, Ollie. You understand me?”

“Oh, sure,” Ollie said.

“Ever,” Carella said.

“Yeah, yeah, relax already, will ya?” Ollie said. “I think I’ll have another hamburger. You guys feel like another hamburger?”

So Long as You Both Shall Live, 1976

The car windows were open, the heat ballooned around the two men as Carella edged the vehicle through the heavy lunch-hour traffic. He glanced sidelong at Kling, who was staring straight ahead through the windshield, and then said, “Tell me.”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about it,” Kling said.

“Then why’d you bring it up?”

“‘Cause it’s been driving me crazy for the past month.”

“Let’s start from the beginning, okay?” Carella said.

The beginning, as Kling painfully and haltingly told it, had been on the Fourth of July, when he and Augusta were invited out to Sands Spit for the weekend. Their host was one of the photographers with whom Augusta had worked many times in the past. Carella, listening, remembered the throng of photographers, agents, and professional models, like Augusta, who had been guests at their wedding almost four years ago.

“… on the beach out there in Westphalia,” Kling was saying, “Beautiful house set on the dunes, two guest rooms. We went out on the third, and there was a big party the next day, models, photographers… well, you know the crowd Gussie likes to run with. That was when I got the first inkling, at the party.”

He had never felt too terribly close to his wife’s friends and associates, Kling said; they had, in fact, had some big arguments in the past over what he called her “tinsel crowd.” He supposed much of his discomfort had to do with the fact that as a Detective/Third he was earning $24,600 a year, whereas his wife was earning $100 an hour as a top fashion model; the joint IRS return they’d filed in April had listed their combined incomes as a bit more than $100,000 for the previous year. Moreover, most of Augusta’s friends were also earning that kind of money, and whereas she felt no qualms about inviting eight or ten of them for dinner at any of the city’s most expensive restaurants and signing for the tab afterward (“She keeps telling me they’re business associates, it’s all deductible,” Kling said), he always tell somewhat inadequate at such feasts, something like a poor relative visiting a rich city cousin, or — worse — something like a kept man. Kling himself preferred small dinner parties at their apartment with friends of his from the police force, people like Carella and his wife, Teddy, and Cotton Hawes and any one of his dozens of girlfriends, or Artie and Connie Brown, or Meyer Meyer and his wife, Sarah — people he knew and liked, people he could feel relaxed with.

The party out there on the beach in Westphalia, some hundred and thirty miles from the city in Sagamore County, was pretty much the same as all the parties Augusta dragged him to in the city. She’d get through with a modeling job at four, five in the afternoon, and if he’d been working the Day Tour, he’d be off at four and would get back to the apartment at about the same time she did, and she’d always have a cocktail party to go to, either at a photographer’s studio or the offices of some fashion magazine, or some other model’s apartment, or her agent’s — always someplace to go. There were times he’d be following some cheap hood all over the city, walking the pavements flat and getting home exhausted and wanted nothing more than a bottle of beer, and the place would be full of flitty photographers or gorgeous models talking about the latest spread in Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, drinking the booze Augusta paid for out of her earnings, and wanting to know all about how it felt to shoot somebody (“Have you ever actually killed a person, Bert?”), as if police work were the same kind of empty game modeling was. It irked him every time Augusta referred to herself as a “mannequin.” It made her seem as shallow as the work she did, a hollow store-window dummy draped in the latest Parisian fashions.

“Well, what the hell,” Kling said, “you make allowances, am I right? I’m a cop, she’s a model, we both knew that before we got married. So, okay, you compromise. If Gussie doesn’t like to cook, we’ll send out for Chink’s whenever anybody from the squad’s coming over with his wife. And if I’ve just been in a shoot-out with an armed robber, the way I was two weeks ago when that guy tried to hold up the bank on Culver and Third, then I can’t be expected to go to a gallery opening or a cocktail party, or a benefit, or whatever the hell, Gussie’ll just have to go alone, am I right?”

Which is just the way they’d been working it for the past few months now. Augusta running off to this or that glittering little party while Kling took off his shoes, and sat wearily in front of the television set drinking beer till she got home, when generally they’d go out for a bite to eat. That was if he was working the Day Tour. If he was working the Night Watch, he’d get home bone weary at nine-thirty in the morning, and maybe, if he was lucky, catch breakfast with her before she ran off to her first assignment. A hundred dollars an hour was not pumpkin seeds, and — as Augusta had told him time and again — in her business it was important to make hay while the sun was shining; how many more years of successful modeling could she count on? So off she’d run to this or that photographer’s studio, rushing out of the apartment with a kerchief on her head and her shoulder bag flying, leaving Kling to put the dishes in the dishwasher before going directly to bed, where he’d sleep till six that night and then go out to dinner with her when she got home from her usual cocktail party. After dinner, maybe, and nowadays less and less frequently, they’d make love before he had to leave for the station house again at twelve-thirty in the morning. But that was only on the two days a month he caught the Night Watch.

In fact, he’d been looking forward to going out to Sands Spit, not because he particularly cared for the photographer they’d be visiting (or any of Augusta’s friends, for that matter) but only because he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse on a beach for two full days — his days off. Nor was he due back at work till Saturday afternoon at 1600 — and that’s where the trouble started. Or, at least, that’s where the argument started. He didn’t think of it as trouble until later that night, when he got into a conversation with a twerpy little blond model who opened his eyes for him while their photographer-host was running up and down the beach touching off the fireworks he’d bought illegally in Chinatown.

The argument was about whether or not Augusta should stay at the beach for the entire long weekend, instead of going back to the city with Kling on Saturday. They’d been married for almost four years now; she should have realized by this time that the police department respected no holidays, and that a cop’s two successive days off sometimes fell in the middle of the week. He was lucky this year, in fact, to have caught the Glorious Fourth and the day preceding it, and he felt he was within his rights to ask his own wife, goddamnit, to accompany him back to the city when he left at ten tomorrow morning. Augusta maintained that the Fourth of July rarely was bracketed by an entire long weekend, as it was this year, and it was senseless for her to go back to what would be essentially a ghost town when he had to go to work anyway. What was she supposed to do while he was out chasing crooks? Sit in the empty apartment and twiddle her thumbs? He told her she was coming back with him, and that was that. She told him she was staying, and that was that.

They barely spoke to each other all through dinner, served on their host’s deck overlooking the crashing sea, and by the time the fireworks started at 9:00 p.m., Augusta had drifted over to a group of photographers with whom she’d immediately begun a spirited, and much too animated, conversation. The little blonde who sat down next to Kling while the first of the fireworks erupted was holding a martini glass in her hand, and it was evident from the first few words she spoke that she’d had at least four too many of them already. She was wearing very short white shorts and an orange blouse Kling had seen in Glamour (Augusta on the cover) the month before, slashed deep over her breasts and exposing at least one of them clear to the nipple. She said, “Hi,” and then tucked her bare feet up under her, her shoulder touching Kling’s as she performed the delicate maneuver, and then asked him in a gin-slurred voice where he’d been all afternoon, she hadn’t seen him around, and she thought sure she’d seen every good-looking man there. The fireworks kept exploding against the blackness of the sky.

