There was a roar from the other side of the room that startled everyone, and the huge form of Lenny came rocketing at Knee High.

Looper and Beam intercepted him but could only slow him down. Looper had him around the waist. Beam caught an elbow in the stomach and sank to the floor. He could only hang on to one of Lenny’s ankles. Da Vinci jumped in and wrapped an arm around Lenny’s bull neck.

Lenny wouldn’t be deterred. Dragging the three men, he continued to move toward the cornered, terrified Knee High. Nell hurled herself on the slowly moving pile of humanity but was brushed aside. She rushed to the door and summoned one of the uniforms on duty in the hall.

He was a man almost as large as Lenny, and he had a weighted baton, which he brought down over and over on Lenny’s head. Hard wood bouncing off Lenny’s skull made a hollow, thumping sound, as if a melon were being struck.

It seemed to dawn on Lenny only gradually that he was being clubbed. He finally slowed and stopped his forward motion, but he didn’t go down, merely slouched. The uniform from the hall kept pounding him, as if angry at Lenny’s lack of reaction.

Beam reached out a hand and caught the uniform’s wrist. “Okay, okay, he’s gonna cooperate.”

The uniform nodded and moved away, still gripping the baton in his right hand, tapping it in the palm of his left. His chest was heaving and his adrenaline was pumping. He still saw Lenny as unfinished business.

Lenny stood with his head bowed, seeming to have suffered nothing other than a change of attitude.

Looper and Nell led him back to the sofa, where he sat morosely and gave no indication that he knew his head was beginning to bleed.

Knee High was still squatting in the corner, back on his heels, trembling. “You shoulda let him kill Knee High! You shoulda!”

“We can leave you two alone,” da Vinci offered.

Lenny shook his head violently from side to side. “No, no! I jus’ wanna do what I gots to do. Thas’ all what’s left for me. I jus’ wanna—”

“We know,” da Vinci said. He trudged over and sat down hard in an orange armchair. Beam was already sitting in the matching chair. Looper was standing bent over with his hands on his knees. The uniform was leaning back against a wall. Down from his adrenaline high, he’d stopped tapping his baton in the palm of his hand.

Nell read Knee High his rights. She was the only one in the room not out of breath.

56

Dust motes rioted silently in a shaft of morning sunlight lancing in between the drapes and casting a Picasso-like symmetry over the wall and bureau.

Nell’s bedroom was cool. The air conditioner had cycled off, and only the blower was on. It was barely light outside the closed drapes, and the morning rush hadn’t yet developed. The city was quiet except for the occasional swish of traffic, and distant shouting and metal clanging somewhere blocks away. A bird chirped determinedly nearby, maybe on the sill.

Nell lay beside the sleeping Terry, listening to the even rhythm of his breathing, and wondered if she’d mentioned to him that the police were pulling protection away from Cold Cat and assigning it to Melanie Taylor? The question nagged her more than it should. She couldn’t remember doing so, but it was possible. Just as it was surely possible that whoever had shot Cold Cat knew with certainty about his reduced protection. The killer had created a diversion, then slipped like grease through the police and the building’s security.

At the precise time when Cold Cat had been killed yesterday, Terry was alone in his apartment, scanning scripts for parts he thought he might have a shot at if he auditioned. Nell thought it odd that Terry seemed almost to make it a point to mention his whereabouts to her.

At about that same time, Nell had been talking with Jack Selig over drinks in the softly lighted lounge at Keys, a new four-star restaurant over on Third Avenue. Her watch at Melanie Taylor’s had ended, and this was, in a way, she told herself, a continuation of the investigation. It had been a few drinks and conversation, nothing more; a gentleman always, Selig had kept his word about that.

But Nell, having been with another man, didn’t think it was a good idea to press Terry about his whereabouts. That would be edging too close to the kind of pot-and-kettle argument that could end a relationship Nell desperately wanted to continue.

She recalled that Terry hadn’t really much of an alibi for the time of Carl Dudman’s death, either.

But Terry lived alone. And she was a cop; she knew how seldom people who lived alone, with no one to witness their lives, had firm alibis.

Terry’s arm was suddenly across her chest, just beneath her breasts, startling her. His big hand closed on her bare upper arm.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said.

“Been lying here looking at you,” he said. “Not much I’d rather do.”

She laughed. “Oh? Is there something you’d rather do?”

He raised his head and kissed her. Bad breath. She didn’t mind.

“There is something I’d rather do,” he said, “but we did it only a few hours ago.”

Another light kiss, and he scooted away from her, sat on the edge of the mattress for a few seconds, then stood up. Nude and without the slightest self-consciousness, he yawned, stretched, then swaggered toward the bathroom.

“Gonna shower?” Nell asked.

“Gotta. And I don’t have time for breakfast this morning. Woman on the East Side needs her oven fixed. It overheats, and she’s desperate for relief.” He winked.

Nell sat up in bed. “Damn you, Terry!” She threw his pillow at him and missed.

In the bedroom doorway, he paused and glanced back at her, smiling. “It’s her ice-maker, actually.”

He continued his nude stroll to the bathroom, and a few minutes later pipes clanked in the wall and she heard the shower begin to hiss. It was an oddly reassuring sound.

Nell lay back and stared up at the slowly revolving ceiling fan, as she’d stared up at it last night during and after sex. As she’d done before. The rhythms and cycles of life. There was something so right about it all. She smiled.

Too much paranoia in the world.

She decided she didn’t really distrust Terry.

She couldn’t.

But if she did distrust him, who would she confide in? Beam? Looper? Hardly. Simply on mere suspicion, they’d be all over Terry. Then the media might find out. They’d swarm. They’d discover one of the investigating officers was sleeping with a suspect.

Nell shuddered. Jesus!

Nobody to confide in there.

She felt a dark contempt for herself. The problem was her disease. Cop’s disease. The creeping cynicism that ruined every relationship, personal or otherwise.

The disease that left you, finally, lonely and alone.

Or was the disease New York? The city was in its own way insular, and everything seemed faster and somehow enhanced. Just the place to lose your perspective, to begin to doubt yourself.

Lonely and alone.

Nell didn’t want that ever to happen to her. Not on a permanent basis. She was still young enough to prevent it. And there was Terry.

Terry.

Selig.

She did love Terry.

But the one person she felt confident to confide in, she realized, was Jack Selig.

Melanie lay in bed alone with her eyes clenched shut.

Cold Cat dead! Richard!

Her avowed hatred for the rap artist melted away. It was, after all, her fault that he was killed. She recalled those moments during the trial when their gazes had met and they’d looked into each other’s souls. Those were moments suspended in amber, moments that would last a lifetime.