“Okay?” he asked. “Will you let me make you honest?”

  She nodded. The nod was a very small one.

  “You mean it this time?”

  She did not nod again. She lifted her mouth, and she put her answer into her lips, and his arms tightened around her, and she knew that he understood her. She broke away from him, and he said, “Hey!” but she trotted away from his reach and went to the kitchen.

  When she brought back the champagne, he said, “I’ll be damned!”

  She sighed, agreeing that he undoubtedly would be damned, and he slapped her playfully on the fanny.

  She handed him the bottle, did a deep curtsy which was ludicrous in the prisoner pajamas, and then sat on the floor cross‐legged while he struggled with the cork.

  The champagne exploded with an enormous pop, and though she did not hear the sound, she saw the cork leave the neck of the bottle and ricochet off the ceiling, and she saw the bubbly white fluid overspilling the lip and running over his hands.

  She began to clap, and then she got to her feet and went for glasses, and he poured first a little of the wine into his, saying, “That’s the way it’s done, you know. It’s supposed to take off the skim and the bugs and everything,” and then filling her glass, and then going back to pour his to the brim.

  “To us,” he toasted.

  She opened her arms slowly, wider and wider and wider.

  “A long, long, happy love,” he supplied.

  She nodded happily.

  “And our marriage in August.” They clinked glasses and then sipped at the wine, and she opened her eyes wide in pleasure and cocked her head appreciatively.

  “Are you happy?” he asked.

  Yes, her eyes said, yes, yes.

  “Did you mean what you said before?”

  She raised one brow inquisitively.

  “About…missing me?”

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, her eyes said.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  She curtsied again.

  “Everything about you. I love you, Teddy. Jesus, how I love you.”

  She put down the wine glass and then took his hand. She kissed the palm of the hand, and the back, and then she led him into the bedroom, and she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his trousers, her hands moving gently. He lay down on the bed, and she turned off the light and then, unselfconsciously, unembarrassedly, she took off the pajamas and went to him.

  * * *

  And while they made gentle love in a small room in a big apartment house, a man named David Foster walked toward his own apartment, an apartment he shared with his mother.

  And while their love grew fierce and then gentle again, a man named David Foster thought about his partner Mike Reardon, and so immersed in his thoughts was he that he did not hear the footsteps behind him, and when he finally did hear them, it was too late.

  He started to turn, but a .45 automatic spat orange flame into the night, once, twice, again, again, and David Foster clutched at his chest, and the red blood burst through his brown fingers, and then he hit the concrete—dead.

  There is not much you can say to a man’s mother when the man is dead. There is not much you can say at all.

  Carella sat in the doilied easy chair and looked across at Mrs. Foster. The early afternoon sunlight seeped through the drawn blinds in the small, neat living room, narrow razor‐edge bands of brilliance against the cool dimness. The heat in the streets was still insufferable, and he was thankful for the cool living room, but his topic was death, and he would have preferred the heat.

  Mrs. Foster was a small, dried‐up woman. Her face was wrinkled and seamed, as brown as David’s had been. She sat hunched in the chair, a small withered woman with a withered face and withered hands, and he thought, A strong wind would blow her away, poor woman, and he watched the grief that lay quietly contained behind the expressionless withered face.

  “David was a good boy,” she said. Her voice was hollow, a narrow sepulchral voice. He had come to talk of death, and now he could smell death on this woman, could hear death in the creak of her voice, and he thought it strange that David Foster, her son, who was alive and strong and young several hours ago was now dead—and his mother, who had probably longed for the peaceful sleep of death many a time, was alive and talking to Carella.

  “Always a good boy. You raise ’em in a neighborhood like this one,” Mrs. Foster said, “and you fear for how they’ll turn out. My husband was a good worker, but he died young, and it wasn’t always easy to see that David wasn’t needing. But he was a good boy, always. He would come home and tell me what the other boys were doing, the stealing and all the things they were doing, and I knew he was all right.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Foster,” Carella said.

  “And they all liked him around here, too,” Mrs. Foster went on, shaking her head. “All the boys he grew up with, and all the old folks, too. The people around here, Mr. Carella, they don’t take much to cops. But they liked my David because he grew up among them, and he was a part of them, and I guess they were sort of proud of him, the way I was proud.”

  “We were all proud of him, Mrs. Foster,” Carella said.

  “He was a good cop, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was a fine cop.”

  “Then why would anyone want to kill him?” Mrs. Foster asked. “Oh, I knew his job was a dangerous one, yes, but this is different, this is senseless. He wasn’t even on duty. He was coming home. Who would want to shoot my boy, Mr. Carella? Who would want to shoot my boy?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Foster. I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few questions.”

  “If it’ll help you find the man who killed David, I’ll answer questions all day for you.”

  “Did he ever talk about his work?”

  “Yes, he did. He always told me what happened around the precinct, what you were working on. He told me about his partner being killed, and he told me he was leafing through pictures in his mind, just waiting until he hit the right one.”

  “Did he say anything else about the pictures? Did he say he suspected anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. Foster, what about his friends?”

  “Everyone was his friend.”

  “Did he have an address book or anything in which their names might be listed?”

