Nocturne

13

At eight-fifteen that morning, the Lincoln Street Fish Market was not quite as bustling as it had been between four and six A.M. when fish retailers from all over the city arrived in droves. As Priscilla and the boys pulled up in a taxi, only housewives and restaurant owners were examining the various catches of the day, all displayed enticingly on ice well, enticingly if you liked fish.

The market was a sprawling complex of indoor and outdoor stalls. On the sidewalk outside the high-windowed arching edifice fishmongers, wearing woolen gloves with the fingers cut off, woolen caps pulled down over their ears, and bloodstained white smocks over layers of sweaters, stood hawking their merchandise while potential customers picked over the fish as if they were inspecting diamonds for flaws.

It was a clear, cold, windy, sunny Monday morning. "Where do we start?" Georgie asked.

He was hoping to discourage her. He did not want her to meet the man who'd dropped off' that key to the bus terminal locker. He did not want her to learn that nobody had been in that locker except him and Tony here, who was backing away from the fish stalls as if his grandmother had cooked fish for him whenever he visited her on a Friday, which she had, and which he'd hated. He learned after her death that she'd hated fish, too. His mother, on the other hand, never had to cook fish in her entire lifetime because the church changed its rules. His mother was a staunch Catholic practiced birth control and didn't believe in confession. Priscilla looked bewildered.

She had never been to this part of the city certainly never to a fish market here, had never seen much damn fish ever and could not imagine how could even hope to find a tall blond man among these men wearing hats and smocks and gloves. The bitter cold did not help.

Priscilla was wearing a mink, dark and soft supple in contrast to the ratty orange-brown coat her grandmother had been wearing when someone shot her. The fur afforded scant protection against the harsh wind blowing in over the river. Georgie and Tony wearing belted cloth coats and woolen mufflers, fedoras pulled down low on their foreheads, in their pockets, just like movie gangsters. wailing around them, the three walked the dockside blocks, studying the men behind each outdoor stalls and ice bins, searching for telltale sideburns at the rolled edges of ubiquitous woolen At the end of twenty minutes of close scrutiny, were happy to be entering the long enclosed After the howling wind outside, even the indoor seemed welcoming, fishmongers touting and squid, sea bass and flounder, mackerel shrimp, sole and snapper. They were coming down center aisle, tall windows streaming wintry sunlight stalls of iced fish on either side of them, Georgie blowing on his hands, Tony wearing a pained look in memory of his grandmother, Priscilla holding the collar of the mink closed with one hand because to tell the truth it was almost as cold inside here as it was outside, when all at once…

Behind the stall on the right… Just ahead… They saw a hatless man with muddy blond hair… Standing some six feet two inches tall…

Wearing a white smock over a blue coat and a red muffler… Bearing a marked resemblance to Robert Redford, and lifting a nice fat halibut off the ice to show to a female customer.

Hawes and Carella were just pulling up outside.

"Blond hair and blue eyes," Hawes said. "Must be from Milan," Carella said. "Or Rome. Rome has blonds, too." Redheads," Carella said.

A gust of wind almost knocked Hawes off his feet.

"Which first?" Carella asked. "Inside or out?" Ask astupid question.

Hawes reached for the doorknob.

At the downtown end of the enclosed market, four city blocks from where the detectives went in, Priscilla was just asking Lorenzo Schiavinato if he knew her grandmother Svetlana.

"Non par lo inglese," Lorenzo said.

Thank God, Georgie thought.

"He doesn't speak English," he translated for Priscilla.

"Ask him if he knew my grandmother."

"I don't speak Italian," Georgie said.

"I do," Tony said, and Georgie wanted to kill him Ask him if he knew my grandmother." Tony's grandmother was from Siciliy, where you did not exactly speak Dante's Italian. The dialect now used was the one he'd heard at Filomena's while she was cooking her abominable fish. First asked Lorenzo his name.

"Mi chiamo Lorenzo Schiavinato," Lorenzo said.

"His name's Lorenzo," Tony translated. "I could make out the last name."

Small wonder, Georgie thought.

"Ask him if he knew my grandmother."

"Where are you from?" Tony asked.

"Milano," Lorenzo said.