The girl went on to say that she was a junior model with the Cutler Agency (the same agency that represented Augusta) and then asked whether he was a model himself, he was so good-looking, or just a mere photographer (she made photographers sound like child molesters), or did he work for one of the fashion magazines, or was he perhaps that lowest of the low, an agent? Kling told her he was a cop, and before she could ask to see his pistol (or anything else) promptly informed her that he was here with his wife. His wife, at the moment, was ooohing and aaahing over a spectacular swarm of golden fish that erupted overhead and swam erratically against the sky, dripping sparks as they fell toward the ocean. The girl, who seemed no older than eighteen or nineteen, and who had the largest blue eyes Kling had ever seen in his life, set in a pixie face with a somewhat lopsided chipmunk grin, asked Kling who his wife might be, and when he pointed her out and said, “Augusta Blair,” the name she still used when modeling, the girl raised her eyebrows and said, “Don’t shit me, man, Augusta’s not married.”

Well, Kling wasn’t used to being told he wasn’t married to Augusta, although at times he certainly felt that way. He explained, or started to explain, that he and Augusta had been married for — but the girl cut him off and said, “I see her all over town,” and shrugged and gulped at her martini. She was just drunk enough to have missed the fact that Kling was a cop, which breed (especially of the detective variety) are prone to ask all sorts of pertinent questions, and further too drunk to realize that she didn’t necessarily have to add, “with guys” after she’d swallowed the gin and vermouth, two words which — when coupled with her previous statement and forgiving the brief hiatus — came out altogether as “I see her all over town with guys.”

Kling knew, of course, that Augusta went to quite a few cocktail parties without him, and he also knew that undoubtedly she talked to people at those parties, and that some of those people were possibly men. But the blonde’s words seemed to imply something more than simple cocktail chatter, and he was about to ask her what she meant, exactly, when a waiter in black trousers and a white jacket came around with a refill, apparently having divined her need from across the wide expanse of the crowded deck. The blonde deftly lifted a fresh martini glass from the tray the waiter proffered, gulped down half its contents, and then — compounding the felony — said, “One guy especially.”

“What do you mean, exactly?” Kling managed to say this time.

“Come on, what do I mean?” the blonde said, and winked at him.

“Tell me about it,” Kling said. His heart was pounding in his chest.

“Go ask Augusta, you’re so interested in Augusta,” the blonde said.

“Are you saying she’s been seeing some guy?”

“Who cares? Listen, would you like to go inside with me? Don’t fireworks bore you to death? Let’s go inside and find someplace, okay?”

“No, tell me about Augusta.”

“Oh, fuck Augusta,” the blonde said, and untangled her legs from under her bottom and got unsteadily to her feet, and then said, “And you, too,” and tossed her hair and went staggering into the house through the French doors.

The last time he saw her that night, she was curled up, asleep in the master bedroom, her blouse open to the waist, both cherry-nippled breasts recklessly exposed. He was tempted to wake her and question her further about this “one guy especially,” but his host walked into the room at that moment, and cleared his throat, and Kling had the distinct impression he was being suspected of rape or at least sexual molestation. The blonde later disappeared into the night, as suddenly as she had materialized. But before leaving the next day (Augusta stayed behind, as she had promised, or perhaps threatened) Kling asked some discreet questions and learned that her name was Monica Thorpe. On Monday morning he called the Cutler Agency, identified himself as Augusta’s husband, said they wanted to invite Monica to a small dinner party, and got her unlisted number from them. When he called her at home, she said she didn’t know who he was, and didn’t remember saying anything about Augusta, who was anyway her dearest friend and one of the sweetest people on earth. She hung up before Kling could say another word. When he called back a moment later, she said, “Hey, knock it off, okay, man? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and hung up again.

“So that’s it,” Kling said.

“That’s it, huh?” Carella said. “Are you telling me…?”

“I’m telling you what happened.”

“Nothing happened,” Carella said. “Except some dumb blonde got drunk and filled your head with—”

“She said she saw Augusta all over town. With guys, Steve. With one guy especially Steve.”

“Uh huh. And you believe her, huh?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“Have you talked to Augusta about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“What am I supposed to do? Ask her if there’s some guy she’s been seeing? Suppose she tells me there is? Then what? Shit, Steve…”

“If I were in a similar situation, I’d ask Teddy in a minute.”

“And what if she said it was true?”

“We’d work it out.”

“Sure.”

“We would.”

Kling was silent for several moments. His face was beaded with sweat, he appeared on the verge of tears. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at his forehead. He sucked in a deep breath, and said, “Steve… is it… is it still good between you and Teddy?”

“Yes.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

“In bed, I mean.”

“Yes, in bed. And everywhere else.”

“Because… I, I don’t think I’d have believed a word that blonde was saying if, if I, if I didn’t already think something was wrong. Steve, we… these past few months… ever since June it must be… we… you know, it used to be we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, I’d come home from work, she’d be all over me. But lately…” He shook his head, his voice trailed.

Carella said nothing. He stared through the windshield ahead, and then blew the horn at a pedestrian about to step off the curb against the light. Kling shook his head again. He took out his handkerchief again, and again dabbed at his brow with it.

“It’s just that lately… well, for a long time now… there hasn’t been anything between us. I mean, not like before. Not the way it used to be, when we, when we couldn’t stand being apart for a minute. Now it’s… when we make love, it’s just so… so cut-and-dried, Steve. As if she’s… tolerating me, you know what I mean? Just doing it to, to, to get it over with. Aw, shit, Steve,” he said, and ducked his face into the handkerchief, both hands spread over it, and began sobbing.

“Come on,” Carella said.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, come on.”

“What an asshole,” Kling said, sobbing into the handkerchief.

“You’ve got to talk to her about it,” Carella said.

“Yeah.” The handkerchief was still covering his face. He kept sobbing into it, his head turned away from Carella, his shoulders heaving.

“Will you do that?”

“Yeah.”

“Bert? Will you talk to her?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will.”

“Come on, now.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kling said, and sniffed, and took the handkerchief from his face, and dried his eyes, and sniffed again, and said, “Thanks,” and stared straight ahead through the windshield again.

She did not get home until almost eleven.

He was watching the news on television when she came into the apartment. She was wearing a pale green, silk chiffon jumpsuit, the flimsy top slashed low over her naked breasts, the color complementing the flaming autumn of her hair, swept to one side of her face to expose one ear dotted with an emerald earring that accentuated the jungle green of her eyes, a darker echo of her costume. As always, he caught his breath at the sheer beauty of her. He had been tongue-tied the first time he’d seen her in her burglarized apartment on Richardson Drive. She had just come back from a skiing trip to find the place ransacked; he had never been skiing in his life, he’d always thought of it as a spoil for the very rich. He supposed they were very rich now. The only problem was that he never felt any of it was really his.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said from the front door, and took her key from the lock, and then came to where he was sitting in front of the television set, a can of warm beer in his hand. She kissed him fleetingly on top of his head, and then said, “I have to pee, don’t go away.”

