Maybe Joe Haller didn’t rob Amberson’s, but he’d beaten and humiliated both men and women pursuing his perverse sexual appetites.

Leonid wondered if Nestor Bendix could have had something to do with Gert’s killing. But he’d never told anyone her name. Maybe Haller got out and somehow traced his problem back to her. Maybe.

A lion roared in his pocket.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. McGill? This is Karma.”

“Hey. I’m on the case. He is on a date but I haven’t seen her yet. I’ll have the pictures for you by tomorrow afternoon. By the way, I had to lay out three hundred to get this address.”

“That’s all right, I guess,” she said. “I’ll pay for it if you can bring me proof about his girlfriend.”

“All right. Let me off now. I’ll call you when I have something for sure.”

When Leonid folded the phone a colony of monkeys began chattering.

“Yeah?”

“You knew Gert Longman, didn’t you?” Carson Kitteridge asked.

Ice water formed in Leonid’s lower intestine. His rectum clenched.

“Yeah.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You asked me if I knew someone and I told you. Yeah. We were close there for a while.”

“She’s dead.”

Leonid remained silent for a quarter face sweep of his Timex’s second hand. That was long enough to seem as if he was shocked by the news.

“How did it happen?”

“Shot.”

“By who?”

“A man wielding a long-barreled.22 pistol.”

“Do you have a suspect?”

“That’s the kinda pistol you like to use, isn’t it, Leon?”

For a moment Leonid thought that the lieutenant was just blowing smoke, trying to get under his skin. But then he remembered a gun that he’d lost. It was seventeen years before. Nora Parsons had come to him scared to death that her husband, who was out on bail before sentencing in his embezzlement trial, was going to come kill her. Leonid had given her his pistol, and after her husband, Anton, was sentenced, she’d told him that she was afraid to have the pistol in the house so she threw it into a lake.

It was a cold piece. Nothing to it.

“Well?” Detective Kitteridge asked.

“I haven’t owned a gun in twenty years, man. And even you can’t think that I’d use my own piece if I wanted to kill somebody.”

But still he thought he might give Nora Parsons a call. Maybe.

“I’d like you to come in for voluntary questioning, Leon.”

“I’m busy right now. Call me later,” Leonid said, and then he disconnected the call.

He didn’t want to be so rude to a member of New York ’s Finest but Richard was coming out of the front door of Umberto’s Brazilian Food. He was accompanied by the haughty receptionist from the real estate company. Now she was wearing a red slip and black pumps with a gossamer pink shawl around her bare shoulders. Her limp brown hair was up.

Richard glanced around the street, probably looking for Mr. DuBois, then hailed a cab.

Leonid turned over the engine. He watched as a cab swooped down to pick them up. The driver wore a Sikh turban.

They went up to Thirty-second Street, headed east over to Park and then up to the Seventies.

They got out at a building with big glass doors and two uniformed doormen.

Almost as if they were posing, the two stopped on the street and entwined their lips in a long soul kiss. Leonid had been taking photographs since he’d hung up on the cop. He had shots of the taxi’s numbers, the driver, the front of the building and the couple talking, holding hands, dueling tongues, and grasping at skin.

They reminded Leonid of Gert, of how much he wanted her. And now she was dead. He put down his camera and bowed his head for a moment. When he raised it again Richard Mallory and the receptionist were gone.

“You awake?” Leonid whispered in bed next to Katrina.

It was early for him, only one-thirty. But she had been asleep for hours. He knew that.

In the old days she was always out past three and four. Sometimes she wouldn’t come in till the sun was up-smelling of vodka, cigarettes, and men.

Maybe if he had left her and gone to Gert. Maybe Gert would still be alive.

“What?” Katrina said.

“You wanna talk?”

“It’s almost two.”

“Somebody I been working with the last ten years died tonight,” Leonid said.

“Are you in trouble?”

“I’m sad.”

For a few moments Leonid listened to her hard breath.

“Will you hold hands with me?” the detective asked his wife.

“My hands hurt,” she said.

For a long time after that he lay on his back staring at the darkness before the ceiling. There was nothing he could think that did not damn him. There was nothing he had done that he could remember with pride.

Maybe an hour later Katrina said, “Are you still up?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a life insurance policy? I’m just worried for the kids.”

“I got better than that. I got a life insurance philosophy.”

“What’s that?” Katrina asked.

“As long as I’m worth more alive than dead I won’t have to worry about banana peels and bad broth.”

Katrina sighed and Leonid climbed out of the bed.

Just as he got to the small TV room Twill came in the front door.

“It’s three in the morning, Twill,” Leonid said.

“Sorry, Dad. But I got into this thing with the Torcelli sisters and Bingham. It was their parents’ car so I had to wait until they were ready to go home. I told them that I was on probation but they didn’t care-”

“You don’t have to lie to me, boy. Come on, let’s sit.”

They sat across from each other over a low coffee table. Twill lit up a menthol cigarette and Leonid enjoyed the smoke secondhand.

Twill was thin and on the short side but he carried himself with understated self-importance. The bigger kids left him alone and the girls were always calling. His father, whoever he was, had some Negro in him. Leonid was grateful for that. Twill was the son he felt closest to.

“Somethin’ wrong, Dad?”

“Why you ask that?”

“ ‘Cause you’re not ridin’ me. Somethin’ happen?”

“An old friend died today.”

“A guy?”

“No. A woman named Gert Longman.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“I, I don’t know,” Leonid said, realizing that he never wondered who would bury his ex-lover. Her parents were dead. Her two brothers were in prison.

“I’ll go with you, Dad. Just tell me when it is and I’ll cut school.”

With that Twill got up and headed for his bedroom. At the door he stopped and turned.

“Hey, Dad.”

“What?”

“What happened to the guy slammed you in the jaw?”

“They had to carry him out.”

Twill gave the father of his heart a thumbs-up and then moved into the darkness of the doorway.

Leonid was at work at five. It was dark in Manhattan and in New Jersey across the river. He’d put twenty-five hundred dollars in Katrina’s wallet, dropped the film off at Krome Addict Four Hour Developing Service, and bought an egg sandwich with Bermuda onions and American cheese. He didn’t turn on the lights. As the morning wore on the dawn slowly invaded his room. The sky cleared and then opened-after a while it turned blue.

Carson Kitteridge came to the door a little before seven.

Leonid ushered him to the back office where they took their regular seats.

“Did you and Gertie have a fight, Leo?” the cop asked.

“No. Not really. I mean I might’a got a little fresh and she had to show me the door but I was sorry. I wanted to take her out to dinner. You’re not dumb enough to think that I would have killed Gert?”

“If somebody gave me information that you were involved with John Wilkes Booth I’d take the time to check it out, Leon. That’s just the kind of guy I think you are.”