Nocturne

"I know where I'm going. And it's morning." "By me, it ain't morning till the sun comes up."

Yolande shrugged. It had been a pretty good night for her, and She was exhausted.

"Why you going to Diamondback?" the cabbie asked. His name on the plastic-enclosed permit on the dashboard to the right of the meter read MAX LIEBOWITZ. Jewish, Yolande thought. Last dying breed of big-city cabdrivers. Nowadays, most of your cabbies were from India or the Middle east. Some of them couldn't speak English. None knew where Duckworth Avenue was. Yolande knew where it was. She had blown a Colombian drug on Duckworth Avenue in Calm's Point. He had given her a five-hundred-dollar tip. She would never

Duckworth Avenue in her life. She wondered if Max Liebowitz knew where Duckworth Avenue was. She wondered if Max Liebowitz knew she herself was Jewish.

"I didn't hear your answer, miss," he said.

"I live up there," she said.

"You live in Diamondback?" he said, and shot a glance at her in the rearview mirror.

"Yes."

Actually Jamal lived in Diamondback. All she did was live with Jamal. Jamal Stone, no relation to Sharon, who had built a career by flashing her wookie. Yolande flashed her wookie a thousand times a day. Too bad she couldn't act. Then again, neither could a lot of girls who were good at flashing their wookies. "How come you live up there?" Liebowitz asked. "I like paying cheap rent," she said.

Which wasn't exactly true. Jamal paid the rent. But he also took every penny she earned. Kept her in good shit, though. Speaking of which, it was getting to be about that time. She looked at her watch. Twenty-five to six. Been a hard day's night.

"Worth your life, a white girl living up there," Liebowitz said.

Nice Jewish girl, no less, Yolande thought, but did not say it because she couldn't bear seeing a grown man cry. A nice Jewish girl like you? Giving blow jobs to passing motorists at fifty bucks a throw. A Jewish girl? Suck your what? She almost smiled.

"So what are you then?" Liebowitz asked. "A dancer?"

"Yeah," she said, "how'd you guess?"

"Pretty girl like you, this hour of the night, I'm a dancer in one of the topless bars."

"Yeah, you hit it right on the head."

"I'm not a mind reader," Liebowitz said, chuckling. "You were standing in front of the Stardust when you hailed me."

Which was where she'd given some guy from Connecticut a twenty-dollar hand job while the girts onstage rattled and rolled.

"Yep," she said.

Tipped the manager two bills a night to let her freelance in the joint. Pissed the regulars workin there, but gee, tough shit, honey.

"So where you from originally?" Liebowitz asked.

unlo, she said.

"I knew it wasn't here. You don't have the accent." She almost told him her father owned a deli in Cleveland. She didn't. She almost told him she had once been to Paris, France. She didn't. Yolande Marie was her mother's idea. Yolande Marie Marx, Known in the trade as Groucho, just kidding. known in the trade as Marie St. Claire, which Jamal had come up with, lot of difference it made to the johns on wheels. My name is Marie St. Claire, case you're interested. Nice to meet you, Marie, take it deeper.

She had nightmares about a john pulling up in a blue station wagon and she leans in the window and "Hey, hiya. Wanna party?" and she gets in the car and unzips his fly and it's her father. Dreamt that on average twice a week. Woke up in a cold sweat every time. Dear Dad, I am still working here in the toy shop, it's a shame you never get out of Cleveland now

that Mom's bedridden, maybe I'll be home for Yom Kippur. Sure. Take it deeper, hon.

"So do you have to do anything else at that bar?" "How do you mean?"

"You know," Liebowitz said, and looked at her in the rearview mirror. "Besides dancing?"

She looked back at him. He had to be sixty years old, short bald-headed little fart could hardly see over the steering wheel. Hitting on her. Next thing you knew he'd offer to barter. Fare on the meter was now six dollars and thirty cents. He'd agree to swap it for a quickie in the backseat. Nice Jewish man. Unzip his fly, out would pop her father. "So do you?" "Do what?"

"Other things beside dancing topless." "Yeah, I also sing topless," she said. "Go on, they don't sing in those places." "I do."

"You're kidding me."

"No, no. You want to hear me sing, Max?"

"Nah, you don't sing."

"I sing like a bird," Yolande said, but did not demonstrate. Liebowitz was thinking this over, trying to determine whether or not she was putting him on.

"What else do you really do?" he asked. "Besides sing and dance? Topless."

She was beginning to think it might not be a bad idea to turn another trick on the way home. But not for the six-ninety now on the meter. How much cash you carrying, Zayde? she wondered. Want a piece of nineteen-year-old Jewish-girl ass you can tell your

grandchildren about next Hanukkah? She thought her father again, decided no. Still, talk old Max into a hundred for a quick blow job, might be worth it. Twice the going price for a street girl, but oh such tender goods, what do you say, Granpa?

"What'd you have in mind?" she asked coyly.

The black man in the black jeans, black leather jacket, black boots, and black watch cap appeared in front of them like an avenging angel of death. They almost all three of them peed on his boots, he was standing that close.

"Now what do you call this?" he asked rhetorically.

"We call it pissing in the gutter," Richard the Second said.

"I call it disrespect for the neighborhood," the black man said. "That what the letter P stand for? Pissing."

"Join us, why don't you?" Richard the Third suggested.

"My name is Richard," Richard the First said,

zipping up and extending his hand to the black man. "So is mine" Richard the Second said. "Me, too," Richard the Third said.

"As it happens," the black man said, "my name is Richard, too."

Which now made four of them.

Bloody murder was only an hour and sixteen minutes away.

Abdul Sikhar lived in a two-bedroom Calm's Point apartment with five other men from Pakistan. They had all known each other in their native town of

Rawalpindi, and they had all come to the United States at different times over the past three years. Two of the men had wives back home. A third had a girlfriend there. Four of the men worked as cabdrivers and were in constant touch by CB radio all day long. Whenever they babbled in Urdu, they made their passengers feel as if a terrorist act or a kidnapping was being plotted. The four cabbies drove like the wind in a camel's mane. None of them knew it was against the law to blow your horn in this city. They would have blown it anyway. Each and every one of them could not wait till he got out of this fucking city in this fucking United States of America. Abdul Sikhar felt the same way, though he did not drive like the wind. What he did was pump gas and wash cars at Bridge Texaco.

When he answered the door at ten to six that morning, he was wearing long woolen underwear and along-sleeved woolen top. He looked like he needed a shave but he was merely growing a beard. He was twenty years old, give or take, a scrawny kid who hated this country and who would have wet the bed at night if he wasn't sleeping in it with two other guys. The detectives identified themselves. Nodding, Sikhar stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him, whispering that he did not wish to awaken his "mates," as he called them, an archaic term from the days of British rule back home, those bastards. When he learned what their business here was, he excused himself and went back inside for a moment, stepping into the hallway again a moment later, wearing along black overcoat over his long johns, unlaced black shoes on his feet. They stood now beside a grimy hall

window that sputtered orange neon from outside. Sikhar lighted a cigarette. Neither Carella or Hawes smoked. They both wished they could arrest him.

"So what is this about a pistol?" he asked

"Everyone wishes to know about this pistol." "The feathers, too," Carella said. "And the bird shit," Hawes said.

"Such a mess," Sikhar agreed, nodding, puffing the cigarette, holding it the way Peter Lorre did in Maltese Falcon. He himself looked something ofa mess, but perhaps that was because the deveh beard looked like a smudge on his face

"What kind of feathers were they, would you know?" Hawes asked.

"Pigeon feathers, I would say."

"Why would you say that?"

"There are many pigeons near the bridge."

"And you think some of them got in the car somehow, is that it?"

"I think so, yes. And panicked. Which is why shit all over everything."

"Pretty messy in there, huh?" Carella said.

"Oh yes."

"How do you suppose they got out again?" Hawes asked.

"Birds have ways," Sikhar said.

He looked at the men mysteriously.

They looked back mysteriously.

"How about the gun?" Carella said.

"What gun?"

"You know what gun."

Sikhar dropped the cigarette to the floor, ground it out under the sole of one black shoe, and took a crumpled package of Camels from the right-hand pocket of the long black coat. "Cigarette?" he asked, offering the pack first to Carella and next to Hawes, both of whom refused, each shaking his head somewhat violently. Sikhar did not get the subtle message. He fired up at once. Clouds of smoke billowed into the hallway, tinted orange by the sputtering neon outside the window. For some peculiar reason, Carella thought of Dante's inferno. "The gun," he prompted.

"The famous missing pistol," Sikhar said. "I know nothing about it."

"You spent an hour or so in that car, didn't you? Cleaning up the mess?"

"A terrible mess," Sikhar agreed.

"Did the birds get anywhere near the glove compartment?"

"No, the mess was confined exclusively to the backseat."

"So you spent an hour or so in the backseat of the car." "At least."

"Never once went into the front seat?"

"Never. Why would I? The mess was in the backseat."

"I thought, while you were cleaning the car..." "No."

"You might have gone up front, given the dashboard a wipe..."

"No,"

"The glove compartment door, give everything a wipe up there, too."

"No, I didn't do that." "Then you wouldn't know whether the compartment was unlocked or not, would you?"

"I would not know."

"What time did you start work on the car?"

"When I got there. Jimmy showed me the mess told me to clean it up. I got immediately to work." "What time was that?" "About seven o'clock." "On Saturday morning."

"Yes, Saturday. I work six days a week," he said pointedly, and looked at his watch. It was now close six o'clock on Sunday morning. Dawn would come in an hour and fifteen minutes.

"Anybody else come near that car while you were in it?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Jose Santiago."

The thing Richard the Fourth did up here in Diamondback was sell crack cocaine to nice little like the three Richards he was now leading up the street to an underground bar where he promised them there'd be girls aplenty. Richard's family name was Cooper, and he was sometimes called Coop by people who wanted to get friendly with him, not knowing he despised the name Coop. This was the same as some jackass coming up to some dude and slamming him on the back and yelling in his face, "Hey, remember me,

Sal?" Only his fuckin name ain't Sal, dig? Richard's name was Richard, and that was what he preferred being called, thank you. Certainly not Coop, nor Rich or Richie neither, nor even Ricky or Rick. Just plain Richard. Like the three Richards with him now, who he was telling about these quite nice jumbo vials he happened to have in his pocket, would they care for a taste at fifteen a pop?

The crack and the money were changing hands, black to white and white to black, when the taxi pulled up to the curb, and along-legged white girl in a fake-fur jacket and red leather boots stepped out. The driver's window rolled down. The driver looked somewhat dazed; as if he'd been hit by a bus. "Thanks, Max," the girl said, and blew him a kiss, and was swiveling onto the sidewalk, a slender, red, patent leather bag under her arm, when Richard Cooper said, "Hey, Yolande, you jess the girl we lookin for."

Fifty-six minutes later, she was dead.

She has done three-ways before, but this is what promises to be a four-way and then possibly if Richard puts in his two cents. She knows from the hood, he deals good shit. In fact, he used to be in business together with Jamal for some time they went their separate ways. She is not eager for this to turn into a five-way with Richard the equation, but as Jamal is fond of saying, "Business is business and never the twain shall meet."

At the same time, it's been a very busy night, God, and she's really very sleepy, and would like nothing better than to go back to the pad and present Jamal with the spoils of the night, so to speak, and cuddle with him a little, he is very good at cuddlin when you lay almost two thousand bucks on him. Richard here is talking six hundred for the preppies here, two hundred apiece for the next hours, and giving her the nod to indicate he must wet his wick a bit, too, in which case he will put into the pot five jumbos.

What he is suggesting and she is considering seriously now, even though she is bone-tired and besides is that they all go up to his place to do crack and get down to realities, sistuh, you hear what I'm sayin? She is thinking six hundred and the jumbos, which at today's market price is fifteen for the red-topped vials, and wondering how she can escalate

thing a bit higher, it being so late at night or so early in the morning, depending on where you're coming from. She wonders if they'll go for a big one and ten jumbos. She decides that's too far a reach. Instead, she tells Richard and the three preppies who are nodding sympathetically while ripping off her clothes with their eyes tells Richard she's been out since eleven last night and it's been along one, bro, so maybe we ought to just pass unless we can sweeten the pot a little, hm? He asks her what she means by sweeten it, how sweet does she wish to sweeten it, and she decides to push the envelope, what the hell.

"If you'll be joining the party," she says, I'll need ten jumbos..."

"No problem," Richard says at once.

Jesus! she thinks.

"And a grand from the college boys here."

The preppies are flattered that she thinks they'-re from Princeton or Yale instead of some shiny little boys' school in Vermont or wherever the fuck. But the thousand-dollar tab sticks in their craw, she can see that, so she says at once, "Though you're all so cute, I might do it for nine."

One of the preppies she later learns they're all named Richard, this is going to be some kind of confusing gang bang immediately says, "Make it eight," but she knows he's just trying to sound like his banker father in Michigan or wherever, so she says, "I can't do it for less than nine. Hey, you're all real cute, but..."

"How about eight-fifty?" one of the other Richards 'asks.

"It has to be nine or I'm out of here," she says. She does not know, at that juncture in time, she walks right this minute, she will still be al fifty-one minutes from now. She does not begin realize she's in serious danger until it is almost late, when things begin getting out of hand. This much later. Right now, they are haggling over and if she walks she still has a shot at survival. boys go into a kind of a football huddle she learns they're all stars on their school's team come clapping out of it, big financial over, big white Ps on the back of their parkas, and one of them says, "Will you accept traveler's check, Richard busts out laughing. Laughing as Yolande says, "Done deal."