On the television screen, the newscaster was detailing the latest trouble in the Middle East. Sometimes Kling thought the Middle East had been invented by the government, the way the war in Orwell’s novel had been invented by Big Brother. Without the Middle East to occupy their thoughts the people would have to worry about unemployment and inflation and crime in the streets and racial conflict and corruption in high places and tsetse flies. He sipped at his beer. He had eaten a TV dinner consisting of veal parmigiana with apple slices, peas in seasoned sauce, and a lemon muffin. He had also consumed three cans of beer; this was his fourth. The thawed meal had been lousy. He was a big man, and he was hungry again. He heard her flushing the toilet, and then heard the closet door in their bedroom sliding open. He waited.

When she came back into the living room, she was wearing a wraparound black nylon robe belted at the waist. Her hair fell loose around her face. She was barefoot. The television newscaster droned

“Are you watching that?” she asked.

“Sort of,” he said.

“Why don’t you turn it off?” she said, and, without waiting for his reply, went to the set and snapped the switch. The room went silent. “Another scorcher today, huh?” she said. “How’d it go for you?”

“So-so.”

“What time did you get home?”

“Little after six.”

“Did you forget the party at Bianca’s?”

“We’re working a complicated one.”

“When aren’t you working a complicated one?” Augusta asked, and smiled.

He watched as she sat on the carpet in front of the blank television screen, her legs extended, the flaps of the nylon robe thrown back, and began doing her situps, part of her nightly exercise routine. Her hands clasped behind her head, she raised her trunk and lowered it, raised it and lowered it.

“We had to go see this lady,” Kling said.

“I told you this morning about the party.”

“I know, but Steve wanted to hit her this afternoon.”

“First twenty-four hours are the most important,” Augusta said by rote.

“Well, that’s true, in fact. How was the party?”

“Fine,” Augusta said.

“She still living with that photographer, what’s his name?”

“Andy Hastings. He’s only the most important fashion photographer in America.”

“I have trouble keeping them straight,” Kling said.

“Andy’s the one with the black hair and blue eyes.”

“Who’s the bald one?”

“Lamont.”

“Yeah. With the earring in his left ear. Was he there?”

“Everybody was there. Except my husband.”

“Well, I do have to earn a living.”

“You didn’t have to earn a living after four P.M. today.”

“Man dies of an overdose of Seconal, you can’t just let the case lay there for a week.”

“First twenty-four hours are the most important, right,” Augusta said again, and rolled her eyes.

“They are.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You mind if I turn this on again?” he asked. “I want to see what the weather’ll be tomorrow.”

She did not answer. She rolled onto her side, and began lifting and lowering one leg, steadily, methodically. He put the beer can down, rose from where he was sitting in the leather easy chair, and snapped on the television set. As he turned to go back to his chair, the auburn hair covering her crotch winked for just an instant, and then her legs closed, and opened again, the flaming wink again, and closed again. He sat heavily in the leather chair and picked up the beer can. The female television forecaster was a brunette with the cutes. Smiling idiotically, bantering with the anchorman, she finally relayed the information that there was no relief in sight; the temperature tomorrow would hit a high of somewhere between ninety-eight and ninety-nine (“That’s normal body temperature, isn’t it?” the anchorman asked. “Ninety-eight point six?”) with the humidity hovering at sixty-four percent, and the pollution index unsatisfactory.

“So what else is new?” Augusta said to the television screen, her leg moving up and down, up and down.

“Marty Trovaro is next with the sports,” the anchorman said. “Stay tuned.”

“Now we get what all the baseball teams did today,” Augusta said. “Can’t you turn that off, Bert?”

“I like baseball,” he said. “Where’d you go after the party?”

“To a Chinese joint on Boone.”

“Any good?”

“So-so.”

“How many of you went?”

“About a dozen. Eleven, actually. Your chair was empty.”

“On Boone, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“In Chinatown?”

“Yes.”

“All the way down there, huh?”

“Bianca lives in the Quarter, you know that.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

The television sportscasters in America all had the same barber. Kling had thought the distinctive haircut was indigenous only to this part of the country, but he’d once gone down to Miami to pick up a guy on an extradition warrant, and the television sportscaster there had his hair cut the same way, as if someone had put a bowl over his head and trimmed all around it. He sometimes wondered if every sportscaster in America was bald and wearing a rug. Meyer Meyer had begun talking lately about buying a hairpiece. He tried to visualize Meyer with hair. He felt that hair would cost Meyer his credibility. Augusta was doing push-ups now. She did twenty-five of them every night. As the sportscaster read off the baseball scores, he watched her pushing against the carpet, watched the firm outline of her ass under the nylon robe, and unconsciously counted along with her. She stopped when he had counted only twenty-three; he must have missed a few. He got up and turned off the television set.

“Ah, blessed silence,” Augusta said.

“What time did the party break up?” he asked.

Augusta got to her feet. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

“Keep me awake,” he said.

“What time are you going in tomorrow?”

“It’s my day off.”

“Hallelujah,” she said. “You sure you don’t want any?”

“I’m sure.”

“I think I’ll have some,” she said, and started for the kitchen.

“What time did you say?” he asked.

“What time what?” she said over her shoulder.

“The party.”

She turned to him. “At Bianca’s, do you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“We left about seven-thirty.”

“And went across to Chinatown, huh?”

“Yes,” she said.

“By cab, or what?”

“Some of us went by cab, yes. I got a lift over.”

“Who with?”

“The Sanlessons,” she said, “you don’t know them,” and turned and walked out into the kitchen.

He heard her puttering around out there, taking the tin of coffee from the cabinet over the counter, and then opening one of the drawers, and moving the percolator from the stove to set it down noisily on the counter. He knew he would have to discuss it with her, knew he had to stop playing detective here, asking dumb questions about where she’d been and what time she got there and who she’d been with, had to ask her flat out, discuss the damn thing with her, the way he’d promised Carella he would. He told himself he’d do that the moment she came back into the room, ask her whether she was seeing somebody else, some other man. And maybe lose her, he thought. She went back into the bathroom again. He heard her opening and closing the door on the medicine cabinet. She was in there a long time. When finally she came out, she went into the kitchen and he heard her pouring the coffee. She came back into the living room then, holding a mug in her hand, and sat cross-legged on the carpet, and began sipping at the coffee.

He told himself he would ask her now.

He looked at her.

“What time did you leave the restaurant?” he asked.

“What is this?” she said suddenly.

“What do you mean?” he said. His heart had begun to flutter.

“I mean… what is this? What time did I leave Bianca’s, what time did I leave the restaurant — what the hell is this?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Just curious, huh? Is that some kind of occupational hazard? Curiosity? Curiosity killed the cat, Bert.”

“Oh? Is that right? Did curiosity…?”

“If you’re so damn interested in what time I got someplace, then why don’t you come with me next time, instead of running around the city looking for pills?”

“Pills?”

“You said Seconal, you said—”

“It was capsules.”

“I don’t give a damn what it was. I left Bianca’s at seven twenty-two and fourteen seconds, okay? I entered a black Buick Regal bearing the license plate…”

“Okay, Augusta.”

“… double-oh-seven, a license to kill, Bert, owned and operated by one Philip Santesson, who is the art director at…”

“I said okay.”

