Tricks

CHAPTER 10

The minute he saw her, he knew she was going to be more fun than any of the others. Something in her eyes. Something in her smile. Something in the way she plumped her cute little bottom down on the bar stool, and crossed her legs, and propped one elbow on the bar, and her chin on her hand, and looked him mischievously in the eye—a fun girl, he could tell that at once.

"Well, well, well, hello, Sheryl," he said.

"Well, well, well, hello to you," she said.

"Barkeep," he said, "see what the lady'll have."

"Barkeep, I love that," Sheryl said.

A fun girl. He knew it.

"So what'll it be?" he asked.

"What are you drinking?"

"Gin and tonic."

"I'll have the same," she said.

"A gin and tonic for the lady," he said to Larry, and then immediately, "This guy walks into a bar…"

"You already told this one," Larry said.

"This is another one. Guy walks into a bar, says, 'See that cat over there?' Everybody looks at the cat. Big tomcat with an enormous tail. The guys says, 'I'll bet any man in the house my penis is longer than that cat's tail.' Everybody wants to bet him. Hundred-dollar bills come out all over the place. The guy says to the bartender…"

"Gin and tonic," Larry said, "three bucks, a bargain."

"You should learn not to interrupt a story," he said.

"Tell 'im," Sheryl said.

"The guy says to the bartender, 'Okay, measure us.' So the bartender takes out a tape measure, goes over to the cat, measures the cat's tail, and says, 'Fourteen inches.' They guy nods and says, 'Okay, now measure my penis.' The bartender measures the penis. 'Eight inches,' he says. 'You lose.' The guy looks at him. 'Excuse me,' he says, 'but exactly how did you measure that cat's tail?' The bartender says, 'I put one end of the tape against his asshole and the other end…' and the guy says, 'Would you mind showing me the same consideration?' "

Sheryl burst out laughing.

Larry said, "I don't get it. You owe me three bucks."

He paid for the drink. Sheryl was still laughing.

A fun girl.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Robert Redford," he said, which wasn't too far from the truth in that his first name really was Robert.

"I believe you," she said, and winked at Larry. "What do people call you? Rob? Bob? Bobby?"

"Bobby," he said, which was absolutely the truth.

"And how does your tail measure up against that cat's, Bobby?"

"Want to find out?" he said.

"Oooo, yes," Sheryl said, and rolled her eyes.

"Think that might be fun, huh?" he said.

"I think it'd be loads of fun," she said. "I'll tell you what I get, Bobby. A handjob's…"

"Not yet," he said.

"Well, you see, Bobby, I'm a working girl. So whereas there's nothing I'd enjoy more than sitting here all night with you…"

He put a twenty-dollar bill on the bartop.

"Let's say we're running a tab," he said.

"You mean you and me? Or you and Larry?"

"You and me. The twenty's yours. It buys twenty minutes, a dollar a minute. We'll talk about renewing the option when the meter runs out. How's that sound, Sheryl?"

"No problem," she said, and scooped up the bill.

"Four bucks of that is mine," Larry said, and held out his hand. Sheryl made a face, but she gave him the twenty, and watched him as he walked down to the cash register to make change.

"So where you from, Bobby?" she asked.

"Most recently? Chicago. Before that, Kansas City."

Playing it recklessly. Those were the two cities exactly. But that's what made this so exciting. Playing the game for the ultimate risk.

Larry was back with her change. "Here's your sixteen," he said, handing her three fives and a single.

"You take out a fourteen-inch whanger in here," she said, "Larry'll want twenty percent of it."

"I never yet seen nobody with a fourteen-incher," Larry said.

"You been looking?" she asked, and winked at Bobby and put the bills into her handbag. "What Larry does, he checks out the men's room for fourteen-inchers."

"This soldier is in the men's room taking a shower," Bobby said. "All the other guys in his company…"

"Is this another one?" Larry said.

"I thought I told you not to interrupt my stories," Bobby said.

"Stories like yours…"

"Be quiet," he said.

He spoke the words very softly.

Larry looked at him.

"Do you understand?" he said. "When I'm telling a story, be quiet."

Larry looked into his eyes.

Then he shrugged and walked to the other end of the bar.

"Serves him right," Sheryl said. "Let me hear the story, Bobby."

"This soldier is taking a shower. All the other guys in his company are crowded around the stall, looking in at him, craning for a look at him. That's because the guy has a penis that's only an inch long. Finally, the guy can't take it anymore. He turns to them and yells, 'What's the matter? You never seen anybody with a hard-on before?' "

Sheryl burst out laughing again.

