"Thought you said it wasn't smart to get mixed up in a homicide investigation?" Durand asked coyly.

Stepovich flicked his eyes at his partner, and away. Like Joey Petmann, he suddenly thought. Ted Petmann's little brother, and when Stepovich and Ted were kids and best friends, Joey had followed them everywhere, bugging the shit out of them. But his favorite thing to do had been to get something they wanted, and then hold out on them. Bubble gum or the latest Blackhawk comic or a Polaroid picture of Stevie Caldwell's big sister in the bathtub- That's how Durand's face looked right now, just like Joey Petmann's face had looked as he leaned over the edge of the tree fort with the rope pulled up and waved the Polaroid out of reach.

Stepovich turned and looked out the window and said, "Well, those lab guys are taught to be pretty tight-lipped. Probably wouldn't part with anything important anyway. Not to some patrol cop in a bar,anyway. Hey!" Stepovich interrupted as Durand's mouth opened in an "oh, yeah!" face. "Hey! How in hell did Willy get back on the street so soon? I thought Rich and Trope busted him hard for beating one of his girls."

"Where?" Durand demanded, and nearly sideswiped a parked car craning his neck to look back.

"You missed him. Or maybe it wasn't him." Durand hated Willy. The wiry little pimp was meaner than hell, and completely unafraid of cops. No one liked to bust him because Willy had ways of making it unpleasant for the arresting officers. Cut up the upholstery in one squad car. Smeared the chili burger he was eating down another cop's uniform. Rumor had it he'd taken a dump in the back seat of Kelly's patrol car. And the first time Durand had collared him, Willy stuck his finger down his throat and threw up all down the front of him. The guy was crazy.

"Where was he?" Durand demanded again- His bottom teeth clamped against his upper lip. Looked like a bulldog. Tenacious as one, too-

"Hell, he's gone now. You want to take a coffee break pretty soon?" Stepovich smiled at him.

"I guess." Durand kept glancing in the rearview mirror, and then over at Stepovich, as if unable to decide which to pursue. "There was one other weird thing about the dead gypsy woman," he offered.

"Yeah? Well, turn left at the next light and go about six blocks, get us out of this hole. I don't wanta get served by some waitress that probably gives hand jobs on the side. Let's go to Norm's, okay? It's clean and cheap."

"I mean, the knife was weird enough, you know,but it gets weirder," Durand offered desperately -

Hey, Joey, we don't wanta see your stupid Polaroid. We got a whole Playboy at our fort, and it's fulla pictures of real girls, not somebody's sister. Stepovich flicked a glance at Durand. "Yeah?" he offered, then,"Or we could go to that new place, the one the Korean guy opened on Fifteenth. I hear it's clean. You been there yet?"

"No- Uh, Norm's let's go to Norm's. But there was something weird about that killing. I mean, besides the knife with the little studs. Four separate stab wounds, I tell you that? Every one right to the hilt. Lab guy says the first one was the fatal one. She musta known she was already dead, but she kept on fighting. Can you beat that?"

"Mean old ladies are like that. Harder to kill than cats." Stepovich knew he just had to wait now and he'd get all that Durand had.

"Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But stuff had been done to the body."

Stepovich was silent, a little sick. What could she have done to make someone want to kill her? And what kind of a person could push a knife into another human being, not just once, to kill her, but over andover as she was struggling and dying? He thought of the Gypsy with his black unreadable eyes and empty face. Could you do it, he asked the image in his mind,and the Gypsy in his mind shrugged his wide shoulders and told him nothing.

"Not rape. It wasn't anything like that. Someone had cut a lock of hair from the back of her head, down underneath at the nape of her neck."

"Souvenir?"

"Maybe. Or maybe proof that a job had been done."

Stepovich shook his head wearily. "Lock of grey hair is too generic. They'd have taken something more personal, a piece of jewelry, something like that.Sounds like a souvenir to me."

Or a cult killing of some kind, some kind of crazy with a special knife who kills her and takes a lock of her hair, some kind of a wacko. Or a very personal revenge of some kind. Or a total crazy, with no reasons at all, only impulses. The Gypsy in his mind was smiling secretively now. That day they busted him,he hadn't even seemed sure of his name. Chuck maybe, but he wasn't sure, so they'd made him John Doe. Man like that, couldn't remember his own name,maybe he wouldn't remember what he'd done the day before. Maybe he'd look in Stepovich's face and seem baffled and innocent.

"Here's Norm's."

And he'd sent Ed after him, to look at things a little. Great, Stepovich. Don't just fuck your career up by withholding evidence, and then turning over what might be a murder weapon to some whacked-out gypsy by a cemetery. Go ahead and drag Ed into it,send him out to look for someone who was probably psycho, who'd probably cut up your old buddy and take a hair sample when he was through. Great. Some cop you are.

"We going in, or what?"

"What?"

"You want to get a cup of coffee here?"

They were parked outside Norm's, Stepovich noticed belatedly. He wondered if Tiffany Marie was working, hoped she wasn't. She always looked so damn glad to see him. He didn't want to deal with any kid grinning and chattering at him right now. He shouldered the door open, nearly banging it into the parking meter, and stumbled out. He felt as if he'd been asleep and had suddenly wakened. Durand was looking at him funny. He restrained the impulse to glare back, and followed him into Norm's. They claimed a couple of stools at the counter and ordered coffee. "Back in a second," Stepovich told Durand,and headed for the phone. Time to start cleaning up the mess he'd made.

Ed's phone rang. Four. Five. Six. "Hello." Pissed voice.

"Ed, it's me. Listen. About that little thing I asked you to look into. Don't bother. It's fizzled out into nothing, no big deal. No sense you messing with it."

"For this I come in all the way from the garage? To hear you tell me to forget it, it's nothing. Shit. Just when I thought I had a hot tip for you, too. Hey. Guess what? This is gonna make you laugh but it ain't really funny. I opened the trunk of the Caddy this morning, and you know what I find? A big hole in the carpeting. I look around a little more, and I find this wad of paper and fiber in the spare tire well. A mouse nest. I got a mouse living in my car. Chewed the hell out of the carpeting in the trunk and I think part of the nest is made from my upholstery stuffing,so God knows how much damage it's done. Pretty weird, huh?"

Weird? Weird is cutting a lock of hair off the nape of a dead granny's neck. Weird is killing someone with a knife with little stars on the hilt that leave telltale bruises. "That's pretty strange, all right. Set a trap for him, Ed. What was this hot tip, anyway?"

"Hell, nothing probably. Guy I got it from's been doing coke so long that he's only got three brain cells left and none of them connect to the others. Told me something about a guy driving a horsedrawn cab in the parks on Sundays when the regular guy's off. According to him, this guy probably knows every gypsy in the city. But he also says he's usually drunk. People been complaining about him because he don't always keep the cab on the right path, you know. Guess they caught him on the bike trail one day. Regular guy's called Spider. Has a rig with two horses, a grey and a brown. Anyway. You coming over Saturday night? Game's on at six. You bring the beer, we'll have spaghetti."

"Yeah. I guess so. Hey, thanks, Ed. Sorry this came to nothing like this."