Tricks

CHAPTER 13

Parker felt like a real cop again.

A working detective.

The feeling was somewhat exhilarating.

The newspaper story accompanying the headline told him everything he needed to know about the liquor-store holdups tonight. The story extensively quoted Detective Meyer Meyer who had been interviewed in his room at Buenavista Hospital. Meyer had told the reporter that the heists and subsequent felony murders had been executed by four midgets being driven by a big blonde woman in a blue station wagon. One of the holdup victims had described the thieves as midgets. She had further told the police that one of the midgets was named Alice.

Parker did not have to be a detective to know that there couldn't be too many midgets named Alice in this city. But making the connection so quickly made him feel like a real cop again.

He put Peaches in a taxi—even though they were only four blocks from her apartment—told her he'd try to call her later, and then hailed a cruising patrol car. The two uniformed cops in the car advised Parker they were from the Three-One—which Parker knew anyway since the number of the precinct was on the side of the car—and they didn't know if they had authority to provide transportation for a detective from the Eight-Seven.

Parker said, "This is a homicide here, open the fucking door!"

The two uniformed cops looked at each other by way of consultation, and then the cop riding shotgun unlocked the back door for him. Parker sat in the back of the car like a common criminal, a metal grille separating him from the two cops up front.

"Four-oh-three Thompson Street," he told the driver.

"That's all the way down the Quarter," the driver complained.

"That's right, it should take you fifteen, twenty minutes."

"Half hour's more like it," the shotgun cop said, and then got on the walkie-talkie to tell his sergeant they were driving a bull from the Eight-Seven downtown.

The sergeant said, "Let me talk to him."

"He's in back," the shotgun cop said.

"Stop the car and let me talk to him," the sergeant said. He sounded very no-nonsense. Parker had met sergeants like him before. He loved trampling on sergeants like him.

They stopped the car and opened the back door. The shotgun cop handed the walkie-talkie in to Parker.

"What's the problem?" Parker said into it.

"Who's this?" the sergeant said.

"Detective Andrew Lloyd Parker," he said, "Eighty-Seventh Squad. Who's this?"

"Never mind who this is, what's the idea commandeering one of my cars?"

"The idea is homicide," Parker said. "The idea is two cops in the hospital. The idea is I gotta get downtown in a hurry, and I'd hate like hell for the media to find out a sergeant from the Three-One maybe stood in the way of a timely arrest. That's the idea. You think you got it?"

There was a long silence.

"Who's your commanding officer?" the sergeant asked, trying to save face.

"Lieutenant Peter Byrnes," Parker said. "We finished here?"

"You can take the car downtown, but I'll be talking to your lieutenant," the sergeant said.

"Good, you talk to him," Parker said, and handed the walkie-talkie to the shotgun cop. "Let's get rolling," he said.

They closed the back door again. The driver set the car in motion.

"Hit the hammer," Parker said.

The blues looked sidelong at each other. This kind of thing didn't seem to warrant use of the siren.

"Hit the fucking hammer," Parker said.

The driver hit the siren switch.

They were sitting in the living room when Brown got off the phone. Marie and her sister-in-law side by side on the sofa, Hawes in an easy chair opposite them.

Brown walked in looking very solemn.

"Hal Willis," he said to Hawes.

"What's up?" Hawes said.

Brown tugged casually at his earlobe before he started talking again. Hawes picked up the signal at once. Little dog-and-pony act on the way.

"They found the rest of the body," Brown said.

Marie looked at him.

"Head and the hands," Brown said. "In the river. I'm sorry, ma'am," he said to Dolores, "but your brother's body was dismembered. I hate to break it to you this way."

"Oh my God!" Dolores said.

Marie was still looking at Brown.

"Guys dredging the river pulled up this aluminum case, head and the hands in it," he said.

Hawes was trying to catch the drift. He kept listening intently.

"Did you know this?" Dolores asked Marie.

Marie nodded.

"You knew he'd been… ?"

"Yes," she said. "I didn't tell Mom because I knew what it would do to her."

"Monoghan responded," Brown said to Hawes, "phoned the squad. Willis went on over with the stuff on my desk."

The stuff on his desk, Hawes thought. The reports, the positive ID, the poster he'd taken from the high school bulletin board.

"I hate to have to go over this another time, Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "but I wonder if you can give me a description of your husband again. So we can close this out."

"I have it right here," Hawes said. He was beginning to catch on. Nobody closed out a case while the murderer was still running around loose. He took his notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket, flipped through the pages. "Male, white, thirty-four years old…" he said.

