The way he looked at her scared her. "Tim?"

"You okay? Tasha?"

She was on the floor now, looking up at the ceiling, which the super had been promising to have painted for the last five months-yeah, right. Someone was piling cinder blocks on her chest, making it very hard to breathe.

"Timmy?" It hurt to speak. Her throat was like a kiln. Tim was holding her forehead and her hand.

"Pops?" she said. "Felix?"

He pulled up her sweater and put his ear to the round of her bosom and listened. There was no sound, only the pounding in his own chest.

Fuck fuck fuck. Shit shit shit. Fuck fuck fuck.

He put his hand to her throat the way he'd seen in the Vietnam movies. Nothing, just his own pulse. His hand was shaking now. Jesus, what was this, transference?

Still on his knees beside her, he thought: Dial 911. He went for the phone and he had the phone in his hand when he thought: Hold on, hold on a second. What is the point of dialing 911 now? There was no emergency. She was dead. Sweet Jesus, this couldn't be happening. Please. Rewind the tape. We're going to shoot this scene over. Rewind, goddamnit, I am not happy with this scene.

The clock on the bookshelf said ten after six. Just move the big hand back five minutes, that's all. Five minutes. Okay, ready? Okay, let's take it from the middle of page 17: "She needs to go on a low-semen diet." There's no "rewind" on the machine, only "play."

You're panicking. Stop it. Think. Breathe. In, out-slow, in, out-slow. Okay. Call 911. All right. All right. All right. I'm going to. Just a moment here. What do I say? Do I say: There's been a little problem with cocaine here and… Jesus, this is not a "little problem" here, this is a major fucking disaster. The mirror, the coke, the razor, Bernie and Karen's fifty. Great. Wonderful. Is this your cocaine? No, Officer. Well, whose is it? You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney… What the hell happened? Is this what happened to the Kennedy kid, to that black basketball player? No. Those two were doing, like, massive quantities. There's still half a gram left here. Jesus, Ramirez, what kind of coke is this? So good you drop dead? You Puerto Rican piece of shit, Ramirez. Well, you're in it same as me, pal, up to your fucking-

Stop. Breathe from the diaphragm. Okay, flush the coke down the toilet. Wait a minute. They'll do an autopsy, they'll find the coke one way or the other. They'll find the coke and then I'm dead too. Might as well be. Probably end up envying her for Chrissake.

Look, make a choice. Call 911 or get out of here. It's not like you're going free. My God, this is going to be with you for the rest of your life. The rest of your life. Jesus, it's like Frank Capra in reverse, It's a Horrible Life. Rikers Island. Great. If you're lucky you'll get for a roommate the guy who killed John Lennon, or Joel Steinberg. Joel can keep me up all night explaining to me how he didn't really kill Lisa. It was really Hedda. Great, fucking great, Tasha. Is that what you want? Me and Joel fucking Steinberg in the same cell. Me and, and, and Mark David Chapman in the same cell? Mark can read to me from The Catcher in the Rye, tell me which of Lennon's songs he liked best, "Day in the Life" or "Imagine." Can you see me in there, Tasha? Doing Chekhov at Rikers Island with Black Muslims? The Three Sisters? Can you see it? After the show, instead of a cast party they sodomize the director. Maybe I'll get AIDS and they'll let me out early on humanitarian grounds. Tasha, for Christ's sake, get UP, please get up off the floor.

He was in the bathroom now, splashing water on his face. His heart was beating. He put his hand over his chest to try to slow it down.

He found a handkerchief in her bedroom and used it to wipe his fingerprints off the glass vial and the mirror. He wiped every surface he thought he might have touched. The fifty-better take that too. Knowing fucking Bernie, he wrote down the serial number.

Let's see. The review. The page was folded over to show the review. It was lying there right next to the coke. Move it a bit closer to the coke? Or is that too obvious? Yes, that's too obvious. Leave something for the audience to put together on its own. The review is fine where it is. Wait, is a cop going to notice something like a review? Should the paragraph be circled in red or yellow-highlighted? No, that's too much. But it needs something else.

He held the vial with the handkerchief and knelt and put Tasha's still-warm thumb and index finger on it-was she right-handed? yes, she was right-handed-and pressed them there. Then he held the vial up to the light and saw what looked like a print.

Okay, let's get this scene on its feet. Let's block the scene. The cops walk in the door, the first thing they see is the body. Then they see the coke on the table. Are they going to see the review? They'll come back to the review. The first cop leans over you and the second cop goes to the coke and puts his finger in it and tastes it and, like, nods. Good shit. Thanks to you, you rat bastard, Ramirez. Okay, then he sees the review, and he picks it up and reads it. And the second cop says: So why weren't all the locks on the door locked-

Keys. Good, the door needs to be locked from the outside so it looks like she locked it from the inside.

They were in the bowl next to the door. He put his ear against the door to listen. Did ears leave prints? No, Jesus, ears do not leave prints, you're being paranoid.

Using the handkerchief as a glove, he opened the door, let himself out and shut it. There were three dead-bolt locks to contend with. Jesus. That's right, he remembered her telling him that she lived in a three-lock neighborhood. The dead bolts were incredibly noisy. He was sure someone was going to see him before he got them locked. Boy they were noisy, so noisy he didn't hear her moan on the other side of the steel door.

Charley and Felix sat together in the back of the limousine, sinuses suffused with gun oil. They'd been cleaning shotguns when the call came from a Detective Mullen of the Sixth Precinct and they used what rags they had on hand.

Felix saw the crowd of reporters and TV people outside the main entrance to the bright blue brick-and-glass building on the corner of Thirtieth and First Avenue. He told the chauffeur to drive straight through the intersection to the side entrance on Thirtieth.

The reporters saw the limousine pulling up and closed in. Charley got out and was pinned against the car. The housekeeper had put a pair of woman's sunglasses on him, left behind by a houseguest, as he left, the Jackie O paparazzi-proof type, big and round, the kind that make you look like a stylish insect. Felix managed to get between him and the press, but he couldn't clear a path to the door that said:

PRINT YOUR NAMES ON ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES CLEARLY

They shouted at Charley and jabbed at him with their boom mikes, then there was a voice, familiar, practiced, New York-weary and seen-it-all-before: "All right, let's give them some air, let's move back, folks, that's it." Detective Mullen.

He got them inside and Charley found himself standing in a black marble lobby while Felix and the detective spoke to a black man behind a black desk. The outside of the building was done in a bright, almost gay, blue ceramic brick; the inside was all business. An inscription ran across the wall in raised steel letters.