–Since-

He'd been a child, and his mother carried a huge ornate key on a chain around her neck. "What is that for, Anya?" he had asked.

"It is the key to our palace," she said.

"Palace?"

"We are royalty, you know. And someday we will take our place, and you will be a great king." She smiled and winked as she said it.

"Will I like being a king?" he had asked, all somber and earnest.

She had smiled, like the rippling laugh the fiddle made when Sandi led the csardas. She said, "Ah, my little man, sometimes I think you will never like anything you do, because you must suffer to be happy."She hugged him, and his face pressed against the ornate iron key she wore, and he wondered.

–Since-

He sat down on what could perhaps be called a bench, and looked at his companions. He wondered what their crimes were. It came to him then that not everyone put in this place was innocent. A shiver began somewhere low down on his spine and shot up it like a rocket. To be innocent of a crime and to be in this place, stripped of identification, dignity, and shoes, with people who smelled like pigs, behind wired glass, yes, that would truly be damnation. A man could panic in here-think that he'd been forgotten, that no one would ever come for him. There was no way to see the sky, nor was there a clock.

Suddenly desperate to take his mind from these thoughts, he addressed his companions. He said carefully, "Do either of you know how long they're likely to keep us here before something else happens?"

Echoes echoes echoes, banging around inside his head, which now hurt so badly he wanted to scream. If the police, for some reason, wanted to listen in to conversations in this place, they would be unable to hear anything but echoes, Charles wasn't sure if his companions had understood his question, but he had no wish to repeat it. The one who stank glowered at him, and Charles was startled by the deep blue of his eyes. The younger, taller one shook his head and went back to contemplating the floor between his arms.

Charles closed his eyes and took two deep breaths.He assessed his options as best he could. From the way he was treated by the policemen, and the diligence of their search, he was considered dangerous,and was wanted for a serious crime. Had he, perhaps,killed someone? His feelings gave him no answer, except that the idea of having take a life filled his heart with no sense of denial.

If he left himself in their hands, could he expect justice? Did he want justice? The answer to that was:Yes, but it was doubtful that they would see justice in the same way he did. The bench was hard, but the floor not as cold as he would have expected. He waited, his eyes fixed on the door, hardly blinking,hardly breathing. The younger of his companions spared him one curious glance, almost a grimace. The older continued to pace.

Charles could not say how long it was before the door opened once more. A policeman with a straight back and a grey mustache stood with the huge key in his hand and called out, "Jeffrey Simmons." The taller one stood and moved toward the door. The policeman said, "Vincent Petersen," and the smelly one looked up and shuffled to the door. The policeman's eyes locked with Charles' for just a moment, but he couldn't see anything in them.

The cell door shut, sending off echoes like a stone thrown into a pool. The echoes, hard and metallic,set off a ringing in his ears. The ringing continued,too high to sing comfortably, like the long screeching note of the violin at the end of a wild csardas. In his mind, he filled in the tambourine. Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek. Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek. His throat burned and he tasted his tears. He reached out,as if to touch his home, and then squeezed, as if to tear apart anything that would keep him from it.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

The ringing became louder still, until it filled all of the world that was or ever could be, and he breathed with the imaginary tambourine.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

He wrapped himself in his arms, and, as he did,the rhythm became buzzing of bees and the ringing became church-bells. He let it take him, fill him, expand him, and move him in a way that was more physical then he would have thought.

Movement?

Music.

His headache was gone.

The fiddle came to accompany the tambourine once more, and, just for an instant, he remembered his brothers. But then, the instant was enough, that time.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

ONE

A Wolf, A Man, and an Old Gypsy Woman

My partner is an asshole,

my ex-wife is a bitch.

My daughter is a hooker,

the suspect is a witch.

"STEPDOWN"

"Will you guys pipe down?"

No one noticed. The background buzz and rattle in the squad room, loud for a Sunday, didn't even falter. Bad enough that his desk was out in the middle of the room, with other guys always walking behind him, spooking the hell out of him on bad days. Did it also have to be butted up against Dumbshit's desk? He lifted his eyes from the smudged keys of the Smith-Coronamatic and the multilayered sheaf of paper that he'd just crammed in its maw and found himself looking at Durand's butt. Dumbshit was sitting on his own desk, his back to Stepovich, his feet on his chair, for all the world like a high school punk bullshitting his way through study hall. The kid had about twenty extra pounds of gear packed into all the shiny leather pouches on his Sam Browne belt. Including the nonregulation and probably illegal sap Stepovich had to take away from him earlier,when he'd wanted to use it on the gypsy. Dumbshit Durand hadn't been content with throwing him up against the fence, he'd wanted to sap him, too. Asshole.

Stepovich spoke to Durand's butt. "What's the name of the street that goes past the cemetery?"

Durand interrupted his monologue to say, "Quince."And resumed it again, saying to Colette, who was hanging on his every word, "so I just catch a glimpse of him going into the St. Thomas, and I say to Step,here, 'There's the bastard now, and I hit the brakes and I'm out of the car and after him before Step's even got his seatbelt unbuckled, and…"

Stepovich let Durand's words dwindle in his mind. Step. Where'd that dumbshit rookie get off anyway,shortening his name? Mike, that's what he could call him if he wanted to be informal. Mike. That's what Ed had always called him before he retired eight months ago. But Dumbshit had to take his last name and cut the end off it. Yesterday one of the office temps had called him Step. Pissed him off. The kid had been his partner for three months now, and Stepovich still couldn't get used to him. If anything, he just grated on his nerves more each day.

He glued his attention to the form, used the release lever to recenter it in the machine, and tapped in"South on Quince." He paused, his fingers on the keys, thinking how to recount the arrest. He'd already left out losing the gypsy inside the bar, simply because he couldn't think of any way to explain it,Nor any way to explain how he had picked up the man's trail again, "Instinct," he'd growled at Durand when he'd had the brass to ask him. Stepovich typed in a couple more bland but informative sentences, in which the gypsy became "the suspect" and he and Durand "the arresting officers." Like that traditional Japanese theater, where the actors held up the masks and struck the poses, the expected faces that hid the real faces behind them. Get the arrest report about two steps away from reality. No one wanted to hear how the chain-link had sproinged when Durand threw the gypsy up against it. There hadn't been a struggle, not really. So leave out the sudden chill that had run over him when he'd touched the gypsy, don't mention how Durand had bared his teeth and swore and pulled out his sap in a response that was totally out of proportion to the gypsy's preoccupied glance and passive resistance-He typed a few more sentences and read them over swiftly. He'd leave out that Durand had wanted to give the gypsy a "screen test" in the car. "You know,Step, build up some speed and hit the brakes? He's got nothing holding him down back there. So when he hits the screen between the seats, we can see if it holds like it's supposed to. Screen test, get it?" And Durand had giggled, like a kid. Stepovich wondered if there were any cop jokes he hadn't already heard.