“Fernando Woodlawn. You never heard that name.”

Detective Mulligan was sitting now, tilted back in a swivel chair. His feet were propped on the edge of the desk in front of him, his trench coat hanging down around his seat. His profile was to Perkins, and it seemed to the poet that the cop was suddenly weary. His eyes blinked lethargically, the batteries running down.

Well, the sparring is over anyway, Perkins thought, looking at him. He’s made his decision about me.

The thought was not a soothing one.

“I’ve heard the name,” he said after a moment. “I can’t place it, but I have heard it somewhere.”

Mulligan blinked slowly at the cinderblocks in the far wall. The empty coffee maker there. The skewed, wilted pages tacked to their strip of brown cork. Even the high monotone of his voice seemed to have grown heavier somehow.

“You probably read about him in Downtowner magazine. They did a feature on him a while back. Your brother took the photographs.”

“Yeah? So Zach took his picture. So what? That’s his job. Who is the guy?”

“Woodlawn? Oh, he’s … a lawyer. A big shot lawyer. A big hoo-ha in the city. Into a lot of real estate deals. The navy port. Times Square development. A lot of deals with a lot of pols. Big, big hoo-ha; one of the back room boys.” He seemed to need to gather his strength for a moment before continuing. “He’s also the man that Nancy Kincaid worked for. The dead girl; he was her boss. And … he’s also the man with his Johnson up the masked girl’s ass. The one …” He gestured toward the photographs.

“I know which masked girl’s ass we’re talking about,” Perkins said glumly. “What does this have to do with my brother?”

Mulligan spared him a tired glance. Showed his profile again. “The people who run this city are Democrats,” he said in that flat, mousy voice of his. “Even the Republicans are Democrats; there are no Republicans. If you want to build a building, or win a city contract, or pass a law, or lower your assessment, or park your car in the middle of Fifth Avenue at rush hour, you go to Someone who knows the Democrats. Right? This Someone then tells you what to do: You hire lawyer A because he is the council leader’s brother-in-law; you hire accounting firm B because your local rep used to work there. You don’t need a PR man? Tough shit: The PR man sucks the borough president’s dick so you gotta hire him too. Right? And you make a campaign contribution here and there and finally you get to supply the city with widgets until Jesus comes. Understand?”

Perkins gave a slow nod. Thinking: Hanh? He had definitely lost the thread here somewhere. It was a little hard for him to focus on a civics lesson when he couldn’t stop obsessing about Zach and the girl in the toilet and what the hell were they asking about Zach for anyway and where was he and was Nana going to have a coronary when she heard about all this and those glassy, china blue eyes staring up at him from the blood-streaked porcelain …

Still, he gave his vague nod. Gestured Mulligan on.

And Mulligan wasn’t looking at him anyway. He stretched a little. Ran his hand over his receding tide of springy curls.

“Right,” he said mildly, always mildly. “Fernando Wood-lawn. He’s the Someone you go to, the Someone who knows the Democrats. All right?”

“Yeah …” said Perkins uncertainly.

“And you go to him and he spreads your money around—but he never does an illegal thing. That’s important. He hires you lawyers you don’t want, and PR men you don’t need, and he contributes to causes you don’t believe in; he helps you get a contract you shouldn’t get or build a building that shouldn’t be there—but not once in any way does he break the law or pass an illegal buck or sidle up to people in the dark or wear sunglasses or anything like that at all. Right? Only greedy people make those mistakes. Not Fernando. All right.”

But it was not all right with Perkins. It sounded serious and he wasn’t following it and what the hell did it have to do with his brother? He blew a long breath out. Brushed back his long black hair. This was worse than Mulligan’s silences. Where the hell was Zach?

“Now.” Mulligan just went mildly on. “For the last six months, Fernando Woodlawn has been spreading around an uncountable number of dollar bills. The idea is he and some other people want to build a complex of buildings called Ashley Towers over by the Hudson. So, if he takes all the necessary steps, which he has, and he wins permission for this complex, which he will, he will have enough jobs to hand out and enough money to pass around so that he will be made the Democratic nominee for governor next year, which means he will be automatically elected because there are no Republicans in sight who can run against him. So here’s tomorrow’s news today: Woodlawn is going to be your next governor. And that’s what’s with Fernando Woodlawn. Which brings us to the Republicans.”

Perkins bent over, held his head. He could just barely keep himself from saying “Argh!” “I thought there were no Republicans,” he said. He shook his head at the dirty white tiles of the floor.

“In New York,” said Mulligan. He lifted a finger, but not at Perkins. He waggled it at the wall. He continued, with excruciating patience. “There are no Republicans in New York. In Washington, there are lots and lots of Republicans. Passels of Republicans. Republicans everywhere. And some of these Republicans don’t want Fernando Woodlawn to become governor because his dishonest plans to milk the state for gain might interfere with their dishonest plans to milk the state for gain. So these Republicans, see, have asked that the FBI investigate Fernando until they find something that will end his gubernatorial hopes and dreams. So for the past year or so, there have been idiot FBI agents sidling up to people in the dark and wearing sunglasses and finding out exactly nothing because Fernando never breaks the law—not the Laws of Man anyway.”