From the other end of the bar, Larry grimaced sourly, and said, "Very funny."

"So which one are you, Bobby?" Sheryl asked. "The fourteen-incher or the inch-long wonder?"

"I thought we weren't going to hurry," he said.

"Listen, it's your money," Sheryl said. "Take all the time you need."

"I mean, I thought we were having fun here," he said.

"We are," she said.

"I mean, isn't this fun?"

"I love your stories, Bobby," she said.

"You're a fun girl," he said. "I can tell that."

"That's what I've been told, Bobby."

"I mean, I'll bet you like to do new and exciting things, don't you?"

"Oh, sure," she said. "I even did it with a police dog once."

"That's not what I meant. I meant new things. Exciting things.'

"Well, to me that was new. Six guys watching while I did it with a police dog? That was new."

"It may have been new, but I'll bet it wasn't exciting," Bobby said.

"Well, I have to admit, when the dog went down on me that was sort of exciting. He had like this very raspy tongue, you know? Like sandpaper. I guess you could say that was sort of exciting. I mean, once you got past the idea of him being a dog, which was disgusting, of course."

"Sheryl," he said, "I think you're terrific, I really do. We're going to have a lot of fun together, you'll see."

"Oh, I'm sure."

"We're going to do some new and very exciting things."

"I can hardly wait," she said.

"Lots of laughs," he said.

"I already find you very funny," she said.

"This midget goes into a men's room," he said. "And there's a guy standing there at one of the…"

This second party was even better than the first one had been.

Parker was having the time of his life.

At the first party, he'd got drunk enough to believe he was really a writer passing himself off as a cop who only wanted to be a writer. At this party, he didn't tell anyone he was a cop because no one was in costume here, it wasn't that kind of a party. But even without the masquerade, he was having a marvelous time. Maybe because there were all sorts of interesting people here, most of them women. Or maybe because these interesting women all found him interesting.

This was very amazing to him.

He thought he was just being his usual shitty self.

It turned out that the woman whose apartment they were in was celebrating her sixty-third birthday tonight, which was why there was a party in the first place, never mind Halloween. Her name was Sandra, and she was the one Peaches had been expecting a call from earlier tonight, which was the only reason she'd answered the phone after that heavy-breathing creep got off the line. Sandra was her next-to-best friend; her best friend was the woman who'd thrown the costume party. Still, Peaches liked Sandra a lot, especially because she never expected a present on her birthday. She was a bit surprised, therefore, and somewhat annoyed, when Parker flatly and rudely expressed the opinion that no one over the age of sixty should be asked to blow out all the candles on a birthday cake in a single breath. And she was even more surprised when Sandra burst out laughing and said, "Oh, baby, how true! Who the hell needs such a humiliating stress test?"

Everyone laughed. Even Peaches.

Sandra then blew out all the candles in a single breath, and pinched Parker on the behind and asked him if he'd like the candles on his cake blown. "Out," she added.

Everyone laughed. Except Peaches.

A little later on, encouraged by the attention a lot of these very interesting women were paying to ideas he'd never even known he'd had, Parker ventured a bit closer to home and suggested to a lady trial lawyer that anyone committing a murder was at least a little bit crazy and that therefore the "legal insanity" defense was meaningless. The lady lawyer said, "That's very interesting, Andy. I had a case last week where…"

It was astonishing.

Parker said to a woman wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses and no bra that he found pornographic movies more honest than any of the nighttime soaps on television, and the woman turned out to be a film critic who encouraged him to expand upon the idea.

Parker told a woman writer—a real writer—that he never spent more than five pages with any book if he wasn't hooked by then, and the woman expounded upon the importance of a book's opening and closing paragraphs, to which Parker said, "Sure, it's like foreplay and afterplay," and the woman writer put her hand on his arm and laughed robustly, which Peaches did not find at all amusing.

Peaches, in fact, was becoming more and more irritated by the fact that Sandra had invited her to a party where the women outnumbered the men by an approximate two-to-one and where Parker was suddenly the center of all this female attention. She had liked it better when they were a couple pretending to be a cop and a victim. They were sharing something then. Now Parker seemed to be stepping out on his own, the small-time flamenco dancer who'd been offered a movie contract provided he ditched his fat lady partner. This miffed Peaches because for Christ's sake she was the one who'd introduced him to show biz in the first place!