“… Winston, Loeb and Fields, accompanied by his wife, June Santesson, whereupon the suspect vehicle proceeded to Chinatown to join the rest of the party at a place called Ah Wong’s. We ordered—”

“Cut it out, Gussie!”

“No, goddammit, you cut it out! I left that fucking restaurant at ten-thirty and I caught a cab on Aqueduct, and came straight home to my loving husband who’s been putting me through a third-degree from the minute I walked through that door!” she shouted, pointing wildly at the front door. “Now, what the hell is it, Bert? If you’ve got something on your mind, let me know what it is! Otherwise, just shut up! I’m tired of playing cops and robbers.”

“So am I.”

“Then, what is it?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“I told you about the party, I told you we were supposed to…”

“I know you—”

“… be there at six, six-thirty.”

“All right, I know.”

“All right,” she said, and sighed, her anger suddenly dissipating.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I wanted to make love,” she said softly. “I came home wanting to make love.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“Instead…”

“I’m sorry.” He hesitated. Then, cautiously, he said, “We can still make love.”

“No,” she said, “we can’t.”

“Wh—?”

“I just got my period.”

He looked at her. And suddenly he knew she’d been lying about the party at Bianca’s and the ride crosstown with the Santessons and the dinner at Ah Wong’s and the cab she’d caught on Aqueduct, knew she’d been lying about all of it and putting up the same brave blustery front of a murderer caught with a smoking pistol in his fist.

“Okay,” he said, “some other time,” and went to the television set and snapped it on again.

Kling should have realized his marriage was doomed the moment he began tailing his wife.

Carella could have told him that in any marriage there was a line either partner simply could not safely cross. Once you stepped over that line, once you said or did something that couldn’t possibly be taken back, the marriage was irretrievable. In any good marriage, there were arguments and even fights — but you fought fair if you wanted the marriage to survive. The minute you started hitting below the belt, it was time to call the divorce lawyers. That’s why Carella had asked him to discuss this with Augusta.

Instead, Kling decided he would find out for himself whether she was seeing another man. He made his decision after a hot, sleepless night. He made it on the steamy morning of August 11, while he and Augusta were eating breakfast. He made it ten minutes before she left for her first assignment of the week.

He was a cop. Tailing a suspect came easily and naturally to him. Standing together at the curb outside their building, Augusta looking frantically at her watch, Kling trying to get a taxi at the height of the morning rush hour, he told her there was something he wanted to check at the office, and would probably be gone all day. Even though this was his day off, she accepted the lie; all too often in the past, he had gone back to the station house on his day off. He finally managed to hail a taxi, and when it pulled in to the curb, he yanked open the rear door for her.

“Where are you going, honey?” he asked.

“Ranger Photography, 1201 Goedkoop.”

“Have you got that?” Kling asked the cabbie through the open window on the curb side.

“Got it,” the cabbie said.

Augusta blew a kiss at Kling, and the taxi pulled away from the curb and into the stream of traffic heading downtown. It took Kling ten minutes to find another cab. He was in no hurry. He had checked Augusta’s appointment calendar while she was bathing before bed last night, when he was still mulling his decision. It had showed two sittings for this morning: one at Ranger Photography for nine, the other at Coopersmith Creatives for eleven. Her next appointment was at two in the afternoon at Fashion Flair, and alongside this she had penned in the words “Cutler if time.” Cutler was the agency representing her.

Goedkoop Avenue was in the oldest section of town, its narrow streets and gabled waterfront houses dating back to when the Dutch were still governing. The area lay cheek by jowl with the courthouses and municipal buildings in the Chinatown Precinct, but whereas the illusion was one of overlap, the business here was neither legal nor administrative. Goedkoop was in the heart of the financial district, an area of twentieth-century skyscrapers softened by the old Dutch warehouses and wharves, the later British churches and graveyards. Here and there in lofts along the narrow side streets, the artists and photographers had taken up residence, spilling over from the Quarter and the more recently voguish “Hopscotch” area, so called because the first gallery to open there was on Hopper Street, overlooking the Scotch Meadows Park. Standing across the street from 1201 Goedkoop, where he had asked the cabbie to let him out, Kling looked around for a pay phone, and then went into a cigar store on the corner of Goedkoop and Fields, where he looked up the phone number for Ranger Photography. From a phone booth near the magazine rack, he dialed the number and waited.

“Ranger,” a man’s voice said.

“May I speak to Augusta Blair, please?” he said. It rankled every time he had to use her maiden name, however damn professionally necessary it was.

“Minute,” the man said.

Kling waited.

When she came onto the line, he said, “Gussie, hi, I’m sorry to break in this way.”

“We haven’t started yet,” she said. “I just got here a few minutes ago. What is it, Bert?”

“I wanted to remind you, we’re having dinner with Meyer and Sarah tonight.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Oh, okay, then.”

“We talked about it at breakfast,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”

“Right, right. Okay, then. They’re coming by at seven for drinks.”

“Yes,” she said, “I have it in my book. Where are you now, Bert?”

“Just got here,” he said. “You want to try that new Italian joint on Trafalgar?”

“Yes, sure. Bert, I have to go. They’re waving frantically.”

“I’ll make a reservation,” he said. “Eight o’clock sound okay?”

“Yes, fine. Bye, darling, I’ll talk to you later.”

There was a click on the line. Okay, he thought, she’s where she’s supposed to be. He put the phone back on the hook, and then went out into the street again. It was blazing hot already, and his watch read only nine twenty-seven. He crossed the street to 1201 Goedkoop, and entered the building, checking to see if there was a side or a back entrance. Nothing. Just the big brass doors through which he’d filleted, and through which Augusta would have to pass when she left. He looked at his watch again, and then went across the street to take up his position.

She did not come out of the building until a quarter to eleven.

He had hailed a taxi five minutes earlier, and flashed the tin, and had told the cabbie he was a policeman on assignment and would want him to follow a suspect vehicle in just a few minutes. That was when he was still allowing Augusta at least twenty minutes to get to her next sitting, crosstown and uptown. Her calendar had listed it for eleven sharp; she would be late, that was certain. The cabbie had thrown his flag five minutes ago; he now sat picking his teeth and reading the Racing Form. As Augusta came out of the building, another taxi pulled in some three feet ahead of her. She raised her arm, yelled “Taxi!” and then sprinted for the curb, her shoulder bag flying.

“There she is,” Kling said. “Just getting in that cab across the street.”

“Nice dish,” the cabbie said.

“Yeah,” Kling said.

“What’d she do?”

“Maybe nothing,” Kling said.

“So what’s all the hysteria?” the cabbie asked, and threw the taxi in gear and made a wide U-turn in an area posted with “No U-Turn” signs, figuring, What the hell, he had a cop in the backseat.

“Not too close now,” Kling said. “Just don’t lose her.”

“You guys do this all the time?” the cabbie asked.

“Do what?”

“Ride taxis when you’re chasing people?”

“Sometimes.”

“So who pays for it?”

“We have a fund.”

“Yeah, I’ll just bet you have a fund. It’s the taxpayers are footing the bill, that’s who it is.”

“Don’t lose her, okay?” Kling said.

