"All right, men," Byrnes said, "then let's do it. And listen to everything she tells you, and let's not have any heroics. I'm playing ball with you, Virginia, because I'm hoping you'll see reason before it's too late."

  "Don't hold your breath," Virginia said.

  "He's right, you know," Kung said softly, boyishly.

  "Is he?"

  "Sure. You're not doing yourself any good, Mrs. Dodge.

  "No?"

  "No. Your husband's dead. You're not going to help him by killing a lot of innocent people. And yourself, too, if that soup should go off."

  "I loved my husband," Virginia said tightly.

  "Sure. I mean, Jesus, I should hope so.

  But what's the good of this? I mean, what are you accomplishing?"

  "I'll be getting the man who killed him."

  "Steve? Come on, Mrs. Dodge. You know he didn't kill your husband."

  "I kiow nothing of the sort!"

  "Okay, let's say he did kill him. I know that's not true, and you know it too-but we'll say it if it makes you happy, okay? So what do you accomplish by revenge?"

  Kung shrugged boyishly.

  "Nothing. Jill tell you something, Mrs. Dodge."

  "Yes?"

  "I've got a girlfriend. Her name is Claire.

  She's a dream. I'm gonna marry her soon.

  She's full of life, do you know? But she wasn't always that way. When I met her, she was dead. I mean dead, really dead. Do you know why?"

  "Why?" Virginia asked.

  "Why?"

  "I'll tell you," Kung said boyishly.

  "She'd been in love with a fellow who got killed in Korea. And when he died, she let herself die, too. She went into this big shell, and she just wouldn't come out. A young girl! Hell, you can't be much older than she is. And in this shell." He shook his head.

  "She was wrong, Mrs. Dodge. She was so wrong. You see, she just didn't realize the guy was dead. She didn't realize the minute that bullet hit him, he wasn't the guy she loved any more, he was just another corpse. Dead! Finished! Out of it! She was carrying on an affair with a pile of fleshy rubble covered with maggots."

  KIng paused and rubbed a hand over his chin.

  "If you don't mind my saying so, you're doing the same thing."

  "I'm not," Virginia said.

  "Sure. Sure, you are. You're coming in here, and you're bringing the stink of death with you.

  Why, you know, you even look like Death, you know that? A pretty woman like you, and you've got death in your eyes and hanging around your lips. You're being stupid. Mrs. Dodge. Really. If you were smart, you'd put up that gun and..

  "I don't want to hear any more," Virginia snapped.

  "You think Frank would want you to do this?

  Get in all this trouble over him?"

  "Yes! Frank wanted Carella dead. He said so.

  He hated Carella!"

  "And you? Do you hate Carella, too? Do you even know him?"

  "I don't care about him. I loved my husband.

  That's enough for me."

  "But your husband was breaking the law when he got arrested. He shot a man! Now you couldn't expect Steve to give him a medal, could you? Now come on, Mrs. Dodge, be sensible."

  "I loved my husband," Virginia said flatly, "Mrs. Dodge, I'll tell you something else.

  You've got to make up your mind. Either you're a woman who really knows what love is all about, or else you're a coldblooded bitch who's ready to blow this dump to hell and gone. You can't play both sides of the fence. Now which one is it?"

  "I'm a woman. I'm here because I'm a woman."

  "Then act like one. Put the gun up, and get the hell out of here before you get more trouble than you've had in all your life."

  "No. No."

  "Come on, Mrs. Dodge... Virginia stiffened in her chair.

  "All right, sonny," she said, "you can knock it off now."

  "Wha ... ?" Kung started.

  "The big blue-eyed baby routine. You can just cut it. It didn't work."

  "I wasn't trying to .

  "Enough," she said, "damnit, that's enough!

  Go find somebody else's fit to suck!"

  "Mrs. Dodge, I .

  "Are you finished?"

  The squad room went silent. The clock on the squad-room wall, white-faced and leering, threw minutes onto the floor where they lay like the ghosts of dead policemen. It was dark outside the grilled windows now. The windows, half-way open to let in the October mildness, also let in the night sounds of early traffic. A typewriter started.

