"I let you out of my sight for five minutes and you get into trouble!" Rachel told him. "Look at you. You're a mess!"

"I forget," Mason said. "Are you my big sister or little sister?"

"I'm just a sister, and you're still a mess. What in the hell happened?"

Before he could answer, Carl Zimmerman waded through the throng of reporters, trailed by a uniformed cop and the police department's director of media relations, who politely but firmly ordered the reporters back behind the police line.

"You too, Miss Firestone," Zimmerman told her. "You'll get your shot at him if there's anything left worth having, but we get to go first."

"Detective, do I look the kind of girl who'd settle for sloppy seconds?"

"I wouldn't know that," Zimmerman answered without a trace of humor.

Rachel gave Mason a peck on his ash-stained cheek. "Save some for me," she told Mason, and left to enjoy the jealousy of her colleagues.

Zimmerman stood outside the ambulance. "You are one dumb-assed motherfucker, you know that, Mason? I don't know whether to arrest you or just throw you back into that fire and save Harry Ryman the trouble of kicking your tail into next week."

"You hold him down and I'll kick him," Harry said as he joined his partner.

Mason looked at both men and then at the paramedic. "Am I in any shape to have my ass kicked?" he asked her.

"You're so beat up already you probably won't even notice. I say give them a shot. Just don't call me. I'm not interested in repeat business," she said. Turning to the detectives, she added, "He'll be black and blue and shitting soot for a week, but he's all yours."

Mason climbed out of the ambulance as Harry and Zimmerman each took him by an arm.

"Am I under arrest?" Mason asked.

Harry answered. "Not until we figure out all the things to charge you with. Let's get a cup of coffee first."

Mason groaned as they led him to the Egg House Diner. "Too bad this place didn't blow up," Mason said.

The waiter gave Mason his I'm-not-surprised look as the two detectives slid into one side of Mason's booth while Mason returned to his now-familiar seat. The homeless woman was back at the counter, and giggled into her coffee cup as she exchanged a wink with the waiter. Mason caught his reflection in the window of the diner. His face was camouflaged with soot, his hair spiked with blood, his clothes were blackened and torn. He understood the homeless woman's laughter. She looked better than he did. He wondered if she would offer to buy him dinner.

The waiter brought them three glasses of water. " Turkey sandwich?" he asked.

"Two coffees, black," Harry said. "What do you want, Lou?"

"Nothing. I've had enough."

"Why didn't you wait for me, like I told you?" Zimmerman asked.

Mason had an answer that was good enough for him, though he doubted it would satisfy Harry and Zimmerman. "Cullan's files were the key to his murder. If I couldn't get my hands on them I couldn't prove you guys were wrong about Blues. Ortiz hung up on me when I asked him to get a search warrant. The two of you were fighting crime. I waited too long. The files are gone. Someone either blew them up or stole them and made it look like they were blown up."

"You better rethink that bullshit when the judge asks you to show remorse," Zimmerman said.

"For what? Breaking and entering?" Mason asked.

"That's chump change," Zimmerman said. "I suppose you're going to tell us that Shirley Parker invited you down into that basement so you could pop her?"

Mason looked at Harry, not believing what he was hearing. "Get real. You can't possibly think I shot Shirley Parker."

"Who said she was shot?" Zimmerman asked him, enjoying the role reversal from Mason's cross-examination.

"Good for you, Carl," Mason said. "I had that coming. Maybe the killer just threw the bullet at her."

Harry interrupted. "Lou, this is serious. Officer Toland reported that he caught you inside that building earlier tonight, but that Shirley Parker refused to press charges. He says that you threatened her. Carl tells you to sit tight, which for you is not possible. You and Shirley are the only ones inside that building when it blows up, and you are the only one who comes out alive. Only Shirley is shot to death, not blown up. How does all that look to you?"

"It looks like head-up-your-ass police work that is a lot easier than figuring out what really happened. Like figuring out who blew up the damn building, who knew about the tunnel to get the files out before they blew up the building, and who would kill Shirley Parker to make sure nobody found out what was in those files."

"You'd been sitting on that building all day," Zimmerman said. "You could have found the tunnel, found the files, and been caught again by Shirley Parker. Only this time, you had to whack her."

"You left out that I also decided to blow my ass up along with the building to hide the evidence of my crime," Mason said. "Harry, if you guys are really looking at me for this, take me downtown, book me, and let's go see a judge. I'll crucify you in court and the media will pick at what's left."

Harry said, "You keep up this cowboy shit, and you won't leave us any choice. Same as Bluestone."

"Okay, I'll be a good boy. But do your job. Check out the slug that killed Shirley Parker. Odds are that the same gun was used to kill Jack Cullan. That will clear Blues."

"We don't need you to tell us how to do our job, Counselor," Zimmerman said. "If you killed Shirley Parker, I'll see to it that you share the needle with your client."

"Carl, you know that it's not safe to share needles," Mason said. "Pay the waiter on your way out."

Rachel was waiting for Mason when he got to his car. He stood there shivering in his undershirt as she leaned against the driver's door, warm in her parka, her green eyes and winter-pinched cheeks alive with promise.

"No," he told her.

"No, what?" she protested.

"No, I'm not letting you take me home, patch me up, and put me to bed again unless you're in it, and that ain't likely."

"You need to learn to value a woman's friendship beyond her vagina, Lou. It would broaden your horizons immeasurably."

Mason opened the door to his car and slid past her. Rachel came around to the other side and let herself into the passenger's seat "How about if you take me home, I wait for you to patch yourself up, and then you tell me what happened? After which, you can go to bed by yourself."

"Rachel, you need to learn to value a man's friendship beyond the stories you can squeeze out of him. It would broaden your horizons immeasurably."

"I don't know," she said. "Men have so little to offer otherwise."

Chapter Twenty-three

Mason was slow getting out of the house on Friday morning. The paramedic had been right about the epidermal color scheme he would be sporting for a while. Standing naked in front of his bathroom mirror, his body looked as if he'd been tattooed with a Rorschach test. The stitches in his side had held, though there was an angry red ribbon around them. He walked creakily around his house like the Tin Man in search of a lube job, trailed by Tuffy, whose whining and yelping Mason mistook for sympathy until he realized that the dog just wanted to be fed. He tried rowing, but gave up when the rowing machine started to sink. A shower hot enough to parboil his skin loosened the kinks in his muscles and joints.

Rachel had followed him home the night before, and had stayed long enough to extract information she agreed to attribute only to a source close to the investigation. Her story in the morning paper ran alongside a color photograph of him clutching the bars on the barbershop window while flames danced a pirouette around him. A spectator had taken the photograph and sold it to a wire service, turning a quick profit on tragedy. Mason held the picture up for a closer look as he searched for a trace of courage in his bugged-out eyes and gaping mouth.