Where they spoke Florentine Italian, and where Sicilian dialect was scarcely understood. Lorenzo in fact, squinting his very blue eyes in an effort to understand Tony's Italian, which itself was bastardization of the dialect his sainted grandmother had spoken.

It occurred to Georgie that the so-called conversation between them was taking place in a market reputedly run by the mob, whose Italian limited to a few basic words like "Boffon gool," itself was a bastardization of the time-honored "Va in culo," better left uninterpreted in the presence of a fine lady like Priscilla Stetson.

Who now said, rather impatiently this time, ask him if he knew my goddamn grandmother."

In Sicilian Italian, Tony asked if Lorenzo had known Priscilla's grandmother.

In Florentine Italian, Lorenzo asked who perchance her grandmother might have been.

"Svetlana Dyalovich," Tony said.

And Lorenzo began running.

From where the detectives were coming down the center aisle of the indoor market, checking out the men selling fish from stalls and barrels and bins and ice chests on either side of them, they saw a tall blond man running toward them, chased by Svetlana's grand daughter and the two goons who'd braced them at the club on Saturday night.

If the tall runner was, in fact, Lorenzo Schiavinato, then he was the one who'd bought the gun that killed Priscilla's grandmother. Despite what was known in the trade as "background" the number of innocent bystanders at any given scene the fact that Lorenzo had purchased the murder weapon was justification within the guidelines for Carella and Hawes to draw their own guns. Besides, the man was running. In this city, unless you were running to catch a bus, the very act was suspicious.

The guns came out.

"Stop!" Hawes shouted. "Police!"

"Police!" Carella shouted. "Stop!"

Lorenzo wasn't stopping.

A hundred and eighty pounds of muscle and bone plowed right through them, knocking Hawes off his feet, tossing Carella back onto a stall of very nice iced salmon, and causing a mustached man in a brown derby to throw his hands over his head in fright. Both detectives recovered at once, Carella first, Hawes an instant later.

"Stop!" they shouted simultaneously.

Hawes was in a crouch, pistol levered, holding gun steady in both hands.

Carella was standing beside him, gun extended both hands, ready to fire.

"Stop!" he shouted. Lorenzo kept running.

Hawes fired first. Carella fired an instant later Carella missed. Hawes did, too. He fired again. This time, his shot took Lorenzo in the left leg, sending him tumbling. Everywhere around them, the back was screaming. The mustached man in the derby was running in the opposite direction, from the shooting, waving his hands hysterically in the air. He tripped over Georgie, who had thrown himself flat on the floor the moment he'd heard shots, the way his uncle Dominick had taught him to do. Lorenzo trying to crawl away, dragging his wounded leg behind him. Hawes kicked him and then stepped on his back, holding him down while Carella cuffed him.

"Ask him if he knew my grandmother," Priscilla said. "Few things we'd like to ask you, too," Carella said. Everyone was breathing very hard.

Fat Ollie Weeks was asking the computer for tri-state area high school, prep school, parochial: school, Christian academy or so-called alternative school whose name began with the letter P. There were fifteen such private schools in the metropolitan area alone.

Thirty-eight in the entire state.

Of the public schools, there were a hundred and forty-six, thirty of them beginning with the word "Port." Port This, Port That, more damn coastal towns than Ollie knew existed.

In the two neighboring states combined, there were thirty-nine private schools and a hundred and ninety eight public schools that began with the letter P. All of the public schools in this city were designated with the letters P.S. before the name, and so the computer belched out what looked to Ollie like more high schools than he could possibly cover in ten years of investigation. He limited the search to proper names alone and came up with sixty-three schools that had the letter P in their names.

Some of these schools were named for areas of the city, like Parkhurst or Pineview or Paley Hills. Others had been named after people. The computer did not differentiate between given names and surnames. The letter P appeared in Peter Lowell High, but it also appeared in Luis Perez High. But Ollie had been born and raised in this fair city, and he knew that kids never said they went to Harry High or Abraham High, but instead said they went to Truman High or Lincoln High. So he figured if the letter on those parkas stood for a person after whom a school had been named, then it sure as hell was the surname. Running down the printed list by hand, he limited the city's sixty-three public schools to a mere seventeen. He was making progress.