“I never lost nobody in my life,” the cabbie said. “You think you’re the first cop who ever jumped in my cab and told me to follow somebody? You know what I hate about cops who jump in my cab and tell me to follow somebody? What I hate is I get stiffed!. They run out chasing the guy, and they forget to pay even the tab, never mind a tip.”

“I won’t stiff you, don’t worry about it.”

“Sure, it’s only the taxpayers’ money, right?”

“You’d better pick it up a little,” Kling said.

The melodramatic chase (Kling could not help thinking of it as such) might have been more meaningful if Augusta’s taxi hadn’t taken her to 21 Lincoln Street, where Coopersmith Creatives had its studios — as he’d learned from the Isola directory the night before, while Augusta was still in the tub. Kling wanted nothing more than to prove his wife was innocent of any wrongdoing. Innocent till proved guilty, he reminded himself; the basic tenet of American criminal law. Beyond a reasonable doubt, he reminded himself. But at the same time, something inside him longed perversely for a confrontation with her phantom lover. Had the taxi taken her anywhere else in the city, her elaborate lie would have been exposed. Write down an appointment at Coopersmith Creatives for 11:00 a.m., and then fly off to meet some tall, handsome bastard at his apartment in a more fashionable section of town. But no, here she was at 21 Lincoln Street, getting out of the taxi and handing a wad of bills through the open window, and then dashing across the sidewalk to a plate-glass door decorated with a pair of thick diagonal red and blue stripes, the huge numerals 21 worked into the slanting motif. He handed the cabbie the fare and a fifty-cent tip. The cabbie said, “Will wonders never?” and pocketed the money.

Kling walked past the building, and glanced through the plate-glass door. She was no longer in the small lobby. He yanked open the door and walked swiftly to the single elevator at the rear of the building. The needle of the floor indicator was still moving, 5, 6, 7 — it stopped at 8. He found the directory for the building’s tenants on the wall just inside the entrance door. Coopersmith Creatives was on the eighth floor. No need to call her again with a trumped-up story reminding her of a dinner date. She was exactly where she was supposed to be.

The sitting was a short one. She came out of the building again at a little past noon, and walked directly to a plastic pay-phone shell on the corner. Watching from a doorway across the street, he saw her fishing in her bag for a coin, and dialing a number. He wondered if she was calling the squadroom. He kept watching. She was on the phone for what seemed a long time. When finally she hung up, she did not immediately step out of the shell. Puzzled, he kept watching, and then realized she had run out of coins and had asked the person on the other end to call her back. He did not hear the telephone when it rang, the street traffic was too noisy. But he saw her snatch the receiver from the hook and immediately begin talking again. She talked even longer this time. He saw her nodding. She nodded again, and then hung up. She was smiling. He expected her to hail another taxi, but instead she began walking uptown, and it took him another moment to realize she was heading for the subway kiosk on the next corner. He thought, protectively, Jesus, Gussie, don’t you know better than to use the subways in this city? and then he quickened his pace and started down the steps after her, catching sight of her at the change booth. A train was pulling in. He flashed his shield at the attendant in the booth and pushed through the gate to the left of the stiles just as Augusta entered one of the cars.

Someone had once told Kling that one of America’s celebrity novelists considered graffiti an art form. Maybe the celebrity novelist never had to ride the subways in this city. The graffiti covered the cars inside and out, obscuring the panels that told you where the train was headed and where it had come from, obfuscating the subway maps that told you where the various station stops were, obliterating the advertising placards, the windows, the walls, and even many of the seats. The graffiti spelled out the names of the spray-can authors (maybe that’s why the celebrity novelist considered it an art form), the streets on which they lived, and sometimes the “clubs” to which they belonged. The graffiti were a reminder that the barbarians were waiting just outside the gates and that many of the barricades had already fallen and wild ponies were galloping in the streets. The graffiti were an insult and a warning: we do not like your city, it is not our city, we shit on your city. Trapped in a moving cage of violent steel walls shrieking color upon color, Kling stood at the far end of the car, his back to Augusta, and prayed she would not recognize him if she chanced to glance in his direction.

On a normal subway tail, there’d have been two of them, one in each of the cars flanking the suspect’s car, standing close to the glass panels on the doors separating the cars, a classic bookend tail. In recent years, you couldn’t see too easily through the glass panel because it had been spray-painted over, but the idea was to squint through the graffiti, and keep your eye on your man, one of you on either side of him, so that you were ready to move out when he came to his station stop. Today, and curiously, the spray paint worked for Kling. Facing the glass panel in the door at the end of the car, he noticed that it had been spray-painted only on the outside, with a dark blue paint that made through-visibility impossible but that served to create a mirror effect. Even with his back to Augusta, he could clearly see her reflection.

She had taken a seat facing the station stops, and she craned for a look through the spray-painted squiggles and scrawls each time the train slowed. He counted nine stops before she rose suddenly at the Hopper Street station and moved toward the opening doors. He stepped out onto the platform the instant she did. She turned left and began walking swiftly toward the exit steps, her high heels clicking; his wife was in a goddamn hurry. He followed at a safe distance behind her, reached the end of the platform, pushed through the gate, and saw her as she reached the top of the stairs leading to the street, her long legs flashing, the shoulder bag swinging.

He took the steps up two at a time. The sunlight was blinding after the gloom of the subterranean tunnel. He looked swiftly toward the corner, turned to look in the opposite direction, and saw her standing and waiting for the traffic light to change. He stayed right where he was, crossing the street when she did, keeping a block’s distance between them. A sidewalk clock outside a savings and loan association told him it was already twelve-thirty. Augusta’s next appointment was uptown, at two. He guessed she planned to skip lunch. He hoped against hope that he was wrong. He’d have given his right arm if only she walked into any one of the delicatessens or restaurants that lined the streets in this part of the city. But she continued walking, swiftly, not checking any of the addresses on the buildings, seeming to know exactly where she was going. The area was a mélange of art galleries, boutiques, shops selling antiques, drug paraphernalia, sandals, jewelry, and unpainted furniture. She was heading toward the Scotch Meadows Park in the heart of the Hopscotch artists’ quarter. He’s an artist, Kling thought. The son of a bitch is an artist. He followed her for two blocks, to the corner of Hopper and Matthews. Then suddenly, without breaking her stride for an instant, without looking up at the numerals over the door — she was surely familiar with the address — she walked into one of the old buildings that had earlier been factories but which now housed tenants paying astronomical rents. He gave her a minute or two, checked out the hallway to make sure it was empty, and then entered the lobby. The walls were painted a dark green. There was no elevator in the building, only a set of iron-runged steps at the end of the lobby, reminiscent of the steps that climbed to the squadroom at the station house uptown. He listened, the way a good cop was taught to do, and heard the faint clatter of her heels somewhere on the iron rungs above. There was a directory of tenants in the lobby. He scanned it briefly, afraid Augusta might suddenly decide to reverse her direction and come down to discover him in the lobby.