"That right?" Brown asked Marie.

"Yes," she said.

"Five-eleven," Hawes said, "one-seventy…"

"Mrs. Sebastiani?"

"Yes."

Eyes flashing with intelligence now. Hawes figured she was beginning to catch on, too. Didn't know exactly what was coming, but was bracing herself for it. Hawes didn't know exactly what was coming, either. But he had a hunch.

"Hair black," he said, "Eyes…"

"Why do we have to go over this again?" she said. "I identified the body, you have everything you…"

My brother's hair was black, yes," Dolores said softly, and patted Marie's hand.

"Eyes blue," Hawes said.

"Blue eyes, yes," Dolores said. "Like mine."

"Will I have to come into the city again?" Marie asked. "To look at… at what they… they found in the… ?"

"Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "the head we found in the river doesn't match your husband's photograph."

Marie blinked at him.

Silence.

Then:

"Well… does… does that mean… what does that mean?"

"It means the dead man isn't your husband," Brown said.

"Has someone made a mistake then?" Dolores asked at once. "Are you saying my brother isn't dead?"

"Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "would you mind very much if I read you this description you gave me of Jimmy Brayne?"

"I really don't see why we have to go over this a hundred times," she said. "If you were doing your job right, you'd have found Jimmy by how."

Brown had already taken out his notebook.

"White male," he read, "thirty-two years old. Height, six feet. Weight, a hundred and eighty…"

"Yes," she said impatiently.

Eyes alert now. Hawes had seen those eyes before. Desperate eyes, trapped eyes. Brown was closing in, and she knew it.

"Hair black, eyes brown."

"Yes," she said again.

"Mrs. Sebastiani, the eyes were brown."

"Yes, I just told you…"

"On the head in the river. The eyes were brown." He turned to Dolores. "Does your brother have an appendectomy scar?" he asked.

"A what?"

"Did he ever have his appendix removed?"

"No. I don't understand what you…"

"Was he ever in a skiing accident? Did he ever tear the cartilage on his…"

"He never skied in his life," Dolores said.

She looked extremely puzzled now. She glanced at Marie.

"The techs printed the fingers and thumbs on both hands," Brown said. "We're running a comparison check right this minute. Was your brother ever in the service?"

"Yes. The Army."

"Would you know if Jimmy Brayne was ever in the service?"

"I don't know."

"Or in any security-sensitive job? How about you, Mrs. Sebastiani? You seem to know a lot about Jimmy Brayne, maybe you know whether he's ever been fingerprinted."

"All I know about him…"

"Right down to his beauty spot," Brown said, and snapped the notebook shut.

"Marie, what is he talking about?" Dolores asked.

"I think she knows what I'm talking about," Brown said.

Marie said nothing.

"If the prints come up blank," Brown said, "we've still got the head. Someone'll identify him. Sooner or later, we'll get a positive ID."

She still said nothing.

"He's Jimmy Brayne, isn't he?" Brown asked.

Silence.

"You and your husband killed Jimmy Brayne, didn't you?" he said.

She sat quite still, her hands folded on the lap of her robe.

"Mrs. Sebastiani," Brown said, "would you like to tell us where your husband is?"

Parker opened the door with a skeleton key.

On the sofa bed in the living room, a male midget and a female midget were asleep. They jumped up the minute the door opened.

"Hello," Parker said softly, and showed them the gun.

Wee Willie Winkie was one of the midgets. He was wearing striped pajamas. He looked cute as a button, but his face went pale the moment he saw the gun. His wife, Corky, was wearing panties and a baby-doll nightgown. Pink. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her breasts as Parker approached the bed. Light from the hallway spilled illumination into the room. It glinted on the gun in Parker's hand. Gorky's brown eyes were opened wide. She kept holding the pillow to her breasts. Parker thought she looked a little bit like Debbie Reynolds.

"Are the others asleep?" he whispered.

Willie nodded.

"Where?"

Willie pointed to a pair of closed doors.

"Up," Parker whispered.

They got out of bed. Corky looked embarrassed in only her nightgown and panties. She kept holding the pillow to her in front, but her back was exposed. Parker gestured with the gun.

"We're going to wake them up," he whispered. "Don't yell or I'll shoot you both."

In one of the bedrooms, Oliver Twist was asleep with a full-sized woman. The woman was very fat and very blonde. Parker remembered the old joke about the midget marrying the circus fat lady and running around the bed all night yelling, "Mine, all mine!"