When the female midget walked in at twenty-five minutes to twelve, Peaches immediately checked out the man with her. Burly guy going a bit bald, but with a pleasant craggy face, and a seemingly gentle manner. Five-ten or -eleven, she guessed, merry blue eyes, nice speaking voice now that she heard him wishing Sandra a happy birthday. Sandra took their coats and wandered off, muttering something about mingling. Peaches moved in fast before the other sharks smelled blood on the water. She introduced herself to the man and the midget—

"Hi, I'm Peaches Muldoon."

"Quentin Forbes. Alice…"

—and then took the man's arm before he could finish the midget's name, and said, "Come on, I'll get you a drink," and sailed off with him, leaving the midget standing there by the door looking forlornly and shyly into the room.

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

He went over to her at once.

"Small world," he said.

And to his enormous surprise—the night was full of surprises—she burst out laughing, and said, "I feel like a fire hydrant waiting for an engine company. Where's the bar?"

Hal Willis came into the squadroom at twenty minutes to midnight. The teams usually relieved at a quarter to the hour, and so he was early—which was a surprise. Nowadays, ever since he'd taken up with Marilyn Hollis, he was invariably late. And rumpled-looking. He was rumpled-looking tonight, too, giving the impression of a man who'd leaped out of bed and into his trousers not five minutes earlier.

"Getting a bit brisk out there," he said.

He was wearing a short car coat over slacks and a sports jacket, no tie, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned. At five-feet eight-inches tall, he was the shortest man on the squad—even shorter than Fujiwara, who was of Japanese descent—but Willis knew judo and karate, and he'd fooled many a cheap thief who'd figured him for a pushover. He took off the coat and hung it on the coatrack, glanced idly at the bulletin board, and then looked at the duty chart to see who'd be sharing the shift with him. He moved like a man underwater nowadays. Kling attributed his eternal weariness to Marilyn Hollis. Eileen said Marilyn Hollis was poison. Maybe she was right. Kling looked up at the clock.

"Let me fill you in," he said.

He told Willis about the four teenagers Genero had shot.

"Genero?" Willis said, amazed.

He told Willis about the four midgets who'd held up a series of liquor stores.

"Midgets?" Willis said, amazed.

He told Willis that Carella and Meyer had taken three bullets between them and were both at Buenavista Hospital.

"You going over there?" Willis asked.

"Maybe later. I have to run out to Calm's Point."

He looked up at the clock again.

"Brown and Hawes caught a homicide," he said, "all the paperwork is on Brown's desk. There's a picture of the victim, too, a magician. They found him in four separate pieces."

"Four pieces?" Willis said, amazed.

"Here's a number you can reach them at in Collinsworth, case anything breaks. They got an all-points out on a guy named Jimmy Brayne."

"Good evening, gentlemen," O'Brien said from the slatted rail divider, and then pushed his way through the gate into the squadroom. "Winter's on the way." He was indeed dressed for winter, wearing a heavy overcoat and a muffler, which he took off now and carried to the coatrack. Willis wasn't happy to be partnered with O'Brien. O'Brien was a hard-luck cop. You went on a call with O'Brien, somebody was bound to get shot. This wasn't O'Brien's fault. Some cops simply attracted the lunatics with guns. On Christmas Day, not too long ago—well, not too long ago by precinct time, where sometimes an hour seemed an eternity—O'Brien and Meyer had stopped to check out a man changing a flat tire on a moving van. A moving van? Working on Christmas Day? The man turned out to be a burglar named Michael Addison, who'd just cleaned out half a dozen houses in Smoke Rise. Addison shot Meyer twice in the leg. Brown later dubbed the burglar Addison and Steal. This was pretty funny, but the bullets in Meyer's leg weren't. Willis—and everyone else on the squad—was convinced Meyer had got himself shot only because he'd been partnered with O'Brien. Still, he'd been shot again tonight, hadn't he? And he'd been working with Carella. Maybe in this line of work, there were bullets waiting out there with your name on them. In any event, Willis wished O'Brien was home in bed, instead of here in the squadroom with him.

"Steve and Meyer took a couple, did you hear?" he said.

"What are you talking about?"

"Some midgets shot them," Kling said.

"Come on, midgets," O'Brien said.

Kling looked up at the clock again.

"I'll be checking out a car," he said to no one.

"You want a cup of coffee?" O'Brien asked Willis.

It was only fifteen minutes before the beginning of All Hallows' Day.