He went outside again, and stood on the sidewalk. In addition to the street-level floor of the building, there were five floors above it. Four windows fronted the street on each of these upper stories, but he supposed most of the loft space was divided, and he couldn’t even guess how many apartments there might be. He jotted the address into his notebook — 641 Hopper Street — and then went into a luncheonette on the corner across the street, and sat eating a soggy hamburger and drinking a lukewarm egg cream while he watched the building. The clock on the grease-spattered wall read twelve-forty. He checked the time against his own watch.

It was one o’clock when he ordered another egg cream. It was one-thirty when he asked the counterman for an iced coffee. Augusta did not come out of the building until a quarter to two. She walked immediately to the curb and signaled to a cruising taxi. Kling finished his coffee, and then went into the building again and copied down all the names on the lobby directory. Six of them in all. Six suspects. There was no rush now; he suspected the damage had already been done. He took the subway uptown to Jefferson and Wyatt, where his wife had a two o’clock appointment at Fashion Flair. He waited outside on the sidewalk across the street from the building till she emerged at a little past five, and then followed her on foot crosstown to her agency on Carrington Street. He watched as she climbed the steps to the first floor of the narrow building.

Then he took the subway again, and went home.

The air conditioner was humming in the second-floor bedroom of the brownstone. The room was cool, but Kling could not sleep. It was two in the morning, and he wasn’t due back at work till four this afternoon, but he’d hoped to get up early again in the morning, in time to leave the apartment when Augusta did. He wanted to see if she visited her pal on Hopper Street again. Wanted to see if visiting her pal was a regular lunch-hour thing with her, quick matinee every day of the week when she wasn’t out screwing around instead of eating in a Chinese restaurant. He was tempted to confront her with it now, tell her he’d followed her to Hopper Street, tell her he’d seen her go into the building at 641 Hopper Street, ask her what possible business she could have had in that building. Get it over with here and now. He remembered what Carella had advised him.

“Augusta?” he whispered.

“Mm.”

“Gussie?”

“Mm.”

“You awake?”

“No,” she said, and rolled over.

“Gussie, I want to talk to you.”

“Go t’sleep,” Augusta mumbled.

“Gussie?”

“Sleep,” she said.

“Honey, this is important,” he said.

“Shit.”

“Honey…”

“Shit, shit, shit,” she said, and sat up and snapped on the bedside lamp. “What is it?” she said, and looked at the clock on the table. “Bert, it’s two o’clock, I have a sitting at eight-thirty, can’t this wait?”

“I really feel I have to talk to you now,” he said.

“I have to get up at six-thirty!” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but, Gussie, this has really been bothering me.”

“All right, what is it?” she said, and sighed. She took a pack of cigarettes from beside the clock, shook one free, and lighted it.

“I’m worried,” he said.

“Worried? What do you mean?” she said.

“About us,” he said.

“Us?”

“I think we’re drifting apart.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said.

“I think we are.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, we… for one thing, we don’t make love as often as we used to.”

“I’ve got my period,” Augusta said. “You know that.”

“I know that, but… well, that didn’t used to matter in the past. When we were first married.”

“Well,” she said, and hesitated. “I thought we were doing fine.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head.

“Is it the sex, is that it? I mean, that you think we don’t have enough sex?”

“That’s only part of it,” he said.

“Because if you, you know, if you’d like me to…”

“No, no.”

“I thought we were doing fine,” she said again, and shrugged, and stubbed out the cigarette.

“You know this girl who’s with the agency?” he said. Here it is, he thought. Here we go.

“What girl?”

“Little blond girl. She models junior stuff.”

“Monica?”

“Yeah.”

“Monica Thorpe? What about her?”

“She was out there at the beach that night of the party. On the Fourth. Do you remember?”

“So?”

“We got to talking,” Kling said.

“Uh-huh,” Augusta said, and reached for the pack of cigarettes again. Lighting one, she said, “Must’ve been fascinating, talking to that nitwit.”

“You smoke an awful lot, do you know that?” Kling said.

“Is that another complaint?” Augusta asked. “No sex, too much smoking, are we going to go through a whole catalogue at two in the morning?”

“Well, I’m only thinking of your health,” Kling said.

“So what about Monica? What’d you talk about?”

“You.”

“Me? Now, there’s a switch, all right. I thought Monica never talked about anything but her own cute little adorable self. What’d she have to say? Does she think I smoke too much?”

“She said she’s seen you around town with a lot of guys,” Kling said in a rush, and then caught his breath.

“What?”

“She said—”

“Oh, that rotten little bitch!” Augusta said, and angrily stubbed out the cigarette she’d just lighted. “Seen me around, seen me—”

“One guy in particular,” Kling said.

“Oh, one guy in particular, uh-huh.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Which guy?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, Gussie.”

“This is ridiculous,” Augusta said.

“I’m only repeating what she said.”

“And you believed her.”

“I… listened to her. Let’s put it that way.”

“But she couldn’t tell you which guy, in particular, I’m supposed to have been seen around town with, is that it, Bert?”

“No. I asked her, but—”

“Oh, you asked her. So you did believe her, right?”

“I was listening, Gussie.”

“To a juvenile delinquent who’s only been laid by every photographer in the entire city, and who has the gall—”

“Calm down,” he said.

“—to suggest that I’m—”

“Come on, Gussie.”

“I’ll kill that little bitch. I swear to God, I’ll kill her!”

“Then it isn’t true, right?”

“Right, it isn’t true. Did you think it was?”

“I guess so.”

“Thanks a lot,” Augusta said.

They were silent for several moments. He was thinking he would have to ask her about 641 Hopper Street, about why she’d gone this afternoon to 641 Hopper Street. He was thinking he’d done what Carella had suggested he should do, but he still wasn’t satisfied, he still didn’t have the answers that would set his mind at ease. He had only opened the can of peas, and now he had to spill them all over the bed.

“Gussie…” he said.

“I love you, Bert,” she said, “you know that.”

“I thought you did.”

“I do.”

“But you keep going places without me…”

“That was your idea, Bert, you know it was. You hate those parties.”

“Yeah, but still…”

“I won’t go anywhere else without you, okay?”

“Well…”

What about during the day? he wondered. What about when I’m out chasing some cheap thief, what about then? What about when I have the night watch? What will you be doing then? he wondered. The parties don’t mean a damn, he thought, except when you tell me you had dinner at a Chinese restaurant with a whole bunch of people, and Mr. Ah Wong himself tells me there was no redhead in Miss Mercier’s party. You should have been a brunette, Gussie, they don’t stand out as much in a crowd.

“I promise,” she said. “No place else without you. Now lie down.”

“There are still some things…”

“Lie down,” she said. “On your back.”

She pulled the sheet off of him. “Just be still,” she said.

“Gussie…”

“Ouiet.”

“Honey…”

“Shh,” she said. “Shh, baby. I’m gonna take care of you. Poor little neglected darling, Mama’s gonna take good care of you,” she said, and her mouth descended hungrily.

She came into the apartment at a little after midnight. He was sitting before the television set watching the beginning of an old movie.

“Hi,” she said from the front door, and then took her key from the lock, and came into the living room, and kissed him on top of his head.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“It was called off,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Some trouble with the hospital. They didn’t want us shooting outside. Said it would disturb the patients.”

“So where’d you end up shooting?” Kling asked.

