"You'd like to, wouldn't you?"

"Oh yes. I mean, at the moment, when we get all excited, I'd like to. I forget all my good intentions. I know that someday- some night rather-neither of us will say, 'Cool it!' And then…"

"Is she on the Pill?"

"Oh no! I asked her that and she said, 'What for?' I mean, she doesn't play around. She's right. Why should she take those dangerous drugs?"

"But what if you both get excited and don't say, 'Cool it,' and it happens, like you said? What if she gets pregnant?"

"No, no. I mean, I'd, uh, like take precautions. I'm not a virgin, Irene. I know about those things. I wouldn't do that to Alice."

She leaned forward, whispered in his ear again.

"Well, ah, yes," he said. "Yes, she could do that. If she wanted to. And I could, too, of course. I know about that."

"But you've never done it?"

"Well, uh, no. No, I've never done it."

"Why don't you take your clothes off?" Zoe Kohler said in a low voice. "I'd like to do it to you."

"You're kidding!"

"No, really, I want to. Don't you? Wouldn't you like the experience?"

She had said the right word. He wanted to experience everything.

"All right," he said. "But you must tell me what to do."

"You don't have to do anything," she assured him. "Just lie back and enjoy it. I have to go into the bathroom for a minute. You undress; I'll be right back."

His innocence was a rebuke to her. She was confused as to why this should be so. She didn't want to corrupt him; that would come soon enough. What she wanted to do, she decided, was to save him from corruption.

She thought this through as she undressed in the bathroom. It made a kind of hard sense. Because, despite how blameless he was now, she saw what would eventually happen to him, what he would become.

Years and the guilt of living would take their toll. He would lie and betray and cheat. His boy's body would swell at the same time his conscience would atrophy. He would become a swaggering man, bullying his way through life, scorning the human wreckage he left in his wake.

What was the worst, the absolute worst, was that he would never mourn his lost purity, but might recall it with an embarrassed laugh. He would be shamed by the memory, she knew. He would never regret his ruined goodness.

So she went back into the bedroom and slit his throat.

CHAPTER 10

Thursday, June 5th…

"All right," Sergeant Abner Boone said, flipping through his notebook, "here's what we've got."

Standing and sitting around the splintered table in Midtown Precinct North. All of them smoking: cigarettes, cigars, and Lieutenant Crane chewing on a pipe. Emptied cardboard coffee cups on the table. The detritus of gulped sandwiches, containers of chop suey, a pizza box, wrappers and bags of junk food.

Air murky with smoke, barely stirred by the air conditioner. Sweat and disinfectant. No one commented or even noticed. They had all smelled worse odors. And battered rooms like this were home, familiar and comfortable.

"Nicholas Telemachus Pappatizos," Boone started. "Aka Nick Pappy, aka Poppa Nick, aka the Magician. Forty-two. Home address: Las Vegas. A fast man with the cards and dice. A smalltime bentnose. Two convictions: eight months and thirteen months, here and there, for fraud and bunko. He got off twice on attempted rape and felonious assault."

"Good riddance," Detective Bentley said.

"The blood on the bathroom floor was definitely not his. Caucasian female. So it's confirmed; it's a female perp we're looking for."

"How do you figure the fight?" Detective Johnson asked.

"The PM shows sexual intercourse just before death," Boone went on, his voice toneless. "It could have been rape; he wasn't a nice guy. So after it's over, she gets her knife into him and starts cutting him up."

"That's another thing," Sergeant Broderick said. "She's obviously got a new knife. My guys are wasting their time trying to track the one that got broke."

"Right," Boone said. "Drop it; we were too late. We can use your guys on people who knew the convention schedule. We've got nearly two thousand names so far."

"Beautiful," Broderick said, but he wasn't really dismayed. No one was dismayed by the enormity of the search.

"Johnson," Boone said, "anything on the Mace?"

"Getting there," the detective said. "The stuff was sold to a lot of security outfits, armored car fleets, and so forth. Anyone who could prove a legitimate need. We're tracking them down. Every can of it."

"Keep on it. Bentley, what about that waitress from the Hotel Coolidge? The Ashley kill. His scarred hands."

"We check with her mother every day, sarge. She still hasn't called in from the Coast. Now we're tracking down her friends in case anyone knows where she is."

"As long as you're following up… Lieutenant? Anything new?"

"Nothing so far on the possibles. Some have moved, some are out of town, some are dead. I wouldn't say it looks promising."

"How did the decoys miss her at the Adler?" Edward X. Delaney demanded.

"Who the hell knows?" Bentley said angrily. "We had both bars in the place covered. Maybe she brought him in off the street."

"No," Delaney said stonily. "That's not her way. She's no street quiff. She knew there were conventions there. The lobby maybe, or the dining room. But it wasn't on the street."

They were all silent for a moment, trying to figure ways to stop her before she hit again.

"It should be about June twenty-ninth," Boone said, "to July second. In that time period. It's not too early to plan what more we can do. Intelligent suggestions gratefully received."

There were hard barks of laughter and the meeting broke up. Sergeant Boone drew Delaney aside.

"Chief," he said, "got a little time?"

"Sure. As much as you want. What's up?"

"There's a guy waiting in my office. A doctor. Dr. Patrick Ho. How's that for a name-Ho? He's some kind of an Oriental. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or maybe from Vietnam or Cambodia. Whatever. With a first name like Patrick, there had to be an Irishman in there somewhere-right? Anyway, he's with the Lab Services Section. He's the guy who ran the analysis on the blood from the bathroom floor and said it was Caucasian female."

"And?" Delaney said.

Boone shrugged helplessly. "Beats the hell out of me. He tracked me down to tell me there's something screwy about the blood. But I can't get it straight what he wants. Will you talk to him a minute, Chief? Maybe you can figure it out."

Dr. Patrick Ho was short, plump, bronzed. He looked like a young Buddha with a flattop of reddish hair. When Boone introduced Delaney, he bowed and giggled. His hand was soft. The Chief noted the manicured nails.

"Ah," he said, in a high, flutey voice. "So nice. An honor. Everyone has heard of you, sir."

"Thank you," Delaney said. "Now, what's this about-"

"Your exploits," Dr. Ho went on enthusiastically, his dark eyes shining. "Your deductive ability. I, myself, would like to be a detective. But unfortunately I am only a lowly scientist, condemned to-"

"Let's sit down," Delaney said. "For a minute," he added hopefully.

They pulled chairs up to Boone's littered desk. The sergeant passed around cigarettes. The little doctor leaped to his feet with a gold Dunhill lighter at the ready. He closed the lighter after holding it for Boone and Delaney, then flicked it again for his own cigarette.

"Ah," he giggled, "never three on a light. Am I correct?"

He sat down again and looked at them, back and forth, beaming.

He was a jolly sight. A face like a peach with ruby-red lips. Tiny ears hugged his skull. Those dark eyes bulged slightly, and he had the smallest teeth Delaney had ever seen. A child's teeth: perfect miniatures.