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, the first day of November is a feast day upon which the church glorifies God for all his saints, known or unknown. The word "hallow" derives from the Middle English halowen, further derived from the Old English halgian, and it means "to make or set apart as holy; to sanctify; to consecrate." All Hallows' Day and Hallowmass are now archaic names for this feast; today—except in novels—it is called All Saints' Day. But it has always been celebrated on the first day of November, which in Celtic times was coincidentally the first day of winter, a time of pagan witches and ghosts, mummery and masquerade. Wholly Christian in origin, however, are the vigil and fasting that occur on the day before.

On the eve of All Hallows' Day, a Christian and a Jew kept vigil in a corridor of the Ernest Atlas Pavilion on the fourth floor of Buenavista Hospital.

The Christian was Teddy Carella.

The Jew was Sarah Meyer.

The clock on the corridor wall read 11:47 p.m.

Sarah Meyer had brown hair and blue eyes and lips her husband had always considered sensual.

Teddy Carella had black hair and brown eyes, and lips that could not speak, for she had been born deaf and mute.

Sarah had not seen the inside of a synagogue for more years than she cared to count.

Teddy scarcely knew the whereabouts of her neighborhood church.

But both women were silently praying, and they were both praying for the same man.

Sarah knew that her husband was out of danger.

It was Steve Carella who was still in surgery.

On impulse, she took Teddy's hand and squeezed it.

Neither of the women said a word to the other.

Neither of the women said a word to the other.

They spotted him the moment they came back into the bar. Annie knew he was their man. So did Eileen. They headed immediately for the ladies' room.

A black hooker wearing a blonde wig was standing at the sink, looking into the mirror over it, touching up her lipstick. She was a woman in her early forties, Eileen guessed, wearing a black dress and a short, fake fur jacket, going a bit thick in the middle and around the ankles. Eileen was certain she had just come in off the meat rack on the street outside.

"Getting chilly out there, ain't it?" the woman said.

"Yeah," Annie said.

"I'd park in here a while, but Larry gets twenty percent."

"I know."

"My man take a fit I give away twenty percent of the store."

There was a knife scar across the bridge of her nose.

She must have been pretty once, Eileen thought.

"One last pee," she said, and went into one of the stalls.

Annie lighted a cigarette. They chatted idly about how cold it was. The black hooker chimed in from behind the closed door of the stall, reporting on the really cold weather in Buffalo, New York, where she used to work years ago. They waited for her to flush the toilet. They waited while she washed her hands at the sink.

"Have a nice night," she said, and was gone.

"He's our man, isn't he?" Eileen said at once.

"Looks like him."

"Hitting on the wrong hooker."

"You'd better move in," Annie said.

"Sheryl won't like it."

"She'll like a slab even less."

"Will Shanahan know he's here?" Eileen asked.

"He'll know, don't worry."

Eileen nodded.

"You ready for this?" Annie asked.

"I'm ready."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Annie searched her face.

"Because if you…"

"I'm ready," Eileen said.

Annie kept searching her face. Then she said, "Let's go then," and tossed her cigarette into one of the toilet bowls.

The cigarette expired with a short tired hiss.

He was telling another joke when Eileen took the stool on his right.

Blond. Six-two, six-three. Two hundred and ten easy. Eyeglasses. A tattoo near his right thumb, a blue heart lined in red, nothing in it.

"… so he says to the old man, 'What's the matter? Why are you crying?' The old man just keeps sitting there on the park bench, crying his eyes out. Finally he says, 'A year ago, I married this beautiful twenty-six-year-old girl. I've never been happier in my life. Before breakfast each morning, she wakes me up and blows me, and then she serves me bacon and eggs and toasted English muffins and piping hot coffee, and I go back to bed and rest till lunchtime. Then she blows me again before lunch, and she serves me a hot, delicious lunch, and I go back to bed again and rest till dinnertime. And she blows me again before dinner and serves me another terrific meal, and I fall asleep until morning when she wakes me up again with another blowjob. She's the most wonderful woman I've ever met in my life.' The guy looks at him. 'Then why are you crying?' he asks. And the old man says, 'I forgot where I live!' "

Sheryl burst out laughing.

Eileen was thinking about the dead hookers he'd had in stitches.

"This guy's marvelous," Sheryl said, still laughing, leaning over to talk across him. "Linda, say hello to Bobby, he's marvelous."

"Hello, Bobby," Eileen said.

Terrific name for a slasher, she thought.

"Well, well, well, hello, Linda," he said, turning to her.

