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  “See ya ’round, Andrea,” he said, making a move to get back into the car.

  “Wait a minute.” She walked up to the open door and regarded him with curiosity. “No tricks?”

  “No tricks. I promise.”

  She went around the front of the car, opened the passenger door, tossed her book bag inside, and got in.

  A tape of Brahms’s piano quintet was playing on the car stereo. They rode in silence until they were driving over the Pulaski Bridge connecting Queens and Brooklyn. She was watching the Manhattan skyline when she suddenly turned and looked at him and asked, “How did you know when I’d be leaving school?”

  “I telephoned a friend on campus security. He got your class schedule from the registrar.”

  She nodded and returned her attention to the view of the city that seemed suddenly like a mirage under the moonlight.

  He glanced at her and said with genuine warmth, “I’m really glad that you’re making a life for yourself.”

  She glared at him and didn’t respond. He pressed on, trying to establish a rapport. “It must have been hard for you, going back to school.”

  “Sorta.”

  “Was it hard getting back into the books?”

  She relaxed, her expression less hostile and guarded. “I hadda teach myself a lot. But I got into the swing of it.”

  “You gotta know that you’re never going to be really free until you get Holiday off your back.”

  She pointedly ignored him and looked out of the passenger side window.

  “I could arrange a new life for you far away from here. You could start over with enough walking-around money to see you through school.”

  Her head whipped around; she spoke in a bitter, depressed voice. “And what do I have to do to get this new life? Tell you and the DA lies? Testify that I saw and heard things I didn’t?”

  “All you’d have to do is tell the truth.”

  She looked at him and asked scornfully, “Whose truth? Socrates’s, Paddy Holiday’s, Beansy’s, or yours?”

  “The truth.”

  She spread her legs wide apart, pointed angrily to her crotch, and snapped, “That’s the only truth men know.” Slamming her knees shut, she glared out at the gas station on McGuinness Boulevard. Their silence lengthened, her anger seeming to fill the car.

  As he was driving along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway he saw the Williamsburg Savings Bank’s pyramid touching the distant sky. The cold barrier between him and Andrea reminded him of how it had been with Pat at the end. He did not want to feel that kind of helplessness ever again, so he looked at Andrea and said, “I’m only trying to do my job and help you at the same time.”

  She lowered her eyes and said softly, “Thanks for nothing.”

  The police car that had been stationed outside Andrea’s house had gone back on patrol when Matt pulled up to the curb and reached across the seat to chuck open the door. As she was getting out, he said, “If you ever need a friend, call me.” He handed her his card with his unlisted office phone number.

  A puzzled look came over her face. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  “Because I know what it’s like to be alone.”

  She slammed the door, ran up onto her porch, and disappeared inside her darkened house.

  Across the street, Mary Terrella released her grip on the parlor curtain and reached for the telephone.

  4

  The first subtle rays of the new day seeped into the frilly bedroom of Helen Kahn’s Vesey Street co-op in Battery Park City on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. She looked across the queen-size bed at the clock radio, saw that it was 4:36 A.M., and turned her attention to the man balancing himself on one leg while he thrust the other into his trousers. She could feel his semen oozing out of her body and felt unclean, as if she had been defiled.

  How did I ever allow myself to get involved with this guy? she thought. He’s married and will never be anything more than a middle-of-the-night fuck. I wonder what he’ll do if his wife wants to make love when he gets home? He’ll probably tell her he’s so strung out from the Job that he can’t get it up.

  He was buttoning his shirt, his mind obviously somewhere else, his thoughts far removed from Helen.

  She hadn’t even wanted to have an affair. It began so innocently. They met at the Holy Name’s St. Patrick’s Day dance. He was reasonably good-looking and wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, so she agreed to a dance. It was a fox-trot, and he didn’t hold her too close and didn’t try any of that fancy dry humping. And she liked his shoes, she’d always been big on men’s shoes. He was wearing soft leather wingtips with a thin decorative band halfway between the tip and the first eyelet, and his socks were blue high-risers with a gray diamond-shaped design. After the dance they went out for coffee; a week later, a movie. The Job gave them a lot in common to talk about, and he never once came on to her. He told her he was married after that first movie and talked openly about his children and his home.