  Kung glanced toward the desk near one of the windows where Meyer had inserted a blue D.D.

  report together with two sheets of carbon and two duplicate report sheets into the machine. The hanging globe of light over Meyer cast a dull sheen onto his bald head as he hunched over the typewriter, pecking at the keys. Cotton Hawes walked to the filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer. The drawer squeaked on its rollers. He opened a folder and began leafing through it.

  Then he went to sit at the desk near the other window. The water cooler suddenly belched into the silence.

  "I'm sorry I bothered you," Kung said to Virginia.

  "I should have known a person can't talk to a corpse."

  There was a sudden commotion in the corridor outside. Virginia tensed where she sat at the desk.

  For an instant, Kung thought her finger would involuntarily tighten around the trigger of the .38.

  "All right, inside, inside," a man's voice said, and Kung recognized it instantly as belonging to Hal Willis. He looked past the desk and into the corridor as Willis and his prisoner came into view.

  The prisoner, to be more accurate, burst into view. Like the aurora borealis. She was a tall Puerto Rican girl with bleached blond hair. She wore a purple topcoat open over a red peasant blouse which swooped low over a threatening display of bosom. Her waist was narrow, the straight black skirt swelling out tightly over sinuously padded hips. She wore high-heeled pumps, red, with black ankle traps. A gold tooth flashed in the corner of an otherwise dazzlingly white set of teeth. And, in contrast to her holiday garb, she wore no makeup on her face, which was a perfect oval set with rich brown eyes and a full mouth and a clean sweeping aristocratic nose. She was one of the prettiest, if flashiest, prisoners ever to be dragged into the squad room

  And dragged she was. Holding one wristlet of a pair of handcuffs in his right hand, Willis pulled the girl to the slatted rail divider while she struggled to retrieve her manacled wrist, cursing in Spanish every inch of the way.

  "Come on, cara mia," Willis said.

  "Come on, tsotzkuIuh. You'd think somebody was trying to hurt you, for Christ's sake. Come on, Liebchen. Right through this gate. Hi, Bert! something, huh? Hello, Pete, you like my prisoner? She just ripped open a guy's throat with a razor

  Willis stopped talking.

  There was a strange silence in the squad room

  He looked first at the lieutenant, and then at KIng, and then his eyes flicked to the two rear desks where Hawes and Meyer were silently working. And then he saw Virginia Dodge and the .38 in her hand pointed into the mouth of the black purse.

  His first instinct was to drop the wristlet he was holding and draw his gun. The instinct was squelched when Virginia said, "Get in here. Don't reach for your gun!"

  Willis and the girl came into the squad room

  "Brutal" the girl screamed.

  "Pendega!

  Hijo de la gran puta!"

  "Oh, shut the hell up," Willis said wearily.

  "Pinga!" she screamed.

  "Dirtee rotten cop bastard!"

  "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Willis pleaded.

  The girl was possibly three inches taller than Willis, who just cleared the minimum five-foot-eight height requirement for all policemen. He was, assuredly, the smallest detective anyone had ever seen, with narrow bones and an alert cocker-spaniel look on his thin face.

  But Willis knew judo the way he knew the Penal Code, and he could lay a thief on his back faster than any six men using fists. He was, as he surveyed the gun in Virginia Dodge's hand, already figuring on how he could disarm her.

  "What's up?" he asked the assembly at large.

  "The lady with the gun has a bottle of nitro in her purse," Byrnes said.

  "She's ready to use it."

  "Well, well," Willis said.

  "Never a dull moment, huh?" He paused and looked at Virginia.

  "Okay to take off my coat and hat, lady'?"

  "Put your gun on the desk here first."

  "Thorough, huh?" Willis said.

  "Lady, you give me the chills. You really got a bottle of soup in that bag?"

  "I've really got it."

  "I'm from Missouri," Willis said, and he took a step closer to the desk.

  For an instant, Kung thought the jig was up. He saw only Virginia Dodge's sudden thrust into the bag, and he tensed himself for the explosion he was certain would follow. And then her free hand emerged from the purse, and there was a bottle of colorless fluid in that hand. She put it down on the desk top gently, and. Willis eyed it and said, "That could be tap water, lady."

  "Would you like to find out whether it is or not?" Virginia said.

  "Me? Now, lady, do I look like a hero?"

