"Couldn't be helped," he told her. "Cop stuff doesn't stop at five o'clock."

She sat looking at him with those huge eyes of hers.If any other woman had called him an asshole, he'd have told her to take off, find someone else to abuse. But coming from Tiffany, it didn't even bother him.Sometimes, when he wasn't around her, he wondered why. He knew all the stuff Step had told him was true, and always before he'd had a rule against dating women who had any kind of trouble in their past, divorce or illegitimate kids or smoking pot, or anything. Sometimes he tried to tell himself she'd been a whore and he shouldn't like her so much. But when he was with her it didn't matter. So he'd broken his own rule, to date her, and she kept right on breaking all his rules of how he thought a woman should be. Like now.

After two seconds of thought, she shrugged and forgave him. "Next time, try to call," she said, and settled in beside him.

"Buckle your seat belt," he told her, as he always had to.

Reluctantly, she slid back to her side of the car. As she dragged down the shoulder harness, she observed, "You ought to install a seat belt in the middle, so I could sit next to you instead of clear over here."

"In my spare time," he promised her, in the joke they shared about him never having any spare time.

"What would you like to do? Dinner and a movie?"

"Okay. But I got to go home and change first. You mind?"

"Nope." He pulled away from the curb, the old Chevy's clutch slipping. That was another thing he was going to have to fix in his spare time.

Durand was content to drive in silence, just smelling the faint trace of perfume that Tiffany brought with her, feeling her left hand rest on his shoulder as he drove. But Tiffany asked, "Aren't you even going to tell me about it?"

"About what?"

"About what kept you last night?"

"Oh. Cop stuff." He always hated to talk to her about anything to do with Step. He was the one thing they could never agree on. It was ironic, because if it hadn't been for Step, they never would have met. He was the one who had introduced them, on Durand's first day on the job. Of course, it had been Tiffany who'd followed up on the introduction, and called him at work to say she'd like to see more of him. No woman had ever done that before.

"It's Mike again, isn't it? What did he do to you this time?"

He drove two more blocks before answering, and she let him have his silence Then he said, "I'm starting to think he's mixed up in something dirty."

"Oh," she said. That was all. Waiting to hear the rest before she said anything more. Probably only he knew her well enough to hear the tiny chill in her voice.

Durand sighed. "It's like this. You know, I told you about that gypsy guy we busted, and how he got turned loose somehow. And the murder at the hotel and everything. Well, Step's been talking to me like it's over, homicide gets to handle it now, forget it.But yesterday I noticed he didn't change out of his uniform after work. So I kind of followed him, and saw him go to the park and talk to this guy with a carriage. And after he'd left, I go talk to the guy, and it turns out Step's been asking him all kinds of questions about a gypsy and a knife."

"I don't see how that means Mike is doing something wrong. I mean, don't cops do that all the time,follow up on cases?"

"Yeah," Durand admitted uneasily. "Only usually they let their partners in on it. And this bit about the knife; I think I remember that the gypsy had a knife when we busted him, but I don't ever remember Step turning it in. And the hotel murder was done with a knife. See?"

"Not really." Her tone flatly denied that Mike could be mixed up in anything he shouldn't be.

"Look," Durand amended. "I'm not saying he's done anything wrong. But I think he's bending the rules, a lot. And no cop can afford to do that, even a little. My dad taught me that, when I was real small.A cop always has to play by the rules, whether he likes it or not. A cop without rules is nothing."

"Rules without common sense are stupid," Tiffany said flatly.

Durand was silent for three blocks. This was as close to a fight as they'd ever come, and he didn't want to get any closer.

"So," he finally said as the Chevy idled roughly at a stoplight. "What would you do? Ignore it?"

"Of course not! For crying out loud, you're partners! Come right out and ask him about it."

"And of course Step will tell me the whole story,"Durand observed with heavy sarcasm.

"He will, if you ask him right," she said quietly,He glanced over at her. She was staring straight ahead, and he knew that, in some odd way, he'd hurt her. It bothered him a lot more than he'd have thought it would. Especially since her left hand had never left his shoulder. He tried to find words to apologize, but it didn't seem like apologizing was the thing to do either.

The Chevy crept out into the intersection, clutch complaining all the way. "Okay," Durand said quietly. "I'll do my best to ask him right."

"Thank you," Tiffany said, just as quietly. Durand was left reflecting on why it was that the times when he understood her least were also the times when he loved her most.

If there's more to making choices

Than luck and happenstance,

I hope I do it right

Next time I get the chance.

"NO PASSENGER"

The bus hissed like a tired snake as the door opened.The Coachman was the first man off. He leapt to the ground and pirouetted, smiling. "Welcome to Lakota," he said.

Daniel climbed out, buttoning his heavy green coat.He followed the Coachman out to the street, and looked up at the glass skyscrapers. "A city," he said."Is a city."

"Not so," said the Coachman. "Each has its own rhythms. You'll see."

Daniel snorted. "If you like. In any case, we're here. What now?"

"Now? Well, it is Wednesday. Tomorrow, we will begin looking around. If we haven't found anything,I'll try to borrow a coach on Friday. I'm sure to get it on Sunday, if we haven't had any luck before then."

"What will we do with a coach?"

"Ride around the city. If your older brother has arrived, and your younger brother hasn't let himself be killed, I will find them, and pick them up, and then we will see what happens. Or maybe not. I don't know as much about this as you may think I do."

"Well,1 know even less. As I said, what now?"

"Have you any money?"

"Some."

"Good. Let us find a place to sleep. It would be good to stay out of sight, if we can."

"Whose sight are we staying out of. Coachman?"

"The Wolf's, of course," said the Coachman,smirking, and hailed a taxi.