"Sir?"

"And that, on the other hand, the lady in question is married. Not to you, of course."

Christ, he knows about Helene! And he's crocked! And pissed, otherwise he would not be calling at three o'clock in the morning.

"Sir?"

"I am about to ask you a question. I want you to carefully consider your answer before giving it."

"Yes, sir."

"Officer Payne, have you been conducting an illicit affair with Mrs. Helene Stillwell?"

Matt did not reply, because he was absolutely sure that whatever answer he gave was going to get him up to his ears in the deep shit.

"You do know the lady? Helene? The beloved wife of our beloved assistant district attorney?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, yes or no, Officer Payne? Have you been fucking Farnsworth Stillwell's wife or not?"

"Yes, sir," Matt confessed.

"Good boy!" Inspector Wohl said, and hung up.

At 5:51 A.M., it was visually pleasant on the 5600 block of Sylvester Street, east of Roosevelt Boulevard not far from Oxford Circle. It had snowed, on and off, during the night, and the streets and sidewalks were blanketed in white. Here and there, light came from windows in the row houses as people began their day. Those windows, and the streetlights, seemed to glow as there came the first hint of daylight.

Physically, it was not quite so pleasant. The reason it had stopped snowing was because the temperature had dropped; it was now twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit, six degrees below freezing. There was a steady northerly wind, powerful enough to move the recently fallen powder snow around.

Officer Richard Kallanan, of the three-man Special Operations team charged with protecting the residence and person of Mr. Albert J. Monahan, had found the wind and the blowing snow particularly uncomfortable during his turn on foot patrol around the Monahan residence. His ears and nose were perhaps unusually sensitive to cold. He had tried walking his route both ways, passing through the alley from Bridge Street to Sanger Street in a northeast direction, and then down Sylvester in a southwestern path, and the reverse. He could detect no difference in perceived cold.

It was a cold sonofabitch in the alley, no matter which way he walked, and he was, therefore, understandably pleased when he turned onto Sylvester Street one more time and saw that there were now two substantially identical dark blue Plymouth RPCs at the curb, one house up from Monahan's house.

Their relief had arrived.

A couple of minutes early, instead of a couple of minutes late. Thank God!

Kallanan picked up his pace a little, slapping his gloved hands together as he moved. As he passed the replacement RPC, he waved and glanced in the window. The side windows were covered with ice, and he could not make out any of the faces inside.

Not that it would have mattered. Kallanan was a relative newcomer to Special Operations, transferred in from the 11^th District, where he had spent six of his seven years on the job, and he had not yet had time to make that many new friends.

He could see enough, however, to notice that two of the guys in the relief car were wearing winter hats, Renfrew of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police hats.

They 're going to need them.

When Kallanan reached his RPC, he knocked on the window, and Officer Richard O. Totts, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, turned and reached into the back and opened the door for him. Kallanan glanced at the relief car, and gave its occupants a cheerful farewell wave. The driver, a black guy whose window was clear, waved back. Kallanan got in the backseat and pulled the door closed.

"Jesus, it's cold out there," he said.

"I think there's a little coffee left," Officer Duane Jones, who was behind the wheel, said. Totts handed a thermos bottle into the backseat. Kallanan unscrewed the top, which was also the cup, and as Duane Jones got the car moving, he emptied the thermos into it. There was not much coffee left in the thermos.

"Hungry, Kallanan?" Jones asked.

"What I would like is a cup of hot coffee. With a stiff shot in it. There's nothing in here."

"I know a place," Totts offered.

"I'm going to turn in the car first," Jones said. "I hear Pekach is a real sonofabitch if you get caught drinking."

"Hey, we've been relieved," Kallanan said.

"We're still in the goddamn car," Jones said. "You can wait."

At 6:06 A.M., Special Operations Radio Patrol Car W-22 (Radio Call, William Twenty-Two) carrying Officers Rudolph McPhail, Paul Hennis, and John Wilhite turned right off Castor Avenue onto Bridge Street, and then right again on Sylvester Street.

"I don't see the car," Officer Wilhite, who was driving, said. "You don't suppose they took off without waiting for us?"

"Shit, we're only a couple of minutes late," Officer Hennis said.

"Hey, Monahan's house is all lit up," Officer McPhail said, from the backseat.

The radio went off:

"BEEP BEEP BEEP. 5600 block Sylvester Street. Report of shooting and hospital case. Civilian by phone.

"BEEP BEEP BEEP. 5600 block Sylvester Street. Report of shooting and hospital case. Civilian by phone. "

"Holy shit!" Officer Hennis said.

Officer Wilhite picked up the microphone.

"William Twenty-Two, in on that. On the scene. There is no other car in sight at this location."

The three of them literally leaped out of the car and ran as fast as they could toward the residence of Albert J. Monahan.

"Wohl," Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, his mouth as dry as the Sahara Desert, said into the phone at his bedside.

"Inspector, this is Lieutenant Farr. We have a report of a shooting and hospital case at Monahan's."

"What?"

"We have a report of a shooting and hospital case at Monahan's house."

"Did they get Monahan?"

"I think so."

"On my way. Notify Captains Sabara and Pekach, Lieutenant Malone, and Sergeant Washington. Have them meet me there."

"Yes, sir."

"And check with the people sitting on Payne. Send a Highway car there, in any event."

"Yes, sir."

Wohl hung up without saying anything else, kicked the blankets off himself, and got out of bed.

TWENTY-FIVE

"Inspector," the Emergency Room physician at Nazareth Hospital said, "I don't know why this man died-I suspect he suffered a coronary occlusion, a heart attack-but I am sure that he wasn't shot. Or for that matter, suffered any other kind of a traumatic wound."

Wohl looked at her in disbelief. She was what he thought of as a pale redhead, as opposed to the more robust, Hungarian variety. She was slight and delicate, with pale blue eyes. Probably, he guessed, the near side of forty.

"Doctor, we have an eyewitness who said shesaw himbeing shot. Hiswife. She said she saw the gun, heard a noise, and then saw her husband fall down."

He received a look of utter contempt.

The doctor pulled down the green sheet that covered the now naked remains of Albert J. Monahan, leaving only the legs below the knees covered.

"There is no wound," she said. "Gunshots, as you probably know, make at least entrance wounds. So do knives. Will you take my word that I have carefully examined the body? Or would you like me to turn him over?"

"What about the head?"

"I checked the head."

"Doctor, what about a very small caliber wound? A.22. That's less than a quarter of an inch in diameter?"

"Closer to a fifth of an inch, actually," the doctor said dryly. "Let me tell you what happened: The cops in the van brought this man in here. They said he had been shot. A superficial examination showed no wound. But-there was time; he was dead on arrival-and though I had no obligation to do so, I checked for a wound. I was thinking.22. We get a lot of them in here. There is no puncture wound of any kind. Sorry."