She has done three-ways before and in fact enjoyed some of them, especially when it's two and a guy. With most of the girls you fake it, you know, you make a lot of lapping, slurping sounds, you moan Oh yeah, honey, do it, while nobody's anything to anybody. But the john gets all thinking he's got two hot lezzies here really getting off. With some girls in a three-way, though, you're really doing what the john thinks you're doing, and can be quite enjoyable, really, all that tongue because another girl knows just where the target is, knows just which buttons to push, so yeah it can be really really good.

Two guys and a girl, you kind of lose control. that they get all macho on you, one of them fucking you from behind while you're blowing the other one and they start saying, You love it, don't you, cunt?

It gets degrading when there are two guys flexing, their muscles and trying to prove how big their cocks are. It's not that she thinks she's a princess or anything, she knows what she does for a living, she knows she's a fucking whore, I mean, she knows that. It's just that when there are two guys, she really begins to feel used, you know, she really begins to feel they have no respect at all for her, and she comes away with a dirty feeling afterward, no matter how much she tells herself she was detached the whole time. It's that they used her, is all. They flat out used her.

So now, here in Richard's pad where she remembers coming to a party once with Jamal when the two of them were first starting out in business together, dealing pot to kindergarten kids, that's a

:. joke, son, they never went near any of the schools, you think they're crazy? Can remember coming to a party here, but not this kind of party with three white preppies and a black guy has a shlong the size of a python. The only black guy she does it with is Jamal and that's because he takes care of her and she loves him. She knows how big black guys can be, and she gets sore even after she does it with Jamal, which is not too frequently because business is business and never the twain shall meet.

Anyway, what she shares with Jamal transcends mere sex, he was the one took her under his wing when she got off the bus from Cleveland, he's the one makes sure nobody hurts her. Anybody gets funny with her, she tells Jamal about it and he breaks the guy's legs. Besides, Jamal is regularly fuckin this other girl he takes care of,: whose name is Carlyle, which Jamal

gave her. Carlyle is black and very beautiful,

can understand the attraction. Occasionally they three-ways together. Jamal Stone and Carlyle

(which he also gave her) and Marie St. Claire

Sometimes Yolande wonders how she ever got into this stuff, boy. But listen, what the hell.

She is wondering now how she got into this tonight when she's so goddamn bone-weary, but ,

course nine bills is nine bills, not to mention the jumbos, which are worth a cool hundred and

Plus, the preppies are sharing their stash with everybody beaming up to the Enterprise on the nickel, until they're all sitting stoned in their underwear and grinning at each other, Jesus the shlong on Richard, the black Richard, which is she discovers they're all four of them named Richard how cute. Richard the black Richard is standin front of her now and idly gliding the head of his dick over her lips, while a preppie on either side

is grabbing a tit and the third preppie is watching jerking off in preparation.

'

So far, no one has called her cunt or bitch.

Or cocksucker is a favorite, too.

Later, she will wonder how this got so out of hand. Nobody seemed to know where Jose Santiago was.

This was now six-forty in the morning. His mother didn't know, none of his friends knew, the guy at the counter at the local hangout hamburger joint didn't know, nobody knew, the whole neighborhood suddenly gone deaf, dumb, and blind. The police

took this to mean that everybody knew where Santiago was, but you are The Man, man, and nobody going to tell you, AEÊsave for

a faint hint of mom gloam only seemed to touch the sky. It was still thirty-five minutes till dawn, the night refused to yield. The bleak January morning was still flat, dull and dark, but there was activity in the streets right now. Even on a Sunday, there was work to be done in this city, and early risers were beginning to move sluggishly toward the subways and the bus stops,

passing revelers and predators who were just now heading home to bed. The homeless, sensing dawn, anticipating the safety that would come with full light, were already crawling back into their cardboard boxes.

Outside a candy store on the corner of Santiago's block, a man was carrying in a tied bundle of newspapers. He was still wearing his overcoat and earmuffs. The scalloped edge of the furled green awning over the front of the store read:, HErnandez VARIETY- NEWSPAPERS LOTTERY-COFFEE. They assumed he was Hernandez himself; there was a bustling air of ownership about him. The store lights beckoned warmly behind him. Coffee sounded pretty good just about now.

"Cops, right?" Hernandez asked the moment they stepped inside.

"Right," Hawes said.

"How did I know, right?"

Not a trace of an accent. Hawes figured him for a third-generation Puerto Rican, grandfather probably came over on the Marine Tiger with the first wave of

immigrants from the island. Probably had kids at college.

"How did you know?" he asked. Hernandez shrugged as if to indicate he wasted valuable time answering such a ridicuh question. He had still not taken off the overcoat and earmuffs. The store was cold. The entire universe cold this morning. Ignoring them, he busied himself cutting the cords around the newspaper bundles. big headline on the morning tabloid read:

PIANIST

SLAIN

On the so-called quality paper, big headlines reserved for acts of war or national disaster. smaller headline over a boxed article in the right corner of the front page read:

VIRTUOSO MURDERED

SVETLANA

DYALOVICH VICTIM OF

SHOOTING

Easy come, easy go.

"You serving coffee yet?" Carella asked. "Should be ready in a few minutes."

"Know anybody named Jose Santiago?" asked.

What the hell, they'd already asked everyone else the neighborhood. He looked to Carella for

Carella was watching the hot plate on a narrow shelf behind the counter. Brewing coffee dripped into the pot. The aroma was almost too much. "Why, what'd he do?" Hernandez asked. "Nothing. We just want to talk to him."

Hernandez shrugged again. The shrug said that this also too ridiculous even to acknowledge. "Do you know him?" Hawes persisted.

"He comes in here," Hernandez admitted offhandedly. "Know where he is right now?" "No, where?"

Little joke there. Hee hee hee.

"Do you or don't you?" Hawes asked.

They were smelling something besides coffee here. "Why? What'd he do?" "Nothing."

Hernandez looked at them.

"Really," Hawes said.

"Then try the roof of his building. He keeps pigeons."

Richard, the black Richard, has already come all over her face, as a matter of fact, which she didn't quite appreciate, but he's the one set up the party, after all. He's sitting in a corner now, a blanket around him, watching television, so she knows for sure he's not the one who starts this thing going haywire. For once you can't blame the black guy, mister.

She doesn't think it's the Richard with the red hair, either, because he's sort of content to keep toying with her right tit, which she has to admit she has terrific knockers, even back in Cleveland they said so. The Richard with the dark hair is now sticking his fingers inside her, searching for her clit, good luck, mister, the condition you're in. He's very hard. She has his cock in her hand and she is stroking it pretty fiercely, hoping she can bring him off this way, get this thing over with, go home to bed. But he's spreading her legs

now, and trying to climb into her, they're all so stoned nobody knows how to do diddly, except the preppie who's licking her nipple like it's his mother's. He knows just what he's doing, and seems to be having a nice time doing it, maybe he'll come this way, she certainly hopes so, kill two with one stone here.

So it must be the blond Richard who pulls the freezer bag over her head.

She knows at once that she is going to die.

She knows this is going to be her worst nightmare realized.

She is going to suffocate inside a plastic freezer bag one of those sturdy things you stuff a leg of lamb in not the kind of thin plastic that clings to your face, warn you to keep away from children. No, she's n going to die with plastic clinging to her nostrils her lips. Instead, she's going to exhaust all the inside the bag, she's going to die that way, there'll be no more oxygen left to breathe inside the bag, she's going to die... "No, cunt," he says, and takes the bag from her and sticks his cock in her mouth.

She is actually grateful for the cock. She will have a cock any day of the week over a freezer bag on her head, accept the one in her mouth and the one in her hand and the one in her vagina she always thinks of it as her vagina, it is her vagina, thank you, same as vagina on a lady in London. So happy is she that the freezer bag isn't on her head anymore, she will even accept black Richard's big shlong again, if he would like to bring it over right this minute. But no, black

Richard seems content to be lying there in the corner all huddled up, watching television. She wonders if she should yell over to him that this preppie son of a bitch tried to scare her a minute ago by putting a freezer bag over her head.

"Cocksucker," the preppie says.

And pulls the bag over her head again.

Steaming cardboard containers of coffee in their hands, the detectives climbed the six stories to the roof of Santiago's building, opened the fire door, and stepped outside. The city almost caught them by surprise. They almost found it beautiful. They stood by the parapet, sipping their coffees, staring down at the lights spread below them like a nest of jewels. Darkness was fading fast. On the far side of the roof, they could hear the gentle cooing of Santiago's pigeons. They walked over to the coop.

The perching pigeons were hunkered down inside their grey and white overcoats.

The floor of the coop was covered with feathers and shit.

Santiago was nowhere in sight.

The time was 6:5.

In three minutes, Yolande would be dead.

The preppie whose cock was in her hand a minute ago now has her by the right wrist, and the one who was fucking her has hold of her left wrist, and now they all join in the fun, the three Richards, two of them keeping her pinned down, the third one making sure the bag is in place over her head and tight around her

neck. She is going to die, she knows she is going to die. She knows that in a minute, in thirty seconds,

two seconds, she will run out of breath and... "No, bitch."

And he yanks off the bag, and sticks his cock in her mouth again.

This is a game for them, she thinks. She hopes.

a game. Put the bag on, take the bag off. They read someplace that depriving a person of air heightens the sexual pleasure. She hopes. But why are they calling her cunt and bitch and shit face why is one of them pushing... "No!" she screams, but it is too late, he has shoved it inside her, whatever it is, hurting her, tearin her, no, please, and now the plastic bag is on her again, and she hears over the ringing in her ears Richard from across the room mumbling, "Hey, whut's... ?" and she screams inside the bag, tries to scream inside the bag, and she hears black yelling, "The fuck you doin?" and she thinks Help! and she screams "Help!" inside the bag, and this time she knows she is going to die, this time the pain is so overwhelming, why is he doing this to her twisting something jagged and sharp inside her, she is going to die, please, she wants to die, she breathes, she can't bear it a moment... "No, cunt!" he shouts, and yanks the bag from head.

The rush of oxygen is so sweet.

She feels something Sticky,and wet on her lips.

She thinks this will be the end of it. They will leave her alone now. She hurts too badly. She is too torn and

ragged below, she knows she is hemorrhaging below. Please, she thinks. Just leave me alone now. Please. Enough.

"You guys crazy?"

Richard.

Good, she thinks. This is the end of it. But the bag is over her head again. And they are holding her down again.

They were back in the car maybe two or three minutes when they caught a 10-29 to proceed to 841 St. Sebastian Avenue. The dispatcher wouldn't call this a homicide for sure because all she had was a dead body in the alleyway there and nobody yet knew what the cause of death was. Could've been a heart attack there in the alley. So she told them the blues had a corpse there, and mentioned that she had also notified Homicide just in case, which is how Monoghan and Monroe got into the act for the second time that night.

The time was a quarter past seven, the sun was just coming up, sort of. This wasn't going to be any rosy-fingered dawn, that was for sure. This was just the end of another hard day's night, the shift almost having run its course, except that now they did, as it turned out, have another homicide on their hands. The freezer bag over the girl's head told them that.

The girl looked like a hooker, but nowadays it was difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. You got Hollywood starlets showing up at the Academy Awards wearing dresses that made them look like streetwalkers, but you also got bona fide prosties standing on the

corner looking like apple-cheeked college girls

Minnesota, so who was to say for sure? "A hooker," Monoghan said. "For sure," Monroe said.

"Probably her pimp done her," Monoghan suggested.

"That's why her handbag's gone."

Which was keen deduction. Carella figured if he hung around long enough, he might learn something. He was wondering why, if this had been a pimp, why the guy hadn't simply stabbed her. Or shot her. Why fancy? Why a freezer bag over her head? It was obvious that someone, pimp or whoever, had dragged her into the alley. She was lying on her back in a pool of coagulating blood, but bloody smears led from the curb, where the track seemed to have begun. someone driven her here, and then dragged her to where she now lay beside a bank of garbage cans and stacks of black-bagged garbage?

"She might have been pregnant," speculated. "All that blood."

"Nowadays, people kill you so they can tear the baby out of your belly," Monoghan said.

"It's ancient times all over again," Monroe said.

"There's no civilization anymore," Monoghan said. "Fucking savages nowadays," Monroe said, with more feeling than Carella had ever thought he'd possessed.

In the dim light of a cold grey dawn, the girl's face under the plastic freezer bag was as white as the ice on the alley floor.

They had wrapped her in the sheet before carrying her down to black Richard's car, and then had driven a mile uptown on St. Sab's, where they'd dragged her into the alley still wrapped in it. But black Richard knew cops had ways of tracing sheets and shit, and he'd convinced the others to roll her out of it before they left her there by the garbage cans, rats big as cats running all over the alley, made him shiver all over

again just to think of them.

Fuckin honkies wanted no part of him once they'd used his car to drop the bitch off, but he reminded them it wasn't him had suffocated her, wasn't him had torn her open, was three fuckin rich guys named

Richard, from a school named Pierce Academy,

which was stitched on the front of all their fuckin P

parkas the fuckin football on the back, dig? So either they helped him clean up the car and the apartment and get rid of the bloody sheet, or whut he was gonna do,

ole black Richard here, would run straight to the cop shop. They believed him. Maybe cause he also showed them a switchblade knife bigger than any of their dicks and tole them he was gonna circumscribe them real bad if they tried to split on him now.

Ended up they'd tidied up the apartment like four speed queens come to work from a cleaning service.