He nudged the midget.

The midget popped up in bed.

Red hair all mussed, blue eyes wide.

"Shhhh," Parker said. "It's the police."

Oliver blinked. So did Willie. This was the first he was hearing of this. Up to now, he'd thought they were dealing with a burglar, which was bad enough. Now he knew it was a cop in here, his worst nightmare realized. He glanced at Corky, his eyes blaming his wife for her goddamn friendship with Little Annie Oakley and her trigger-happy finger.

"Wake up your lady," Parker said to Oliver.

Oliver nudged the fat blonde.

She rolled over.

He nudged her again.

"Go away," she said.

Parker pulled the blanket off her. She was wearing a long granny nightgown. She tried to pull the blanket back over her again, grasped futilely at only thin air, and then sat up, annoyed and still half-asleep.

"Police," Parker said, smiling.

"What?" she said, blinking.

"You the one did the driving?" he said.

"What driving?" she said.

"She don't know what driving," Parker said to Oliver, still smiling.

"Quentin did the driving," Oliver said. "This lady had nothing to do with any of it."

"Any of what?" the blonde said.

Quentin, Parker thought. The guy at the party.

"Where is he?" he asked.

"In the other room," Oliver said.

"Let's go tell him the party's over," Parker said. "Get out of bed. Both of you."

They got out of bed.

"Is this a joke?" the blonde whispered to Oliver.

"I don't think it's a joke," Oliver whispered back.

Parker herded the four of them into the other bedroom. The radiator was hissing, and the room was suffocatingly hot. Parker snapped on the lights. Quentin Forbes was in bed with Alice. Neither of them stirred. They had thrown back the covers in their sleep, and they were both naked. Alice looked as pretty as a little doll, her blonde hair fanned out over the pillow.

"Police!" Parker shouted, and they both jumped up at the same time. "Hello, Alice," he said, and smiled.

"Hello, Andy," she said, and smiled back.

"We have to get dressed now," he said, as if to a child.

"Okay," she said, and reached under the pillow.

Parker said it even before he saw the gun in her hand.

"Don't."

She hesitated.

"Please, Alice," he said. "Don't."

She must have discerned something in his eyes. She must have known she was looking into the eyes of a cop who had seen it all and heard it all.

"Okay," she said, and put down the gun.

Forbes said, "This is an outrage."

"It is, I know," Parker said.

"Let me see your badge," the blonde said.

Parker showed her his shield.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Let's get dressed now," he said, and went to the window and yelled down for the two uniformed cops from the Three-One.

There were only three pairs of handcuffs among them, and six people to cuff. This was a problem in the law of supply and demand. One of the blues went downstairs again and radioed for assistance, making it clear this wasn't a 10-13, they just needed some more handcuffs. The sergeant at the Twelfth wanted to know what two blues from the Three-One and a detective from the Eight-Seven were doing on his turf, but he sent a car around with the extra cuffs. By the time the cuffs arrived, Parker had personally searched the apartment. He'd found a valise full of money. He'd found a trunk with costumes and masks and wigs in it. He'd found four .22-caliber Zephyr revolvers and a Colt .45-caliber automatic.

He figured he had a case.

When they put the cuffs on her, Alice was wearing a pair of tailored gray slacks, a long-sleeved pink blouse, a double breasted navy-blue jacket with brass buttons, blue patent leather shoes with French heels, and a little navy-blue overcoat. She looked adorable.

As they went out of the apartment together, she said, "It didn't have to happen this way, you know."

"I know," Parker said.

Willis hoped there wasn't a gun in the room here. He hoped there wouldn't be shooting. With O'Brien along…

"Police," O'Brien said, and knocked on the door again.

Silence inside the room there.

Then the sound of a window scraping open.

"He's moving!" Willis said.

He was already backing away from the door and raising his right leg for a piston-kick. Arms wide for leverage, he looked like a football player going for the extra point. His leg lashed out, the sole and heel of his shoe hitting the door flat, just above the knob. The latch sprang, the door swung inward, O'Brien following it into the room, gun extended. Don't let there be another gun in here, Willis thought.

A man in his undershorts was halfway out the window.

"That's a long drop, mister," O'Brien said.

The man hesitated.

"Mr. Sebastiani?" Willis said.

The man still had one leg over the windowsill. There was no fire escape out there, Willis wondered where the hell he thought he was going.

"My name is Theo Hardeen," he said.

"So your wife mentioned," Willis said.

"My wife? I don't know what you're talking about."