  What a fool, what a fool I am. The bastard conned me. He’s good, I have to give him that. I’m thirty-one, my meter’s running, and I’m in a no-win situation. I’m out of playing-around time.

  Lieutenant Ken Kirby slid his holstered .38 S&W Chief off the dresser and stuck it into his waistband, clipping it onto his belt. He looked at her and came over, smiling. Lowering himself onto the edge of the bed, he brushed a forelock from her brow. He kissed her and began kneading her nipple through the sheet. “You have beautiful tits.”

  “Thanks a lot, sport.” She crossed her legs, wishing he’d go.

  “You’re a world-class fuck, Helen.”

  “As world class as your wife?”

  A bleak smile touched one corner of his mouth. “It’s different when you’re married.”

  You scumbag, she thought. “You’d better get going, you have a long drive out to the Island.”

  “Why don’t we go away for a weekend?”

  She looked surprised. “How can you do that?”

  “I’ll tell Dot that I have to go out of town on an extradition caper,” he said smugly.

  She looked deep in his eyes, searching for the warmth of his soul, but found only a cold emptiness. I’m really seeing him for the first time, she thought. His poor wife. He’s a lowlife, and what does that make me? She dropped her eyes and asked, “Would your wife believe you?”

  “Sure she would. Dot knows that IAD lieutenants are the purest of the pure.”

  Helen pulled the covers up to her neck and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t think I can right now, Ken. I’m carrying forty-two open cases, and we just caught another homicide. I’m really up to my neck.”

  Kirby made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Beansy Rutolo is a five-and-dime hit. Solving gay and racially motivated hits are what make careers today, not wiseguys. Nobody gives a shit about them anymore—except your lieutenant, for some reason.” He stood up, looked down at her, and said, “I’ll be in touch.”

  She sat up, wrapping and firmly securing the sheet around her, and got out of bed. She didn’t want him ever to see her naked again. They walked silently out of the bedroom and across the living room to the door. He pulled her into his arms and said, “You know a cop named Janet Clark, works steady midnights in the Sixth?”

  “No.”

  “You might wanna whisper in her ear that somebody dropped a kite on her, alleging that she’s eating on the arm in the Triangle Diner on Hudson Street and doing the owner of the diner on her meal hour, which is city time.”

  “She must be a fast eater.”

  Suddenly he slipped his hand between her legs, pushing up the sheet. “I’ve been assigned the investigation. See, we’re not all bad guys in IAD.”

  She grabbed his wrist and pushed it away from her body.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m tired. You wore me out.”

  “We really get it on together, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, you’re terrific, Ken,” she said, rea
ching past him and opening the door, nudging him out.

  After he was gone, she locked the door and, letting her makeshift sarong fall to the floor, ran into the bathroom. She stepped into the shower, turned on the hot water, and tried to clean away the awful feeling of self-disgust, thinking, The bastard always leaves me with some IAD tidbit like he’s throwing a fish to a trained seal.

  The Seven One Squad’s detention pen was crowded with the late tour’s dregs when Matt Stuart walked into the squad room early Wednesday morning. Six hours of sleep had given him a more cheerful outlook. Smasher, wearing his black, green, and orange bandanna, sat on his haunches outside the heavy wire mesh detention cage, staring in at the prisoners, emitting a steady, low growl. The Squad’s six typewriters were being used by detectives and cops doing their arrest paperwork. The three wastebaskets overflowed with pizza boxes and stained Chinese food cartons. Two floor fans lazily stirred the faintly rancid air.

  Stuart walked over to the command log and signed himself present for duty. As he was ruling off his entry, he felt someone’s cold stare and looked up. One of the prisoners inside the cage, a big black man, with biceps bulging across his dirty T-shirt, was glaring out at him. He was sitting on the floor with his back up against the wall; his head was swathed in a bloodied gauze turban. Their eyes locked, and Stuart thought, That bro got a real bad attitude.