Weren't no car washes open this time of night, day,

whatever the fuck, and Richard didn't want to go to no garage, neither, blood all over the backseat that way,

he never knew anybody could bleed that bad. He remembered a movie he'd seen one time, blood and shit all over a car from a shootin inside it, this wasn't like that, but there was plenty blood, anyway, and he

didn't know any big-shot gangster he could call come set it straight. All he knew was these honkies better help him or their name was shit.

In movies and on television, blacks and whites all pals and shit, that was all make-believe. In real life you never saw blacks and whites together hardly at all In that movie where the guy's brains were spattered over the car, this black guy and this white guy two contract hitters tighter'n Dick's hatband. But was make-believe, callin each other "nigger" and that, black guy callin the white guy "nigger," guy callin the nigger "nigger" right back, break the fuckin head any white man called Richard "nigger," never mind that movie bullshit! Was a white wrote that movie, the luck he knew about black

What was real, my friend, was equality never come to pass here in this land of the free and home the brave, wasn't no black man ever trusted a man and vice versa, never. Richard didn't trust these three white bastards and they didn't trust him, but they needed each other right now cause a girl been killed in his apartment and they were the guy's who killed her. The white guys, not him. But it was his apartment, don't forget that. Cops had a way of never forgettin little black mishaps like that, fuckin cops.

So this was what you might call strange bedfellows here, which was what it actually was called in a book Richard read one time. Oh, he was literate, man, don't kid your fuckin self. Read books, saw movies, even went to see a play downtown one time had all blacks in it about soldiers. His opinion blacks were the best actors in the world cause they knew what sufferin was

all about. That movie with the brains all over the car, was the black guy shoulda got the Cademy Award, never mind the white guy.

So here they were, the four of them, three white guys didn't know shit about anything, and one black guy teachin them all about survival here in the big bad city. Thing they didn't know was that soon as they cleaned up his car and got rid of the sheet they'd wrapped the bitch in, he was gonna stick it to them good.

The girl's name was Yolande Marie Marx. Her fingerprints told them that. She had a B-sheet not quite as long as her arm, but long enough for a kid who was only nineteen. Most of the arrests were for prostitution. But there were two for shoplifting and half a dozen for possession, all bullshit violations when she was underage that had got her off with a succession of slaps on the wrist from bleeding-heart judges. When she turned eighteen, she finally did three months at Hopeville, some name for a female correctional facility. She worked under the name Marie St. Claire, which alias was on the record. Her pimp's name was there, too.

The shift had changed without them.

At fifteen minutes to eight, give or take, the eight-man team of detectives on the day shift had relieved six of the detectives on the morning shift, but not Carella and Hawes, who were still out in the field. They were there, instead of home in bed, because maybe they had something to go on in the murder of Yolande Marie Marx. Her death might never make

newspaper headlines; she was not Sw

Even if they caught whoever had brutally slain her, murder would never result in anything more than media mention. But they had the name of her pimp And the man had a substantial record, including arrest for a New Orleans murder some ten years afor which he had done time at Louisiana's An State Penitentiary. He was now gracing this city with his presence; a policeman's lot was not a happy one. Especially not at eight in the morning, when Carel and Hawes knocked on Jamal Stone's door and bullets came crashing through the wood even when they announced themselves.

"Gun!" Hawes shouted, but Carella had already hit the deck, and Hawes came tumbling immediately afterward. Both men lay side by side the hallway outside the door now, breathing sweating heavily despite the cold, heads close together, guns in their hands.

"Guy's a mind reader," Hawes whispered.

Carella was wondering when the next shots would come.

Hawes was wondering the same thing. The door opened, surprising them. They almost shot him.

"Who the fuck are you?" Jamal asked.

What it was or so he explained in the secon interrogation room up at the old Eight-Seven he was expecting someone else, was what it was. Instead, he got two policemen breaking down the door. Crack of dawn. Two cops.

"You always shoot at people who knock on your door?" Hawes asked.

"Only when I expect them to shoot me," Jamal said. This was now beginning to get interesting. In fact, Bert Kling was almost happy they'd asked him and Meyer to sit in on the interrogation. It was still early enough on the shift to enjoy a cup of coffee with colleagues who'd been out in the freezing cold all night long. But aside from the camaraderie, and the bonhomie, and the promise of some entertainment from a man who'd been around the block once or twice and who felt completely at home in a police station, the doubling-up was a way of bringing them up to speed on one of the two squeals Carella and Hawes had caught during the night.

There used to be a sign on the squad room wall (before Detective Andy Parker tore it down in a fit of pique) that read: IT'S YOUR CASE! STICK WITH IT! The Dyalovich murder and the Marx murder did indeed belong to Carella and Hawes as the detectives who'd caught them. But they would not be on duty again until 11:45 tonight and meanwhile there were two long eight-hour shifts between now and then. In police work, things could become fast-breaking in the wink of an eye; briefing the oncoming team was a ritual these men observed more often than not.

Jamal figured the two new cops for the brains here. The ones asking the questions were the ones almost got themselves shot, so how smart could they be? But the big bald-headed guy his ID tag read DET/2ND GR MEYER MEYER, must've been a computer glitch looked smart as could be. The tall blond guy

with the appearance of a farm boy, DET/3RD BERT KLING, was probably the one played Go, Cop to the bald guy's Bad Cop when they had some cheap thief. Right now, though, both of them were as still as coiled snakes, watching, listening.

"Who were you expecting to shoot you?" Carella asked.

This was all vamping till ready. They didn't actually care who wanted to shoot him, good riddance to bad rubbish, as Carella's mother was fond of saying. All they really wanted to know was whether Jamal was the one who'd put that freezer bag over Yolande's head. Toward that end, they would let him talk forever all his real or imagined enemies out there, make him feel comfortable, ply him with cigarettes and wait for him to reveal through word or gesture that they already knew why he was here being questioned by a pair of detectives, which no one had yet told him, which he hadn't yet asked about, either. Which might or might not have meant something. felons, it was difficult to tell.

Jamal puffed on his cigarette.

Meyer and Kling watched him.

Their presence was a bit unsettling. He was beginning to wonder if they were cops headquarters or something. What kind of thing was this, two cops from headquarters here observing? he knew better than to ask why he was up here. Too easy to step into shit that way. So he puffed on his cigarette and sipped at his coffee and told them all about this Colombian crack dealer who thought he'd stole some shit from him, which he hadn't, but who let

the word out that he was looking for him and was going to kill him. So when he heard somebody banging on the door eight o' clock in the morning, the sun hardly up, he figured he'd better make the first move here because there might not be no second move. Which is why he'd pumped four through the door. Then, not hearing a sound out there, he figured he'd nailed whoever had done the knocking, and he opened the door expecting to find Manuel Diaz bleeding on the floor

"That's his name, Manuel Diaz, I just gave you something."

As if they didn't already know the names of all the dealers in most of the precincts up here.

"But instead it was you two guys, who I almost shot, by the way, before you yelled "Police." " Jamal shrugged. "So here we are," he said.

"Here we are," Hawes agreed.

Jamal still knew better than to ask what this was all about. The big bald guy and the tall blond guy were both looking very stern now, as if he'd said something wrong a minute ago. He wondered what it could have been. Fuck em, he thought. I can wait this out as long as you can. He lit another cigarette. Meyer nodded. So did Kling. Jamal wondered why they were nodding. These two guys were making him very nervous. He felt relieved when Carella asked another question. "Who was the girl with you?" "Friend of mine," Jamal said.

Carlyle Yancy was one of the two girls he ran. Her real name was Sarah Rowland, which he'd changed for her the minute he put her on the street. Jamal

wasn't about to discuss either her profession or "Friend of mine" covered a lot of territory.

"How old is she?" Hawes asked. This also covered a lot of territory. Cops always asked how old was the girl figuring you'd wet your pants if she was underage. "Twenty," Jamal said. "No cigar." "What's she do?"

"What do you mean, what's she do?"

"Is she a prostitute?"

"Hey, come on. What kind of question is that?" "Well, Jamal, considering your record..." So that's how they'd got to him. But why? calling a man by his first name was an old cop trick. Jamal knew quite well, thank you.

"I haven't been in that line of work for a long time he said.

Meyer raised an eyebrow. He was wondering if being a pimp qualified as work. So was Kling Carella And Hawes. Jamal read their faces and figured them for a bunch of cynics. "How about murder?" Carella asked. "Have you been in that line of work recently?"

"I paid my debt to society," Jamal said with dignity

"So we understand. Released last April, is that right?"

"That's right. The slate is clean."

Still with dignity.

"What have you been doing since?"

"Different kinds of work."

"Different from pimping?" Hawes asked. "Different from murder?" Carella asked. "Just different jobs here and there."

"Here and where?" "Here in the city." "Lucky us," Hawes said.

"What kind of different jobs?" Carella asked.

They were harassing him now. Trying to put him on edge. He knew it and they knew it. He remained unruffled. He'd been involved with cops ever since he was twelve. Wasn't a cop in the world could rattle him now.

"Drove a taxi, drove a delivery truck, worked as a waiter," he said. "Odd jobs like that."

"By the way," Hawes said, "we have another B-sheet here," and turned it so Jamal could see the name typed across the top of it. MARX, YOLANDE MARIE, and below that, in parentheses, alias MARIE

ST. CLAIRE.

"Know her?" Carella asked.

If they had her B-sheet, they knew he was pimping for her. Was she in some kind of trouble again? The last time she'd shoplifted, he told her he'd break both her legs if she ever brought down heat again. Whatever this was, he figured it was time to play it straight. "I know her," he said. "You're her pimp, right?" "I know her."

"How about the pimp part?"

Jamal nodded, shrugged, wagged his head, waggled his fingers, all intended to convey uncertainty, they guessed. They looked at him silently, waiting for elaboration. He was wondering what Yolande had done this time. Why had they punched up her B-sheet? He said nothing. Wait them out, he thought. Play the game.

"When did you see her last?" Hawes asked. "Why?". Jamal said. "Can you tell us?"

"Sure, I can tell you. But why?"

"Just tell us, okay?"

"I drove her down by the bridge around nine o'clock."

"Put her on the street at ten?" "Well... yeah." "Which bridge?" "The Majesta Bridge." "What was she wearing?"

"Little black skirt, fake-fur jacket, black stockin red boots, red handbag." "See her after that?" "No. Is she in jail?"

The detectives looked at each other. As Yogi once said, "When you come to a crossroads, take They took it.

"She's dead," Carella said, and tossed a photo onto the desk. The photo had been taken in the alley St. Sebastian Avenue. It was a black-and-white with the address of the crime scene camera-lettered white at the bottom of the picture, the date and time the right-hand corner. Jamal looked at the picture.

That was it. Dead hooker, you go to her pimp.

"So?" Hawes said.

"So, I'm sorry. She was a good kid. I liked her." "Is that why you put her on the street in underwear last night? Twelve fuckin degrees out there, you liked her, huh?"

"Oh, did she freeze to death?" Jamal asked.

"Don't get smart," Hawes warned.

"Nobody twisted her arm," Jamal said. "What was it? An overdose?"

"You tell us."

"You think I did her? What for?"

"Where were you around seven this morning?" "Home in bed." "Alone?"

"No, I was with my friend. You saw her. That's who I was with."

"Carlyle Yancy, is that her name?" "That's what she told you, isn't it?" "Is that her real name?"

"She's never been busted, forget it." "What's her real name?" "Sarah Rowland."

"We'll check, you know."

"Check. She's clean."

"From what time to what time?" Carella asked. "What do you mean?" "Was she with you."

"She got home around three-thirty. I was with her from then till you came busting down my door. We were waiting for Yolande, in fact."

"We'll check that, too, you know." "She'll tell you." Meyer turned to Carella.

"You looking for a bullshit gun bust?" he asked. "I'm looking for a murderer," Carella said.

"Then go home, there's nothing but a 265.01 here." He turned to Jamal.

"You, too," he said. "We'll keep the piece, thanks."

When you pull the boneyard shift, you quit work eight, nine in the morning, sometimes later if a turns up in your soup. Say you're lucky and you home at nine, nine-thirty, depending on traffic. You kiss the wife and kiddies, have a glass of milk and a piece of toast, and then tumble into bed ten, ten-thirty. After a few days, when you're used to the day-for-night schedule, you can actually sleep through a full eight hours and wake up refreshed. This would put you on your feet again six, six-thirty in the evening. That's when you have your lunch or dinner or whatever you might choose to call it at that hour. You're then free till around P.M. At that time of night, it shouldn't take more than half an hour, forty-five minutes to get to the precinct.

While you're asleep or spending some time with your family or friends, the precinct is awake bustling. A police station is in operation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the That accounts for its worn and shoddy look. Criminals never rest; neither does a police station. So while Carella and Hawes slept, the day worked from 7:45 in the morning to 3:45 in the afternoon, when the night shift took over. And while Carella was having dinner with Teddy and-the twins, and Hawes was making love with Annie Rawles, the night shift learned some things and investigated some

things but only some of these had to do with their two homicide cases.

During the hours of nine-fifteen that Sunday morning, when Carella and Hawes left the squad room and eleven forty-five that night, when they reported back to work again, things were happening out there. They would learn about some of these things later. Some of these things, they would never learn about.