They never knew what anyone was talking about.

"Mr. Sebastiani," Willis said, "at this very moment, your wife is driving in from Collinsworth with two detectives from the Eighty-Seventh Squad, upon whose instructions and advice we're…"

"I don't have any wife in…"

"They also have a chain saw in the car," O'Brien said.

"They found a chain saw in your garage," Willis said.

"There's a lot of blood on the saw," O'Brien said.

"Sir, we're arresting you for the crime of murder," Willis said, and then began reeling off Miranda-Escobedo by rote. Sebastiani listened to the recitation as though he were being lectured. He still had one leg over the windowsill.

"Mr. Sebastiani?" Willis said. "You want to come in off that window now?"

Sebastiani came in off the window.

"She blew it, huh?" he said.

"You both did," Willis said.

This time is for real, Carella thought.

No tricks this time.

This time I go west.

Swirling darkness, blinking lights, aurora borealis, murmuring voices, beeping sounds, everything so fake and far away, but everything so real and immediate, it was funny. Floating somewhere above himself, hovering above himself like the angel of death, "Wear this garlic around your neck," Grandma used to say, "it'll keep away the angel of death," but where's the garlic now, Grandma? Crisp white sheets and soft feather pillows, tomato sauce cooking on the old wood stove in the kitchen, your eyeglasses steaming up, the time Uncle Jerry ate the rat shit, thinking it was olives, everyone gone now, is Meyer dead, too?

Jesus, Meyer, don't be dead.

Please don't be dead.

Floating on the air above himself, looking down at himself, the big hero, some hero, open to the world, open to the hands and eyes of strangers, an open book, don't let Meyer be dead, let me hold you, Meyer, let me hold you, friend. Let's go in now, did someone say that years and years ago? Open him up now, open up the hero, big editorial conference out there, but no last-minute editorial decisions this time, no one here to say you can't kill the hero, big hero, some hero, cold-cocked by midgets, bang-bang, gotcha, close the book.

Exit.

But…

Please save that for later, okay? Save the final curtain for somewhere down the line, I'm a married man, give me a break. He almost laughed though nothing was funny, tried to laugh, wondered if he was smiling instead, heard someone say something through the fog rolling in off the water, heavy storm brewing out there, I never even learned to sail, he thought, I never had a yacht.

All the things I never did.

All the things I never had.

Well, listen, who's… ?

All the treasures.

Thirty-seven five a year doesn't buy treasures.

Ah, Jesus, Teddy, I never bought you treasures.

All the things I wanted to buy you.

Forgive me for the treasures, bless me father for I have sinned, A is for amethyst and B is for beryl, C is for coral and D is for diamonds, F is for furs and G is for gold and H is for heaven and I is for…

E is missing.

E is for exit.

But…

Please don't get ahead of me, please don't rush me, just give me a little time to finish the rest of the alphabet, I beg of you, please.

I is for me.

"Careful," someone said.

There's one hot-bed hotel the girls use, plus fifty or sixty rented rooms all over the Zone.

Shanahan talking.

Too many hours ago.

She had lost her backups, she knew that.

She didn't know what had happened on the street outside, but they were gone, that was for sure.

So here we are, she thought.

Alone at last.

You and me.

Face to face.

Not in that single hot-bed hotel, where there was a chance they might find her before the crack of dawn, but in one of those fifty or sixty rented rooms. Lady downstairs taking the money from him, looking at it on the palm of her hand as if she expected a tip besides, up the stairs to the third floor, the smells of cooking permeating the hallways, terrific spot for a honeymoon, key in the door, the door opening on a room with a bed and a dresser and a wooden chair and a lamp and a tattered window shade, and a small door at the far end leading into a bathroom with only a toilet bowl and a soiled sink.

"It's small, but it's cheerful," he'd said, grinning, and then he'd locked the door behind them and put the key into the same pocket with the knife.

That was almost an hour ago.

He'd been talking ever since.

She kept reminding him that time was money, wanting him to make his move, get it over with, but he kept laying twenty-dollar bills on her, "A dollar a minute, right?" he said, and the empty minutes of the night kept ticking away, and he made no move to approach her.

She wondered if she should bust him, anyway. Here we go, mister, it's the Law, run a lineup for the pair of hookers who'd described him, run the risk of them either chickening out or not remembering, run the further risk—even with a positive ID—that he'd talk his way out of it, walk away from it. Two hookers claiming they saw him chatting up the victims didn't add up to a conviction. No. If he was their man, he had to move on her before she could bust him. Come at her with the knife. No easy way out of this one, she thought. It's still him and me, alone together in this room. And all I can do is wait. And listen.