“We didn’t. Had a big meeting instead. Up at Chelsea.”

“Chelsea?”

“Chelsea TV, Inc. Would you like a sandwich or something? I’m famished,” she said, and walked out to the kitchen.

He watched her as she went, kept watching her as she unwrapped a loaf of sliced bread at the kitchen counter. He could remember the first time they’d met, could remember all of it as if it were happening here and now, the call from Murchison on the desk downstairs, a Burglary Past at 657 Richardson Drive, Apartment 11D, see the lady.

He had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“What?” Augusta said from the kitchen.

“Chelsea TV.”

“The ad firm shooting the commercial.”

“Oh,” he said. “So what was the meeting about?”

“Rewriting, rescheduling, picking a new location — the same old jazz.” She licked the knife with which she’d been spreading peanut butter and said, “Mmm, you sure you don’t want some of this?”

“They needed you for that, huh?”

“For what?”

“Rewriting, and rescheduling, and—”

“Well, Larry wants me for the spot.”

“Larry?”

“Patterson. At Chelsea. He wrote the spot, and he’s directing it.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

“So we had to figure out my availability and all that.”

He found himself staring at her as she came back into the living room, the sandwich in her hand, just the way he’d stared at her on their first date so long ago, couldn’t stop staring at her. When finally she’d told him to stop it, he was forced to admit he’d never been out with a girl as beautiful as she was, and she simply said he’d have to get over it, he could still remember her exact words.

“Well, you’ll have to get over it. Because I think you’re beautiful, too, and we’d have one hell of a relationship if all we did was sit around and stare at each other all the time. I mean, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, and I’d like to think I’m permitted to sweat every now and then. I do sweat, you know.”

Yes, Gussie, he thought, you do sweat, I know that now, and you belch and you fart, too, and I’ve seen you sitting on the toilet bowl, and once when you got drunk with all those flitty photographer friends of yours, I held your head while you vomited, and I put you to bed afterward and wiped up the bathroom floor, yes, Gussie, I know you sweat, I know you’re human, but Jesus, Gussie, do you have to… do you have to do this to me, do you have to behave like… like a goddamn bitch in heat?

“… thinking of going down to South America to do it,” Augusta said.

“What?” Kling said.

“Larry. Shoot the spot down there. There’s snow down there now. Forget the symbolic mountain, do it on a real mountain instead.”

“What symbolic mountain?”

“Long General. Have you ever seen it? It looks like—”

“Yeah, a mountain.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“So you’ll be going to South America, huh?”

“Just for a few days. If it works out.”

“When?”

“Well, I don’t know yet.”

“When do you think it might be?”

“Pretty soon, I guess. While there’s still snow. This is like their winter, you know.”

“Yeah,” Kling said. “Like when? This month sometime?”

“Probably.”

“Did you tell him you’d go?”

“I don’t get many shots at television, Bert. This is a full minute, the exposure’ll mean a lot to me.”

“Oh, sure, I know that.”

“It’ll just be for a few days.”

“Who’ll be going down there?” he asked.

“Just me, and Larry, and the crew.”

“No other models?”

“He’ll pick up his extras on the spot.”

“I don’t think I’ve met him,” Kling said. “Have I met him?”

“Who?”

“Larry Patterson.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Augusta said, and looked away. “You sure you don’t want me to fix you something?”

“Nothing,” Kling said. “Thanks.”

He wanted to make sure he’d given her enough time to get here.

She had called him at the squadroom at nine o’clock, to say she was going to the movies after all, if he wouldn’t mind, and would be catching the nine twenty-seven show, just around the corner, he didn’t have to worry about her getting home safe, the avenue was well lighted. She had then gone on to reel off the name of the movie she’d be seeing, the novel upon which it was based, the stars who were in it, and had even quoted from a review she’d read on it. She had done her homework well.

It was now a little past ten.

The windows on the first floor of the Hopper Street building were lighted; Michael Lucas, the painter, was home. On the second floor, only the lights to the apartment shared by Martha and Michelle were on; Franny next door was apparently uptown with her Zooey. The lights on the third and fourth floors were out, as usual. Only one light binned on the Fifth floor, at the northernmost end of Bradford Douglas’s apartment — the bedroom light, Kling thought.

He waited.

In a little while, the light went out.

He crossed the street and rang the service bell. Henry Watkins, the superintendent he’d talked to this past Tuesday, opened the door when he identified himself.

“What’s it now?” Watkins asked.

“Same old runaway,” Kling said. “Have to ask a few more questions.”

“Help yourself,” Watkins said, and shrugged. “Let yourself out when you’re finished, just pull the door shut hard behind you.”

“Thanks,” Kling said.

He waited until Watkins went back into his own ground-floor apartment, and then he started up the iron-runged steps. On the first Moor, a stereo was blaring rock and roll music behind Lucas’s closed door. On the second floor, he heard nothing as he passed the door to the apartment shared by the two women. He walked past the studio belonging to Peter Lang, the photographer on the third floor, and then look the steps up to the fourth floor. The light was still out in the hallway there. He picked his way through the dark again, and went up the stairs to the fifth floor.

His heart was pounding.

He stood outside the door to apartment 51 and listened.

Not a sound.

He took his gun from his shoulder holster. Holding it in his right hand, he backed away from the door, and then leveled a kick at the lock. The door sprang open, wood splinters flying. He moved into the room swiftly, slightly crouched, the gun fanning the air ahead of him, light filtering into the room from under a door at the end of the hall, to his left. He was moving toward the crack of light when the door flew open and Bradford Douglas came into the hall.

He was naked, and holding a baseball bat in his right hand. He stood silhouetted in the lighted rectangle of the doorway, hesitating there before taking a tentative step into the gloom beyond.

“Police,” Kling said, “hold it right there!”

“Wh—?”

“Don’t move!” Kling said.

“What the hell? Who…?”

Kling moved forward into the light spilling from the bedroom. Douglas recognized him at once, and the fear he’d earlier felt — when he’d thought a burglar had broken in — was replaced by immediate indignation. And then he saw the gun in Kling’s hand, and a new fear washed over him, struggling with the indignation. The indignation triumphed. “What the hell do you mean, breaking down my door?” he shouted.

“I’ve got a warrant,” Kling said. “Who’s in that bedroom with you?”

“None of your business,” Douglas said. He was still holding the bat in his right hand. “What warrant? What the hell is this?”

“Here,” Kling said, and reached into his pocket. “Put down that bat.”

Without turning, Douglas tossed the bat back into the bedroom. Kling waited while he read the warrant. The bedroom fronted Hopper Street, and there were no fire escapes on that side of the building. Unless Augusta decided to jump all the way down to the street below, there was no hurry. He looked past Douglas, into the bedroom. He could not see the bed from where he was standing, only a dresser, an easy chair, a floor lamp.

“Attempted murder?” Douglas said, reading from the warrant. “What attempted murder?” He kept reading. “I don’t have this gun you describe, I don’t have any gun. Who the hell said I—?”

“I haven’t got all night here,” Kling said, and held out his left hand. “The warrant gives me the right to search both you and the apartment. It’s signed by—”

“No, just wait a goddamn minute,” Douglas said, and kept reading. “Where’d you get this information? Who told you I’ve got this gun?”

