Victoria is out there somewhere.

I moaned out loud and paced the room. I picked up one phone and then the other to call Singh. The phone lines were dead.

The assistant manager came up to explain to the sleepy policeman next door and to apologize to us. Thousands of phones in the area were out of order. He had sent a runner to the telephone company, but the offices were closed. No one knew when service might be resumed. Sometimes it took days.

When the clerk left, I removed our clothes from the closet and hung them on a shower rod in the bathroom.

"What are you doing?" asked Amrita. Her voice was slightly slurred. She had not slept in over forty hours. Her eyes were dark and weary.

I said nothing, but pulled out the heavy round wooden dowel that had served as a rod for hangers. It was almost four feet long and felt agreeably solid in my hands. I propped it behind a chair near the door. Outside, lightning crashed nearby and caught the flooded scene in a second's stroboscopic clarity.

At ten minutes after eleven, there was a heavy knock. Amrita startled awake in her chair while I stood and hefted the dowel. "Who is it?"

"Inspector Singh."

The Sikh wore a pith helmet and a dripping black raincoat. Two soaked policemen stood in the hall. "Mr. Luczak, we would like you to come with us on an important matter."

"Come where, Inspector?"

Singh shook water from his helmet. "To the Sassoon Morgue." At Amrita's involuntary intake of breath, he hurried on, "There has been a murder. A man."

"A man? Does this relate to whatshisname? Dhavan?"

Singh shrugged. Water fell to the carpet. "We do not know. The . . . style of the murder has connotations of the goondas. The Kapalikas, if you will. We would like your help in identifying the body."

"Who do you think it is?"

Again the shrug. "Will you come, Mr. Luczak? My car is waiting."

"No," I said. "Absolutely not. I'm not leaving Amrita. Forget it."

"But for identification to be made . . ."

"Take a photograph, Inspector. Your department has a camera, doesn't it? If not I'll wait for close-ups in the morning paper. Calcuttans seem to enjoy viewing corpse photos the way we get a kick out of comic strips back in the States."

"Bobby!" said Amrita. Her voice was raw. We were both exhausted. "The Inspector is only trying to help."

"Yeah," I said. "Tough. I'm not leaving you again."

Amrita picked up her purse and umbrella. "I'll go too."

Both Singh and I looked at her.

"The phones are out," she said. "No one can call us. It's been twenty-four hours, and there has been no ransom demand. No contact of any kind. If this can help, let us do it now."

Lightning illuminated the boarded windows and the two rain-pelted stone lions left over from some earlier, more innocent era. The morgue entrance was reached by a rear drive that curved between dark, dripping buildings and heaps of garbage which were melting in the downpour. A crumpling overhang sheltered the broad doors to the Sassoon Morgue.

A man in a rumpled suit met us in an outer office. Even there, the air was thick with the high-school-biology scent of formaldehyde. Kerosene lanterns threw shadows behind filing cabinets and tall stacks of folders on every desk. The man steepled his fingers at me, bowed perfunctorily, and released a veritable tirade of Bengali at the dripping Inspector.

"He says that Mrs. Luczak can remain here," translated Singh. "We will be in the next room."

Amrita nodded and said, "He also said that the morgue needs an emergency generator, Inspector. He invited the politicians at City Hall to get off their asses and come down here to sniff the roses. Is that right? It was an idiom."

"That is correct," said Singh and surrendered a grim smile. He said something to the morgue official, and the little man blushed and led Singh and me through swinging doors and down a short, tiled hallway.

A hanging lantern showed an area which might have been Jack the Ripper's idea of an operating room. It was filthy. Papers, cups, and various detritus lay everywhere. Knives, scalpels, and bone saws were scattered across stained trays and tabletops. A huge dish of a light — inoperative now — and the gleaming steel table with open drains confirmed the purpose of the room. That and the body which lay exposed on the table.

"Ah," said the Inspector and stepped closer. He beckoned impatiently for me to join him. The morgue official lifted the lantern from its peg on the wall and hung it from the bar of the curved operating-room light. The swinging light threw swirls of patterns on the slick steel.

When I was a child my parents had invested in a set of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedias. My favorite section was the chapter on the human body. There were pages there of translucent overlays. You started with the whole body, skin and all, and as you flipped the delicate pages you descended farther into the mysteries of the body's crowded interior. Everything was neat, color-coded, and labeled for reference.

The body before me now was the second page — MUSCLES & TENDONS. From the neck down the skin had been flayed open and pulled back. It lay bunched under the corpse like a moist and wrinkled cape. But there was no neat labeling of muscles here, only a human being looking like raw meat, greasy fluids catching the light; thick, white fibers disappearing into raw, pink striations; and yellowish tendons stretched like bloody thongs.

Singh and the other man were looking at me. If they expected me to cry out or be sick they were to be disappointed. I cleared my throat. "You've already begun the autopsy?"

Singh translated the other's brief sentence. "No, Mr. Luczak. This was the way he came in two hours ago."

I reacted then. "Jesus! Why would anyone kill and then skin a human being?"

Singh shook his head. "He was not deceased when he was first seen. He was on Sudder Street. Screaming. Running, according to witnesses. He fell. Sometime later the screaming stopped. Eventually someone sent for a police wagon."

I took two involuntary steps back. I could hear my mother's voice echoing from the third-floor landing on Pulaski Street. Robert Luczak, you come in here this minute before I skin you alive. It was possible.

"Do you know him?" Singh asked impatiently. He gestured for more light. The corpse's head was thrown back, frozen in final agony by the grip of early rigor mortis.

"No," I said through gritted teeth. "Wait." I forced myself to step into the tight circle of light. The face was untouched except for the distorted features. Recognition hit me like a fist.

"You do know him," said Singh.

"Yes." I had said his name. Dear God, I had said his name when talking to Das.

"It is Mr. Krishna?"

"No," I said and turned away from the bright table. I had said his name. "It's the glasses that are missing. He wears glasses. His name is Jayaprakesh Muktanandaji."

Amrita and I slept until nine A.M. We did not dream. The roar of rain through the open window obliterated dreams. Sometime around dawn, the electricity and air conditioning must have come on, but we were not aware of it.

At 11:00 Singh sent a car to bring us to police headquarters. Any phone call to the hotel would be transferred to us there. The police center was another dark and cavernous room in another dark and labyrinthine building. Great mounds of file folders and yellowing documents obscured the desks and almost hid the faceless men hunched over typewriters that looked to have been used in Queen Victoria's day. Amrita and I spent several hours going through huge books of photographs. After hundreds of women's faces, I began to wonder if I would recognize Kamakhya Bahrati if I saw her. Yes, I would.

There was only one discovery. After scrutinizing a dark and faded photograph of a heavy man in prison gray, I tentatively identified him as the Kapalika in khaki who had broken my finger.