"Mussor," Sergei said. Garbage, a Russian punk's word for cop. "She dies for you."

"Go, just go," Eddie said. "No one will follow you."

Eddie put his gun away and waved his empty hands. Sergei didn't release the woman. He kept her in front of him as he hobbled backward out the door.

"Come on," Eddie yelled. "Let her go. I'm not following you!"

The Lincoln turned left on Emmons and accelerated out of sight. Eddie didn't get a good look at the driver. On the way out, he took charge of the restaurant, ordering the hostess to call 911 and say shots had been fired, people injured. He told her to ask for two ambulances. Dolgev was dead; Eddie didn't bother with him. The mother of the birthday girl lay on the blacktop parking lot, two bullets in her face. A total of three shots had been fired, the police said later, as if it were important to count such things.

When the first radio car arrived, Eddie left the mother to the uniformed cops. He shoved his way back through the crowd leaving the diner. The birthday girl sat in the arms of a waitress. Alone in his booth, Fredek Dolgev slumped facedown on the table, still holding tightly to his coffee cup. Blood and bits of brain and bone stuck to the window that looked out onto the sailboats on Sheepshead Bay. Eddie reached around the body and unhooked the keys from Freddie's belt.

It was after eleven when Eddie looked into Grace's bedroom. She'd kicked off the covers and now lay at an angle, facing the foot of the bed. Like Kate as a child, Grace always seemed red-faced and overheated. She ran around barefoot, dressed in only shorts and a T-shirt on days when it was definitely not warm enough to do so.

Kate never told her to put more clothes on. She said she was raising her to make her own decisions; that when she got cold, she'd put something on. Eileen wouldn't have approved of this liberal parenting, but Eddie liked the results. Grace made a puffing noise and laughed in her sleep, having a good dream. He prayed to God to always keep her dreams happy, and asked Him to do whatever He could for the dreams of the birthday girl.

"Matty Boland called," Babsie said. "He wants you to call him."

Babsie sat at the kitchen table, wearing a flannel robe and pink furry slippers. On the table was an empty wooden chessboard angled against the Yonkers phone book. Loose scraps of a torn photograph were pinned to the board like the start of a jigsaw puzzle.

"Bad scene?" she said.

"Thanks to me. I jump in… people die because of it."

"You didn't kill anybody, Eddie. There's a bastard out there who did, but you didn't kill anybody."

"Maybe a hundred years from now, I'll think that, too. Right now, the lesson is: Everyone who comes near me dies."

"I thought this guy Sergei was in the wind."

Eddie told her the truth about what had happened to Sergei. He needed to start telling someone the truth or suffocate in a maze of half-truths and omissions. He realized he was putting her in a tough spot, but he had to open up to this woman. He told her how he blew off Sergei's toes and stuck him in the trunk of a Mercedes bound for Russia. All the Parrot had to do was drive the car a couple hundred yards down a dock and whisper bon voyage. Gypsies should be good at that, he figured.

"Remind me not to piss you off," Babsie said.

"You would have done the same thing if you'd heard the way he talked about Kate."

"He said he saw Kate?"

"He said it, but it was bullshit."

"Well, at least you didn't kill him," she said. "You don't have that to worry about."

The only remorse Eddie felt was that he'd failed to kill the Russian. It made him sick that he'd gotten too cute with it. Fining and deporting him was playing the same glib, facile game that had gotten him in trouble as a cop. The fact that he'd shot Sergei in the foot rather than the head wound up destroying the lives of a family.

"I guess your Gypsy friend really did sell you out," she said.

"Looks that way."

It surprised him that the Parrot had sold him out. Not because he expected the Gypsy's loyalty. If the price was right, he'd understand it. Expect it. But this was going to be a hard payoff to collect. Borodenko would sooner kill him than pay a Gypsy. Maybe Madame Caranina talked him into it. Caranina liked money. Men always make their best and worst decisions on the advice of women.

On the floor next to Babsie was a plastic trash can filled with scraps of paper.

"What is that stuff?" Eddie asked.

"In the trash can? Those're the bits of photograph I found in that black garbage bag outside West Nineteenth Street."

"Is that all one picture?"

"I don't know; I just started. Bigger than I first thought. Looks like a nine-by-twelve, something like that. So far, I got a couple of legs done. But there're at least two people. Guy in white shorts, then a woman's legs. Long legs."

"Good luck," he said.

"Listen, Eddie, if you want to talk about what happened today… I'm comfortable sitting here in my fuzzy slippers."

Eddie had already told her about shooting Sergei and she hadn't flinched. He wondered what else he could release from his nightmare vault. Oddly, what he remembered most about the El Greco diner was the smell of the cologne from the father of the birthday girl. After the Lincoln took off, he pushed Eddie out of the way and lay down on his wife, as if the mere pressing of his body against hers could stop the life from leaking out of her. Eddie understood this. He loved her, and he was desperate. She was still breathing at that time. Her eyes were open but gazing blankly. Eddie could see one exit wound behind her ear. It was then he noticed the strong cologne, that overpowering chemical smell that seemed common to so many men who, because of their jobs or personalities, had a need to impress. His old partner had worn cologne like that. Every once in a while when Eddie caught a whiff of overripe cologne, he'd turn around and look for Paulie the Priest.

Eddie said, "This guy shoots an innocent woman in the face for no reason. He watches her drop to the ground. Then he puts his gun away, buttons his coat, and gets in the car. In front of a hundred witnesses."

"People are evil, Eddie. One thing about being a cop is that we don't have any ambiguous feelings about that fact."

"I was surprised he didn't grab the little girl. But she was probably too small for him to hide behind. I kept thinking about Kate, how these guys have no regard for human life."

"That's why we have to put an end to it. We're going to get Kate back and stop these bastards."

Eddie couldn't believe he'd come to care so deeply for Babsie in such a short time. Eileen had always said that Eddie's parents had taught him how to fight but not how to love. If that were true, why did this seem such an easy fit?

"Now, I've got some bad news for you," Babsie said. "Scott filed a petition for custody with Westchester County Family Court. He's going to ask for temporary custody of Grace, to remove her from a possibly dangerous situation."

"What danger? She's the most protected kid in the country."

"A lot about you in the petition, Eddie. Not good stuff."

"How much time do I have?"

"I don't know. I heard this from my brother's wife, who works at Con Ed with Scott's sister. You better get your ass in gear on this."

"I'm calling B.J.'s friend tomorrow. We'll fight it, slow the process up. By the time it goes to court, Kate will be back."

"Yeah," she said.

"She will be back, Babsie."

"I'm agreeing with you. We'll find her."

"If she was dead, they wouldn't have killed Freddie. The only thing Freddie could have told us is where she is."

Babsie nodded. Eddie knew she had the decency not to point out the flaw in his logic: that Freddie's knowledge of Kate's kidnapping, or where she was now, didn't mean she was alive.