By the time he was ready to begin making his calls, his trimmed-down list seemed like a one…

Sort of.

The way the joke goes, a woman is telling a woman about her son in medical school, and she's referring to him as a doctor. The other woman says "By you, your son is a doctor. And by your son, son is a doctor. But by a doctor, is your son a By Byrnes, Carella was Italian. And by Carella was Italian. But by an Italian, was Italian?

Lorenzo Schiavinato asked for an interpreter. The interpreter's name was John McNalley.

He had studied Italian in high school one because he'd wanted to become an opera singer. never did get to sing at La Scala or the Met because he had a lousy voice, but he did have a certain with language, and so in addition to interpreting for the police and the courts, he also worked for publishers, translating for worthy books from the Italian and Spanish.

He still wanted to sing opera.

McNalley informed Lorenzo that he was charged with murder in the second degree. In this state, you could be charged with Murder One only you killed someone during the commission of felony, or if you'd been earlier convicted of murder, if the currently charged murder was particularly wanton, or if it was a contract killing, or if the victim was a police officer, or a prison guard, or prisoner in a state pen, or a witness to a prior crime, or a judge all of whom, according to one's personal opinion, might deserve killing.

Murder Two was killing almost anybody else.

Like murder in the first, murder in the second was also an A-1 felony.

In accordance with the new law, Lorenzo was looking at the death penalty at worst, or fifteen to life at best, none of which added up to a tea party on the lawn.

Naturally, he asked for a lawyer.

He was an illegal alien in the United States of America, but, hey, he knew his rights.

Lorenzo's lawyer was a man named Alan Moscowitz. He was a tall angular man wearing a brown suit and Vest, looking very lawyerly in gold-rimmed spectacles and shiny brown shoes. Carella disliked most defense attorneys, but hope springs eternal so maybe one day he'd meet one who wouldn't rub him up the wrong way. Moscowitz didn't understand Italian at all. The melting pot realized.

They read Lorenzo his rights in Italian, and he said he understood them, and Moscowitz ascertained, through back-and-forth interpretation, that his client understood Miranda and was willing to answer whatever questions the detectives posed. The questions they posed had to do with shooting an eighty-three-year-old woman at close range in cold blood. Lorenzo didn't much look like a man who'd committed murder, but then again not many murderers did. What he looked like was a slightly bewildered Robert Redford who spoke only basic English like Me Tarzan, You Jane.

The back-and-forth, in English and Italian and English again, went this way.

"Mr. Schiavinato…"

Very difficult name to pronounce. Skeeahve nah-toe..

"Mr. Schiavinato, do you know, or did you know, a woman named Svetlana Dyalovich?"

"No."

"How about Svetlana Helder?"

"Her granddaughter told us… did you know she had a granddaughter?"

"We've been talking to her. She told us things we'd like to ask you about."

"Umo"

"Mr. Schiavinato, did you deliver to Miss Stetson at the Hotel Powell the key to a pay locker at the Rendell Road Bus Terminal?"

"No."

"Delivered it on the morning of January twenty-first, didn't you?"

"No."

"Miss Stetson says you did."

"I don't know who Miss Stetson is."

"She's Svetlana Dyalovich's granddaughter."

"I don't know either of them."

"Locker number one thirty-six. Do you remember that?"

"No, I don't."

"Where'd you get that key?"

"I don't know what key you're talking about."

"Did Svetlana Dyalovich give you that key?"

"Nobody gave me a key."

"Did Svedana Dyalovich ever come to your stall at the Lincoln Street Fish Market to purchase fish for her cat?"

"No."

"Early in the morning, this would have been."

"No."

"Every morning."

"No. I don't know this woman."

"Ever go to her apartment?"

"How would I? I don't know her. I don't know where she lives."

"Her neighbor down the hall told the granddaughter you went there to deliver fish one morning."

"I don't know her or her neighbor. Or the granddaughter, either."

"Then you never went to 1217 Lincoln Street, apartment 3A, is that right?"

"Never."

"Mr. Schiavinato, I show you this weapon tagged as evidence and ask if you've ever seen it before."

"Never."

"Didn't you buy this pistol from a man named Jose Santiago…"

"No."

