He also informed commanders of the Hotel Ripper task force who were, at the time, holding their morning meeting upstairs in the precinct house. Sergeant Abner Boone sent Detectives Bentley and Johnson to check it out.

While they were waiting for the Yes or No call, the others sat in silence, smoking, sipping stale coffee from soggy cardboard containers. Edward X. Delaney rose to locate the Tribunal on a precinct map Scotch-taped to the wall. Deputy Commissioner Thorsen joined him.

"What do you think, Edward?" he asked in a low voice.

"Not exactly midtown," the Chief replied, "but close enough."

They sat down again and waited. No one spoke. They could hear the noises of a busy precinct coming from the lower floors. They could even hear the bubbling sound as Lieutenant Crane blew through his pipe stem to clear it.

When the phone rang, all the men in the room jerked convulsively. They watched Boone pick it up in a hard grip, his knuckles white.

"Sergeant Boone," he said throatily.

He listened a moment. He hung up the phone. He turned a tight face to the others.

"Let's go," he said.

They went with a rush, chairs clattering over, men pouring from offices, feet pounding down the stairs.

"What's the goddamn hurry?" Sergeant Broderick said in a surly voice. "She's long gone."

Then engines starting up, blare of horns, the wail of sirens. Delaney rode in Deputy Thorsen's car, the uniformed driver swinging wildly onto Eighth Avenue, west on 55th Street to Ninth Avenue, south to 49th Street.

"She fucked us again," the Admiral said wrathfully, and the Chief mused idly on how rarely Thorsen used language like that.

By the time they pulled up with a squeal of brakes in front of j the Tribunal, the street was already choked with police vehicles, vans, an ambulance. A crowd was growing, pushed back by precinct cops until barricades could be erected.

The hotel was already cordoned: no one in or out without showing identification. Motor inn staff, residents, and visitors were being lined up in the lobby for questioning. A uniformed officer guarding the elevator bank sent them up to the fifth floor.

There was a mob in the corridor, most of them clustered about Room 508. Sergeant Boone stood in the doorway, his face stony.

"It was her all right," he said, his voice empty. "Throat slashed, stab wounds in the nuts. The clunk was Chester LaBranche, twenty-four, from Barre, Vermont. He was here for some kind of a college convention."

"A convention again," Thorsen said bitterly. "And twenty-four. A kid!"

"Did we have any decoys in the place?" Delaney asked.

"No," Boone said shortly. "The place is small and this neighborhood isn't exactly Times Square, so we didn't cover it."

The Deputy Commissioner started to say something, then shut his mouth.

Tommy Callahan came to the doorway.

"Naked," he reported. "Half-on and half-off the bed. No signs of a struggle. Looks like the early kills when she came up behind them. All the blood appears to be his. We'll scrape the bathroom drains, but it doesn't look good."

Lou Gorki shouldered him out of the way. The Crime Scene Unit man was holding a wineglass by two fingers spread wide inside. There was a half-inch of amber liquid at the bottom. The outside of the glass was whitened with powder.

"It's wine all right," Gorki said. "I dipped a finger. Chablis. Vintage of yesterday. But the kicker is that there's also a half-empty bottle of beer and a glass. No guy is going to drink beer and wine at the same time. Good prints on both. I figure this wineglass was hers."

"Check it out," Boone said.

"Sure," Gorki said. "We'll take everything downtown for the transfers. At least now we got a make if we ever pull someone in on this thing."

"Sarge," Detective Johnson said from behind them, "I think maybe we lucked onto something. I got a waiter upstairs who says he might have seen her."

They trooped after him to a staircase at the end of the corridor, closed off with a red Exit sign above the door.

"This guy's name is Tony Pizzi," Johnson said as they climbed the concrete stairs. "He's on the day shift today, but yesterday he worked from six until two. He hustles drinks in the outdoor lounge by the pool. Then, when the pool and bar closed at midnight, he went downstairs to help out in the main bar. He thinks he served LaBranche and a woman up here. Bottled beer and white wine."

Anthony Pizzi was a sleepy-eyed man, short, chunky rather than fat. He was wearing a white apron cinched up under his armpits. The apron bulged with the bulk of his belly.

He had a fleshy, saturnine face cut in half with a narrow black mustache, straight across, cheek to cheek. His teeth were almonds, and he had a raspy New York voice. Delaney figured the accent for Brooklyn, probably Bushwick.

They got him seated at a corner table and hunched around him on metal chairs. A bartender, polishing one glass, watched them intently, but a man cleaning the pool with a long-handled screen paid no attention.

"Tony," Detective Johnson said, "will you go through it again, please, for these men? When you came on duty, what you did, what you saw. The whole schmeer."

"I come on duty at six o'clock," Pizzi started, "and-"

"This was yesterday?" Boone interrupted sharply.

"Yeah. Yesterday. Monday. So I come on duty at six o'clock, and there's a few people in the pool, not many, but at that time we're busy at the bar. The cocktail crowd, y'unnerstan. Martinis and Manhattans. We got one waiter here, me, and one bartender. In the afternoon, you can buy a sandwich, like, but not after six. So's people will go down to the dining room, y'unnerstan. So the crowd thins out like till nine-ten, around there, and then we begin to fill up again, and people come up for a swim."

Sergeant Boone was the interrogator.

"What time do you close?"

"Twelve. On the dot. Then anyone he wants to keep on drinking, he's got to go down to the lobby bar. Unless he wants to drink in his room, y'unnerstan. Anyways, last night about ten-eleven, like that, a couple of people in the pool, all the tables taken… Not that I'm all that rushed, y'unnerstan, with the tables filled. This is a small place; look around. Mostly couples and parties of four. Two guys by theirselves and one dame. The guys are double bourbons on the rocks and bottled Millers. The dame is white wine. The bourbon guy is like maybe fifty, around there, lushing like there's no tomorrow, and the beer guy is nursing his bottles. The wine dame is sipping away, not fast, not slow."

"You allow unescorted women up here?"

"Why not? If they conduct theirselves in a ladylike manner, y'unnerstan, they can drink up a storm-who cares?"

"Describe the young guy, Tony. The one drinking beer by himself."

"He's like-oh, about twenty-five, I'd guess. Tall, real tall, and thin. He's got long blond hair, like down to his shoulders and all over his ears, and a beard. But not a hippie, y'unnerstan. He's clean and dressed nice."

"What was he wearing-do you remember?"

"Khaki pants and a sports jacket."

They looked at Boone. The sergeant nodded grimly.

"Those were the clothes he took off," he said. "That was him. What about the woman, Tony. Can you describe her?"

"I din get a good look. She's sitting over there at that small table. See? Next to the palms. At night, most of the light comes from around the pool, so she's in shadow, y'unnerstan. About forty, I'd guess, give or take."

"Tall?"

"Yeah, I'd say so. Maybe five-six or seven."

"Wearing a hat?"

"No hat. Brown hair. Medium. Cut short."

"How was she dressed?"

"Very plain. Nothing flashy. White turtleneck sweater. One of those denim things with shoulder straps."

"Was she pretty?"

"Nah. You'd never look at her once. Flat-chested. Flat heels. No makeup. A nothing."