  As Stuart walked across the squad room, heading for his office, Hector Colon, a forty-five-year-old swarthy detective with a weather-creased face and a full Pancho Villa mustache, got up from behind his desk and followed him inside. Tradition dictated that Colon, as the senior detective doing night duty, brief the whip on what went down during the tour.

  Stuart looked down at the sixty sheet, a chronological record of all the cases that the Squad caught during the night. “You’ve been busy.”

  “The natives were restless,” Colon said, flicking his thumb at the silent radio speakers. “A half hour ago this place was jumpin’, and now, not a peep.”

  “Our clientele are probably all juiced up and calling it a night. Anything heavy go down that’s not entered on the sixty sheet yet?”

  “No, it’s all there, chronologically, as per the Detective Guide.” He brushed the tips of his fingers across his full mustache. “Those 911 tapes on the Rutolo homicide arrived last night in the department mail. I stuck them in your top drawer.” He began riffling through the wire “in” basket on the desk and yanked out a department bulletin. “This crap arrived in the mail.”

  Stuart read the bulletin. It announced that applications were now being accepted for the newly created civilian title Voucher Officer, whose duties would be to collect all evidence stored at patrol precincts, including firearms, money, narcotics, jewelry, and art, for delivery to the Borough Property Clerk. Felony arrests would not be a barrier to appointment. Starting salary, $30,000. Stuart gave an exasperated sigh, balled up the bulletin, and tossed it into the wastebasket. “The bastards are pork-barreling the Job to death.”

  “I got paper to do,” Colon said, and walked outside.

  Smasher lumbered in and crumpled by the side of the desk. Stuart scratched him behind the ears and slid open the middle drawer, took out the 911 tape cassette and a portable tape deck, then inserted the cassette into the machine. The woman’s voice was obviously distorted. “Get the cops over to Four-oh-one Rutland Road. Somethin’ bad’s happened.” He replayed the tape a second and third time.

  “Recognize her?” Helen Kahn asked, walking inside. She wore a dark green skirt and a black blazer.

  He glanced up at the clock. It was a little before eight. “What are you doing in so early?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Can I hear it?” she asked, indicating the tape deck as she lowered herself into the chair at the side of his desk. As she crossed her legs, the hem of her skirt rode above her knees.

  They listened to the tape. Kahn’s perfume had the delicate scent of lilacs. “It sounds as though she tucked her tongue into the corner of her mouth as she made the call,” she said.

  Stuart switched off the machine. “She certainly didn’t want us making her.”

  She regarded him with mild curiosity. “You think Russo was leveling with us about her keys?”

  “No way. She’s hiding something.”

  “Think maybe she could have been Beansy’s squeeze?”

  The barest hint of a smile crossed his face. “From the way I’ve heard Andrea Russo talk about men, I don’t think she’s into them anymore.”

  “I can relate to that,” she said. She rose and went out into the squad room.

  Stuart opened the Rutolo case folder. The autopsy protocol stated that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. A photograph of the death bullet was pinned to the onionskin; it showed a deformed lead slug with some of its lands and grooves clearly visible. By examining the number and width of the grooves, and their direction of twist, along with the degree of twist of the spiral, the ballistic technician had determined that the bullet had been fired from a .38 Colt Special. His father’s service revolver had been a .38 Colt Special. Because modern munitions contain lead compounds that are transferred from the barrel with the bullet, the ME had been able to determine that the shooter was standing about four feet away from Beansy when he fired. Stuart looked up at the corkboard, focusing on the crime scene photos of the living room.

  Borrelli and Jones arrived within five minutes of each other. Jones was wearing a tan sports coat and a tricolor African cap.

  One by one the late tour detectives finished their paperwork and drifted off into the locker room to wash off the night’s crud and grab some z’s before going to court to arraign their prisoners.

  Jerry Jordon arrived, wearing a lightweight gray suit with an “I Love Stock Cars” button pinned to his lapel. As he walked in, the desk officer telephoned up to the squad room to say that the paddy wagon had arrived to transport the prisoners to court.