  “I don’t think he had an address book, but there’s a pad near the telephone he always used.”

  “May I have that before I leave?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Did he have a sweetheart?”

  “No, not anyone steady. He went out with a lot of different girls.”

  “Did he keep a diary?”

  “No.”

  “Does he have a photograph collection?”

  “Yes, he liked music a lot. He was always playing his records whenever he—”

  “No, not phonograph. Photograph.”

  “Oh. No. He carried a few pictures in his wallet, but that’s all.”

  “Did he ever tell you where he went on his free time?”

  “Oh, lots of different places. He liked the theater a lot. The stage, I mean. He went often.”

  “These boyhood friends of his, did he pal around with them much?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did he drink?”

  “Not heavily.”

  “I mean, would you know whether or not he frequented any of the bars in the neighborhood? Social drinking, of course.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Had he received any threatening letters or notes that you know of?”

  “He never mentioned any.”

  “Ever behave peculiarly on the telephone?”

  “Peculiarly? What do you mean?”

  “Well, as if he were trying to hide something from you. Or as if he were worried…anything like that. I’m thinking of threatening calls, Mrs. Foster.”

  “No, I don’t ever remember him acting strange on the phone.”

  “I see. Well…” Carella consulted his notes. “I guess that’s about it. I want to get going, Mrs. Foster, because there’s a lot of work to do. If you could get me that telephone pad…”

  “Yes, of course.” She rose, and he watched her slight body as she moved out of the cool living room into one of the bedrooms. When she returned, she handed him the pad and said, “Keep it as long as you like.”

  “Thank you. Mrs. Foster, please know that we all share your sorrow,” he said lamely.

  “Find my boy’s killer,” Mrs. Foster said. She extended one of her withered hands and took his hand in a strong, firm grip, and he marveled at the strength of the grip, and at the strength in her eyes and on her face. Only when he was in the hallway, with the door locked behind him, did he hear the gentle sobs that came from within the apartment.

  He went downstairs and out to the car. When he reached the car, he took off his jacket, wiped his face, and then sat behind the wheel to study his worksheet:

  STATEMENT OF EYEWITNESSES: None.

  MOTIVE: Revenge? Con? Nut? Tie‐in with Mike? Check ballistics report.

  NUMBER OF MURDERERS: Two? One Mike, one David. Or tie‐in? B.R. again.

  WEAPONS: .45 automatic.

  ROUTE OF MURDERER: ?

  DIARIES, JOURNALS, LETTERS, ADDRESSES, TELEPHONE NUMBERS, PHOTOGRAPHS: Check with David’s mthr.

  ASSOCIATES, RELATIVES, SWEETHEARTS, ENEMIES, ETC: Ditto.

  PLACES FREQUENTED, HANGOUTS: Ditto.

  HABITS: Ditto.

  TRACES AND CLUES FOUND ON THE SCENE: Heel print in dog feces. At lab now. Four shells. Two bullets. Ditto.

  FINGERPRINTS FOUND: None.

  Carella scratched his head, sighed against the heat, and then headed back for the precinct house to see if the new ballistics report had come in yet.

  * * *

  The widow of Michael Reardon was a full‐breasted woman in her late thirties. She had dark hair and green eyes, and an Irish nose spattered with a clichéful of freckles. She had a face for merry‐go‐rounds and roller coaster rides, a face that could split in laughter and girlish glee when water was splashed on her at the seashore. She was a girl who could get drunk sniffing the vermouth cork before it was passed over a martini. She was a girl who went to church on Sundays, a girl who’d belonged to the Newman Club when she was younger, a girl who was a virgin two days after Mike had taken her for his bride. She had good legs, very white, and a good body, and her name was May.

  She was dressed in black on the hot afternoon of July 25, and her feet were planted firmly on the floor before her, and her hands were folded in her lap, and there was no laughter on the face made for roller coaster rides.

  “I haven’t told the children yet,” she said to Bush. “The children don’t know. How can I tell them? What can I say?”

  “It’s a rough thing,” Bush said in his quiet voice. His scalp felt sticky and moist. He needed a haircut, and his wild red hair was shrieking against the heat.

  “Yes,” May said. “Can I get you a beer or something? It’s very hot. Mike used to take a beer when he got home. No matter what time it was, he always took a beer. He was a very well‐ordered person. I mean, he did things carefully and on schedule. I think he wouldn’t have been able to sleep if he didn’t have that glass of beer when he got home.”

  “Did he ever stop in the neighborhood bars?”

  “No. He always drank here, in the house. And never whiskey. Only one or two glasses of beer.”

  Mike Reardon, Bush thought. He used to be a cop and a friend. Now he’s a victim and a corpse, and I ask questions about him.

  “We were supposed to get an air‐conditioning unit,” May said. “At least, we talked about it. This apartment gets awfully hot. That’s because we’re so close to the building next door.”

  “Yes,” Bush said. “Mrs. Reardon, did Mike have any enemies that you know of? I mean, people he knew outside his line of duty?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Mike was a very easygoing sort. Well, you worked with him. You know.”

  “Can you tell me what happened the night he was killed? Before he left the house?”

