“Listen, man. I have never killed anybody. Never pulled a trigger, never ordered a job done. I didn’t kill Gert.”

“You called her,” Kitteridge said. “You called her from that phone on your desk just about when she was getting killed. It speaks to your innocence but one wonders what you had to talk to her about at that hour, on that night? What were you apologizing for?”

“I told you-I got a little fresh.”

“And here I thought you had a wife.”

“Listen. She was my friend. I liked her-a lot. I don’t know who did that to her but if I find out you can be sure that I’ll let you know.”

Kitteridge made a silent clapping gesture.

“Get the fuck out of my office,” Leonid said.

“I have a few more questions.”

“Ask ‘em out in the hall.” Leonid stood up from his chair. “I’m through with you.”

The policeman waited a moment. Maybe he thought that Leonid would sit back down. But as the seconds ticked by on the wall clock it began to dawn on him that Leonid’s feelings were actually hurt.

“You’re serious?” he asked.

“As a heart attack. Now get your ass outta here and come back with a warrant if you expect to talk to me again.”

Kitteridge stood.

“I don’t know what you’re playing here, Leon,” he said. “But you can’t put out the law.”

“But I can put out an asshole who doesn’t have a warrant.”

The lieutenant delayed another moment and then began to move.

Leonid followed him down the hall and to the door, which he slammed behind the lawman. He kicked another hole in the wall and marched back to his office, where his gut began to ache from whiskey and bile.

“Yes, Ms. Brown,” Leonid was saying to his client on the telephone later that afternoon. “I have the photographs right here. It wasn’t an older woman like you suspected.”

“But it was a woman?”

“More like a girl.”

“Is there any question about their, um… their relationship?”

“No. There’s no doubt of the intimate nature of their relationship. What do you want me to do with these pictures and how will we settle accounts?”

“Can you bring them to me? To my apartment? I’ll have the money you put out and there’s one more thing that I’d like you to do.”

“Sure I’ll come by to you if that’s what you want. What’s the address?”

Karmen Brown lived on the sixth floor. He pressed the number she gave him, sixty-two, and found her waiting at the door.

The demure young thing had on a dark brown leather skirt that wouldn’t keep her modest if she sat without crossing her legs. Her blouse had the top three buttons undone. She wasn’t a large-breasted girl but what she had was mostly visible.

Her delicate features were serious but Leonid wouldn’t have called her brokenhearted.

“Come in, Mr. McGill.”

The apartment was small-like Gert’s.

There was a table in the middle with a brown manila folder on it.

Leonid held a similar folder in his right hand.

“Sit down,” Karmen said, gesturing toward a blue sofa.

In front of the couch was a small table holding up a decanter half-filled with an amber fluid and flanked by two squat glasses.

Leonid opened the folder and reached for the photographs he’d taken.

She held up a hand to stop him.

“Will you join me in a drink first?” the young siren asked.

“I think I will.”

She poured and they both slugged back hard.

She poured again.

After three stiff drinks and with a new one in her glass Karmen said, “I loved him more than anything, you know.”

“Really?” Leonid said, his eyes drifting between her cleavage and her crossed legs. “He seemed like kind of a loser to me.”

“I would die for him,” she said, gazing steadily into Leonid’s eyes.

He brought out the dozen or so pictures.

“For this louse? He doesn’t even respect you or her.” Leonid felt the whiskey behind his eyes and under his tongue. “Look at him with his hand under her dress like that.”

“Look at this,” she replied.

Leonid looked up to see her ample mound of pubic hair. Karmen had pulled up her skirt, revealing that she wore nothing underneath.

“This is my revenge,” she said. “You want it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Leonid answered, thinking that this was the other thing she wanted him to take care of.

He had been half-aroused since the last night he saw Gert. Not sexy but prey to a sexual hunger. The whiskey set that hunger free.

She got down on her knees on the blue sofa and Leonid dropped his pants. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been that eager for sex. He felt like a teenager. But push as he would he couldn’t press into her.

Finally she said, “Wait a minute, Daddy,” and reached around to lubricate his erection with her own saliva.

After his first full thrust he knew he was going to come. He couldn’t do anything about it.

“Do it, Daddy! Do it!” she cried.

Leonid thought about Gert, realizing at that moment that he had always loved her, and about Katrina who he was never good enough for. He thought about that poor child so much in love with her man that she had to have revenge on him by giving her love away to an overweight, middle-aged gumshoe.

All of that went through his mind but nothing could stand in the way of the pulsing rhythm. He was slamming against Karmen Brown’s slender backside. She was yelling. He was yelling.

And then it was over-just like that. Leonid didn’t even feel the ejaculation. It all blended into his violent, spasmodic attack.

Karmen had been thrown to the floor. She was crying.

He reached to help her up but she pulled away.

“Leave me alone,” she said. “Let me go.”

She was in a heap with her skirt up around her waist and the slick sheen of spit on her thighs.

Leonid pulled up his pants. He felt something like guilt about having had sex with the girl. She was only just a few years older than his wife’s girl, the daughter of the Chinese jeweler.

“You owe me three hundred dollars,” he said.

Maybe sometime in the future he’d tell someone that the best tail he ever had paid him three hundred dollars for the privilege.

“It’s in the envelope on the table. There’s a thousand dollars there. That and the ring and the bracelet he gave me. I want you to give them back to him. Take it and go. Go.”

Leonid tore open the envelope. There he found the money, a ring with a large ruby in it, and a tennis bracelet lined with quarter-karat diamonds.

“What do you want me to tell him?” Leonid asked.

“You won’t have to say a word.”

Leonid wanted to say something but he didn’t.

He went out the door, deciding to take the Stairs rather than wait for the elevator.

On the first flight down he thought about Karmen Brown begging for sex and then crying so bitterly. On the third flight he started thinking about Gert. He wanted to reach out and touch her but she was gone.

On the first floor he passed a tattooed young man waiting at the elevator doors.

When Leonid glanced at the young man he looked away.

He was wearing leather gloves.

Leonid went out the door and turned westward.

He took four steps, five.

He made it all the way to the end of the block and it was then, when he had the urge to take off his jacket, because of the heat, that he wondered why somebody would be wearing leather gloves on a hot day. He thought about the tattoos and the image of a motorcycle came into his mind.

It had been parked right outside Karmen Brown’s front door.

He pressed every buzzer on the wall until someone let him in. He was even ready to run up the stairs but the elevator was there and open.