  Jordon went into the supply closet and lifted a handcuff chain off the hook. Back outside, he slid his nine-millimeter out of his holster and handed it to Jones. He pulled the cotter pin out of the cage’s locking bar and rammed the bar out of its sleeve. The other detectives gathered around the cage. Smasher’s growl was louder now.

  Jordon swung open the gate and motioned a bare-chested, stocky white guy outside. He spread-eagled the prisoner against the steel mesh and began running his hands slowly over the prisoner’s legs. Cops learned to do their job from the fatal mistakes of other cops. The rule was, Never assume that a prisoner has been properly searched. Lots of cops were under tombstones because someone had missed a weapon on the initial search. Jordon carefully ran his hands up the inside of the prisoner’s legs and under his crotch.

  “Kiss me first,” the prisoner growled.

  Jordon squeezed his testicles. The prisoner howled. “That’s a cop’s kiss, scumbag,” Jordon said.

  After the prisoner had been searched, he was cuffed to the steel chain and another prisoner brought outside and stretched out over the cage. When all had been searched and cuffed, three uniformed cops convoyed them downstairs to the waiting paddy wagon.

  The day duty detectives took plastic bottles of spray cleaner out of their drawers and began spraying their work spaces. Soon the stench of the late tour was smothered in evergreen and lemon.

  Kahn watered the cactus plant on her desk and put the watering can back on the windowsill. She sat down and picked up the telephone, dialing an extension in Patrol Borough Manhattan South. A familiar woman’s voice came over the line, “Sergeant Esposito.”

  “Hey, Miranda, how’s it going?” Kahn exchanged a little gossip with her friend and then, in a casual tone, got to the point. “You know a gal in the Sixth named Janet Clark?”

  “Yes.”

  Kahn shook her brushed-gold bangles down her wrist and said softly, “Whisper to her to stay away from the Triangle Diner, and to stop doing the owner on city time.”

  “Ten-four,” Esposito said,
using the radio code for acknowledgment.

  Returning the receiver slowly, Kahn thought, Ken, you IAD lowlife.

  Stuart came out of his office and went over to Kahn. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  As she was reaching under her desk for her pocketbook, the telephone rang and Stuart snapped it up. “Seven One Squad, Stuart.” After listening to the voice at the other end, he slipped his hand over the mouthpiece, looked over at Jones, and said, “Calvin, it’s Plaintiff.”

  Jones’s face screwed up in anger. “Every Wednesday ’fore payday Plaintiff gotta call and break my balls. ‘Don’t forget my alimony check,’” he mimicked. Grabbing the receiver and holding the mouthpiece away from his mouth, he shouted, “Fuck you, Plaintiff,” and slammed the receiver down.

  Borrelli started singing “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.”

  Andrea would never forget the gruesome sight that greeted her on Tuesday night when Stuart dropped her off at home. She had entered the house apprehensively; dark shadows shimmered across the walls and ceilings. An eerie cone of light came from the kitchen. Leaning her back up against the door, she heard Stuart’s car drive off. She felt desperately alone and exploited. As she stared at the light reaching into the living room from her kitchen, a chill prickled the hairs on the back of her neck, and she shivered.

  Walking across her living room, she saw the upended table and lamp and the dark stains in her carpet. The refrigerator door had been left open. Her mouth opened in silent dismay when she saw the lasagna, and the broken eggs, and the gore inside the box. Her home had been violated, and she felt a deep sense of revulsion. She wrapped her arms around herself and began swaying side to side, tears streaming down her face. “That lasagna was supposeta last the week,” she cried, wiping a thin strand of mucus from her nose.

  Suddenly her sorrow was replaced by an overwhelming feeling of anger. She stormed into the kitchen and kicked the head of lettuce across the floor. She whirled, slamming the refrigerator door, cutting off the source of light. “Holiday, you prick.”

  She left the kitchen and went into her bedroom, where she got undressed and climbed into bed without showering. She’d deal with everything in the morning; right now she needed to close her eyes.