She was learning a lot about him.

He was lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling, and she was sitting in the wooden chair across the room near the dresser, her bag on the floor near her dangling hand, and she felt like a psychiatrist listening to a patient. The room was warm enough, she had to say that for it. Sizzling hot radiator throwing heat, she was almost getting drowsy, that's all she needed. His jacket draped over the back of the wooden chair now, his voice droning into the room. She sat with both feet planted firmly on the floor, legs slightly apart, gun strapped to her ankle inside the right boot. She was ready for anything. But nothing came. Except talk.

"… that maybe she was partly to blame for what happened, you know?" he said. "My mother. Listen, I love her to death, don't get me wrong, she's the one who made my freedom possible, may she rest in peace. But when you think of it another way, was it all my father's fault? Can I just hold him responsible? For laying Elga? I mean, isn't my mother partly to blame for what happened?"

Elga again.

Hardly a sentence out of his mouth without some mention of the housekeeper.

"She was a schoolteacher, you know, my mother, did I tell you that?"

Only a hundred times, Eileen thought.

"Put him through medical school, left me with Elga all the while I was growing up, well, listen, I don't blame her for that. She was teaching to support the family, you know, that was a lot of responsibility. Do you know the one about the kindergarten teacher who gets the obscene phone call? She picks up the phone, she says, 'Hello?' and the voice on the other end says, 'Doo-doo, pee-pee, ca-ca,' well, that's an old one, you probably heard it. My mother didn't teach kindergarten, she was a high school teacher, worked in a tough school, long, hard hours, sometimes didn't get home till six or seven, had to correct papers all night long, I hated Elga. But what I'm saying, responsibility is a two-way street. If my father was laying Elga, maybe part of the fault was my mother's, do you see what I mean? She always said she hated teaching, but then why did she take it so seriously? Her sense of responsibility, sure. But shouldn't she have been responsible to her husband, too? To her son? Shouldn't she have taken care of our needs, too? I mean, shit, teaching didn't have to become an obsession with her, did it?"

I don't want to be your shrink, Eileen thought. I don't want to hear anything else about you, make your goddamn move!

But he wouldn't stop talking.

"Children sense things, don't you think?" he said. "I must have known something was wrong in that house. My father yelling at me all the time, my mother never there, there was tension in that house, you could cut it with a knife."

Silence.

She watched him on the bed.

Hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.

"I'll tell you the truth, I sometimes felt like killing her."

More silence.

Here it comes, Eileen thought.

"When I was a kid," he said.

And the silence lengthened.

"Fucking dedicated schoolteacher," he said.

She watched him.

"Ignoring the people who loved her."

Kept watching him. Ready. Waiting.

"I tried to make sense of it later, after she died. Left me all that money. This is for Robert's freedom to risk enjoying life. That was guilt talking, wasn't it? That was her guilt for having ignored us both."

Silence again.

"Do you know what she did once? Elga?"

"What did she do?"

"I was eight years old."

"What did she do?"

"She took off her bloomers."

Bloomers. A child's expression.

"Showed herself to me."

Silence.

"I ran away from her and locked myself in the bathroom."

Silence.

"My mother found me in there when she got home from school. Elga said I'd been a bad boy. Told my mother I'd locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out. My mother asked me why I'd done that. Elga was standing right there. I said I was afraid of the lightning. It was raining that day. Elga smiled. The next time we were alone together, she… she… forced me to…"

He sat up suddenly.

"Do you know the one about the guy who goes into a sex shop to buy a merkin? The clerk says, 'Did you want this sent, sir, or will you take it with you?' The guy says, 'No, I'll just eat it here.' " He laughed harshly and abruptly and then said, "How would you like me to eat your pussy?"

"Sure," she said.

"Then take off your bloomers."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"Come over here and take off your bloomers."

"You come here," Eileen said.

He stood up.

He put his right hand in his pocket.

She thought Yes, take out the knife, you son of a bitch.

And then she thought No, don't, Bobby.

And was suddenly confused again.

"Bobby," she said wearily, "I'm a cop."

"Sure," he said, "a cop."

"I don't want to hurt you," she said.

"Then don't bullshit me!" he said angrily. "I've had enough bullshit in my life!"

"I'm a cop," she said, and took the gun out of her bag, and leveled it at him. "Let's go find some help for you, okay?"

He looked at her. A smile cracked over his face.