“Thai doesn’t matter, Mr. Douglas. Are you finished with that?”

“I still don’t—”

“Let me have it. And let’s take a look inside.”

“I’ve got somebody with me,” Douglas said.

“Who?”

“Your warrant doesn’t give you the right to—”

“We’ll worry about that later.”

“No, we’ll worry about it now,” Douglas said.

“Look, you prick,” Kling said, and brought the pistol up close to Douglas’s face, “I want to search that bedroom, do you understand?”

“Don’t get excited,” Douglas said, backing away.

“I am excited,” Kling said, “I’m very excited. Get out of my way.”

He shoved Douglas aside and moved into the bedroom. The bed was against the wall at the far end of the room. The sheets were thrown hack. The bed was empty.

“Where is she?” Kling said.

“Maybe the bathroom,” Douglas said.

“Which door?”

“I thought you were looking for a gun.”

“Which door?” Kling said tightly.

“Near the stereo there,” Douglas said.

Kling, went across the room. He tried the knob on the door there. The door was locked.

“Open up,” he said.

From behind the door, he could hear a woman weeping.

“Open up, or I’ll kick it in,” he said.

The weeping continued. He heard the small oiled click of the lock being, turned. He caught his breath and waited. The door opened.

She was not Augusta.

She was a small dark-haired girl with wet brown eyes, holding a bath towel to cover her nakedness.

“He’s got a warrant, Felice,” Douglas said behind him.

The girl kept weeping.

“Anybody else here?” Kling asked. He felt suddenly like a horse’s ass.

“Nobody,” Douglas said.

“I want to check the other rooms.”

“Go ahead.”

He went through the apartment, turning on lights ahead of him. He checked each room and every closet. There was no one else in the apartment. When he went back into the bedroom again, both Douglas and the girl had dressed. She sat on the edge of the bed, still weeping. Douglas stood beside her, trying to comfort her.

“When I was here Tuesday night, you told me you’d had a visitor the day before,” Kling said. “Who was your visitor?”

“Where does it say in your warrant…?”

“Mr. Douglas,” Kling said, “I don’t want to hear anymore bullshit about the warrant. All I want to know is who was here in this apartment between twelve-thirty and one forty-five last Monday.”

“I… I’d feel funny telling you that.”

“You’ll feel a lot funnier if I have to ask a grand jury to subpoena you,” Kling said. “Who was it?”

“A friend of mine.”

“Male or female?”

“Male.”

“What was he doing here?”

“I told him he could use the apartment.”

“What for?”

“He’s… there’s a girl he’s been seeing.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know her name.”

“Have you ever met her?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know what she looks like.”

“Larry says she’s gorgeous.”

“Larry?”

“My friend.”

“Larry who?” Kling said at once.

“Larry Patterson.”

Kling nodded.

“He’s married, so’s the broad,” Douglas said. “He needed a place to shack up, I’ve been lending him the pad here. I do a lot of work for him. He’s one of the creative people at—”

“Chelsea TV,” Kling said. “Thanks, Mr. Douglas, I’m sorry for the intrusion.” He looked at the weeping girl. “I’m sorry, miss,” he mumbled, and quickly left the apartment.

So now it was all over.

Face her down when she got home tonight after the “movie” she’d gone to see, tell her he knew she’d been with this man named Larry Patterson last Monday, enjoying a quick roll in the hay in a borrowed apartment, tell her he knew all about her and her little married playmate, had seen through the he about the never-scheduled television commercial outside Long General, confront her with the indisputable fact that the man she’d be accompanying to South America was this man Larry Patterson, her lover, tell her, get it over with, end it. End it.

It was almost eleven-thirty when he got back to the apartment.

He inserted his key into the lock, and then opened the door. The apartment was dark, he reached for the switch just inside the door, and turned on the lights. He was bone-weary and suddenly very hungry. He was starting toward the kitchen when he heard the sound in the bedroom.

The sound was stealthy, the sound a burglar might make when suddenly surprised by an unexpected arrival home, nothing more than a whisper really, a rustle beyond the closed bedroom door; he readied for the shoulder holster and pulled his gun. The gun was a .38 Smith & Wesson Centennial Model with a two-inch barrel and a rapacity of five shots. He knew this was not a burglar in there, this was Augusta in there, and he also knew that she was not alone, and hoped he was wrong, and his hand began sweating on the walnut grip of the pistol.

He almost turned and left the apartment. He almost holstered the gun, and turned his back on that closed bedroom door, on what was beyond that closed bedroom door, almost walked out of the apartment and out of their life as it had been together, once, too long ago, almost avoided the confrontation, and knew it could not be avoided, and became suddenly frightened. As he crossed the room to the bedroom door, the gun was trembling in his fist. There could have been a hatchet murderer beyond that door, the effect would have been much the same.

And then the fear of confrontation gave way to something alien and even more terrifying, a blind, unreasoning anger, the stranger here in his own home, the intruder in his bedroom, the lover, who was Larry Patterson, here with his wife, the trap sprung, she thought he would be working the night watch, she knew she would be safe till morning, there hadn’t been a movie at all, there was only the movie here in this bedroom, his bedroom, an obscene pornographic movie behind that closed door.

He took the knob in his left hand, twisted it, and opened the door. And he hoped, in that final instant, that he would be wrong again, he would not find Augusta in this room, not find Augusta with her lover but instead find a small brown-eyed girl who went by the name of Felice or Agnes or Charity, a mistake somehow, a comedy of errors they would all laugh about in later years.

But of course it was Augusta.

And Augusta was naked in their bed, absurdly clutching the sheet to her breasts, hiding her shame, protecting her nakedness from the prying eyes of her own husband, her green eyes wide, her hair tousled, a fine sheen of perspiration on the marvelous cheekbones that were her fortune, her lip trembling the way the gun in his hand was trembling. And the man with Augusta was in his undershorts and reaching for his trousers folded over a bedside chair, the man was short and wiry, he looked like Genero, with curly black hair and brown eyes wide in terror, he looked just like Genero, absurdly like Genero, but he was Larry Patterson, he was Augusta’s lover, and as he turned from the chair where his trousers were draped, he said only, “Don’t shoot,” and Kling leveled the gun at him.

He almost pulled the trigger. He almost allowed his anger and his humiliation and his despair to rocket into his brain and connect there with whatever nerve endings might have signaled to the index finger of his right hand, cause it to tighten on the trigger, cause him to squeeze off one shot and then another and another at this stranger who was in that moment a target as helpless as any of the cardboard ones on the firing range at the Academy — do it, end it!

But then — and this was against every principle that had ever been drilled into him throughout the years he’d spent on the force, never give up your gun, hang on to your gun, your gun is your life, save the gun, keep the gun — he suddenly hurled it across the room as though it had become malevolently burning in his hand, threw it with all his might, surprised when it collided with a vase on the dresser top, smashing it, porcelain shards splintering the air like debris of his own dead marriage.

His eyes met Augusta’s.

Their eyes said everything there was to say, and all there was to say was nothing.

Heat, 1981