At nine-thirty that Sunday morning, two of the Richards were in the empty lot across the street from the abandoned produce market, waiting for the other two Richards to come back with fresh pails of water. They had done a good job of cleaning the trunk of the black Richard's car, but now they wanted to make sure there weren't any bloodstains anyplace else. The other two had gone for fresh water and fresh rags at a car wash some three blocks away, under the expressway. This part of Riverhead was virtually forlorn at nine thirty on a Sunday morning. Hardly a car passed by on the overhead expressway. Empty window frames with broken shards of glass in them stared like eyeless sockets from abandoned buildings. The sun was shining brightly now, but there was a feel of snow in the air. Richard the Lion-Hearted knew when snow was coming. It was a sense he'd developed as a kid. He hoped snow wouldn't screw up what he had in mind. He was telling Richard the Second how he saw this thing.

"The girl dying was an accident," he said. "We were merely playing a game."

"Merely," Richard the Second said.

"She should've let us know if she was having difficulty breathing."

"That would've been the sensible thing to do." "But she didn't. So how were we to know?" "We couldn't have known."

"In a sense, it was her own fault."

"Did you come?" Richard the Second asked. "Yes, I did." "I didn't."

"I'm sorry, Richard."

"Three hundred bucks, it would've been nice to come."

"I think he took the money, you know."

Who?"

"Richard. Took her money and the jumbos given her earlier. Nine hundred bucks and ten j "You didn't see her bag anywhere around, did you.

When we carried her down to the car?"

"No, I didn't, come to think of it."

"I'm sure he stole her bag with the money and jumbos in it. Which is how we're going to tie him to this thing."

"Tie him to what thing?"

"The girl's accident. Yvonne. Whatever her was."

"Claire, I think her name was. I wish I

had come before she passed out." "Well, that was her fault." "Even so."

"We have to find that bag, Richard."

"Which bag is that?"

"It's not in the car, I looked. It has to be in his apartment."

"Which bag, Richard?"

"The one with the money and the jumbos in it. Once we find it, we can link him to the accident."

"How?"

"If he stole the bag, his fingerprints'll be on it." "He might've wiped them off."

"They only do that in the movies. Besides, he wouldn't have had time. We were all of us together, don't you remember? Wrapping her in the sheet, getting her downstairs into the trunk? He wouldn't have had time."

"She was heavy."

"She was."

"She looked so small. But she was heavy." "Deceptive, yes."

"I still don't understand about the bag."

"What don't you understand?"

"How will it link him to the accident?" "Well, his prints are on it." "Yes, but..."

"The prints will link him to it."

"But if we go to the police with her bag..." "No, no, no, we can't do that." "Then what?"

"We leave it alongside the body."

"You think it's still there? She's probably in the morgue by now, don't you think?"

"I'm not talking about her body, Richard."

Paul Blaney was trying to determine which had come first, the chicken or the egg. Had the white female corpse on his autopsy table suffocated to death, or had her death been caused by severe hemorrhaging from the genital area? He had already determined that there was a sizable amount of cocaine derivative in the bloodstream. The girl had not died of an overdose, that was certain, but the detectives nonetheless would want to know about the presence of the drug, which could mean that the murder was drug-related so what else was new? He wasn't confident that the detectives would care a whit whether she was so badly injured below that she had bled to death or whether the bag over her head had caused her to suffocate. But it was Blaney's job to determine cause of death and establish a postmortem interval.

He was not paid to speculate. He was paid to examine the remains and to gather the facts that led to a scientific conclusion. Suffocation in his lexicon was described as "traumatic asphyxia resulting when obstructed air passages prevent the entrance of air to the lungs." But if the girl had suffocated, then where were all the telltale signs? Where was the cyanosis of the face, the blue coloration he always found somewhat frightening, even after all these years performing autopsies? Where were the small circular ecchymoses on the scalp, those tiny bruises indicative of strangulation, smothering, or choking? Where were the minute blood spots in the whites of the eyes? Lacking any of these certain indications, Blaney cut open the girl's chest.

What black Richard was thinking as he lugged the water back from the car wash was he would go to the police and tell them these four rich kids from a prep school in Massachusetts someplace, Connecticut, wherever, a school named Pierce Academy stitched right there on the front of their parkas these three rich white football players had come to him to see did he have any dope to sell, which of course he did, you all know I deal a little dope every now and then, who's kidding who here? I'm not here to lie to you, gents, I'm here to help you.

Cops lookin at him like Sure, the nigger's here to help us. Started as a mere clocker in the hood, and now he's dealing five, six bills a day, he's here to help us. Get lost, nigger.

Hey, no. I seen these boys do a murder.

Ah?

Ears perkin up now.

"What're you smiling at?" Richard the Third asked. Hulking along in his blue parka with the big white P on the back, little football right under the P, carrying two pails of water, same as black Richard himself. Both of them with clean rags from the car wash stuffed in their pockets. Shagging along under the expressway. If it was nighttime stead of mornin right now, they could both get killed, this neighborhood.

"Whut I'm thinking," Richard said, "is soon as we finish here, you go your way, I go mine."

And never the twain shall meet, he thought.

"It was a shame what happened to the girl," the other Richard said.

"Mm."

"But it wasn't our fault."

"Sure as shit wasn't my fault, Richard thought. They were the ones holdin her down, doin her with the Which is why I'll feel safe goin to the police. By my car being all spic-and-span, my apartment clean as a whistle, my bedsheets burned to ashes along with all rags we used. Get that little bonfire started soon as finish with the car. Watch it all go up in smoke. kiss the boys goodbye and go straight to the cops.

"Still," the other Richard said, "I feel sort of sorrn for her."

Oh, man, you don't know how sorry you gonna feel Richard thought. Cause what I'm gonna do is sell you to the police. I'm going to trade your ass for money, boy, whatever the traffic will bear. Cause this is to be a big bust, three rich white kids from a fancy school suffocating a white hooker? Oh, this is a bust, cops up here in the asshole of the universe kill for a bust like this one, never mind just layin out three, four large from a slush fund they keep handy hot information like this. Might be worth even five grand, information like this, three rich white kids?

Can see the motherfuckin cops salivatin. Just got to keep clear of it, is all. Keep myself out of it.

Make it plain I had nothin to do with it. I only seen them do it. Which, anyway, is the truth.

"I wish you'd stop smiling that way," Richard said. "You look like a hyena."

Oh yes, Richard thought.

There was something that kept troubling Jamal about the picture the cops had shown him. Well, sure, Yolande being dead and all, that was very troubling.

Laying on her back there in the alley, skirt hiked up over all that blood on the inside of her legs, plastic bag over her head, that was troubling. To see her that way. Beautiful young girl, dead that way. Man, you never knew.

But there was something else troubling him about that picture and he didn't realize what it was until he was back in the apartment again, telling Carlyle all about his encounter with The Law.

"Thing they do," he said, "they tries to wait me out, like I don't know they got some reason to have me up the precinc, like I'm some dumb nigger frum Alabama visitin Granma in the big city. They finey gets aroun to Yolande..."

"Are you telling me she's dead?" Carlyle asked. Sitting at the kitchen table eating one of the croissants he'd brought back from the All Night Bakery on the Stem. Sipping coffee the color of her skin. Cafe au lait was what you could call Carlyle. Yancy, who was Sarah Rowland when he first met her fresh and sassy at-nineteen. Twenty years old now, a fire-cracker pussy and a dedicated crack addict, thank you, Jamal Stone.

"Yes, she is dead," Jamal said, affecting a pious tone and a mounful look. Carlyle kept eating her buttered croissant. She appeared thoughtful for a moment, bad failing for a hooker. You never wanted them to start thinking about the perils of the occupation. But then she gave a slight shrug and took another bite of the

croissant. Jamal went back to his tale of Derring-Do the Face of Imminent Arrest and Incarceration.

"They had these two big dudes from headquarters there, I knew this was something big even before they brung up Yolande's name. Then they lays her on me, and asts when I seed her last and whut she wearin an all that shit, and they throws dis pitcher of her dead in a alley on St. Sab's, bleedin her snatch."

"Urgh," Carlyle said, and bit into the croissant again.

"Yeah," Jamal said, "with a plastic bag over her fuckin head."

Carlyle got up and went to the stove. She wearing just this little silk wrapper he'd got her Victoria's Secret, floral design on it, all laven looking, and high-heeled bedroom slippers, looked as delicious as any of the croissants on the table. Man, he loved this girl. Yolande had been good money-maker, but this one he loved. Even if never again made a dime for him, he'd keep her take care of her. Well, maybe. He watched her as she poured more coffee into her cup. Watched her tight little ass, actually. Wouldn't care if she never brought home a nickel, this one.

Which was when he realized what was wrong with the picture the cops had shown him. "The bag," he said.

Carlyle turned from the stove, puzzled. "Yolande's bag. That red bag she has." "The patent leather," Carlyle said, nodding. "She was carryin it last night."

Carlyle sipped at her coffee. "But it wasn't in the pitcher." "What picture?"

"The one they showed me. Ain't them crime scene pitchers spose to show jus how everything was?"

"I don't know."

"They can't touch nothin before they take they pitchers, can they?"

"I don't know."

"So where was the bag?"

"Whoever done her must've taken it," Carlyle said. "Yeah, with my fuckin money in it," Jamal said.

He started making his calls at ten minutes past ten.

"Hello," the recorded voice said, "welcome to the Mayor's Action Center, the front door to city government If you are calling from a touch-tone phone and you want to continue in English, press One."

He had dialed 300-9600, and now he pressed One. "We aim to guide you if you don't know where to go, to listen thoughtfully to your opinions, and to help you if you have a problem. We can't promise to always solve what's wrong, but we can promise to do our best. By pressing selected buttons on your phone, this twenty-four-hour-a-day service can answer many of your questions without your speaking to an operator. It also allows you to leave your opinion of city policies. To speak directly to one of our representatives between the hours of nine and five, press Zero at any time. However, if you choose this option, please understand that you may need to hold for a while."

He chose the option.

He pressed Zero.

"You will experience a slight delay on the transl

Please do not hang up."

He did not hang up.

"Hello, you have reached the Mayor's Action Center. All service representatives are serving clients. Your call will be handled by the available representative. Please make sure that you have all the materials relevant to your request available. Please provide as much detail as possible that we can serve you promptly."

He waited for exactly thirty seconds.

"All service representatives are still busy.

continue to hold for the next available

He waited another thirty seconds.

The same announcement repeated itself.

He waited again.

Five minutes of utter silence. Then:

"Mayor's Action Center. How may I help you?"

"Hello, my name is Randolph Hurd? To whom do I speak about noise pollution?"

"What kind of noise pollution?"

"The honking of horns in the vicinity of Hamilton Bridge. Which I believe is against the law anywhere in the city."

"The honking of what?"

"Horns. Car horns, taxicab horns, truck horns..."

"You want Environmental Protection. Let me give you the number there."

She gave him the number.

3374357.

He dialed it.

"This is the Department of Environmental Protection. If you are calling about a water or sewer problem, air or noise pollution..."

Good, he thought.

"... asbestos or hazardous materials, please hold. Our customer service agents handle calls in the order they come in, twenty-four hours a day. We will get to your call as quickly as possible. Thank you for waiting."

He waited for a minute or so.

"All of our agents are still busy," the recorded voice said. "would. you please continue to hold?"

The announcement repeated itself a moment later. And then there was silence for two or three minutes. "Environmental Protection," a man's voice said.

"Hello," Hurd said, "I'd like some information about noise pollution?"

"What type of noise pollution?"

"The honking of automobile horns? Taxis, trucks,

cars? In the vicinity of the Hamilton Bridge?"

A silence. Then:

"What type of noise is that again?"

"Horns. Taxicab horns, track..."

"You want the Taxi and Limousine Commission,"

the man said. "That's 3078294."

He dialed the number.

"This is the Taxi and Limousine Commission," a recorded voice said. "If you are calling from a touch-tone phone, press One for further information."

He pressed One.

"If you are calling to report a complaint, press

If you are calling regarding property left in a press Two. All other inquiries, press Three." He had a complaint. He pressed One.

"All complaints must be made in writin recorded voice advised him, and then went on to give him an address to which he could write.

"To return to the main menu," the recorded said, "press Eight."

He pressed Eight.

He listened to the options again. "All other inquiries" suddenly sounded very good. He pressed Three. A recorded voice said, "if you are calling licensing or owner information, press One. If you have a question about a hearing, summons, or appeal, press Two. If you have an inquiry regarding medallion renewal..."

He thought it over for a moment, figured that he most certainly wanted was a hearing of any and pressed Two. There were yet more options. Did he want to reschedule a hearing? Did want to check his subpoena status? Did he... ?

"If you are calling regarding an appeal," the recorded voice said, "press Four."

He pressed Four.

"Please remain on the line. There will be a moment of silence."

He felt as if he were standing at the Tomb of the

Unknown Soldier.

He waited.

The brief moment of silence passed.

"Appeals," a voice said:

"Are you a recording?" he asked.

"No, sir, I am a person."

"God bless you," he said, and eagerly told her that he wasn't calling regarding an actual appeal as such, but that he just wanted to talk to a human being who might be able to give him some information about motor vehicles blowing horns in the vicinity of the... "You want Public Affairs," she said. "That's 3074738."

"Is that still the Taxi and Limousine Commission?" "Yes, sir, it is."

"Thank you," he said, and dialed the number. "Public Affairs," a man's actual voice said. He was on a roll.

"Sir," he said, "is it against the law for taxicabs to blow their horns?"

"Except in an emergency, yes, sir," the man said. "It's part of the Vehicle and Traffic Law."

"Are taxi drivers told it's against the law?" "They're supposed to know it, yes, sir."

"But who informs them? Is the information in a booklet or something?"

"They're supposed to familiarize themselves with the law, yes, sir."

"How?"

"They're supposed to know it, sir."

"Well, they don't seem to be too familiar with it."