"Me and Bobby's running a tab," Sheryl said. "Which by the way, time's almost up."

"That right?" Eileen said.

"Just having a little fun here," Bobby said.

"The real fun comes later, honey," Sheryl said. "This is just the warm-up."

"I hear redheads are a lot of fun," Bobby said. "Is that true?"

"I haven't had any complaints," Eileen said.

She was wondering how she could get rid of Sheryl. If they were running a bar tab…

"But they burn in the sun," Bobby said.

"Yeah, I have to watch that."

"Just don't go out except at night, that's all," Sheryl said. "Listen, Bobby, I hate to be pushy, but your time's running out. You said twenty bucks for twenty minutes, remember?"

"Uh-huh."

"So take a look at the clock. You got about a minute left."

"I see that."

"So what do you say? We're having fun here, am I right?"

"Lots of fun."

"So how about another twenty, take us into Saturday?"

"Sounds like a good idea," he said, but he made no move for his wallet. Sheryl figured she was losing him.

"Matter of fact," she said, "whyn't you put Linda on the tab, too?"

"Thanks, no, I've been drinking too much tonight," Eileen said.

"This ain't a booze tab," Sheryl said. "This is accounts receivable. What do you say, Bobby? Lay a couple of twenties on the bar there, you buy both of us till a quarter past. Double your pleasure, double your fun. And later on, you still interested, we do a triad."

"What's a triad?" he asked.

"I read it in a book. It's like a two-on-one. A triad."

"I'm not sure I could handle two of you," he said.

But Eileen could see the sudden spark of ambition in his eyes. Blue to match the blue in the tattooed heart near his thumb. Seriously considering the possibility now. Take them both outside, slash them both, maybe go for a third one later on, do the hat trick tonight.

She didn't want a civilian getting in the way.

She had to get rid of Sheryl.

"I don't work doubles," she said.

A risk.

"How come?" Bobby asked.

"Why should I share this?" she said, and put her left hand on his thigh. He thought she was going for the meat. She was frisking him for the knife. Found it, too. Outlined in his right-hand pants pocket, felt like a six-incher at least. Maybe eight.

A shiver ran up her spine.

Sheryl was getting nervous. Her eyes flicked up to the clock again. The twenty minutes were gone, and she didn't see another twenty bucks coming out of his wallet. She was afraid she'd already lost him. So she tried again, appealing not to him now, but to the redheaded hooker sitting on his right, a sorority sister, so to speak, someone who knew how tough it was to earn a buck in a dog-eat-dog world.

"Change your mind, Linda," she said.

There was something almost plaintive in her voice.

"Come on, okay? It'll be fun."

"I think Linda might be more fun alone," Bobby said.

Eileen's hand was still on his thigh. Off the knife now, like finding the knife was an accident. Fingers spread toward his crotch.

Sheryl looked up at the clock again.

"Tell you what," she said. "I'll make it only ten bucks for the next twenty minutes, how's that? We'll sit here, I'll let you tell me some more of your jokes, be a lot of fun, what do you say?"

A last desperate try.

"I say it's up to Linda here. What do you say, Linda?"

"I told you. I don't do doubles."

Flat out. Get rid of her.

"You heard her," he said.

"Hey, come on, what kinda… ?"

"So long, Sheryl," he said.

She got off the stool at once.

"You're some cunt, you know that?" she said to Eileen, and turned away angrily and walked toward a table where three men were sitting drinking beer. "Who wants me?" she said angrily, and pulled out a chair and sat.

"I hate it when the fun goes out of it," Bobby said.

"We'll have lots of fun, don't worry," Eileen whispered, and tightened her hand on his thigh. "You want to get out of here this minute? I get ten bucks for a handjob…"

"No, no, let's talk a while, okay?" He reached into his right hip pocket, pulled out his wallet. Big killer, she thought, keeps his wallet in the sucker pocket. "Same deal as with Sheryl, okay? A buck a minute, here's a twenty"—reaching into the wallet, pulling out a bill, looking up at the clock—"we'll see how it goes, okay?"

"What is this?" Eileen asked. "An audition?"

"Well, I'd like to get to know you a little before I…"

He cut himself short.

"Before you what?" she said.

"You know," he said, and smiled, and lowered his voice. "Do it to you."

"What would you like to do to me, Bobby?"

"New and exciting things," he said.

She looked into his eyes.

Another shiver ran up her back.

"You cold?" he asked.

"A little. The weather's changing all of a sudden."