"On the night before…"

"No."

"… Svetlana Dyalovich was murdered?"

"No."

"Didn't you telephone her a few minutes before you bought the gun?"

"Mr. Schiavinato, we have here a tele company record showing that a call was made from a wall phone at a club called The Juice Bar at one- A.M. this past Friday night to a telephone listed to Svetlana Helder at 1217 Lincoln Street…"

"Cosa?"

The precinct's civilian stenographer read back the question. McNalley the interpreter translated it Lorenzo and his lawyer. Moscowitz nodded that it was okay to answer it.

"I don't know who called this woman," he said, "but it wasn't me."

"Weren't you in The Juice Bar that night at A.M.?"

"No. I don't know this place."

"Uptown in Riverhead?"

"No."

"Harris Avenue? Uptown?"

"No."

"Mr. Schiavinato…"

Such a damn difficult name to pronounce.

"Mr. Schiavinato, do you know a man named Bernard Himmel?"

"No."

"Bernie Himmel?"

"No."

"Benny Himmel?"

"No." 'Bernie the Banker Himmel?"

"I don't know any of these people."

"Never placed a bet with him, huh?"

"Never. Any of them."

A good imitation of a Robert Redford smile. Hawes wanted to smack him.

"Ever place a bet with him on the Super Bowl?"

"What is this Super Bowl?"

Smack the fucking smile off his face.

"Steelers against the Cowboys?"

"I don't know what any of this means."

"Twenty grand on the Steelers?"

"What is twenty grand?"

"You lost the bet. Because of the point spread."

"What is a point spread?"

"Twenty grand gone in a wink."

"What is a wink?"

"He sounds like Jeopardy t.," Carella said.

"Please, Detective," Moscowitz warned, raising an eyebrow.

"Sorry, Counselor," Carella said, and raised his own eyebrow. "Mr.

Schiavinato, didn't you lose twenty thousand dollars on the Steelers-Cowboys game?"

"I never had twenty thousand dollars in my entire life."

"You had it when you paid your marker, didn't you?"

"I don't know what a marker is."

"A promise to pay money you owed."

"I don't owe anybody money. I have an honest job. I do honest work."

"You owed Bernie Himmel the twenty thousand dollars you lost on the Super Bowl, didn't you?"

"No."

"You went to see him on Friday night…"

"… and he told you he'd kill you if you didn't the money by Sunday morning."

"I don't know who you're talking about."

"Bernie Himmel. Your bookie. Bernie the B You're a gambler, aren't you, Lorenzo?"

"Sometimes I bet on horse races. At the OTB. B don't know this man you're talking about."

"Then you don't remember him telling you to get money or you'd be swimming with your little fishie "I don't know him. How could he tell me this?"

"After which you went directly to the wall telephone…"

"No."

"… and called Svetlana Dyalovich. Why, did you want to make sure she'd be out of her apartment when you went there to burglarize it?"

"Cosa?" he said again.

The stenographer repeated the question. M translated it. Moscowitz cleared his throat.

"Detective," he said, "my client has told you repeatedly that he did not know Svetlana D) did not know her granddaughter, and never went to her apartment on Lincoln Street. Nor does he know a bookmaker named Bernie Himmel or a guy named Jose Santiago. Now, if…"

"He's not a gun dealer."

"Excuse me, I thought he's supposed to have my client a gun."

"He did sell him a gun. But he's not a dealer. He pumps gas at a Texaco station."

"Whatever he does, my client doesn't know him."

Carella figured he kept calling him "my client" only because he couldn't pronounce his last name.

"So unless you have something new to…"

"How about a clear chain on the gun, Counselor?"

"You!" Moscowitz shouted, and pointed his finger at the stenographer. "Hold it right there." He turned to Carella. "Is this off the record?" he asked.

"Sure."

The stenographer waited. Carella nodded.

"Then let me hear it," Moscowitz said.

"We've traced the gun from its registered owner…"

"Named"

"Rodney Pratt."

"TOT"

"Jose Santiago, who stole it from the glove compartment of Pratt's car…"

"He's admitted this"

"He has."

"And from there…?"

"To Mr. Schiavinato here, who bought it from him for two hundred and fifty dollars."

