"Yeah. Me, too. That info cost me ten bucks, pal.But I'll forget it if you bring some munchies to go with the beer. Hey, why not bring your kid? Jeff's old enough to watch a game now."

And Jennie had warned him that she'd have his visitation rights reviewed the first time he started taking the kids around any of his "cop buddies." "Not this time, Ed. He asks too many questions. Maybe another time. We'll see you."

"Okay. And if I get any more back on the feelers I sent out, I'll let you know."

"Forget it, Ed. It's dead, come to nothing, I told you."

"Sure. Go ahead, treat me like an old man. I can still kick your ass, if it comes down to cases. Tell Durand I said hi. And lighten up on the kid. He's not that bad. Not too different from someone else I knew as a rookie."

"Bullshit," Stepovich told him, and hung up.Damn Ed and his instincts.

He went back to the counter, sat down heavily on the stool. Durand held up his coffee cup and a passing waitress gave him a refill. "Tiffany's not working today?" he asked her. She shook her head, went on without speaking. Stepovich sipped at his own still-brimming cup. It was lukewarm and on the bitter side.

"Know what?" Durand said.

"What?" He tore open two sugar packets and stirred them in.

"I think we should go back to that bar where we picked up the gypsy. He might be a regular there,they might be able to tell us where to find him."

"Waste of time." He tasted the coffee.

"Maybe not. I really think he was our man. And if not, I suspect he's a lead. I'd like another look at that knife."

Stepovich's cup rattled as he set it back in the saucer. He centered the cup carefully, mopped up the few spilled drops and motioned the waitress for more. the cold little beast in his belly was sharpening his claws now. He didn't dare ask, couldn't stop himself."What knife?"

"Gypsy had a knife when we shook him down. You don't remember it?"

"Whoa, that's plenty. Thanks," and he motioned the waitress off. Added another packet of sugar, hoping that keeping his hands busy would cover the slight trembling. "No," he lied carefully, and lifted his cup. It tapped against his teeth twice before he had it steady and could sip at it. Hot.

"Sure you do. Knife in a leather sheath, we took it off him by the cemetery…"

Stepovich borrowed the Gypsy's eyes to look at Durand. Empty eyes. No expression in them, no clues, no betrayal. "I don't even remember him having a wallet." That much of the truth for Durand.

"No. No, he didn't that I remember, either. But I woulda sworn that when we shook him down, he had a knife."

"We didn't turn one in when we booked him."Another little bit of the truth,

"No. Hey, that's right, we sure as hell didn't. Crap.I wonder if we just went off and left it laying thereon the sidewalk."

"I doubt it. I really think we would have noticed a knife lying on the sidewalk." Funny. The lies and half truths weren't getting any easier. Sure, this was Dumbshit, and Stepovich didn't owe Dumbshit anything. But he was also his partner. And the one thing any cop owed his partner was the truth. Not bits of it, but the whole truth. Especially when what he was lying about was something that could get his partner written up, too. The one thing that had to be true between cops was that your partner would put it on the line for you. If you didn't believe that, it didn't work.

And it doesn't work, Stepovich realized as he took another long sip of bitter coffee. Not because I don't think Durand wouldn't put it on the line for me. But because I'm not sure if I'd do it for him. I'd face down a gun barrel for Ed, kid. But maybe not for you. Not cause you're such a Dumbshit either. But just because I don't want to give a damn about you.

That was a dirty little thought, one that made him feel slimy and selfish.

Durand had been chewing on the cuticle beside his thumbnail all this time. Evidently this had helped him reach some sort of decision, because he now announced, "You're probably right. Probably there wasn't a knife. Maybe I got him mixed up with that other guy. Hey. I told Dispatch we were only taking ten or so. Gotta be getting back to the car. Step."

"Sure." He paid for their coffees and left the tip.Feeling guilty as hell, he walked put behind Durand. There were already too many people that he cared about, and he wasn't doing any of them any damn good. Why add Durand to the list?

He had a sense of crossing another line. The first had been not turning the knife in. The second had been giving it back to the Gypsy. And now he was holding out on his partner. Last month he'd have punched anyone who'd insinuated he could do such things. But now he was doing them, getting farther and farther out, and he couldn't really see how to get back to where he should be. It was like when Jennie had divorced him, when he'd had to go out and find his own place and start taking care of only himself. Come home to an empty place, just the sound of the toilet running because there'd been no one there all day to rattle the handle. "This is all wrong" he'd thought to himself every evening, eating alone, going to bed between cold sheets. This is wrong, this isn't what I signed up for. But he'd kept going, just the same way he kept going if he got off on the wrong freeway exit. Keep going and don't even slow down,because if you do the jerk behind you is going to smash into you and you're going to crash and burn.So just keep going. Look out the window and watch yourself get farther and farther away from where you're supposed to be.

"My turn to drive," he told Durand as they walked around the car. Driving was a hell of a lot easier than thinking.

FIVE

How the Raven Looked for the Dove

We left the fires behind us

We followed a carriage track,

And I'll never see my brothers,

But perhaps they made it back.

"RAVEN, OWL, AND I"

When Daniel had first started working around University and Dale in St. Paul, many years ago, children had thought he was an ice-cream man because of the bell on his truck. They were disappointed when they found out he only sharpened knives, but he won them over. He told them jokes and made coins vanish and by now he was part of the neighborhood. They waved as he came by and he waved back, ringing his bell.

Dumpy Mrs. Holgrim came out of her lower duplex, wearing a dirty white apron like a uniform and holding out today's worthless pieces of cutlery along with one good French chef's knife that she'd been given as a present and didn't know the value of. He pulled the little truck up to the curb and put the parking brake on. He didn't turn off the engine because it had trouble warm-starting. By the time she had reached him, he had picked out the appropriate grade of stone and put some oil on it. She smiled her yellow teeth at him and handed up the knives. He put the first one, a cheap little vegetable knife, on the stone and began to work before he'd even greeted her. Then he said, "How are you today, Mrs. Holgrim?"

"I'm fine, Daniel. Robert's home with a cold, and I'm sure he'll give it to the girls, but there you are."

"Indeed, Mrs. Holgrim."

"How are you, Daniel?"

"Oh, I'm always fine." Mrs. Holgrim nodded, believing it because that was how she thought he always must be. Daniel said, "A poultice of garlic on his feet will cure the cold, Mrs. Holgrim."

"Really?" She looked skeptical. Daniel didn't press the issue. He returned the vegetable knife and started on an equally worthless paring knife. They made small talk for a while, then, as he began to work the steel of the chef's knife, her one good cutting utensil,he said, "You know, Mrs. Holgrim, if I may say so,if you were to learn to use a butcher's steel, you could keep this in fine shape without having it sharpened nearly so often."