  He walked closer to the desk. Virginia put her purse on the floor. The bottle, pint sized gleamed under the glow of the hanging light globes.

  "Okay," Willis said, "first we check the gat." He pulled gun and holster off his belt and placed them very carefully on the desk top, his eyes never leaving the pint bottle of fluid.

  "This plays a little like Dodge City, doesn't it?" he said.

  "What's the soup for, lady? If I'd known you were having a blowout, I'd have dressed." He tried a laugh that died the moment he saw Virginia's face.

  "Excuse me," he said.

  "I

  didn't know the undertakers were holding a convention. What do I do with my prisoner, Pete?"

  "Ask Virginia."

  ~Virginia, brother, are one's name Virgin and "Well, how angel here?"

  "Bring her in. Tell her to sit down."

  "Come on, Angelica," Willis said, "have a chair. Angelica! Oh, Jesus, that breaks me up. She just slit a guy from ear to ear. A regular little angel. Sit down, angel. That bottle on the desk there is nitroglycerin."

  "What you mean?" Angelica asked.

  "The bottle. Nitro."

  Nitro~ You mean like a born'?"

  "You said it, doll," Willis answered.

  "A born'?" Angelica said.

  "Madre de los santos!"

  "Yeah," Willis said, and there was something close to nwe in his voice.

  huh?" Willis burst out laughing.

  ?~~Jfl we getting them today.

  You know what this is?

  Angelica! Virginia and Angelica.

  The the Angel!" He burst out laughing again. about it, Virginia? What do I do with my

  CHAPTER 6

  FROM WHERE MEYER MEYER SAT

  NEAR THE WINDOW

  typing his D.D. report, he could see Willis lead the Puerto Rican girl deeper into the squad room to offer her one of the straight backed chairs. He watched as Willis unlocked the handcuffs and then draped both wrist lets over his belt. The skipper walked over and exchanged a few words with Willis and then, hands on hips, turned to face the girl. Apparently Virginia Dodge was going to allow them to question the prisoner. How kind of Virginia Dodge!

  Patiently, Meyer Meyer turned back to his typing.

  He was reasonably certain that Virginia Dodge would not walk over to his desk to examine his masterpiece of English composition. He was also reasonably certain that he could do what he had to do unobserved especially now that the Puerto Rican bombshell had exploded into the room. Virginia Dodge seemed completely absorbed with the girl's movements, with the girl's string of colorful epithets. He was sure, then, that he could carry out the first part of his plan without detection.

  The thing he was not too sure of was his English composition.

  He had never been a very good English student. Even in law school, his papers had never been what one would call brilliant.

  Somehow, miraculously, he had received his degree and passed his bar examinations only to receive a Greetings from Uncle Sam, advising him that he was to serve in the United States Army. After four years of trudging through muck and mire (Hello, Muck! Hello, Meyer!), he'd been honorably discharged. By that time, he'd decided that he didn't want to spend the next ten years of his life building a practice. Cubbyhole offices and ambulance chasing were not for Meyer Meyer. He had joined the police force and married the girl he'd been dating ever since his college days, Sarah Lipkin. (He could still remember the fraternity house banter:

  "Nobody's lips kin like Sarah's lips kin."

  The banter had never disturbed him.

  Patiently, he had smiled and listened to it.

  Patiently, he had continued dating her.

  Besides, the banter was true. Sarah Lipkin was the kissin'est fool he'd ever met.

  Maybe that was why he married her when he got out of the Army.) His decision to leave the law profession startled Meyer. It startled him because he was usually a very patient man, and certainly it would have taken extreme patience to sit out the next ten years waiting for a client to step into the office. And yet, tossing patience aside for the first time in his life, he quit being a lawyer and joined the police force. In his own mind both professions were linked. As a cop, he would still be concerned with law. Patiently, doggedly, he did his job. He did not make Detective 3rd/Grade until he had been on the force for eight years. That took patience.

  Patiently, he worked on his English composition now. His patience was an acquired skill, nurtured over the years until it had reached a finely honed edge of perfection. He had certainly not been born patient. He had, however, been born with the attributes which would later make a life of patience an absolute necessity if he were to survive.