"Do you have a complaint about a taxi driver blowing his horn, sir?"

"I have a complaint about ten thousand of them blowing their horns!"

"11,787, sir," the man corrected. "But if you have a specific taxi in mind, you can call 307-TAXI with complaint."

"I don't have a specific taxi in mind."

"Then you should call DEP-HELP. They'll be to take a nonspecific complaint."

He hung up, and immediately dialed DEPH realizing an instant too late that this was in 3374357... This is the Department of Environme Protection. If you, are calling about a water or problem, air or noise pollution, asbestos or materials, please..."

He waited through two more announcements which told him that everyone was still busy, and finally he got a customer service agent. He explained that he wanted to make a nonspecific complaint about the honking horns in the vicinity of the Hamilton Bridge between the hours of..."

"The honking of what?"

"Horns. Car horns, taxi horns, truck horns."

"And you say you wish to make what kind of complaint?"

"Nonspecific. I've just been informed it's against the law, and that you would take my complaint."

"I don't know if it's against the law or not. If you want a copy of the Noise Pollution Rules, you can send four dollars and seventy-five cents to this address, have you got a pencil?"

"I don't want a copy of the rules. The Taxi and Limousine Commission just told me the honking of horns is against the Vehicle and Traffic Law."

"Then you want Traffic," the agent said. "Let me give you a number."

She gave him a number and he dialed it. The line was busy for four minutes. Then a voice said, "Customer Service."

"Hello," he said, "I'm calling to complain about the honking of horns..."

"You want Traffic," the woman said. "Isn't this traffic?" "No, this is Transit."

"Well, have you got a number for Traffic?" She gave him a number for traffic. He dialed it.

"Hello," he said, "I'm calling to complain about the honking of horns in the vi. "

"We only take complaints for traffic lights and streetlights."

"Well, to whom do I talk about... ?". "Let me give you Traffic." "I thought this was traffic." "No, I'll switch you." He waited.

"Department of Transportation."

"I'm calling to complain about the honking of homs in the vicinity of..."

"What you want is the DEP."

"I want the what?"

"Department of Environmental Protection. Hold on, I'll give you the number."

"I have the number, thanks."

He called Environmental Protection again. All agents were busy again. After a wait of some six minutes, he got someone on the phone and told her

about his problem all over again. She listened patiently.

Then she said, "We don't take auto horns." "Are you telling me that the Department Environmental Protection can't do anything noise pollution?"

"I'm not saying there's no one here can do about it," she said. "All I'm saying is we don't auto horns."

"Well, isn't the honking of auto horns noise pollution?"

"Not in this department. Day construction, night construction, all that kind of stuff is what we call noise pollution."

"But not horn honking?"

"Not horn honking."

"Even though it's against the law?"

"I don't know if it's against the law or not. You can check that with your local precinct."

"Thank you," he said.

He looked up the number for the precinct closest to the Hamilton Bridge. The 87th Precinct. 41 Grover Avenue. 387-8024. He dialed it.:

A recorded voice said, "If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911. If this is not an emergency, hang on and someone will be with you shortly."

He hung on.

"Eighty-seventh Precinct, Sergeant Murchison." He went straight for the jugular.

"The honking of automobile horns is against the law," he said. "Isn't that true?"

"Except in an emergency situation, yes, sir, that very definitely is true."

Good, he thought.

"But it's a law that's extremely difficult to enforce," Sergeant Murchison said. "Because, sir, we can't pinpoint who's doing the actual honking, do you see, sir? Where the honk is coming from, do you see? If we could find out who was actually leaning on his horn, why, we'd give him a summons, do you see?"

He did not mention that standing on the corner of Silvermine and Sixteenth, listening to the infernal, incessant cacophony of horns, he could without fail and with tremendous ease pinpoint exactly which cabdriver, truck driver or motorist was doing the honking, sometimes for minutes on end.

"What if he gets a summons?" he asked.

"He goes to court. And gets a fine if he's found guilty."

"How much is the fine?"

"Well, I would have to look that up, sir." "Could you do that, please?" "You mean right now?" "Yes."

"No, I can't do that right now, sir. We're very busy here right now."

"Thank you," he said, and hung up.

He sat with his hand on the telephone receiver for a very long time, his head bent. Outside, the noise was merciless. He rose at last, and went to the window, and threw it wide open to the wintry blast and the assault of the horns.

"Shut up," he whispered to the traffic below.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!" he shouted.

Ten minutes later, he shot and killed a guy who was blowing his horn on the approach ramp to Hamilton Bridge.

The car looked as if it had just come out of the showroom. Black Richard had never seen it looking so good. He told the three rich white fucks they should go into the car wash business together. They all laughed.

In an open bodega not far from the car wash, they bought a can of starter fluid and then found a soot-stained oil drum that had already been used for fires a hundred times before. This neighborhood, when it got cold the homeless gathered around these big old cans, started these roaring fires, sometimes roasted potatoes on a grate over them, but mostly used them just to keep warm. It was warmer in the shelters, maybe, but in a shelter the chances were better of getting mugged or raped. Out here, standing around an oil drum fire, toasting your hands and your ass, you felt like a fuckin cowboy on the Great Plains.

They started the fire with scraps of wood they picked up in the lot, old newspapers, picture flames without glass, wooden chairs with broken legs, a dresser missing all of its drawers, curled and yellowing telephone directories, broomstick handles, whatever they could find that was flammable. On many of the streets and roadways in this city, in most of the empty lots, the discarded debris resembled a trail left by war refugees. When the fire was roaring and crackling, they threw in the bloody sheets and rags, and then stirred them into the flames with a

broomstick, Richard the First intoning, "Double double toil and trouble," Richard the Second chiming in with "Fire burn and cauldron bubble," which black Richard thought was some kind of fraternity chant.

They stayed around the oil drum till everything in had burned down to ashes. Well, not everything. some wood in there, turning to charcoal, beginning to smolder. But anything they were worried about was now history. No more bloody sheets, no more bloody rags. Poof. Gone.

"Time to celebrate," Richard the First said.

The man sitting at Meyer Meyer's desk was Randolph Hurd. He was a short slender man, almost bald as Meyer himself, wearing a brown suit and a muted matching tie, brown shoes, brown socks. An altogether drab man who had killed a cabdriver in cold blood and been apprehended by a traffic cop before he'd taken six steps from the taxi, The tagged and bagged murder weapon was on Meyer's desk. Hurd had just told Meyer about all the phone calls he'd made this morning. Brown eyes wet, he now asked, "Isn't horn-blowing against the law?"

There were, in fact, two statutes against the blowing of horns, and Meyer was familiar with both of them. The first was in Title 34 of the Rules of the City, which rules were authorized by the City Charter. Title 34 governed the Department of Transportation. Chapter 4 of Title 34 defined the traffic rules. Chapter 4, Subsection 12(i) read:

Horn for danger only. No person shall sound the horn of a vehicle except when necessary to warn a person or animal of danger.

The penalty for violating this rule was a $45 fine. The second statute was in the City's Administrative Code. Title 24 was called Environmental Protection and Utilities. Section 221 fell within Chapter 2, which was called Noise Control, within Subchapter 4, which was called Prohibited Noise and Unnecessary Noise Standards. It read:

Sound signal devices. No person shall operate or use or cause to be operated or used any sound signal device so as to create an unnecessary noise except as a sound signal of imminent danger.

The fines imposed for violating this statute ranged from a minimum of $265 to a maximum of $875.

"Yes, sir," Meyer said. "Horn-blowing is against the law. But, Mr. Hurd, no one has the right to take..."

"It's the cabbies and the truck drivers," Hurd said. "They're the worst offenders. All of them in such a desperate hurry to drop off a fare or a precious cargo. Other motorists follow suit, it's contagious, you know. Like a fever. Or a plague. Everyone hitting his horn. You can't imagine the din, Detective Meyer. It's ear-splitting. And this flagrant breaking of the law is carried on within feet of traffic officers waving their hands or policemen sitting in parked patrol cars. Something should be done about it."

"I agree," Meyer said. "But Mr. Hurd..." "I did something about it," Hurd said. Meyer figured it was justifiable homicide.

Priscilla Stetson thought she was keeping

Agnello and Tony Frascati as sex toys. Georgie

and Tony thought they were taking advantage of a beautiful blonde who liked to tie them up blindfold them while she blew them.

It was a good arrangement all around.

Anybody came near her, they would break his head. She was theirs. On the other hand, they were hers. She could call them whenever she needed them, send them home whenever she tired of them. It was an arrangement none of them ever discussed for fear of jinxing it. Like a baseball pitcher with a natural fast-breaking curve. Or a writer with a knack for good dialogue.

At eleven o'clock that Sunday morning, they were!

all having breakfast in bed together when Priscilla mentioned her grandmother.

Georgie and Tony hated eating breakfast in bed."

You got crumbs all over everything, you spilled coffee all over yourself, they hated it. Priscilla was between them, naked, enjoying herself, drinking coffee and eating a cheese Danish. The boys, as she called them,

had each and separately eaten her not twenty minutes ago, and they were waiting now for her to reciprocate in some small way, which she showed no sign of doing just yet. She did this to show the boys who was boss here. On the other hand, they occasionally beat the shit out of her, though they never hurt her hands or her face. Which she sometimes enjoyed, depending on her mood. But not very often.

It was all part of their arrangement.

Like the suite the hotel provided on the nights she played. That was another arrangement. It wasn't the presidential suite, but it went for four-fifty a night, which wasn't litchi nuts. They were in the suite now, which had been named the Richard Moore Suite after the noted Alpine skier who had stayed here back in the days when he was winning gold medals hither and yon, the Richard Moore Suite at the Hotel Powell, Priscilla naked between them, drinking coffee and munching on her cheese Danish, Georgie and Tony wearing nothing but black silk pajama tops and erections, trying not to spill coffee or crumbs on themselves. After breakfast, and after she had taken care of them, if she decided to take care of them, they might do a few lines of coke, who could say? Priscilla had connections. Georgie and Tony liked being kept in this state of heightened anticipation, so to speak. Priscilla liked keeping them there. She might decide to send them home as soon as she finished the second pot of coffee room service had brought up, who could say? Out, boys. I have things to do, Sunday is my day off. Or maybe not. It depended on how she felt ten minutes from now.

"I know she had money," she said out loud.

The boys turned to look at her. Bookends in black silk. The sheet lowered to their waists, Priscilla sitting there naked, breasts exposed. The boys made sly eye contact across her.

"Your grandmother, you mean?" Georgie asked.

Priscilla nodded. "Otherwise, why'd she keep saying I'd be taken care of?."

"How about taking care of this a little?" Tony had glanced down at the sheet.

"She the one lived in the rat hole on Lincoln Street?" Georgie asked.

"Take care of this a little," Tony said, impressed by his earlier witty remark.

"She meant when she died," Priscilla said. "I'd taken care of her when she died."

"How?" Georgie said. "She didn't have a pot to piss in."

"I don't know how. But she said she'd take care of me."

"Take care of this a little," Tony said again.

"Maybe she had a bank account," Priscilla suggested.

"Maybe she left a will," Georgie said.

"Who knows?"

"Maybe she left you millions."

"Who knows?"

Tony was thinking these two had just escalated an old lady's empty pisspot into a fortune. "There are two old people in a nursing home," he said. "The man's ninety-two, the woman's ninety. They start a relationship. What they do, he goes into her room, and gets in bed with her, and they watch television together with his penis in her hand. That's the extent of the relationship. She holds his penis in her hand while they watch television."

"Don't you ever think of anything else?" Priscilla asked.

"No, wait, this is a good one. The woman is passing her girlfriend's room one night she's ninety years

old, too, the girlfriend and lo and behold, what does she see? Her man is in bed with the girlfriend. They're watching television, she's holding his penis in her hand. The woman is outraged. "How can you do this to me?" she wants to know. "Is she prettier than I am? Is she smarter than I am? What has she got that I

haven't got?" The guy answers, "Parkinson's."" "That's sick," Priscilla said, laughing. "But funny," Tony said, laughing with her. "I don't get it," Georgie said. "Parkinson's," Tony explained.

"Yeah, Parkinson's Parkinson's, I still don't get it." "You shake," Priscilla said. "What?"

"When you have Parkinson's."

"She's jacking him off, "Tony explained. "So what was the other one doing?" "Just holding him in her hand."

"I thought she was jacking him off, too."

"No, she was just holding him in her hand," Tony said, and looked across at Priscilla. "Which is little enough to ask," he suggested pointedly.

"I'll bet all that money is still in her apartment," Priscilla said.

At that moment, a knock sounded on the door to the suite.

Jamal knew something the cops didn't know and that was where Yolande had been at what time. She had called him around five-thirty in the morning, told him she was just leaving the Stardust and would be home soon as she caught a cab. He'd asked her what the take

was and she said close to two large, and he told her hurry on home, baby, Carlyle's already here, wait up for you. So from the Stardust to the alley on Sab's and First would've taken five, ten minutes most, which would've put her uptown at twenty to six a quarter to six, depending on how long it took her to find a taxi. Never mind the time in the corner of picture: 07:22:03. All Jamal knew was that had been there almost an hour and a half before that. But who'd been there with her?

Jamal knew the nighttime city.

He knew the people who frequented the night.

He kissed Carlyle goodbye and went out into the glare of a cold winter morning.

He didn't have to go very far.

