In the mayor's office, Brazil was impatiently perched on a couch, making a note of his surroundings and watching the secretary, Ruth Lafone, answer another call. She felt a little sorry for Andy Brazil, well aware that he was being set up as others before him. Her phone rang again. Ruth answered and smiled. She was pleasant and respectful to the man elected by an overwhelming majority to serve the people of the city. She hung up as she rose from her chair, and looked at Brazil.

"The mayor will see you now," she said. Brazil was slightly bewildered. He had no idea how many times he had tried to get comments, interviews, and opinions from Mayor Search. Now the mayor was calling Brazil, finally following up on a request? Which request?

Brazil wished he had dressed a little better this day, something beside black jeans that were too small. He had stopped in the men's room, at least, and had tucked in his faded red Head shirt, which also was a bit too small. Since Brazil had lost a few pounds, his normal clothes were falling off as if he were jailing, so he had dipped into another drawer of jeans and shirts he'd had since high school.

"If you don't mind my asking," he said to the secretary as he got off the couch.

"Is there some purpose to this interview other than my requests to talk to the mayor that go back to the beginning of my career?"

"I'm afraid he can't always get to everything right away," she apologized as she had learned to so well over the years.

Brazil looked at her for a moment, hesitating, detecting something in the way she averted her gaze from him.

"Okay," he said.

"Thanks a lot."

"You're so welcome." She led him to the slaughter because she needed her job.

Mayor Search was a distinguished, neat man in a European-cut summer-weight gray suit. He wore a white shirt, his tie charcoal and blue paisley with matching suspenders. He did not get up from his huge block of walnut, the skyline of the city filling many windows.

US Bank Corporate Center was cut off about belt level, directly behind him, and the mayor could not see the crown unless he got on the floor and strained to look up.

"Thank you for finding the time to see me," Brazil said as he sat in a chair across from Search.

"Understand you've got a rather interesting situation here in our city," Search said.

"Yes, sir. And I appreciate it."

This wasn't the typical smartass reporter Search dealt with morning, noon, and night. The kid was Billy Budd, Billy Graham, wide-eyed innocence, polite, respectful, and committed. Search knew the extreme danger of sincere people like this. They died for causes, would do anything for Jesus, served a higher calling, were no respecter of persons, believed in burning bushes, and were not led into sin by Potiphar's wife. This wasn't going to be as easy as Search had supposed.

"Now let me tell you something, son," Search began in his earnest, overbearing way to this lad who was lucky to get the mayor's time.

"No one loves our police department more than I do. But you do realize, I hope, there are two sides to every story?"

"Usually more sides than that, sir, it's been my experience," said Brazil.

Hammer was in her outer office, having a word with Horgess, while she waited for West and a videotape that she prayed might reveal what Mungo seemed to think it did. Maybe her luck would turn for the better for once.

"Fred, enough," Hammer said, standing at the corner of his desk, hands in the pockets of her tobacco brown pants.

"It's just I feel so bad. Chief Hammer. Can't believe I did something like that. Here you trusted me, and I'm supposed to make your life better, be a faithful retainer. And look what I did when things got a little stressful," Horgess said in his same sad, hate-me tone.

This was sounding all too much like Seth, and the last thing Hammer needed at present was an office husband as pitiful as the one in room 333 at Carolinas Medical Center.

"Fred, what do we say about mistakes? As part of our vision statement?" she quizzed him.

"I know." He could not look at her.

"First, we allow a mistake if you were trying to do the right thing when you made it, and second, if you tell someone that you made the mistake. And third, if you are willing to talk about your mistake to others so they won't do the same thing."

"I haven't done two and three," he said.

"No, you haven't," Hammer had to agree as West walked in.

"Two isn't necessary because in this instance, everybody already knows. No later than seventeen hundred hours, I want a commentary by you for the Informer, telling everyone about your mistake. On my desk." She looked at him over the top of her glasses.

Tw/9 Mayor Search did not know the first thing about a community policing vision statement or any other vision statement, for that matter, that did not slaughter people for making mistakes, especially of the egregious nature that caused Hammer such embarrassment. This was not about to happen to him because the mayor knew how to handle people, including the media.

"It absolutely is untrue that the city is unsafe," he stated to Brazil, and the office seemed to have gotten airless and hot, and maybe smaller.

"But five businessmen from out of town have been murdered in the last five weeks," Brazil said.

"I don't know how you can…"

"Random. Isolated. Incidents." Sweat rolled down his sides. Search felt his face getting red.

