Someone knifed a granny,

someone shot a clerk.

I'm sick of seeing bodies,

but it's just a day at work.

"STEPDOWN"

Three beers. No, maybe four. Hell, even if it had been six, that was still no excuse for this. Stepovich swayed slightly, in rhythm with the big oak that rustled softly from its side of the high wrought-iron fence. Hell, maybe it had been six. He was almost hoping it was six, and,that as the man came closer, his features would resolve into the face of someone Stepovich had never seen before.

The Gypsy halted, no more than a step and a lunge away. His dusky face seemed pale in the gloom, and Stepovich wondered how that could be. His eyes were dark in his face, darker than the night around them,and that, too, made him wonder. They stood facing each other on the quiet street. Neither spoke. Neither wanted to offer the other an opening.

The knife in his jacket pocket dragged, seemed to weigh twice what it should. He could feel the pull on the fabric at his shoulder, could feel the shape resting against his hip. His hand reached into his pocket,gripped the sensible leather sheath. The Gypsy did not move as Stepovich reached for the knife, but he sensed the change in the Gypsy, the activated stillness that was really a readiness to move in any direction, to attack or flee or defend. Stepovich's eyes didn't leave him as he drew the knife from his pocket.

He'd expected some reaction. But the Gypsy's dark eyes only flicked once to the knife, and then back up to Stepovich's face. Like a cornered animal, he waited. Stepovich shifted the knife through his fingers, felt his fingers brush the raised stars on the hilt before he turned it so that the hilt extended toward the Gypsy.Stepovich held it out, waiting. Got nothing. The Gypsy offered him only stillness and carefully empty eyes. Not even the phony innocence that most suspects tried for. Not a blank face, either. This was more like a mask to trick authority.

A red-hot wire of anger speared down his backbone, raced along his nerves. The Gypsy's impassive face was like a challenge. No. Like an insult. The careful mask was classifying Stepovich as not human, as a blue uniform with shiny buttons, filled with rules and laws and legal technicalities. During the day, he would have expected it. But somehow, by night, out of uniform, on this deserted street, for the reason he had come here, it was the worst kind of insult.

Anger won, or perhaps humiliation. He flipped the knife, a hard practiced movement, so that it struck the Gypsy's breast hilt first and then clattered to the pavement- And still the Gypsy moved not at all,though Stepovich would have sworn that he could have caught the knife in midair and returned it blade first if he had chosen to do so. So Stepovich spoke,broke the silence with hard cutting words, as cold and callous as he could make them. "We found a dead gypsy granny today. Stabbed to death in a cheap hotel. Don't suppose you'd know anything about something like that."

For a long time the Gypsy didn't speak. Stepovich listened to his own words hang in the air between them, the vocalization of the law-thing the Gypsy's mask had invoked.

"With this knife," the Gypsy said at last.

Music in the voice, accent of a homeland whose existence was lost in the shadows of time. And accusation, it seemed to Stepovich.

"You asking if I offed her," said Stepovich, "the answer is no. But I suspect you'd have a line on whoever did. Not that you'd tell me anything. But maybe you won't have to. Whoever did it left behind plenty of sign. Before noon tomorrow, we'll know the size and shape of the weapon, and a hell of a lot about the man who used it, right down to his blood type."Bluff, you're bluffing, Stepovich, and that Gypsy knows it. Look into his black, black eyes and see how he despises you.

"You find the one who held the knife," and again the accent left Stepovich wondering if the words were a request, a command, or merely a question, a comment.

"Damn right we will," he growled, and felt himself grow smaller with the lie. "With or without any help from you," and he tried not to let the last sound like a plea.

The Gypsy moved, very slightly, looking down at his own hands which opened and clenched, and opened again, as if he were making sure they were empty. "I have nothing to give you." He stooped in an unconcerned way, picked up the knife carefully,as if it were dirty with unspeakable filth. "I wish you had been more careful with this. But you didn't know what you had. The fault rests between us." His eyes moved in his face, and it was as if his whole body had shifted, as if he looked at Stepovich from another place and time. "It isn't a comfortable harness to share, is it?" There might have been kindness in those black eyes, or pity, or maybe just a stray glint from a street lamp. The Gypsy moved his hands, and the sheathed knife was gone, secreted somewhere on his person.

"You knew she'd been murdered?" Stepovich asked, groping after professional suspicion. "You knew the old woman?"

"I guessed only that a friend had been killed. Nothing more."

"You didn't know her?"

The Gypsy looked disoriented. "What was her name?"

"Which one? She had ID for four different ones, and two social security cards. Rosa Stanilaus? Cynthia Kacmarcik? Molly Kelly?" He uttered the last name with heavy sarcasm, but the Gypsy appeared not to notice any change in his voice. He tipped his head to one side,as if he were listening to some other voice.

"No," he said, and it did not seem to be in answer to any of Stepovich's queries. "She left no message for me." Statement? Question?

Stepovich felt an insane desire to laugh. "Only the crystal. And all it said was, Find out who killed me.' " The words were out before he could curb them. Shit. That had been stupid. The crystal was just the kind of detail Homicide might hold back,might reserve to test who knew it was in her purse and who didn't. And he must have sounded like an idiot, voicing the words from his dream.

But this Gypsy was nodding, as if it was something he had expected, but was not glad to hear. Nodding and turning and walking away from him. Stepovich watched him go, his dark shape fading into the night and his footsteps were lost in the sound of the wind blowing trash down the street.

And then it was suddenly late, very late at night,and Stepovich shivered. His jacket was too thin for this cutting wind. He wondered how long he'd been standing there. As he walked back to the corner where he'd parked his Dodge, he was thinking that tomorrow was a day off, and that Ed had asked him to meet him. If he had the time. As if time wasn't the only thing he had.

As he walked back to the car, he felt strangely light. Not lighthearted, but unburdened. He was opening the car door before he realized what it was. The weight of the knife was no longer dragging at his pocket.

I only want to stop and rest,

Don't want to start no fight;

I'll just stay here for a while

'Til the police car's out of sight.

"RED LIGHTS AND NEON"

The Wolf stood bristling and growling, as surprised to find Cigany in its path as Cigany was to find it.That is what I must remember, he told himself. It is frightened of me, and will not attack unless I show fear or threaten it. The unbidden voice of his grandmother from long ago added. Or it is desperately hungry. The Wolf growled again, daring Cigany to show fear. Cigany held himself still and met the Wolf's gaze until the growling subsided a little.