Richard the First had bought six bottles of Dom Perignon, and he and all the other Richards had already consumed three of them by eleven-ten that morning. Or at least that's what black Richard thought. What he didn't know was that the other three Richards weren't drinking at all, but were instead laughing it up while one or the other of them took a walk to the bathroom, back and forth, emptying glass after glass of champagne behind his back, dumping down the toilet bubbly that had cost $107.99 a fifth. The idea was to get Richard drunk. The idea was to drown him.

What the bellhop delivered to Priscilla's suite was a plain white envelope with her name written on the front of it. She recognized her grandmother's frail

handwriting at once, tipped the bellhop a dollar, and immediately tore open the flap of the envelope.

A key was inside the envelope.

The accompanying notes in her grandmother's hand, read:

My darling Priscilla,

Go to locker number 136 at the Rendell Road Bus Terminal. your loving grandmother,

Svetlana.

Priscilla went to the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed the front desk.

"This is Priscilla Stetson" she told an assistant manager. "A letter was just delivered to me?"

"Yes, Miss Stetson?"

"Can you tell me who left it at the desk?"

"A tall blond man."

"Did he give you his name?"

"No, he just said to be certain it was sent up to your suite. Sort of."

"What do you mean sort of." "Well, he had a very heavy accent." "What kind of accent?" "I have no idea."

"Thank you," Priscilla said, and hung up.

"What the hell is this?" she asked aloud. "A spy movie?"

The white man who approached Jamal the moment he came out of his building was named Curly Joe Simms,

and he ran a book up here in Diamondback. Jamal knew him because every now and then he would have a girl for a horse, so to speak, asking Curly Joe to put two bills on a nag as an even swap for an hour with one of his girls. Jamal never ran more than two girls at a time. And nobody underage, thanks. He knew they escalated from a class-A misdimeanor to a class-D felony if:i person promoted "prostitution activity by two or more prostitutes" or "profited from prostitution of a less than nineteen years old." He figured a judge go easier on him if he didn't have say, five, six girls in his stable, ha ha. Anyway, even two girls were a handful, and to tell the truth, he got tired of them soon and was always on the lookout for fresh talent.

Curly Joe was bald, of course, and he wore earmuffs on this frighteningly cold morning, hands in the pockets of a brown woolen coat buttoned over green muffler, his eyes watery, his nose red. He had not been waiting for Jamal, but when he spotted him coming out of his building, he walked right over.

Janm, he said. "It's me."

Jamal recognized him at once, and figured he was looking for a piece of ass.

"How you doin, man?" he said. "Good, how you been?" "I'm survivin," Jamal said.

"Cold as a fuckin witch's tit, ain't it?"

"Cold," Jamal agreed.

"Was that your girl last night?" Curly Joe asked.

"Got herself juked on St. Sab's?"

"Yeah," Jamal said cautiously.

"I thought I recognized her from that time."

"Yeah."

"What a shame, huh?"

"Yeah."

"How'd she get all the way down there?"

Jamal looked at him.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Cause I seen her up here not long before," Curly Joe said.

"What do you mean?" Jamal asked again.

"Musta been six or so in the morning. I was in the diner havin a coffee. She got out of a taxi."

Jamal waited.

"You know Richie Cooper?"

"I know him," Jamal said.

"She went off with him and three young kids who were pissing in the gutter. I seen them from the diner."

He had finally passed out, and they were dragging him into the bathroom where they had filled the tub with water. Not passed out entirely cold, but so sklonked he couldn't walk or even stand, didn't know what the hell was happening to him, just kept waving one arm in the air like a symphony conductor except that he was singing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as they dragged him across the floor by the ankles. Something fell out of his pocket, the switchblade knife he'd threatened them with earlier tonight. Richard the First stooped to pick it up, jammed it in the pocket of his own jacket. He was sweating heavily. They were about to kill someone, but this had to be done. The girl had been an accident, but this was murder, but it had to be done. They all knew that. The three Richards now as one.

They were

Richard acting in concert, dragging yet another Richard into the bathroom where the tub full of water waited.

The water looked brownish, this city. Richard the Third was the strongest of them, he grabbed black Richard under the arms, while the two each grabbed a leg. "One... two . . three," they said, and they hoisted him off the floor and swung him into the tub.

"Hey!" he yelled.

Too late.

Jamal knew Richard as a dope dealer pulled down what, five, six bills a day, maybe a thou when business was good and the cotton was high. Used to be in trade together many a moon back, before Jamal tipped to the fact that dealing was a hazardous occupation whereas living off the sweat and toil of the female persuasion was less strenuous and nowhere near as dangerous.

What puzzled Jamal now was what Yolande had been doing with Richard and three white dudes at six this morning, directly after she'd phoned to say she was on the way home. Had Richard decided to do a little freelance pimping on his own? In which case he had to be taught about territorial imperative and not stepping on a fellow entrepreneur's toes. Or had Yolande and Richard decided to share an early morning breakfast with the three honkies? In which case, what had happened to the red patent-leather handbag containing--by Yolande's own admission on the phone." close to two thousand dollars?

Teaching Richard a lesson was no longer necessary now that Yolande was dead.

Recovering that handbag with the money in it was of prime importance, however, and it was the memory of that bag and anticipation of what was in that bag that propelled Jamal up the steps two at a time to Richard's third-floor apartment.

The time was three minutes to noon.

He started fighting the minute they threw him in the tub. He didn't know how to swim and the first thing that entered his mind was that he had somehow fallen into a swimming pool and was going to drown.

Only the second half of this supposition was true.

Jamal was thinking if Richard didn't hand that bag over the minute he asked for it, he was going to beat him senseless.

No cyanosis.

No bruises on the galea of the scalp.

No punctate hemorrhages in the conjunctivae.

And now no dark red fluid blood in the heart, or excess serous fluid in the lungs.

Ergo, no suffocation.

Considering the way she had bled, Blaney wondered if the girl had died from a botched abortion.

If the Pro-Lifers--a hypocritical designation if ever he'd heard one, and don't send me letters, he thought ........ had scared her away from seeking help at any of the city's legal clinics, perhaps she'd found a back-alley butcher to do the job or, worse yet, maybe

she'd tried to do it herself. Too many women attempted tearing the fetal membrane release the amniotic fluid, thereby causing contractions and expulsion of the fetus. Then whatever long thin object they could find, not just a coat hanger depicted in the Pro-Choice propaganda and don't you write to me, either, he thought but also umbrella ribs and knitting needles.

Blaney was a doctor.

He felt the best and only place to perform a gynecological procedure was in a hospital.

Period.

By a trained physician.

Period.

But here in the silence of the morgue, there were moral or religious judgments to be made, no agendas to be met.

There was only search and discovery. How had the girl died? Period.

Blaney found no fetus, nor any fetal parts, in the girl's genital tract or peritoneal cavity. Moreover, he had measured the thickness, length and width of the uterus, the density of the uterine wall, the length of the uterine cavity, the circumference of both the internal and external vaginal openings, and the length of the lower part of the uterus, he found no indication that the girl had been pregnant before her death. Nor was there any indication that the vaginal vault had been accidentally punctured while she'd been seeking to abort herself, unsurprising in that there had been nothing to abort.

What he found instead was a massive assault on the uterus by a sharp instrument with a saw-toothed edge. The instrument had passed through the cervix, wreaking havoc in its relentless wake, and had ripped through the abdominal cavity where it caused hugely significant damage; Blaney found eighteen inches of the small intestine severed and hanging in the uterus. The pain would have been excruciating. Hemorrhaging would have been profuse. The girl could have died within minutes.

Which might have been a blessing, he guessed.

Only one of the three Richards knew he had just for the fun of it inserted a bread knife with a serrated blade into the girl's vagina. The other two didn't know such a thing had happened although later they saw a lot of blood running down the inside of her legs and figured it was the black guy with his big shlong had hurt her somehow. Even the one who'd experimented with the knife didn't realize this was what had killed her. He figured the bag over her head had done it, the girl's stupidity in not informing them that the game had gone too far. She should have told them. No one had wanted her dead. Every one of them wanted black Richard dead. Black Richard was their link to the dead girl, who had died by accident, after all, and for whom they most certainly were not about to ruin their lives, all three of them accepted at Harvard?. Hey.

So as Richard thrashed around in the tub, trying to keep his head above water, the three other Richards kept forcing him back under again, time after time, avoiding his pummeling fists, trying not to get

themselves all wet, trying just to for Christ's sake drown him.

They were succeeding in doing just that, finally succumbing to their overpowering insistence subsiding below the surface of the water, unclenching at last, a final thin bubble of air his mouth and rising, rising, when a voice behind them yelled, "The fuck you doin?"

They were each and separately, all three Richards overwhelmed by a powerful feeling of deja vu all again, a black man standing there with outraged surprise on his face, only this time Richard the First had a knife, and he snapped the blade open at once because the last thing on earth they needed was another asshole linking them to a murder.

Jamal remembered too late what his sacred mother taught him about the streets of this here city, it was Mind your own business, son, an stay out of harms way. But this wasn't a city street, this was the bathroom of a onetime business associate sometime friend, and he was being drowned in his own bathtub by three fuckin college boys, or whatever they were, and one of them had a knife in his fist and he was coming at Jamal with a tiny little smile on his face. It was then that Jamal knew this was serious. Man with a big mother knife in his hand and a smile on his face was dangerous. But, of course, all of this was too late, the memory of his mother's admonition, the memory of smiles he had seen on the faces of other would-be assassins, of whom there were far too many in this part of the city in this part of the world.

Smiling, Richard the First slashed Jamal's jugular with a single swipe of the blade, and then dropped the knife as if it were on fire.

The other two Richards went pale.

And now it became the tale of a handbag.

The door to Svetlana Dyalovich's apartment was padlocked and a printed CRIME SCENE notice was tacked to it. But Meyer and Kling had obtained a key from the Property Clerk's Office, and they marched right in.

"What a dump," Meyer said. "Smells, too," Kling said. "Cat piss," Meyer agreed.

A pair of uniformed cops had already delivered the old lady's dead cat to the Humane Society for cremation, but Meyer and Kling didn't know that, and besides the apartment still stank. They did know that Carella and Hawes, and presumably the technicians from the Mobile Crime Unit, had conducted a thorough search of the apartment. But this morning Carella had suggested that they might have missed something namely a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and another run-through might be a good idea.

They both thought about that kind of money for a moment.

A hundred and twenty-five thousand was about a third more than their combined annual salaries. It was a sobering thought. They began looking.

There was a dead man in the bathtub and another dead man on the bathroom floor. One of them had been drowned, and the other's throat had been slit. This almost had comic possibilities. Too bad the one bleeding all over the tile floor wasn't named Richard, too. Then there would have been five Richards in the apartment instead of just four, three of whom were running around looking for a red patent-leather bag. The fourth one wasn't doing any running at all. The fourth one would never do any running ever again Nor swimming, either, which he'd never learned to do, anyway. None of the live Richards knew who the other dead man was, and they were squeamish about going through his pockets for identification. Slitting a man's throat was one thing. Frisking him was quite another.

Richard the First knew the girl's handbag had to be in this apartment someplace. It didn't have legs, did it?: She herself had carried it up here, and they themselves had carried her out of here without it. So where the was it? He was eager to find that bag because it contained traveler's checks with their signatures on them, and these could all too easily link them to the dead girl, and by extension the man they'd drowned and the one whose throat they'd slit.

In his mind, the three Richards had acted and were still acting in concert. No longer was it he alone who'd slit the second black man's throat. Now it was they who'd done it. Just as it was they who were now looking for the patent-leather bag that would irrevocably tie them to the girl who'd died by accident because she'd been too reticent to tell them she was having difficulty breathing. An asthmatic shouldn't

have been in her profession, anyway, the things unfeeling men asked her to do with her mouth.

Neither of the other two Richards quite shared the first Richard's feelings about the second murder. The first murder, of course, was drowning black Richard in the tub, a necessity. The girl had not been murdered; you couldn't count her as a murder victim. All of them firmly believed, the girl had died by accident. However, both the second Richard and the third Richard knew damn well that neither of them had slit the black stranger's throat, whoever he may have been and no longer was. Richard the First was solely responsible for that little bit of mayhem. So whereas they dutifully turned that apartment upside down, trying to find that elusive handbag, they did so only because they didn't want the dead girl to come back to haunt them. And though neither of them would dare speak such a blasphemy aloud, if push ever came to shove they were quite willing to throw old Lion-Heart here to the lions.

At the end of a half hour's search, they still had not found the bag.

It was now twenty minutes to two.

"Where would you be if you were a red patent-leather handbag?" Richard the First asked. "Where indeed?" Richard the Second asked. Richard the Third stood in the center of the room, scratching his ass and thinking. "Let's reconstruct it minute by minute," he said. "From when we first met her on the street to when we carried her out of here."

"Oh yes, let's do that," Richard the Second said sarcastically. "Two dead Negroes in the bathroom,

with more of their friends possibly coming to visit, we have all the time in the world."

Richard the First hadn't heard anyone using the word "Negroes" in a very long time.

"She definitely had that bag in her hand when she stepped out of the taxi," he said.

"She had it here in this apartment, too," Richard the Third said. "She put the traveler's checks and the jumbos in it. I saw her do that with my own eyes."

"Okay, so where did she put it when we started making love?"

Richard the Second's use of this euphemism startled the other two. He saw their surprised looks and shrugged. "Does anyone remember?" No one remembered.

So they started searching the apartment yet another time.