"Well, this is where it begins to get speculative, Detective. But let's assume for the moment, arguendo, that my client did buy a gun from this man. How does that make it the murder weaponT"

"The bullets that killed Mrs. Helder and her cat were fired from it.

We found them embedded in the door behind her body and the baseboard behind the cat. We recovered the gun itself in a sewer outside her building. The only thing we don't have is Mr. Schiavinato's fingerprints on the gun, and frankly…"

"Well, that's a very big negative, Detective. could have fired the gun."

"Perhaps your client…" Byrnes said.

He couldn't pronounce the name, either.

"can explain why he telephoned the minutes before he bought the gun that killed her."

"Why exactly did he call her, Lieutenant?" The weak spot.

Byrnes knew it, Carella knew it, Hawes knew it now Moscowitz had zeroed in on it: Why had he called Svetlana before buying the gun he later used to kill her?

"We think he was planning to burglarize her apartment," Carella said. "He called to find out would she be safe. When she'd be home."

It still sounded weak.

"Are you saying he called to ask her when she'd be home? So he could run right over to burglarize…"

"Well, no, he didn't ask her flat out."

"Then how did he ask her?"

"I don't know the actual conversation that took "But you think he was trying to determine she'd be out of the apartment…"

"Yes."

"So he'd know when it would be safe to go into burglarize it."

"Exactly."

"In Italian"

"What?"

"This conversation. Was it in Italian"

"Yes, it was. According to a witness."

"Because he doesn't speak English, you see."

"I suspect he speaks some English."

"Oh. And why is that?"

"He sells fish to English-speaking people, I'm sure he must speak at least a little English."

"We'll have to ask him, won't we?" Moscowitz said, and smiled sweetly.

"In Italian."

Hawes wanted to smack him, too.

"How long was this phone conversation, do you know?"

"No, I don't."

"The phone company would know, I suppose."

"Yes, but…"

"Should we contact them?"

"Why?"

"Find out how long it took my Italian-speaking client to learn when his prospective victim would be out of the apartment so he could burglarize it."

He's trying his case right here in the interrogation room, Carella thought. And winning it.

"By the way, were there any signs of burglary at the scene?" Moscowitz asked.

"The window was open."

"Oh? This means a burglary was committed?"

"No, but Mr. Schievinato must have know there was money in the apartment…"

"Oh? How would he have known that?"

"He knew the woman. Talked to her every morning at the market. Even made a delivery to the apartment when she was sick one morning. She was a lonely old lady. She confided in him. And he took advantage of her trust."

"I see. By shooting her and killing her, is that it?"

"Yes"

"He was surprised during the commission of…"

"But I thought he called her to find out when she'd be out."

"Yes, but…"

"If he knew when she'd be out, how come he was surprised?"

"People come home unexpectedly all the time."

"So he shot her. Was that after he found out that he supposedly knew that she was in the apartment?"

"It had to've been. He paid off his bookie the next day."

"Gave him twenty thousand dollars the next day that right?"

"Yes. Himmel told us…"

"A bookie," Moscowitz said, dismissing him with an airy wave of his hand.

"He had no reason to lie."

"Oh? When did bookmaking become legal?"

"We offered no deals."

"How about offering me one?"

"Like what?"

"We all go home. My client included."

"Your client is a murderer."

"Who stole twenty thousand dollars from an old lady, right?"

"Maybe more."

"Oh? How much more?"

"She withdrew a hundred and twenty-five from her bank the morning before she was killed."

Moscowitz looked at him.

"Let me get this straight," he said. "Are you now saying he stole a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars from her?"

"I'm saying the money is gone. I'm saying twenty thousand of it was turned over to a bookie the following morning. I'm saying it's highly likely, yes."

"Stole all that money and then shot her, is that it?"

"Yes, that's it. That's what it looks like to us."

"Detective, I'll tell you what. This is so preposterous that I'm going to ask that you stop the questioning of my client right this…"

"It's Schiavinato," Carella said. "Skeeah.veenah-toe."

"Thank you. All we're doing here is going over the same tired ground over and over again. You're wasting everyone's time here, and I think you know a grand jury will kick this right out the window in ten seconds flat."