  Meyer's father, you see, was a very comical man. That is to say, he considered himself something of a wit. Half of this consideration was perhaps erroneous. In any case, he was a tailor who played practical jokes on friends every now and then, to his vast enjoyment and their vast annoyance. When his wife, Martha, had already seemed past the age when she could have any further children, when-in fact she was experiencing change of life, nature played its own practical joke on Meyer's father. Martha, of all things, was going to have another baby!

  The news did not sit too well with Meyer's father. He thought dirty diapers and runny noses were all behind him and now, at this late stage of the game, another baby.

  He accepted the news with faintly disguised distaste, suffered through the pregnancy, and meanwhile plotted his own practical joke in retaliation against the vagaries of nature and birth control.

  The Meyers were Orthodox Jews. At the briss, the classic circumcision ceremony, Meyer's father made his announcement.

  The announcement concerned the name of his new offspring. The boy was to be called Meyer Meyer. The old man thought this was exceedingiy humorous. The moile didn't think it was so humorous. When he heard the announcement, his hand almost slipped. In that moment, he almost deprived Meyer of something more than a normal name. Fortunately, Meyer Meyer emerged unscathed.

  But being an Orthodox Jew in a predominantly Gentile neighborhood can be trying even if your name isn't Meyer Meyer. The repetitive handle provided the hate-mongers with a ready-made chant:

  "Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire!" If the haters needed any further provocation for beating up the nearest Jew, Meyer's double-barreled name provided it. He learned to be patient.

  Patient, in the beginning, with his enemies.

  Later, when he realized how maliciously innocent had been his father's little joke, patient with his father. Patient, still later, with the young doctor who had originally diagnosed his mother's malignant cancer as a sebaceous cyst-a faulty diagnosis which had probably cost her life. And finally, patient with the world at large.

  Patience is, perhaps, a rewarding virtue.

  Patience leads to tolerance. A patient man is an easy~ going man.

  But anger must erupt somewhere.

  Somehow, the body must compensate for years and years of learning to sublimate.

  Meyer Meyer, at the age of thirty-seven, was completely bald.

  Now, patiently pecking at his typewriter, he composed his message.

  "What's your name?" Byrnes asked the girl.

  "What?" she said.

  "Your name! Que es su nombre?"

  "Angelica Gomez."

  "She speaks English," Willis said.

  "I don' speak English," the girl said.

  "She's full of crap. The only thing she does in Spanish is curse. Come on, Angelica. You play ball with us, and we'll play ball with you."

  "I don' know what means thees play ball."

  "Oh, we've got a lallapaluza this time," Willis said.

  "Look, you little slut, cut the Marine tiger bit, will you?

  We know you didn't just get off the boat."

  He turned to Byrnes.

  "She's been in the city for almost a year, Pete.

  Hooking mostly."

  "I'm no hooker," the girl said.

  "Yeah, she's no hooker," Willis said.

  "Excuse me. I forgot. She worked in the garment district for a month."

  "I'm a seamstress, that's what I am. No hooker."

  "Okay, you're not a hooker, okay? You lay for money, okay? That's different. That makes it all right, okay? Now, why'd you slit that guy's throat?"

  "What guy you speaking about'?"

  "Was there more than one?" Byrnes asked.

  "I don' sleet nobody's thro'."

  "No? Then who did it?" Willis asked.

  "Santa Claus? What'd you do with the razor blade?" Again, he turned to Byrnes.

  "A

  patrolman broke it up, Pete. Couldn't find the blade, though, thinks she dumped it down the sewer. Is that what you did with it?"

  "I don' have no erazor blay." Angelica paused.

  "I don' cut nobody."

  "You've still got blood all over your hands, you little bitch! Who the hell are you trying to snow?"

  "That's from d'hanncuffs," Angelica said.

  "Oh, Jesus, this one is the absolute end," Willis said. The trouble, Meyer Meyer thought, is that it's hard to get the right words. It mustn't sound too melodramatic or it'll be dismissed as either a joke or the work of a crank. It has to sound sincere, and yet it has to sound desperate. If it doesn't sound desperate nobody'll believe it, and we're right back where we started. But if it sounds too desperate, nobody'll believe it anyway. So I've got to be careful.