Meyer and Kling were experienced at searching apartments. They knew where people hid money and jewelry. Lots of old people, they didn't trust banks. Suppose you fell down in the bathtub and hurt yourself and nobody found you till you starved to death and were all skin and bones, how could you go to the bank to take your money out? You couldn't, was the answer. Also, if you were an old person and you were squirreling away the bucks to give to your grandchildren, you didn't want a bank account because then there was a record, and Uncle Sam would come in and take almost all of it in inheritance taxes. So what lots of old people did, they kept their money or their jewelry in various hiding places.

Ice cube trays were a favorite. Everybody figured no thief would ever dream of looking for gems in a tray of frozen ice cubes. Except that some cheap writer of detective stories had written a book some time back in which a cheap thief froze diamonds inside ice cubes and now everybody in the world knew about it, including other cheap thieves. Meyer and Kling were not thieves, cheap or otherwise, but they did know about the ice cube ploy. So hiding your diamonds in an ice cube tray was a ridiculous thing to do since this was where most burglars looked first thing. Open the fridge door, check out the freezer compartment, there you are, you little darlings!

Another favorite hiding place was inside the bottom rail of a Venetian blind, which was weighted, and which had caps on either end of it. You could remove these end caps and slide wristwatches or folded bills into the hollow rail. This worked very nicely, except that every thief in the world knew about it. They also knew that people hid jewelry or money inside the bag on a vacuum cleaner, or at the bottom of a toilet tank, or inside the globe of a ceiling light fixture from which the bulbs had been removed so if anybody threw the switch you wouldn't see the outline of a necklace up there under the glass.

Meyer and Kling tried all of these favorite hiding places.

And found nothing.

So they looked under the mattress.

There was nothing there, either.

The envelope looked as if it had been through the Crimean War. Perhaps Georgie and Tony shouldn't have opened the envelope, but then again they had been entrusted with the key to locker number 136 at the Wendell Road Bus Terminal, and if Priscill hadn't wanted them to examine whatever they found in that locker, she should have specifically said so. Besides, the envelope hadn't been sealed. It was just a thick yellowing envelope with the word written across the front of it, a bulging envelope with rubber band around it, holding the flap closed. There was money in the envelope. Hundred-dollar bills. Exactly a thousand of them.

Georgie and Tony knew because they took the envelope into the men's room to count the bills.

A thousand hundred-dollar bills.

Which on their block came to a hundred dollars in cold hard cash.

There was also a letter in the envelope.

This didn't interest them as much as the money did, but they read it, anyway, though not in the men's room.

It was Richard the Third who found the bag. "Bingo!" he yelled.

Where he found the bag was under black Richard's mattress, the dope. Did he think they were so dumb they wouldn't look under the mattress, where for Christ's sake everybody in the entire world hid things? What he must have done, they figured, was slide it in between the mattress and the bedsprings while they were ripping off the sheets to wrap her in.

Nobody had yet touched the bag.

Richard the Third was still standing beside the bed with his parka on because it was freezing cold in this part of the city unless you turned on a kerosene heater or a coal stove, grinning from ear to freckle-faced ear, holding up the corner of the mattress to reveal the red patent-leather bag nestled there all shiny and flat.

Richard the Second took a pair of gloves from the pocket of his parka and pulled them on with all the aplomb a surgeon to perform surgery.

Gingerly, he lifted the bag from where it rested on the bedsprings. He unsnapped the flap, opened the bag, and reached into it.

There was nineteen hundred dollars in cash in the bag.

Plus the ten jumbo vials black Richard had paid the girl for his piece of the action.

Plus nine hundred dollars in traveler's checks respectively signed by Richard Hopper, Richard Weinstock, and Richard O'Connor. They each had separately pocketed the checks at once, and then debated whether or not to leave all the money and crack in the bag, or to take some of it for all the trouble they'd gone through. It was Richard the First who suggested that a good way to extricate themselves entirely was to link the dead girl to the two dead men. If they left her handbag in the bathroom, the presence of such a large amount of cash, not to mention the sizable stash of crack, would lend credibility to the police theory that the hooker had been killed in a robbery. Or what he hoped would be the police theory.

All three of them went into the bathroom.

Jamal, whose name they didn't yet know, was still lying on his back on the floor with his throat slit. He had stopped bleeding. Black Richard was lying on the bottom of the tub. Richard the Second suggested that they leave the bag open on the floor, with a lot of hundred-dollar bills and a few jumbo vials spread on the tiles, as if the two of them had been fighting over it before they killed each other.

Richard the Third looked puzzled. "What is it?" Richard the First asked. "What's the scenario here?" "Scenario?"

"Yes, how did this happen?"

"I see his point," Richard the Second said.

"What point? They were fighting over the bag. They killed each other."

"How can a person stab another person while that person is drowning him?"

"That's not how it happened."

"Then how did it happen?"

Richard the First thought this over for a moment. "They were fighting over the bag," he said again. The other two waited.

"Richard stabbed him, whoever he is."

They still waited.

"Then he got in the tub so he could wash off the blood."

"With his clothes on?"

"He was drunk," Richard the First said. "That's why he got in the tub with all his clothes on. In fact, that's how he drowned. He was trying to wash himself, but he fell in the tub. He was drunk!"

He looked at the other two expectantly. "Sounds good to me," Richard the Second said. "Just might fly," Richard the Third said.

Grinning, Richard the First winked at himself in the mirror over the bathroom sink.

It was snowing when they left the apartment for the bus terminal.

The time was ten minutes past two.

Detective First Grade Oliver Weeks known far and wide, but particularly wide, as Fat Ollie Weeks though never to his face got into the act because two dead bodies were found in an apartment in Eighty-eighth Precinct, which happened to be his bailiwick.

The discovery was made by a woman who lived on Richard Cooper's floor, who happened to be by his door when she saw it standing wide open. She called into him, and then stepped inside and saw a mess there, clothes thrown all over which way, drawers pulled out, and figures somebody's been in there and ripped him off, so she went downstairs to tell the super. This was seventeen minutes past five, about a half hour after Ollie and his team had relieved the day watch. super went upstairs with her and found the two bodies in the bathroom and ran right down again to dial Nine-One-One. The responding blues radioed precinct with a double DOA and Ollie and an Eight-Eight detective named Wilbur Sloat, who sounded black but who was actually a tall, thin blond man with a scraggly blond mustache, rode over there to Ainsley and North Eleventh. They got there at a quarter to six.

Since Ollie was a bigot in the truest sense of the word that is to say, he hated everyone he was

naturally tickled to death to see two of the precinct's more contemptible black specimens dead by their own hands. For such was what it appeared to be at first glance.

"Make either one of them?" Sloat asked.

He was a new detective, and he affected mannerisms and speech he heard on cop television shows. Ollie would have liked it better if Sloat had stayed back in the squad room answering telephones and picking his nose. Ollie was aloner. He preferred being aloner. That way, you didn't have to deal with assholes all the time.

The one with his throat slit, he recognized at once as a small-time pimp named Jamal "The Jackal" Stone, formerly known as Jackson Stone before he picked himself a name he thought sounded African. Jamal, my ass. Ollie had recently read in Newsweek magazine that forty-four percent of all persons of color in America preferred being called "black," whereas only twenty-eight percent liked to be called African American So why did all these niggers (Ollie's own choice of appellation by a personal margin of one hundred percent) give themselves African names and run around celebrating African holidays and wearing fezzes and robes, what the hell was it?

The way Ollie looked at it, a simple fact of American life was that one out of every three black males was currently enmeshed in the criminal justice system. That meant that thirty-three and athird percent of the black male population was either in jail, on parole, or awaiting trial. So, yeah, if a white guy crossed the street when he saw three black men approaching him, it was because one of them might be

Johnnie Cochran, sure, and another might be Darden, okay, but the third one might be O Simpson.

So here were two dead black men in a bathroom. Big surprise.

The way Ollie saw it, there were two instituti that should be reinstated all over the world. One of them was dictatorship and the other was slavery. He told Sloat who the one on the floor was. "Got himself juked real good," Sloat said Juked, Ollie thought. Jesus.

The one in the tub he didn't recognize under allthat water, which distorted his good looks. But when the M.E. had him pulled out of the tub so he could examine him, Ollie pegged him at once, as a two-bit drug dealer named Richard Cooper, who once broke both a man's legs for calling him Richie. M.E. wouldn't even speculate that the cause of death was drowning, having been burned on a similar call years ago where it turned out a man had been before someone shoved his head facedown in a toilet bowl. The one on the floor had definitely been slashed, though, so the M.E. had no trouble determining that the cause of death was severance of the carotid artery.

The two Homicide detectives working the night shift were called Flaherty and Flanagan. Ollie told them he knew both of the victims, one of them by his ugly face, the other by his ugly reputation. Sloat suggested that perhaps they'd got into a fight over the handbag there on the floor, one thing leading to another, and so on and so forth, the same old story.

Same old story, Ollie thought. Fuckin dope's been a detective hardly three months, he's talkin about the same old story.

"A clutch," Flaherty said.

"Well, I don't know whether they were grabbing each other or not," Sloat said. "I'm only suggesting they may have done each other."

Done each other, Ollie thought.

"The bag, I mean," Flaherty said. "A clutch." "It's called a clutch," Flanagan said. "The type of bag," Flaherty said. "A clutch bag."

"A handbag without handles."

"What's that got to do with the price of fish?" Ollie asked impatiently.

"For the sake of accuracy," Flaherty said. "In your report. You should call it a clutch bag."

"A red patent-leather clutch handbag," Flanagan said. Most Homicide Division detectives favored wearing black, the color of mourning, the color of death. But black suited these two more than it did many of their colleagues. Tall and thin, with pale features and slender waxen hands, the two resembled vampires who had wandered in out of the snowy cold, the shoulders of their black coats damp, their eyes a watery blue, their lips bloodless, their shoes a sodden black. They were both wearing white woolen mufflers, a limp sartorial touch.

"How much money is that on the floor?" Flanagan asked.

"Five C-notes," Sloat said.

C-notes, Ollie thought.

"Don't forget the three jumbo vials," Flaherty said. "Hey, you!" Ollie yelled to one of the technicians. "Okay to look in this bag now? This clutch bag? This red patent-leather clutch handbag?"

The technician turned off his vacuum cleaner, walked over to where they were standing, and began dusting the bag for latents. The detectives wandered around the apartment, waiting for him to finish.

"No sheets on the bed, you notice that?" Flaherty said.

"What do these people know about sheets?" Ollie said. "You think they have sheets in Africa? In Africa they sleep in huts with mud floors, they have flies in their fuckin eyes day and night, they drink goat's milk with blood in it, what the fuck do they know about sheets?"

"This ain't Africa," Flanagan said.

"And there still ain't no sheets on the bed," Flaherty said.

"Looks like somebody really tossed the place," Flanagan said, observing the clothes strewn everywhere, the open dresser drawers and kitchen cabinets, the overturned trash basket.

"Maybe it was an interrupted crib job," Sloat suggested.

"Jamal's a fuckin pimp," Ollie said. "What does he know about burglaries?"

"Which one is Jamal?"

"The one with his tonsils showing."

"Maybe he was the one being burglarized, Maybe he walked in and found the other guy..."

"No, the mailbox says Cooper. Who don't like to be called Richie. You gonna take all day with that fuckin clutch bag?" Ollie yelled to the technician.

"You can have it now," the technician said, handing it to him.

"What'd you get?"

"Some good ones. Patent's a good surface." "What do they look like?"

"Smaller ones may be female. The others, who knows."?"

"When can I have something?"

"Later today?"

"How much later? I go home at midnight." "A quarter to midnight," Sloat amended. "Soon as we process them," the technician said.

"Run them through Records at the same time,

okay?" Ollie said. "See if we come up roses." "Sure."

"So what timeT"

"What's the rush? They're not going anywhere," he said, and glanced toward the open bathroom door, where the police photographer was taking his Polaroids.

"I'm just wonderin what really happened here, is all," Ollie said. "Send me what you get the minute you get it, okay? The Eight-Eight. Oliver Weeks."

"Sure," the technician said, and shrugged and went back to his vacuuming.

"I think what happened here is what the kid says happened here," Flaherty said.

Sloat looked flattered.

"They killed each other, right?" Ollie said. He was already beginning to go through the bag the technician had handed him. The clutch bag, excuse me all to hell. Looked like some more hundred-dollar bills in here..

"Dude's about to take a bath," Sloat suggested, "he hears somebody coming in the apartment, he immediately grabs for a knife ..." '

"I think the kid's got it," Flaherty said, and approval again.

Fuckin Homicide jackass, Ollie thought. Fourteen hundred in the bag, plus the five on the `:-3,' floor, came to nineteen. Money like that spelled dope or prostitution. More red tops on the bottom of the bag, looked more, like a dope thing every minute. He fished out a driver's license with a photo ID on it.

"What've you got?" Flanagan asked. "Ohio driver's license," Ollie said. "Out-of-towner," Sloat surmised.

"Probably mugged her, one or the other of them, then got into a fight over the bag."

"When was this?" Ollie asked. "Before he turned apartment upside down or after?"

"What?"

"Whoever got killed first. Give me the sequence, Wilbur."

He made the name sound like a dirty word. "Start with the muggin," Flanagan said.

"Cooper mugged her, brought the bag back to his apartment," Sloat said.

"Who's Cooper?" Flaherty asked.

"The one who drowned."

From the door, where he was putting on his hat, the

M.E. called, "I didn't say he drowned."

"If he drowned," Sloat said.

"For all I know, he was poisoned."

Yeah, bullshit, Ollie thought.

"Good night, gentlemen," the M.E. said, and headed downstairs to the snow and the wind. Ollie looked at his watch. A quarter to seven.

"So let's hear it, Wilbur," he said.