"I think not."

"We think not," Byrnes amended.

"Either way, let's quit. Right now."

"Sure," Carella said. "In fact, I have a suggestion."

"And what's that, Detective?"

"Let's hold a little lineup." Moscowitz looked at him.

"Let's drag Himmel and Santiago out of bed, and let's go wake up the man who saw your client kneeling over the sewer where we recovered the gun."

Moscowitz was silent for what seemed a very long time. Then he said,

"What man? You don't have such a witness."

"Wanna bet, Counselor?"

"What I don't understand," Priscilla said, "is what happened to the other hundred and twenty."

"Me, too," Georgie said.

They were sitting in Lieutenant Byrnes's office Priscilla in the comfortable black leather winged chair behind the lieutenant's desk, the men in straight-backed wooden chairs across the room, near the bookcases.

Outside the lieutenant's office was the squad room proper. They could hear a telephone ringing out there. Outside the grilled corner window" there was the steady sound of traffic on Grover Avenue and the intersecting side street. Beyond slatted wooden railing that divided the square from the corridor outside, in a little room with words INTERROGATION lettered on its frosted glass upper panel, Lorenzo Schiavinato was still being questioned. The little digital clock on the lieutenant's desk, alongside a picture of a woman Pr presumed to be his wife, read 10:32 A.M. The day beginning to cloud over. It looked as if it might snow again.

"He said she'd withdrawn a hundred and five from the bank, didn't he?"

"The cop, yeah," Tony said "Told us a hundred and twenty-five, didn't he?"

"Carella, yeah."

"So how come there was only five in the envelope Priscilla asked.

'"Which isn't exactly horseradish," Georgie reminded her yet another time.

He desperately wanted her to believe that th was what the old lady had in mind when she said her granddaughter would be taken care of. He wanted her to get off that missing hundred and twenty. He knew where ninety-five of that was. It was in an envelope inside a shoebox on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, tucked into one of a pair of black patent-leather slippers he wore with his tuxedo on special occasions like New Year's Eve.

"What happened to the other hundred and twenty?" Priscilla asked again.

Georgie was still doing arithmetic.

Old lady took a hundred and twenty-five from the bank. But there was only a hundred in the locker. So where'd the other twenty-five go?

Lorenzo was weeping into his hands.

This was because he was Italian. It was also because his lawyer had advised him to tell him everything he knew about this old lady's death before the cops called in a lot of people who'd begin pointing fingers at him. Moscowitz listened without benefit of an interpreter as Lorenzo broke his tale in broken English.

It was a sad story.

After he heard it, Moscowitz told the detectives he had no doubt the crime had been committed, but there were unique and sympathetic circumstances surrounding it. In view of these unusual conditions, he had advised his client to tell his story in the presence of a district attorney, and was therefore requesting one now.

Which meant he was ready to cop a plea.

It was snowing outside by the time Assistant District Attorney Nellie Brand got to the Eighty-sevel Precinct: She felt cold and bedraggled even though she looked toasty warm and well-tailored in brown leather boots, a beige blouse, and a headband that complemented, and complimented, blue eyes and sand-colored hair.

She'd had an argument with her husband leaving for work this morning, and her manner with detectives she knew as well as those from Eight-Seven was unusually brusque. She knew Moscowitz, too, had in fact lost a court case to him six months ago. Altogether, her mood did not go well for Lorenzo Schiavinato, who looked handsome by half and who had, by his own admission to his attorney, pumped two slugs into a little old lady. Nellie had already been briefed. And in translating, she began the Q and A with the name/address/occupation bullshit, and then eased into a routine she'd followed a hundred times before. Thousand times. It was exactly 11:04 A.M.

Q: So tell me, sir, how long did you know the murdered woman?

Carella noticed that Nellie, too, had avoided using Schiavinato's name.

He figured if the man ever got out of jail, he should change it to Skeever or something. But it also occurred to him that Nellie had called Svetlana Dyalovich "the murdered woman," and wondered if she was having difficulty pronouncing her name, too. Maybe everyone in the world should change his name, he thought, and missed part of Lorenzo's reply.

A:… at the fish market.

Q: Would this be the Lincoln Street Fish Market?