  “I was sleeping when he left. Whenever he had the twelve‐to‐eight tour, we argued about whether we should try to get any sleep before he went in.”

  “Argued?”

  “Well, you know, we discussed it. Mike preferred staying up, but I have two children, and I’m beat when it hits ten o’clock. So he usually compromised on those nights, and we both got to bed early—at about nine, I suppose.”

  “Were you asleep when he left?”

  “Yes. But I woke up just before he went out.”

  “Did he say anything to you? Anything that might indicate he was worried about an ambush? Had he received a threat or anything?”

  “No.” May Reardon glanced at her watch. “I have to be leaving soon, Detective Bush. I have an appointment at the funeral parlor. I wanted to ask you about that. I know you’re doing tests on…on the body and all…but the family…well, the family is kind of old‐fashioned and we want to…we want to make arrangements. Do you have any idea when…when you’ll be finished with him?”

  “Soon, Mrs. Reardon. We don’t want to miss any bets. A careful autopsy may put us closer to finding his killer.”

  “Yes, I know. I didn’t want you to think…It’s just the family. They ask questions. They don’t understand. They don’t know what it means to have him gone, to wake up in the morning and not…not have him here.” She bit her lip and turned her face from Bush. “Forgive me. Mike wouldn’t…wouldn’t like this. Mike wouldn’t want me to…” She shook her head and swallowed heavily. Bush watched her, feeling sudden empathy for this woman who was Wife, feeling sudden compassion for all women everywhere who had ever had their men torn from them by violence. His thoughts wandered to Alice, and he wondered idly how she would feel if he stopped a bullet, and then he put the thought out of his mind. It wasn’t good to think things like that. Not these days. Not after two in a row. Jesus, was it possible there was a nut loose? Somebody who’d marked the whole goddamn precinct as his special target?

  Yes, it was possible.

  It was very damn possible, and so it wasn’t good to think about things like Alice’s reaction to his own death. You thought about things like that and they consumed your mind, and then when you needed a clear mind which could react quickly to possible danger, you didn’t have it. And that’s when you were up the creek without a paddle.

  What had Mike Reardon been thinking of when he’d been gunned down?

  What had been in the mind of David Foster when the four slugs ripped into his body?

  Of course, it was possible the two deaths were unrelated. Possible, but not very probable. The M.O. was remarkably similar, and once the ballistics report came through, they’d know for sure whether they were dealing with one man or two.

  Bush’s money was on the one‐man possibility.

  “If there’s anything else you want to ask me…” May said. She had pulled herself together now, and she faced him squarely, her face white, her eyes large.

  “If you’ll just collect any address books, photographs, telephone numbers, newspaper clippings he may have saved, anything that may give us a lead onto his friends or even his relatives, I’d be much obliged.”

  “Yes, I can do that,” May said.

  “And you can’t remember anything unusual that may have some bearing on this, is that right?”

  “No, I can’t. Detective Bush, what am I going to tell the kids? I sent them off to a movie. I told them their daddy was out on a plant. But how long can I keep it from them? How do you tell a pair of kids that their father is dead? Oh God, what am I going to do?”

  Bush remained silent. In a little while, May Reardon went for the stuff he wanted.

  At 3:42 P.M. on July 25, the ballistics report reached Carella’s desk. The shells and bullets found at the scene of Mike Reardon’s death had been put beneath the comparison microscope together with the shells and bullets used in the killing of David Foster.

  The ballistics report stated that the same weapon had been used in both murders.

  On the night that David Foster was killed, a careless mongrel searching for food in garbage cans had paused long enough to sully the sidewalk of the city. The dog had been careless, to be sure, and a human being had been just as careless, and there was a portion of a heel print for the lab boys to work over, solely because of this combined record of carelessness. The lab boys turned to it with something akin to distaste.

  The heel print was instantly photographed, not because the boys liked to play with cameras, but simply because they knew accidents frequently occurred in the making of a cast. The heel print was placed on a black‐stained cardboard scale, marked off in inches. The camera, supported above the print by a reversible tripod, the lens parallel to the print to avoid any false perspectives, clicked merrily away. Satisfied that the heel print was now preserved for posterity—photographically, at least—the lab boys turned to the less antiseptic task of making the cast.

  One of the boys filled a rubber cup with half a pint of water. Then he spread plaster of paris over the water, taking care not to stir it, allowing it to sink to the bottom of its own volition. He kept adding plaster of paris until the water couldn’t absorb any more of it, until he’d dumped about ten ounces of it into the cup. Then he brought the cup to one of the other boys who was preparing the print to take the mixture.

  Because the print was in a soft material, it was sprayed first with shellac and then with a thin coat of oil. The plaster of paris mixture was stirred and then carefully applied to the prepared print. It was applied with a spoon in small portions. When the print was covered to a thickness of about one‐third of an inch, the boys spread pieces of twine and sticks onto the plaster to reinforce it, taking care that the debris did not touch the bottom of the print and destroy its details. They then applied another coat of plaster to the print and allowed the cast to harden. From time to time, they touched the plaster, feeling for warmth, knowing that warmth meant the cast was hardening.