"Here," he said. "Take my jacket."

He shrugged out of the jacket. Tweed. He was wearing a blue flannel shirt under it, open at the throat. Blue to match his eyes and the tattooed heart near his thumb. He draped the jacket over her shoulders. There was the smell of death on the jacket, as palpable as the odor of smoke hanging on the air. She shivered again.

"So what do you say?" he asked her. "A buck a minute, does that sound all right?"

"Sure," she said.

"Well, good," he said, and handed her the twenty-dollar bill.

"Thanks," she said, and looked up at the clock. "This buys you till twenty past," she said, and tucked the bill into her bra. She didn't want to open her bag. She didn't want to risk him spotting the .44 in her bag, under the silk scarf. She was going to blow his brains out with that gun.

"Nothing for our friendly barkeep?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"I thought he got twenty percent."

"Oh. No, we have an arrangement."

"Well, good. I'd hate to think you were cheating him. You don't cheat people, do you, Linda?"

"I try to give good value," she said.

"Good. 'Cause you promised me a lot of fun, didn't you?"

"Show you a real good time," she said, and nodded.

Across the room, Annie was in conversation with the frizzied brunette who'd earlier partnered with Sheryl. The place was beginning to thin out a bit. There'd be a new shift coming in, Eileen guessed, the morning people, the denizens of the empty hours. He'd paid for twenty minutes of her time, but he'd dumped Sheryl without a backward glance, and she couldn't risk losing him to any of the other girls here. Twenty minutes unless he laid another bill on the bar. Twenty minutes to get him outside on the street, where he'd moved on the other three women. Show him a real good time, all right. Punish him for what he'd done. Make him pay for the three women he'd killed. Make him pay, too, for what a man named Arthur Haines had done to her face… and her body… and her spirit.

"So where are all the jokes?" she asked.

"Jokes?"

"Sheryl said you're full of jokes."

"No, Sheryl didn't say that."

"I thought she said…"

"I'm sure she didn't."

A mistake? No. Back off a bit, anyway.

"She said she'd settle for ten bucks, sit here with you, let you tell her some more jokes…"

"Oh. Yeah."

"So let me hear one."

"I'd rather talk about you right now."

"Sure," Eileen said.

" 'Cause I find that fun, you know. Learning about other people, finding out what makes them tick."

"You sound like a shrink," she said.

"Well, my father's a shrink."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Practices in L.A. Lots of customers out there. You know what L.A. stands for?"

"What?"

"Lunatic Asylum."

"I've never been there, so I wouldn't…"

"Take my word for it. Every variety of nut in the—do you know the one about the guy who goes into a nut shop?"

"No."

"He stutters badly, he says to the clerk, 'I'd I-I-like to b-b-buy a p-p-pound of n-n-nuts.' The clerk says, 'Yes, sir, we have some very nice Brazil nuts at three dollars a pound.' The guy says, 'N-n-no, that's t-t-too high.' So the clerk says, 'I've also got some nice almonds at two dollars a pound.' The guy says, 'N-n-no, that's t-t-too high, t-t-too.' So the clerk says, 'I've got some peanuts at a dollar a pound,' and the guys says, 'F-f-fine.' The clerk weighs out the peanuts, puts them in a bag, and the guy pays for them. The guy says, 'Th-thank you, and I also w-w-want to th-thank you for n-n-not m-m-mentioning m-m-my im-p-p-pedi-ment.' The clerk says, 'That's quite all right, sir, and I want to thank you for not mentioning my deformity.' The guy says, 'Wh-what d-d-deformity?' The clerk says, 'Well, I have a very large nose.' The guy says, 'Oh, is that your n-n-nose? Your n-n-nuts are so high, I th-thought it was your p-p-pecker.'"

Eileen burst out laughing.

The laughter was genuine.

For the briefest tick of time she forgot that she was sitting here at the bar with a man she felt reasonably certain had killed three women and would do his best to kill her as well if she gave him the slightest opportunity.

The laughter surprised her.

She had not laughed this heartily in a long time. She had not laughed since the night Arthur Haines slashed her cheek and forced himself upon her.

She could not stop laughing.

She wondered all at once if the laughter was merely a release of nervous tension.

But she kept laughing.

Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

She reached into her bag for a tissue, felt under the silk scarf, touched the butt of the .44, and suddenly the laughter stopped.

Dabbing at her eyes, she said, "That was very funny."

"I'm going to enjoy you," he said, smiling, looking into her eyes. "You're going to be a good one."