They were having breakfast in the grill of the Marimont Hotel in Midtown. The place was all red carpeting, red drapes, white tablecloths with folded red napkins, polished oak paneling, and subtle touches of gleaming brass. The china looked as if it might be rimmed with real gold. Nell was impressed, as she was sure Selig wanted her to be. The softening up period. Nell had seen and heard it all before and knew how it worked. But, damn, this guy was handsome despite his burden of years. And there was that yacht.

And there was Terry.

“Rough night?” Selig asked.

Mind reader. “Why?” Nell asked. “Do I look it?”

Selig smiled. “Instead of stunningly beautiful, you look stunningly beautiful and tired.”

“It’s this case.”

“The investigation into the Justice Killer murders?”

“Yeah. The pressure to find this creep never lets up. I know when we’re finished here”—she glanced at her watch—“which better be within an hour, I’ve gotta go join the battle again. And it’s a hard one.”

“It doesn’t have to be your battle, Nell. You never have to go in to work again if you don’t want to.”

“Yes,” Nell said, “I do. You need to understand that I do.”

He looked puzzled behind his quiche. “But, why?”

“I suppose because we all have our roles to play in life. The ones we chose. I’m a cop. You’re a…”

“What?”

“Wildly rich and successful.”

“I wasn’t always, and you weren’t always a cop. Fate doesn’t have to rule our lives. We choose, and we can unchoose. We can change roles when we get the opportunity, when we have the courage.”

“That wasn’t fair, Jack.”

He smiled and dabbed at his lips with his napkin. “You’re right, it wasn’t. I apologize. Lord knows, I wouldn’t question your courage.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Nell could see outside a window, a double-decker bus full of tourists slowly driving past in the bright sunlight. New York pretending to be London.

“The point is, this killer doesn’t have to be your personal responsibility,” Selig said.

“He does, Jack. He is.”

“What about your boss? Detective Beam? Seems to me the investigation is his responsibility.”

“Not his alone. We’re a team.”

“Almost everyone’s on some kind of team.”

“Not where people are dying.”

Selig forked in a bite of quiche, chewed, swallowed. “I wasn’t thinking of it that way. You’re right, of course.”

“Not of course, but I’m right.”

He smiled. “You getting your dander up, Nell?”

She made herself calm down. “No. Dander down.”

But it wasn’t. Not entirely.

Selig was looking at her as if she were something infinitely precious and available that was rapidly slipping away. “Is there someone else, Nell?”

Bastard! “Yes. No. Jesus! Yes, there is!”

He looked so injured she had to fight the instinct to reach across the table and squeeze his hands and apologize. He looked suddenly older. Helpless.

What have I done?

“Another, younger, man…” He said it as if he’d expected it to happen all along. Maybe he had. “Are you sure about him?”

“Oh, God, I’m not sure of anything, Jack! Honestly!”

“That’s your problem, Nell, you can’t be anything but honest.”

Jack, if you only knew.

“Don’t make a final decision until you’re absolutely sure. That’s all I ask of you. Okay?”

“Okay, Jack.” She had to sip coffee and look away, afraid she’d goddamn start to cry!

She felt his cool fingers touch the back of her left hand then softly massage her ring finger. “You all right, Nell?”

She nodded, biting her lip. “Yeah, fine.” She sat up straighter. “Let’s have some more coffee, then I’ve gotta get to work.”

Right now the red carpet, the red drapes, the red napkins, reminded her of blood.

Melanie stood on the sidewalk outside the entrance to Richard Simms’s apartment building. The doorman wouldn’t even let her stand in the lobby, where it was cool.

As he had all day yesterday and earlier today, he’d informed her that Simms wasn’t home. This time she refused to believe him, and she’d raised enough hell that if she promised to wait outside, he’d call upstairs to make sure. Apparently others had suffered her fate, but for different reasons, because there was a litter of cigarette butts around where she stood.

The afternoon was heating up in earnest, and the hairdo she’d gotten yesterday and was nursing along was a tangled mess in the humidity. A bead of perspiration broke from her hairline and trickled along the side of her forehead. As she raised a wrist to look at her watch, she felt the tug of her clothes sticking to her and got the faintest whiff of her deodorant.

When Melanie was almost to the point of giving up hope and going back into the lobby to give the doorman one more blast of insults before storming away, the tinted glass door swung open wide, held by the doorman. He gazed blankly at her, unassailable in his position and uniform, as an African American man the size of a locomotive pushed past him and outside and looked down at Melanie. His straightened hair was gelled and combed sleekly back, and his eyes were tilted down at the outside corners to give him a permanent pained expression. He had on a flowered shirt and muted plaid pants held up by broad red suspenders, an obvious color and design mismatch to attract attention. Combined with his size, it worked. People hurrying past on the sidewalk couldn’t resist glancing his way, and the somewhat startled looks they gave him lingered and suggested trepidation.

“I’m Lenny,” he said to Melanie in a surprisingly high voice. “I work for Mr. Simms.”

Melanie struggled to find her voice. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Lenny interrupted. “Seen you in court.”

Melanie tried again. Her throat seemed to be blocked. “I—”

“You wanna see Mr. Simms. That’s unfortunate, ’cause Mr. Simms, he ain’t seein’ nobody today.”

“What about yesterday and tomorrow?” Melanie asked, feeling less intimidated and more angry.

“You’d have to ask Mr. Simms ’bout that.”

“But I can’t get in to see Mr. Simms.”

Lenny shrugged massive shoulders. “Way the world works.”

Melanie fought to remain calm, but her hands were trembling. She knew her lower lip was, too. She tried to choose her words carefully, but they were slippery and kept whirling around in her mind and were difficult to grasp and match with her intent. “I want you to take—I want you to deliver a message.”

“I can do that.”

“You tell Cold Cat—Mr. Simms—that there’s a madman in this city killing people for doing what I did for Mr. Simms. What I did was save Mr. Simms’s life. The least he could do is see me, talk to me. He doesn’t answer my phone calls and he doesn’t invite me up when I come here personally. That isn’t right.”

“Maybe his lawyers have advised him not to talk to you,” Lenny said. Was he smiling? Ever so slightly?

Despite herself, Melanie felt her heart leap with hope. “Is that true? Have they told him that?”

Now Lenny was most definitely smiling, and there was cruelty in those dark, angled eyes. “You’d have to ask Mr. Simms.”

That goddamned smile!

“The Mr. Simms I can’t get in to see so I can ask him?”

“Uh-huh. Same Mr. Simms.”

“You tell Mr. Simms I feel used!” Melanie was aware she was out of control but couldn’t help herself. Her rage, her shame, were in charge. Spittle flew as she spoke, catching the sunlight and adding to her humiliation. “You tell him I risked my shitting life for him, and I feel used!”

The big man gazed calmly down at her with disinterest. The smile only a shadow now. “That it?”

Melanie glared fiercely at him. “That is goddamned it!”

Lenny simply turned his huge bulk away from her and opened the tinted glass door to enter the lobby. He was part of Cold Cat’s security, probably his personal bodyguard, or one of them. His business with Melanie was finished.