"Is this a trick?" he said.

"No trick. I'm a cop. Let's go, okay?"

"Go where? Where do you want to go, baby?" He was still smiling.

But his hand was still in his pocket.

"Find some people you can talk to," she said.

"About what? There's nothing I have to say to…"

"Put the knife on the floor, Bobby,"

She was standing now, almost in a policeman's crouch, the gun still leveled at him.

"What knife?" he said.

"The knife in your pocket, Bobby. Put it on the floor."

*'I don't have a knife," he said.

"You have a knife, Bobby. Put it on the floor."

He took the knife out of his pocket.

"Good, now put it on the floor," she said.

"Suppose I don't?" he said.

"I know you will, Bobby."

"Suppose I lock myself in the bathroom instead?"

"No, you won't do that, Bobby. You're going to put the knife on the floor…"

"Like a good little boy, huh?"

"Bobby… I'm not your mother, I'm not Elga, I'm not going to hurt you. Just drop the knife on the floor…"

"Listen to the shrink," he said. "You're a fucking hooker is what you are, who the fuck do you think you're kidding?"

"Bobby, please drop the knife."

"Say pretty please," he said, and the blade snicked open.

The gun was in her hand, she had him cold.

"Don't move," she said.

The policeman's crouch more defined now, more deliberate.

He took a step toward her.

"I'm warning you, don't move!"

"Do you know the one about the guy who goes into a bank to hold it up? He sticks the gun in the teller's face and says, 'Don't muss a moovle, this is a fuck-up!' "

Another step toward her.

"This isn't fun anymore," he said, and sliced the knife across the air between them.

"Whoosh," he said.

And came at her.

Her first bullet took him in the chest, knocking him backward toward the bed. She fired again almost at once, hitting him in the shoulder this time, spinning him around, and then she fired a third time, shooting him in the back, knocking him over onto the bed, and then—she would never understand why—she kept shooting into his lifeless body, watching the eruptions of blood along his spine, saying over and over again, "I gave you a chance, I gave you a chance," until the gun was empty.

Then she threw the gun across the room and began screaming.

Some people never change.

Genero didn't even seem to know she couldn't hear him.

He was there at the hospital to tell Carella what a hero he'd been, shooting four teenagers who'd firebombed a building.

He sat in the hallway talking to Teddy, who was praying her husband wouldn't die, praying her husband wasn't already dead.

"… and all at once they came running out," he said, "Steve would've been proud of me. They threw the firebomb at me, but that didn't scare me, I…"

A doctor in a green surgical gown was coming down the hallway.

There was blood on the gown.

She caught her breath.

"Mrs. Carella?" he said.

She read his lips.

At first she thought he said, "We shot him."

A puzzled look crossed her face.

He repeated it.

"We got it," he said.

She let out her breath.

"He'll be okay," the doctor said.

"He'll be okay," Genero repeated.

She nodded.

And then she cupped her hands to her face and began weeping.

Genero just sat there.

Annie talked to him in the hallway of the Seven-Two.

"The landlady called 911 because somebody was screaming upstairs," she said. "She caters to hookers, she wouldn't have called unless she thought it was very serious."

Kling nodded.

"She quieted down just a little while ago. She's down the hall in Interrogation. I'm not sure you ought to talk to her."

"Why not?" Kling said.

"I'm just not sure," Annie said.

He went down the hall.

He opened the door.

She was sitting at the long table in the Interrogation Room, the two-way mirror behind her. Just sitting there. Looking at her hands.

"I'm sorry if I screwed it up," he said.

"You didn't."

He sat opposite her.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"No," she said.

He looked at her.

"I'm quitting," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"The force."

"No, you're not."

"I'm quitting, Bert. I don't like what it did to me, what it keeps doing to me."

"Eileen, you…"

"I'm quitting this city, too."

"Eileen…"

"This fucking city," she said, and shook her head.

He reached for her hand. She pulled it away.

"No," she said.

"What about me?" he said.

"What about me?" she said.

The phone rang at a little past two in the morning.

She picked up the receiver.

"Peaches?" the voice said. "This is Phil Hendricks at Camera Works, we talked earlier tonight."

Him again!

"What I want you to do," he said, "I want you to take off your blouse and go look at yourself in the mirror. Then I want you to…"

"Listen, you creep," she said, "if you call me one more time…"

"This is Andy Parker," he said. "I'm in a phone booth on the corner. Is it too late to come up?"

"You dope," she said.

It was the last trick of the night.