A: Yes. Where I work.

Q: And that's where you first met her?

A: Yes.

Q: When was this?

A: The middle of September.

Q: This past September.

A: Yes.

Q: So you've know her approximately four months. A bit more than four months.

A: Yes.

Q: Were you ever in her apartment on Lincoln Street?

A: Yes.

Q: 1217 Lincoln Street?

A: Yes.

Q: Apartment 3A?

A: Yes.

Q: When were you there?

A: Twice.

Q: When?

A: The first time to deliver fish for her cat. Svetlana was sick, she called the market…

Q: You called her Svetlana, did you?

A: Yes. That was her name.

Q: And that's what you called her.

A: We were friends.

Q: Did you visit your friend in her apartment on the night of January 20, two days ago?

A: I did.

Q: To deliver fish again?

A: No.

Q: Why were you there, sir?

A: To kill her.

Q: Did you, in fact, kill her?

A: Yes.

Q: Why?

A: To save her.

The way Lorenzo tells it, Svetlana is a nice old lady who comes to the market every morning to buy fish for her cat, telling him every day in almost perfect Italian… Mica, lei par la Italiano bene. Solo un pocotino. No, no, molto bene.

Congratulating her on the way she speaks his tongue, she shyly denying her facility with language, telling him she needs… Mi bisogna un po di pesce fresco per il mio gatto… fresh fish for her cat every day, two fish a day, in the morning, one at night. She feeds him only a day, but the fish must be absolutely fresh my Irina is very fussy," she says in Italian, with girlish wink that tells him she must once have been very beautiful woman. Even at her age, there is still something elegant about the way she walks, a long graceful stride, as if she is crossing a stage; he wonders, sometimes if perhaps she was once an actress.

He first realizes she is in constant pain when, one early morning at the fish market, she can scarcely hold her handbag to pay for her purchase.

This is September, and the weather is mild and sunny, but she is struggling nonetheless with the catch on the bag, and he notices for the first time the gnarled hands and twisted fingers.

She is having such difficulty with the catch on her bag that the pain contorts her face and she turns away from him in embarrassment, continuing her struggle in silence, her back turned to him. When at last she frees the stubborn interlocking metal pieces, she turns to him and he sees that tears are running down her face as she hands him the several dollars for the two fish. "Are you all right?" he asks.

"Puoi alzare la voce?" she asks. "Sono unpo sordo."

Asking him to speak a little louder as she is a little deaf.:

He repeats the question, and she answers, in Italian, "Yes, fine, I'm fine."

He learns one day, early in October, that she is originally from Russia and at once a stronger bond is forged, these two immigrants in a city of immigrants, he an Italian seller of fish, thirty-four years old and adrift in a foreign land, she a Russian expatriate in her eighties, a former actress, perhaps, or dancer perhaps, or perhaps even a princess, who knows, seeking fresh seafood for "mio piccolo tesoro Irina."

My little treasure Irina.

She. reminds him somehow of his gentle and cultivated Aunt Lucia who married a greengrocer from Napoli when Lorenzo was only twelve, breaking his heart when she moved to that beautiful but barbaric city so very far to the south.

Their daily exchanges are no longer than ten or fifteen minutes, each, but during this time they each learn much about the other, and he finds that he looks forward to her early morning visits to the market, pretty silk scarf on her head now that winter is" approaching, woolen gloves on her twisted hands; a worn blue woolen coat, he senses she was once a woman of elegance and taste who has now fallen on hard times here in this harsh city.

One day he tells her why he left Milano.

"I am a gambler," he says. "I owed money."

"Ah," she says, and nods wisely.

"A lot of money. They threatened to kill me. In Italy, this is not an idle threat. I left."

"Do you still gamble?" she asks.

"Ehh," he says, and shrugs, and smiles saying with the slight lifting of his shoulders and faint grin, Yes, signora, every now and then, che fare? "And you?" he asks. "Do you have any habits?"

"I listen to old records," she says.

A week or so later, he learns that she once played piano on the concert stage, often performing at La Scala in Milan, which is where she learned Italian… "But no! La Scala? Veramente?"

"Yes, yes!" Excitedly.

