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"What made you decide to become a cop?"

He looked at her. She was gazing up at the fan. "You mean what's a nice guy like me doing in a lousy racket like this?"

"Oh,
Janek
." She turned to him and smiled.

"You ask a tough question." She waited for his answer. "Well, whatever it was, it had nothing to do with why I stayed. Ask an old priest why he went into the priest business, or a whore why she started peddling her ass. They can hardly remember. They just fell into it. They were different people then. I was different. I thought a cop was something I'd like to be because it was exciting, paid a decent wage and there was a certain honor to the work. You know—a cop defended the Right against the Wrong. He Protected and he Upheld. If you were a cop you were maybe a little better than other people. You could be counted on. You were the guy they called when trouble hit."

"You don't believe that anymore."

He shook his head. "I've been around too long. Anyway, it doesn't relate to what I do. I became a detective, and a detective is different from a cop. We investigate. We prowl around in people's lives. When we're good we make cases. I like that: get a case, get to the bottom of it, close it out, go on to the next. I like confessions too, like to watch and listen while a person unburdens himself, tells me what he's done. I can feel his need for me, feel I'm of use. And then there's the endless fascination of that thing I'm always looking for."

"What's that?"

"The shadow. The side that's dark. The place where all the hurt and evil is. The shadow's there, in all of us, sometimes gray and faint, other times very deep and black. I'm attracted to it, and filled with pity on account of it, for all of us for having it within us, for myself too, perhaps, most of all. My wife used to mock me for saying that. 'Isn't it just too heavy to bear, Frank, that gloomy load of pity you carry around?' But she was wrong. It's not too heavy. I like the feeling. I think it's the thing I like most about my life."

He stopped talking and after a while, when he'd almost forgotten what he'd said, he heard her say, "It's the thing I love most about you, too."

H
e met Sal at a coffee shop called Aspen. Darkness was settling upon the city, and the streets were still slick from the rainstorm that afternoon. Aspen smelled like a McDonald's, but there were copper pots hanging from the walls, the waitresses all spoke as if they'd gone to Finch, and the six-dollar burgers were accompanied by bean sprouts instead of fries.

They didn't talk much.
Janek
was Sal
Marchetti's
rabbi, and looking at the younger man he vowed Sal would never be awakened by a Sunday-morning call telling him his old mentor had eaten his thirty-eight.

Sal checked his watch. "In about ten minutes she starts to walk her dog."

"Okay, let's get over there."

Janek
left money on the table and they walked out to Madison, deserted the starry weekend night. In other neighborhoods, poorer ones, the heat of summer lured people into the streets, but on the Upper East Side over Labor Day weekend the streets were almost empty, everyone was at the Hamptons and the old apartment houses were locked up tight like silent brooding banks.

They got into
Janek's
car, drove down to Lexington, found a parking space between Eightieth and Eighty-first. There were five or six other spaces open on the block. No need to use the meter—it was night.

"Let's say he parks around here, waits till he sees her coming down Eightieth with the dog. He waits till she passes the car, then he knows he's got maybe twenty minutes to get inside."

They got out, walked up toward the brownstone. They passed only one large apartment house. The doorman didn't turn.

"Was on last weekend," Sal said. "Didn't see a thing. Doesn't even recognize me now. Quiet around here, Frank."

"Saturday night was a good night to do it."

Sal glanced at him; they walked on.

There was a short, narrow passageway beside Amanda's building, with a spring-locked grill-cage door. Behind the grill a row of trashcans. It took
Janek
eleven seconds to slip the catch. A minute later they had scaled a low wall and were in the garden behind the brownstone, beside the bottom of the fire escape.

"Don't like it, Sal. Too many windows in that big building on the corner. All it takes is one person looking out. And on his way up the ladder he's got to pass three apartments very close. Too risky. He didn't do it this way. Let's see if he came down from the roof."

They went back out through the passageway, then around to the front of the brownstone. Six seconds to open up that door. They crept up the carpeted stairs. Two apartments to a floor, eight doors to pass. At the top Sal unbolted the fire door and they stepped onto the roof.

It was a typical flat asphalt roof sprouting chimneys and ventilator exhausts. The asphalt was still wet. There was a breeze.
Janek
was breathing hard from the climb; his shirt felt wet against his back.

Sal found the ladder, the built-in kind, rods sunk into the concrete. It led over the back wall of the roof and down the rear of the building to the fire-escape balcony just outside the windows of Amanda's studio. So it was easy, incredibly easy: slip the front-door lock with a plastic credit card, climb up to the roof, then lower yourself and climb on in.

"That fucking Stanger," whispered Sal.

Janek
had to agree. It was basic work on a robbery to figure out how an intruder had gotten in. This was a double homicide. It was inexcusable that Stanger hadn't checked the roof. Now they began to check it themselves, using flashlights they'd brought along. They didn't find anything except some old cigarette butts disintegrating in a puddle of rain.

"If this was a police procedural," Sal said, "we'd find a half-eaten eggroll tossed into the corner. We'd trace it back to a carry-out joint on Third Avenue on account of how they always cut their bean curd at an angle of thirty-two degrees. We'd question the help. No one would remember anything—they sell so much eggroll, you know. But then this old
mamasan
would come out. She'd remember. When the guy paid for his eggrolls she saw this Jap sword strapped on beneath his coat..."

They had climbed down the ladder, were perched now on the grilled balcony of the fire escape.

