"They think you might be an Indian, or part Indian, but they're not sure until they hear your voice," Lucas said between stops. "You look a little Indian."

"I don't sound Indian."

"You sound Lawn Guyland."

"There's an Indian reservation on Long Island," she said.

"No shit? Jesus, I'd like to hear those people talk…"

Late in the morning, Lucas drove to Yellow Hand's apartment at the Point, describing him to Lily as they went. Outside, on the stoop, he reached back and freed the P7 in its holster.

"Is this trouble?" she asked.

"I doubt it," he said. "But you know."

"Okay." When they were inside the door, she slipped her hand into a mufflike opening in her shoulder bag, took out a short Colt Officer's Model.45 and jacked a shell into the chamber.

"A forty-five?" Lucas said as she put it back in the purse.

"I'm not strong enough to wrestle with assholes," she said bluntly. "If I shoot somebody, I want him to go down. Not that the P7 isn't a nice little gun. But it's a bit light for serious work."

"Not if you can shoot," Lucas said through his teeth as he headed up the stairs.

"I can shoot the eyes out of a moving pigeon," she said. "And not hit the feathers."

The door on the top floor was open. Nobody home. Lucas eased inside, looked around, then tramped across a litter of paper, orange peels and empty personal-size catsup packs from McDonald's. "This is where he was," Lucas said, kicking Yellow Hand's mattress.

"Place feels vacant," Lily said. She touched one of the empty catsup packs with the toe of her shoe. Street people stole them from fast-food joints and used the catsup to make tomato soup. "They're really hurting for money."

"Crackheads," Lucas said.

Lily nodded. She took the Colt out of the purse, pulled the magazine, stuck it between the little and ring fingers of her gun hand, cupped the ejection port with her free hand and jacked the slide. The chambered round ejected into her palm. She snapped it back into the magazine and pushed the magazine back into the butt of the pistol. She'd done it smoothly, without thinking, Lucas thought. She'd spent some time with the gun.

"The trouble with single-action weapons," Lucas said, "is that shit happens and you're caught with an empty chamber."

"Not if you've got half a brain," she said. She was looking around at the litter. "I've learned to anticipate."

Lucas stopped and picked up an object that had been almost hidden by Yellow Hand's mattress where it had pressed against the wall.

Lily asked, "What?" and he tossed it to her. She turned it over in her hands. "Crack pipe. You said he was a crack-head."

"Yeah. But I wonder why he left it here? I wouldn't think the boy would be without it. All of his other shit is gone."

"I don't know. Nothing wrong with it. Yet," Lily said. She dropped the glass pipe on the floor and stepped on it, crushing it.

On the street again, Lucas suggested a check at Cuervo's rental office. If there was anyone running the place, he told Lily, there might be some word of where Yellow Hand had gone. She nodded. "I'm following you," she said.

"I hope the dipshit hasn't gone back to the res," Lucas said as they climbed back in the car. "Yellow Hand would be hell to find out there, if he didn't want to be found."

Lucas had been in Cuervo's office a dozen times over the years. Nothing had changed in the shabby stairway that went up to it. The building had permanent bad breath, compounded of stale urine, wet plaster and catshit. As Lucas reached the top of the stairs, Cuervo's office door opened on a chain and a woman looked out through the crack.

"Who're you?" Lucas asked.

"Harriet Cuervo," the woman snapped. All Lucas could see were her eyes, which were the color of acid-washed jeans, and a pale crescent of face. "Who in the hell are you to be asking?"

"Police," Lucas said. Lucas fished his badge case out of his jacket pocket and flashed the badge at her. Lily waited behind him, down a step. "We didn't know you'd taken over Ray's operation."

"Know now," the woman grunted. The chain rattled off and she let the door swing open. Her husband's murder had left a faint stain on the wooden floor and Harriet Cuervo was standing in the middle of it. She was wearing a print dress that fell straight from her neck to her knees. "I told the other cops everything I knew," she said bluntly.

"We're looking for a different kind of information," Lucas said. The woman went back around Cuervo's old desk. Lucas stepped inside the office and glanced around. Something had changed, something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. "We're asking about one of his tenants."

"So what do you want to know?" she asked. She was five feet, nine inches tall and weighed perhaps a hundred pounds, all of it rawboned knobs. There were short vertical lines above and below her lips, as though they'd once been stitched shut.

"You've got a renter named Yellow Hand, down at the Point?"

"Sure. Yellow Hand." She opened a ledger and ran a finger down an open column. "Paid up 'til tomorrow."

"You didn't see him yesterday or today?"

"Shit, I don't do no surveys. I just rent the fuckin' apartments," she said. "If he don't have the money tomorrow, out he goes. Today, I don't care what he does."

"So you haven't seen him?"

"Nope." She peered around Lucas at Lily. "She a cop too?"

"Yeah."

Cuervo looked Lily up and down. "Dresses pretty good for a cop," she sniffed.

"If Yellow Hand doesn't pay, do you go down and evict him yourself?" Lily asked curiously.

"I got an associate," Cuervo said.

"Who's that?" Lucas asked.

"Bald Peterson."

"Yeah? I thought he'd left town."

"He's come back. You know him?"

"Yeah. We go back."

"Say…" Harriet Cuervo's eyes narrowed and she made a gun of her index finger and thumb and pointed it at Lucas' heart. "You ain't the cop that pounded him, are you? Years ago? Like fuckin' crippled him?"

"We've had some disagreements," Lucas said. "Tell him hello for me." He took a step toward the door. "How about a guy named Shadow Love? You seen him around?"

"Shadow Love? Never even heard of him."

"He was living up at the Point…"

She shrugged. "Didn't rent from me," she said. "Must've been one of those other flatheads let him in. You know how it goes."

"Yeah," Lucas said as he turned away again. "Sorry about Ray."

"It's nice somebody is, 'cause I ain't," Cuervo said flatly. Her face showed some animation for the first time. "I was trying to think what I remembered best about Ray. One thing, you know? And you know what come to mind? He had a bunch of porno videotapes. He had one called Airtight Brunette. You know what an airtight brunette is? That's one who is filled up everyplace, if you know what I mean. Three guys. Anyway, his favorite part was when this guy 'jaculates on the brunette's chest. He was running that back and forth, back and forth. Everytime he stopped the VCR and rewound the tape, the regular TV show come on. You know what that was?"

"Uh, no, I wouldn't," Lucas said. He glanced quickly at Lily, who was staring at Cuervo, fascinated.

"Sesame Street. Big Bird was finding out how doctors take your blood pressure. So this guy 'jaculates on the brunette's chest and we get Big Bird. And he 'jaculates again and we get Big Bird. It was like that for fifteen minutes. 'Jac-ulate, Big Bird, 'jaculate, Big Bird."

She stopped to take a breath. "That," she said, "is how I remember Ray."

"Okay. Well, jeez, we gotta get going," Lucas said desperately. He pushed Lily out the door toward the stairs. They were ten steps down when Harriet Cuervo came to the landing.

"I wanted to have kids," she shouted down at them.

Lily grinned at him as they walked back to the car. "Nice girl," she said. "We wouldn't do much better in New York."