"Downtown hotels and restaurants claim business has dropped more than twenty percent." Brazil wasn't trying to argue. He just wanted to get to the bottom of this.

"And people like you are only going to make that worse." Search mopped his forehead, wishing Cahoon had never passed this goddamn assignment along to him.

"All I want is to tell the truth, Mayor Search," Billy Budd, Billy Graham, said.

"Hiding it won't help resolve this terrible situation."

The mayor resorted to sarcasm, laughing at this simple boy's simple logic. He felt that bitter juice seep through his veins, the bile rising, as his face reddened dangerously, his rage a solar flare on the surface of his reason. Mayor Search lost control.

"I can't believe it," he laughed derisively at this reporter who was nothing in life.

"You're giving me a lecture. Look. I'm not going to sit here and tell you business isn't suffering. I wouldn't drive downtown at night right now." He laughed harder, unstoppable, and drunk with his power.

By six p. m. at happy hour, West and Raines were on their way to being drunk at Jack Straw's A Tavern of Taste, next to La-dee-da's and Two Sisters, on East Seventh Street. West had changed out of her uniform, and was casual in jeans, a loose denim shirt, and sandals.

She was drinking Sierra Nevada Stout, the beer of the month, and still in a state of disbelief over the videotape she had watched with Hammer.

"Do you have any idea how this makes me and my investigative division look?" she said for the fourth time.

"Christ. Please tell me this is a nightmare. Please, please. I'm going to wake up, right?"

Raines was drinking Field Stone chardonnay, the wine of the month. In gym shorts, Adidas with no socks, and a tank top, he was turning all heads except for the one across the table from him. What was it with her? All she ever talked about was work and that twit from the paper she rode around with. And Niles, oh yes, let's not forget that fucking, God-save-the-queen, cat. How many times had that cat ruined a building moment? Niles seemed to know exactly when to cause a distraction. A jump on Raines's back or head, a bite of a sock-covered toe. How about the time Niles sat on the remote control until the volume of Kenny G sounded like an air raid?

"It's not your fault," Raines said again, working on the spinach dip.

West ate another pickle fried in beer batter as Jump Little Children began setting up all their equipment and instruments. This small place with blue plastic table cloths and funky art in screaming colors by someone named Tryke was going to rock tonight, jam, trot out primitive Ids and libidos. Raines hoped he could make West stay at least until the second set. Actually, Raines thought what had happened to her all in a day's work was hilarious. It was all he could do to look tender and concerned.

He imagined Mungo-Jumbo swinging into the Presto to chow down. He spots a dude with a banana in his pocket who's the head of the Geezer Grill Cartel. A task force is formed, ending with a videotape of Blondie, the King of Vice and top suspect in the Black Widow serial murders, as he cruises Five Points in his tight black jeans and reporter's notepad. What wouldn't Raines have paid to see a videotape of Hammer sitting in her important conference room watching this shit!

Christ! He fought a smile again, and was losing. His face was aching and his stomach hurt.

"What's wrong with you?" West gave him a look.

"There's nothing fucking funny about this."

"There certainly isn't," he said weakly as he dissolved into laugher, doubled over in his chair, howling as tears streamed down his face.

This went on as Jump Little Children set up amplifiers, and checked Fender electric guitars. Pearl drums with Zildjian medium crash cymbals, and Yamaha keyboards. They gave each other sly looks, flipping long hair out of the way, earrings glinting in the dim light. This guy was fried. Man, look at him go. Cool. The girlfriend wasn't digging it, either. Him taking a trip she's not on.

Kind of weird he's drinking chardonfucking-nay.

West was so angry she wanted to flip over the table, cowboy style. She wanted to jump on top of Raines, flex-cuff his ankles and feet and just leave his sorry ass in the middle of Jack Straw's on a hot Thursday night. She halfway believed the only person Mungo was undercover for was Goode. Maybe Goode had gotten to him, and promised him favors if he would set up West, and destroy her credibility, her good relationship with Hammer. Oh God. When they had been sitting at that polished table and the video had flickered on, at first West was certain some mistake had been made. Brazil, big as life, was walking along to the sound of traffic, making notes, for Chrissake! How many serial killers or drug kingpins walk around in the middle of the day making notes?

As for Brazil's physical description, Mungothe-Woolly- Mammoth had missed that by about forty pounds and six inches, although West had to admit she'd never seen Brazil in clothes that tight. She didn't know what to make of it. Those black jeans were so tight she could see the muscles in the back of his thighs flex as he walked, the red polo shirt fitting like paint, muscles lean and well-defined, and he' had veins. Maybe he was trying to blend out there. That would make sense.