"I've got an even better idea," Sloat said.

"Even better than your first one?" Ollie said, sounding surprised.

"They both mugged her."

"That's very good," Flaherty said appreciatively.

"Came back here to celebrate. All these empty champagne bottles? They were drinking champagne."

"Got drunk, got wild, started throwing around clothes and stuff," Flanagan suggested.

"I like it," Flaherty said.

"A drunken party," Sloat said. "Cooper goes in the bathroom to run a tub. Jamal comes in after him, and they start arguing about how to split the money." "Better all the time," Flaherty said.

"Cooper pulls a knife, slashes Jamal. Jamal shoves out at him as he goes down. Cooper falls in the tub and drowns."

"Case closed," Flaherty said, grinning.

Assholes, Ollie thought.

"Hey, you!" he yelled to the technician.

The technician turned off his vacuum cleaner again.

"I want the knife and the champagne bottles dusted. I want every fuckin surface in this dump dusted. I want comparison prints lifted from both those two black shits in the bathroom. I want comparison hairs from their heads, and comparison fibers from their clothes, and I want them checked against whatever you pick up with. that fuckin noisy vacuum of yours. Where'd you buy that vacuum, anyway? From a pushcart Majesta?"

"It's standard departmental issue," the technician said, offended.

"Stand on this awhile," Ollie said, and clutched his own genitals with his right hand and then released them at once. "I want to know was there anybody else in this dump besides those two ugly bastards in the bathroom. Cause there's nothing I'd like better than to nail another son of a bitch up here in Diamondback. You got that?"

The technician was glaring at him.

"I go off at a quarter to twelve," Ollie said. "I want to know before then."

The technician was still glaring at him.

"You got it?" Ollie said, glaring back.

"I've got it," the technician snapped. "You fat tub of shit," he muttered, which he was lucky Ollie didn't hear.

Along about then, Steve Carella was just waking up.

Georgie and Tony had a serious problem on their hands.

"The thing is," Georgie said, "the old lady probably didn't even remember putting that money in the locker."

"An old lady, how old?" Tony asked. "How could she remember?"

"You see the envelope it's in?"

The envelope was in the inside pocket on the right-hand side of his jacket. It bulged out the jacket as if he was packing, which he was not. Georgie only carried a gun when he was at the club protecting Priscilla. Carrying a gun was too dangerous otherwise. People would think you were an armed robber or something. Georgie preferred subtler ways of beating the System. Beating the System was what it was all about. But now, Priss Stetson had in some strange mysterious way become the System.

"Even the envelope looks ancient," Georgie said, lowering his voice.

The men were in the bus terminal restaurant, eating an early dinner and trying to figure out what to do about this large sum of money that had come their way. The place wasn't too crowded at a little past seven. Maybe a dozen people in all. Black guy and what looked like his mother sitting at a nearby table. Three kids in blue parkas, looked like college boys, sitting at another table across the room. Old guy in his sixties holding hands with a young blonde maybe thirty or forty, she was either his daughter or a bimbo. Two guys hunched over racing forms, trying to dope out tomorrow's ponies.

It had been snowing since two this afternoon. Beyond the restaurant's high windows, sharp tiny flakes, the kind that stuck, swirled dizzily on the air, caught in the light of the streetlamps. There had to be six inches on the ground already, and the snow showed no sign of letting up. Inside the restaurant, there was the snug, cozy feel of people hunched over good food in a safe, warm place. Outside, buses came and

The hundred thou in the yellowing envelope was burning a hole in Georgie's pocket.

"The question here," he said, "is what is our obligation?"

"Our moral obligation," Tony said, nodding. "If the old lady forgot the money was there." "My grandmother forgets things all the time." "Mine, too."

"She says it, too. I mean, she knows it, Georgie. says if her head wasn't on her shoulders she'd forget where she put it."

"They forget things. They get old, they forget things."

"You know the story about the old guy in the nursing home?"

"Yeah, you told us." "No, not that one." "Parkinson's? You told us."

"No, this is another one. This old guy is in a nursing home, the doctor comes in his room, he says, "I've got bad news for you." The old guy says, "What is it?" The doctor says, "First, you've got cancer, and second, you've got Alzheimer's." The old guy goes, "Phew,

thank God I don't have cancer." " Georgie looked at him. "I don't get it," he said.

"The old guy already forgot," Tony explained. -"Forgot what?"

"That he has cancer."

"How can a person forget he has cancer?" "Cause he has Alzheimer's."

"Then how come he didn't forget he has Alzheimer's?"

"Forget it," Tony said.

"No, you raised the question. If he can forget he has one disease, how come he doesn't forget he's got the other disease?"

"Cause then it wouldn't be a joke."

"It isn't a joke, anyway."

"A lot of people think it's a joke."

"If it isn't funny, how can it be a joke?"

"A lot of people think it's funny."

"A lot of people are pretty fuckin weird, too,"

Georgie said, and nodded in dismissal.

Both men sipped at their coffee.

"So what do you want to do here?" Tony asked.

"About the envelope?" Georgie asked, lowering his voice.

"Yeah."

Both of them whispering now.

"Let's say the old lady put it there ten years ago, forgot it was there."

"Then why did she send Priss the key?"

"Who knows why old ladies do things? Maybe she had an apparition she was about to get knocked off."

"Anyway, it doesn't matter either way. The old lady's dead, how can she tell Priss what was in that locker?"

"Her note didn't say anything about what was in the locker. All it said was go to the locker, that's all."

"What it said exactly was go to locker number thirty-six at the Rendell Road Bus Terminal." "Exactly."

"What I'm saying," Georgie said, "As if Priss knew there was a hundred large ones in that locker, you think she'd have trusted us to come for it?"

"Us? She'd have to be out of her mind."

"Exactly the point."

"What you're saying is she didn't know." "What I'm saying is she doesn't know." Silence. The clink of silverware against coffee and saucers. The trill of the black woman's laughter at the nearby table. The buzz of conversation from the college boys on the other side of the room. Other voices. And the loudspeaker announcing the arrival of a bus from Philadelphia at gate number seven. At the center of all this, the core of Tony's and Georgie's thoughtful silence.

"We're the only ones who know," Tony said at last.

"So why should we turn it over to her?" Georgie asked.

Tony merely smiled.

The next bus back to school wouldn't be leaving for an hour yet. This gave them plenty of time to work out what in the film industry was called a back story..

What seemed perfectly apparent to them was that the only people with whom they'd had any contact after the bouncer tossed them out of the Jammer were all now dead. This was definitely in their favor. If they hadn't even talked to anyone after telling the bouncer to go fuck himself, then there wasn't anyone alive who

could say they were uptown in Diamondback getting involved with three people who would later cause trouble for each other, the girl by refusing to mention she was suffocating, the two black drunks getting into a fight over her money and her stash, one of them ending up drowned, the other stabbed, boy.

"What about the cabdriver?" Richard the Second asked.

"Uh-oh, the cabbie," Richard the Third said. "What about him?" Richard the First said. "He picked us up downtown, he dropped us off uptown. So what?"

Two guys who looked like gangsters in a Martin Scorsese movie were walking past the table, on their way out of the restaurant. The boys lowered, their voices, averted their eyes. In this city, it was best to be circumspect. Witness what had happened uptown when they'd got too chummily careless with three people who'd turned out to be unwholesome types.

"See that bulge under his coat?" Richard the Third whispered as soon as the men pushed through the door into the terminal proper. Outside, despite the snow, buses kept coming and going. The two men disappeared in the swirling flakes.

"How'd you like to meet one of those guys in a dark alley?" Richard the Second said.

None of the Richards seemed to realize that they themselves were now prime candidates for guys you would not care to meet in a dark alley. Or anywhere else, for that matter. They had killed three people.

They qualified. But the odd thing about what had happened was that it now seemed to be something

they'd read about or watched on television or seen on stage or in a movie theater. It simply did not seem to have happened to them.

So as they discussed whether or not who'd driven them to Diamondback posed any kind a threat, they dismissed from their reasoning reason for their concern. They had been sitting in the back of a dark cab, he could not have seen their faces clearly. There had been a thick plastic between them and the driver's seat, further obscuring vision. They had placed the fare and a reasonable tip into the little plastic holder that flipped out toward them. The only words that passed between them and the cabbie was when Richard the First told him their destination. Ainsley and North Eleventh, he'd said, The driver hadn't even muttered acknowledgment.

The way Richard the First figured it, and he told this to the other two Richards now, the camel jockeys in this city were involved solely with calculating how more months they'd have to work here before they saved enough to go back home. This was why they never spoke to anyone. Never even nodded to indicate they'd heard you. Never said thank you, God forbid. They were too busy reckoning the nickels and dimes they'd need to build their shining palaces in the sand. "He won't be a problem," Richard the First said. But none of them acknowledged the events that had followed that fateful ride uptown. None of them even whispered the possibility that they may have been seen by someone as they entered black Richard's building in the company of that unfortunate girl who'd later been too timid or stupid to mention or even indicate

that she was having trouble breathing. Acknowledging the cause of their concern would concede implication.

No.

The boys were clean.

Their bus would leave in forty-five minutes.

They would be back at school in an hour and forty-five minutes.

Everything there would be white and still and clean.

"Nothing happened," Richard the First said aloud.

"Nothing happened," the other two Richards said.

"Swear," Richard the First said, and placed his clenched fist on the tabletop.

"I swear," Richard the Second said, and covered the fist with his hand.

"I swear," Richard the Third said, and likewise covered the fist.

The loudspeaker announced final boarding of the seven-thirty-two bus to Poughkeepsie.

The boys ordered another round of milk shakes.

Two pieces of significant information came into the squad room in the final hour of the night shift. Detective Hal Willis, sitting in his shirtsleeves in the overheated room, watching the snowflakes swirling outside, took both calls. The first came at a quarter past eleven. It was from a detective named Frank Schulz who asked to speak to either Carella or Hawes, and then settled for Willis when he said he'd give them the information.

Schulz was one of the technicians who'd examined the Cadillac registered to Rodney Pratt. He informed Willis, by the way, that the limo had already been

returned to the owner, receipt in Schulz's possession did Willis want it faxed over or could Schulz drop it in the mail, the receipt? Willis told him to mail it.

"What we got was a lot of feathers" Schulz said.

"Now, I don't know if you're familiar with the difference between down and contour feathers..."

"No, I'm not," Willis said.

"Then I won't bother you with an explanation because we're both busy men," Schulz said, and then went on to give along, erudite dissertation on feather sacks and quills and shafts and barbs and barbules and l hooklets and knots, all of which differed in orders of birds, did Willis happen to see the film

Alfred Hitchcock wrote?

Willis didn't think Hitchcock had written it.

"The determination of which feathers came from what order of bird is important in many investigations," Schulz said.

Like this one, Willis thought.

"I don't know whether the Caddy was being used for any illegal activity, but that's not my domain, anyway."

Domain, Willis thought.

"Suffice it to say," Schulz said, "that the feathers we recovered from the backseat of the car were chicken feathers. The shit is anybody's guess." "Chicken feathers," Willis said. "Pass it on," Schulz said. "I will."

"I know you're busy," Schulz said, and hung up.

The second call came from Captain Sam Grossman some ten minutes later. He told Willis that he'd

examined the clothing of the murder victim Svetlana Dyalovich and had come up with nothing of any real significance except for what he'd found on the mink.

Willis hoped he was not about to hear a dissertation on the pelts of slender-bodied, semi aquatic carnivorous mammals of the genus Mustela. Instead, Grossman wanted to talk about fish, Willis braced himself. But Grossman got directly to the point.

"There were fish stains on the coat. Which in itself is not unusual. People get all sorts of stains on their garments. What's peculiar about these stains is their location."

"Where were they?" Willis asked.

"High up on the coat. At the back, inside and outside, near the collar. From the location of the stains, it would appear that someone had held the coat in both hands, one at either side of the collar, thumbs outside, fingers inside."

"I can't visualize it" Willis said, shaking his head. "Have you got a book handy?"

"How about the Code of Criminal Procedure?"

"Fine. Pick it up with both hands, palms over the spine, fingers on the front cover, thumbs on the back." "Let me put down the phone."

He put down the phone. Picked up the book. Nodded. Put down the book and picked up the phone again.

"Are you saying there are fingerprints on the coat?" "No such luck," Grossman said. "But the stains at the back are smaller, which might've been where the thumbs gripped it near the collar. And the larger ones

inside the coat could have been left by the fingers of each hand."

"So what you're saying..."

"I'm saying someone with fish oil on his or her hands held the coat in the manner I just described. to you," he said, and hung up.

Fish oil, Willis thought. And chicken feathers. He was glad this wasn't his case.

"Anything happen while we were gone?" Carella asked.

"Same old shit," Willis said. "How are the roads?" "Lousy."

The clock on the squad room wall read eleven-forty P.M. It was twenty minutes to midnight. Cotton Hawes was just coming through the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squad room from the corridor outside. Beyond the steel mesh on the high squad room windows, it was still snowing. This meant they could add a half hour, maybe forty minutes to any outside visits they made.

"Frozen tundra out there," Hawes said, and took off his coat. Carella was leafing through the messages on his desk.

"Chicken feathers, huh?" he asked Willis. "Is what the man said," Willis answered. "And fish stains on the mink." "Yeah."

"What kind of fish, did Grossman say?"

"I didn't ask."

"You should have. Just for the halibut."

Willis winced.

"Meyer and Kling tossed the piano player's apartment again," he said. "Zilch."

"That means a hundred and twenty-five K is still kicking around someplace."