"Not only in Milan," she says, "but also in New York and London and Paris…"

"Brava," he says.

" Budapest' Vienna Anvers, Prague, Liege, Brussels, everywhere. Everywhere." Her voice falling. "Bravissima," he says. "Yes," she says softly.

They are silent for a moment. He is wrapping the fish he recommended to her. "And now?" he says. "Do you still play?"

"Now," she says, "I listen to the past."

Just before Thanksgiving, she comes to the market one morning and tells Lorenzo she had been to see her ear doctor yesterday and he made some tests… "Audiometric tests," she says. "Non so il parole Italiano.. ." she doesn't know the Italian word for the tests, they reproduce various sounds in each ear. The results weren't good, she tells him, and now she is fearful there may be something else wrong. She has lately begun to hear ringing in her ears, she is afraid… Lorenzo tells her that tests aren't always accurate, and doctors often make mistakes, they think they're God, they think they can play with a person's emotions, but she keeps shaking her head and saying she knows the tests were correct, her hearing is getting worse and worse every day of the week. What if there comes a time when she can no longer listen to her own recordings? Then even the past will be gone. And then she might just as well be dead.

It is not until he delivers the fish to her, on the morning she got sick..,

Q: What do you mean, sick?

A: Nothing serious. A cold. Although, for an old woman…

Q: When was this?

A: The beginning of the month.

Q: This month? January?

A: Yes…

Q: How'd you know she was sick?

A: She telephoned me.

Lorenzo, non mi sen to tanto bene oggi. Me lo puoi port are i pesci?

Q: Phoned you at the market?

A: Yes. And asked me if I could please pick out two nice fresh fish for Irina, same as always, and deliver them to the apartment. I told her I would. She was a friend. I got there… At eight-thirty that January morning, there is no one in the hallway when Lorenzo knocks on the door to apartment 3A. But just as Svetlana calls, "Yes, who is it?" the door to apartment 3C opens, and an' exotic-looking woman with long black hair and brown eyes, and a mouth like Sophia Loren's, high cheekbones and wonderful…

Q: What about her?

A: She was coming out of the apartment.

Q: 3C, did you say?

A: Down the hall.

Q: So what about her?

A: Nothing. I'm giving you all the details.

He tells Svetlana through the closed door that it's him, Lorenzo, and he's here with the fish for Irina. She calls to him to come in, the door is open. The girl from 3C has already gone down the stairs.

Lorenzo goes into the apartment. It is a small apartment and frightfully cold on this day when winter has scarcely begun in earnest. Svetlana is sitting up in a double bed in the tiny bedroom, wearing a faded pink silk robe, covered with a blanket and a quilt that looks almost Italian. There is a dresser that is almost certainly Italian, or so he believes, like one you might find on Sicilia or Sardegna, with ornate drawer pulls and paintings on the sides and top.

"C'ho un mal raffredore," she says, telling him she has a bad cold, and then gently warning him not to come near her, "Non ti avvicinare."

Irina the cat is lying at the foot of the bed. She is a fat grey and black and white animal. She blinks up at Lorenzo as he comes into the room, and then catches the scent of the fresh fish wrapped in white paper, and is suddenly all uptight ears and flashing green eyes and twitching nose. Like a jungle beast, Lorenzo thinks.

Svetlana asks if he would mind feeding Irina one of the fish. He needn't do anything but put it in Irina's bowl under the sink; Irina eats everything but the spine and the hard part of the jaw. Lorenzo goes out to the kitchen, unwraps the fish while the cat rubs against his leg. There is something about cats that makes him enormously uncomfortable. He never knows what a cat is thinking. He never knows whether a cat is going to lick his hand or spring for his throat. He puts the raw fish in the cat's bowl and backs away at once.

When he comes back into the bedroom, Svetlana asks him to sit for a moment, please, there is something she would like to discuss with him.

He takes a chair near the dresser. Across the room, he can see into an open closet where old but stylish clothes, tattered and frayed, are hanging on silk-covered hangers the color of Svetlana's robe. She coughs, takes a Kleenex from a box beside the bed, blows her nose, and then says, "Lorenzo, voglio che to mi ammazi."

"Lorenzo, I want you to kill me."