Compounding the problem, Larry King followed Lao with karate master Ding Ho, who demonstrated the one-punch-one-kill method by breaking a brick and a two-by-four with the side of his hand. This party trick hadn't been a subject of interest on TV for quite some time and further infuriated the detectives. New York City was topping the charts for the freak-of-the-week crime story.

Lightning had struck twice in the same place in the same unusual way. Now everyone in the entire world knew about it, and everyone from the PC on down was embarrassed. Embarrassment on top always passed the gas along to the ranks below. When April met Mike at his car in the garage of headquarters, his face was gray. She'd been with Jason and didn't know about the TV fiascos.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Henry Lao was on Larry King right after the PC. Made him look like an asshole."

"Oh."

"How did you make out?" He gave her a distracted kiss.

"Good," she said, and hugged him back hard. "What did he say?"

"Lao? He talked karate chops. Then someone came on to break bricks with his pinkie. After the PC had refused to talk cause of death, it was humiliating," Mike told her.

"You okay?"

"Oh, yeah. A lot of asses on the line, but not mine. Or yours. You got some points for the York U connection." He gave her a quick smile, then drove up and out of the garage, waved at the uniforms on guard around the barricades that kept civilian cars and vans far from the building, and took his first easy breath in sixteen hours.

April took a breath herself and settled down. It was a clear, clear night. A beautiful spring night with the kind of low humidity that gave a piercing clarity to the air and made the lights on the Brooklyn Bridge look like sparklers. Some New Yorkers had long since finished dinner and were easing toward sleep. Others were just on their way out on the town or heading to work.

"Jason and April and Emma are fine," she said slowly. "He knew Max Bassett well, Birdie not at all. Birdie was Max's secretary before she became his wife. She didn't get along with the stepchildren. They're older than she. Seems they clung to Daddy. The son never married. His father thought he was a poof. Those two are quite the pair. They were busy looting the place when Woody and I got there and probably continued after we left. Woody checked out the son's alibi. Burton was drinking at Player's Club last night. A lot of people remember him. Nothing on the daughter. She's very thin."

"How does that pertain?" Mike asked.

"Doesn't. I just like to count the anorexics. It seems the richer they are the thinner they get. Makes me glad to be poor."

"You're not poor, querida; you're rich in love. And her name is Martha," Mike added.

"Birdie's?"

"Uh-huh. Martha Mandelbaum. I saw her mother on TV."

"No kidding. Martha Mandelbaum." The name was no poem, but Birdie Bassett wasn't much better. The whole family was full of Bs. It was a B case. Everywhere Bs-what was the probability of that?

"What's the mother like?" she asked.

"A mother." Mike was noncommittal about mothers. "What else?" he asked.

"Martha's late husband was a big giver at Jason's institute. When he called her last week to set up a meeting, she told him she thought her husband had been murdered."

"What did Jason have to say about that?"

"Nothing at the time. Late this afternoon he checked with Max's doctor, Paul Perry. Dr. Perry said there was nothing to his suspicion. Max was eighty-one. He had a massive stroke."

Mike stopped at a red light. The car was making a lot of noise. He tried to ignore it. "What about the apartment?"

"It's a museum. So much stuff there you wouldn't believe it. The vic had gorgeous clothes, beautiful jewelry, but she couldn't sleep at night. I'll check with her doctor tomorrow. There was Xanax, Valium, a whole pharmacy in there. She also liked enemas. There were dozens of them in the vanity under her sink. Some people do that to diet," she said softly.

Unlike Woody, Mike chose not to make any smart remarks.

"I listened to her messages, but who knows if any were erased by the stepchildren before I got there. I have her calendar and address book," she finished.

"What was on her schedule?"

"I haven't had time to study it… What do you think are the odds of two offspring killing a parent the same way in the same place a week apart?" she asked.

"Oh, about two hundred and fifty million to one."

"About the same odds as winning the lottery, probably. But think about it. In the lottery, someone's number always comes up."

Mike groaned. "Oh, don't start with the numerology."

"I'm not kidding. What about the odds of Jack Devereaux's being in that square at the moment I ran in chasing Bernardino's killer?"

"Oh, that's an easy one. Jack was in the square every night. There was a hundred-to-one chance that he would be there."

"His father died three weeks ago."

"So?"

"Mike, we have a killer who's murdered two heirs on the thirty-day anniversary of the wealth holder's death. Is that a coincidence, or what?"

"Oh, give me a break." Mike came off the Brooklyn Bridge and hung a left on the ramp for the BQE.

"You picked it up, though, didn't you?"

"Yeah. I did, and Harry got his money the day after Lorna's funeral. Numerologist, how does that add up?"

Mike put some speed on the Camaro, and the tires squealed as he understeered around a turn. He didn't say anything the rest of the way home.

Forty-one

In the old days when April had lived at home, Skinny Dragon Mother used to show her love by force-feeding her daughter before she went to bed. Didn't matter what time April dragged herself home after work. There was always food waiting for her. One, two, three in the morning. The poodle Dim Sum would be waiting and so was the real dim sum. Pork and shrimp and vegetable dumplings, steamed rolls. Crab in ginger sauce, lamb and scallions. Succulent chicken and vegetables in the clay pot. Skinny was a big nag and threatener, but a great feeder. April sometimes got nostalgic thinking of home.

By the end of the week, the refrigerator in her kitchen was usually empty. She didn't have time to shop or cook. Mike didn't care what he ate during the day, but she was picky. If she didn't take the time to find something she liked, she went to sleep hungry and almost missed her mom. That night she missed her. After they'd settled in for the night, she lay in Mike's arms for hours listening to the steady beat of his heart and thinking about love and food and telemarketers all over the country, armed with the tools for the most insidious kind of home invasion- telephones.

People called from real companies like AT & T and Sprint, and Chase and Citibank, from charities like heart and cancer organizations, from the Special Olympics, from Channel Thirteen. And they called for phony charities, like police and state police funds that didn't help the police. They called from chiropractors and dentists. And they called alums from universities, where they knew how old you were, where you lived, and what you looked like.

Her restless dreams were full of probabilities. Armies of black-belt wannabes practicing one punch, one kill against herself, naked and out of shape. Horses stuffed with thousand-dollar bills. And the approaching thirty-day anniversary of Jack Devereaux's father's death.

At four-thirty a.m. thunder struck in the distance, forecasting another rainy day. April climbed out of her bad dreams and out of her bed. Mike never knew she left. In a T-shirt and a pair of NYPD shorts, she foraged in the kitchen for food. Way at the back of the freezer she found two ancient heavily frosted roast pork buns under a half-filled ice tray. She defrosted them in the microwave and boiled some water for tea. A few minutes later as the buns were steaming, she found the calendar of the woman she still thought of as Birdie Bassett.