"...and that was weird because who wears a coat in New York in August?" Sal gently pried the window up. "The
mamasan
remembered that and that the coat had these unusual epaulettes. We took her downtown and showed her our epaulette book. She pored over it. We were sweating buckets. Finally she paused. 'That's the one,' she said..."

They climbed into Amanda's apartment.
Janek
pulled the window shut and they peered around the dark room. Sal cut his saga short. Exactly a week before, a killer had come in, had stood just where they were standing now.

They didn't speak as Sal hung the shower curtain which
Janek
had purchased on his way to Long Island City that afternoon. When Sal came out of the bathroom,
Janek
went in, stepped into the tub and carefully pulled the curtain closed.

He could hear Sal open the apartment door, then go out into the hall. Standing alone in the tub, he felt very strange. He didn't know how long he could bear to stand there, but when he heard the bolt snap open again he froze behind the curtain, spread his legs another half a foot, then planted his feet upon the porcelain. When the lights came on in the studio he raised his fist beside his shoulder and tried to control his breathing sounds.

"What about the dog?" Sal asked.

"She releases her as soon as she comes in."
Janek
hated having to talk. His voice echoed against the tiles.

"Why doesn't she run into the bathroom and sniff you out?"

"She's thirsty from her walk. She goes straight to the water bowl beside the kitchenette."

A pause. "You don't own a dog, do you, Frank?"

Sal was right. He'd made a mistake. The plastic smell of the new shower curtain penetrated his nostrils; he wanted to cough.

Silence. Then the sound of music. Sal had turned the radio on. He walked into the bathroom, strode in like a man. Amanda would have slipped in quieter. Sal flicked on the light. "Can't see you at all."

Janek
was silent. He could see Sal clearly in silhouette, and for a few seconds, when he tried to imagine Amanda there, he felt his heart speed up and a dry throbbing in his throat. Sal moved to the sink, turned on the faucet, bent slightly as if to brush his teeth. He was just inches away, his image sharp against the curtain.

"You know, it's strange to come in and find the curtain closed. After a shower you usually leave it open to dry the tub.''

"Or leave it closed to dry the curtain. That was her habit. He saw it was and took advantage of it."

Janek
sucked in his breath, then plunged. His fist landed firmly, the curtain pressed against Sal
Marchetti's
back.

They didn't bother to act out the rest of it, down on the floor with the curtain between them, though
Janek
imagined the chest-stabbing part, then the dog yelping, and his going into the studio to kick her unconscious, then coming back and dragging the girl over to the bed. Easy to slice off her head, take her keys from her purse, latch the window, turn off the radio and the lights, then let himself out. No sound in the hall. No traffic on the stairs. They walked straight out of the building and back down Eighty-first. When they reached the car they both were breathing hard.

"Madness, of course,"
Janek
said, "but simple too. I think he took her head with him. The elegant way to do this is to cross town only twice."

"What about the dog? I'm still not happy about the dog."

"Neither am I. Should have run an autopsy. By now she's cremated, of course. What about a chemical analysis of the water dish? He could have drugged the water, knocked the dog out that way. But I don't think so. I think he just took a chance and everything broke his way."

"Could have run into someone on the stairs."

"We didn't. Anyway, they're pretty badly lit."

They drove to Seventy-ninth, took the transverse through Central Park, turned left on Central Park West, drove down to Seventy-first and turned right.

"Funny," said Sal, "I never figured a private car. Thought the parking would be too tough. But there're places around here too."

Janek
spotted a Buick pulling out, fought a short duel with a Mazda, slipped into the space. They were half a block from Brenda Beard's.

"He leaves Amanda's head in the trunk, goes to the regular phone booth over there. She sticks her head out the window. He waves to her and she beckons him up. She knew him. She wouldn't have let him in this late if she didn't."

They walked to her building from the booth. "He rings. She buzzes him in. Takes the elevator. Doesn't care if he's seen. People coming and going here all the time. She has a parade of guys. No one gives a fuck."

After they went through the motions in the apartment,
Janek
looked down at the bed. "He must have used some kind of plastic sheet. Then he took it with him. Now it starts getting cute. He takes Brenda's head down to the car, stashes it in the trunk, brings up Amanda's head and tries to screw it on real tight. When he has everything just the way he wants he goes back downstairs and drives to Lexington and Eighty-first.
He
carries the head bag up to Amanda's and lets himself back in with her keys. He arranges things there and goes back to his car. A good night's work. He's done."

They went through it all without talking. No need to enact it, but
Janek
wanted to in case something happened that would spark off a new idea. Nothing happened. They did it just the way he said. Half an hour later they were finished. The run-through from start to end had taken them an hour and a half.

"Fucking impossible," said Sal. They were sitting in the car again.

"So possible it kills you, right?"

"This guy had some kind of balls, Frank. Had to be the coolest guy in town."

Janek
nodded. "Let's look at what we got. First there's a slight problem with the dog. Second, I can't prove Brenda knew him, but I'd bet my shield that she did. Third, two
crosstown
trips instead of three. And now that we know the parking's easy I think we can count on a private car. Now that leaves one other thing."

"What?"

"Hiding in the shower."

"What's wrong with that? You said she kept the curtain closed."

Janek
nodded. "But I still don't like it. Not the curtain, but the shower. I felt funny in there. Too stylized. Too much like
Psycho
."

"Like I keep telling you, Frank, this whole thing's like a fucking movie script. Anyway, in
Psycho
the girl was in the shower and the killer surprised her there."

"Yeah, but it's the same idea. Maybe that's what's interesting. It's like some kind of reverse. Deliberate. Contrived. I didn't feel right in there. The whole thing's much too slick."