“Jesus, Mulligan,” Perkins said. He was still bent over, holding his head in his hands. “I mean, you’re killing me here. I give up. I confess. For God’s sake, would you get to the point?”

Mulligan dropped his feet to the floor with a clunk. Perkins looked up. Saw the detective standing, his hands slipping into his trench coat pockets again. The round face was blank as the cop walked toward him. Perkins straightened in his plastic chair. Mulligan blinked down at him from behind his wire rims.

“Last week, a young woman came to me,” he said. “That was Nancy Kincaid. She didn’t want to come to the police, but she was scared and she didn’t know where else to go. She was afraid her employer, Fernando Woodlawn, wanted to involve her in something illegal. Something strange anyway, maybe even dangerous. She couldn’t tell her parents, because they idolized Woodlawn and wouldn’t understand. And no one else could help her. So she came to me.”

“Okay. All right,” said Perkins. He was all ears now. More than a little wary of the impassive face above him, the slowly blinking eyes. Mulligan had come close, and he remembered how fast the detective had moved when he slammed the photo down on the desk. A dangerous guy, definitely. Not a fun, not a takin’-it-easy kind of guy at all.

“Woodlawn wanted her to pick up a package under mysterious circumstances,” Mulligan ploughed on. “At night. In a Chinatown alley. Carry the package straight back to the office without looking at it, he said. If anyone asks, tell ’em you’re responding to an anonymous call. Don’t involve Fernando … On and on. Understand? So it frightened her. It sounded dirty. She thought he might be using her for something dirty because no one would suspect her or follow her. Oh yeah—to add to the mystery, she was supposed to carry a book.” The detective nodded toward the table, and Perkins turned to it, his mouth opening. “The Animal Hour. She was supposed to carry The Animal Hour under her arm for identification.”

What could Perkins say? He showed the cop his bewildered gaze; he had no better response. How many people, after all, could possibly own his book? Or even know about his book? The café crowd? The crowd over at St. Mark’s church? Even over at St. Mark’s, the rads and the fems despised him. But then maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe this was some advanced new form of literary criticism. It was a logical extension of the going thing, after all …

He was about to make some sort of crack to this effect, but the detective’s expression stopped him. Or not his expression—that would be going too far. Some tension in the impassive face. Some irradiating pain beneath the pasty skin. Something grim anyway that made Perkins wait.

And Mulligan licked his lips once and blinked as his glasses flashed in the fluorescents. And then he said: “I referred her to the feds.”

What was this? Perkins didn’t have time to figure out the full meaning of the words. But it sounded like a confession of some sort, didn’t it? I referred her to the feds. Somehow, this strange little man had brought him into this soulless office—with its empty desks and its hanged papers and its unforgiving cinderblock walls—this weird little cop had brought him in here and had then proceeded to beat a confession out of himself.

“The feds,” Perkins said.

“It was an interagency courtesy. It sounded like what they were after, right? Something on Fernando. It sounded like it might make them happy and they might make my boss happy about me.” His shoulders lifted and fell. He looked down at his shoes. “And so Nancy Kincaid went to the feds. And the feds—who are arrogant and incompetent to the point of being … well, feds—the feds went off and sidled around and wore their sunglasses and talked into their walkie-talkies. And they played their bullshit cloak and dagger games, which I am not at liberty to discuss with you. And, in the end, they got the package in the Chinatown alley …”

Perkins wasn’t even trying to understand anymore, but suddenly it just clicked into place. “And that was the photograph. Fernando up the masked girl’s ass. It was a blackmail thing.”

Still blinking at his shoes, Mulligan nodded slightly. “The feds thought they finally had Fernando, and instead they had a gang of shmoes trying to extort money from him—twenty-five thousand dollars—nothing.”

And Perkins was surprised to find he really did get it now. “But that was good, right? Good for the feds.”

“Right.” The detective raised his blank and yet somehow agonized eyes to him. “Now the feds could bust the extortionists and come off as competent and nonpolitical—and still slip it to the papers that Fernando was doing leather and rectums in his off hours. No governorship and no trail to the Republicans. It was perfect.” He turned away, to the louvered windows. Wistfully, Perkins thought. Gazing at them as if he could see something through their thin, filthy panes. “And everyone was happy,” he said. “And everything was great. And that was the last I heard about it until this morning. And then the feds called me. And everyone was panicking. And everything had turned to shit. Nancy Kincaid had been abducted right out of her own apartment building. Our federal friends hadn’t even thought to put a guard on her. Even her parents weren’t at home that night. So zippo, she was just gone.”

And you referred her to them, Perkins thought. You referred her to the feds. He had the picture now. He understood, in some measure anyway, that pained glow lighting the detective’s skin, that phosphor of rage. But the understanding did not improve his day. In fact, it made him feel heavy inside. Weighted down with dread. Oh yes. The Bad News was definitely a-comin’—he could feel it. Little black gibbering Bad News Demons. Crowding in around him to carry him off, like the devils in those apocalypse paintings who drag the sinful souls to Hell.

He had to ask—he couldn’t stand the suspense. “What about Zach? What about my brother?” And when the cop let him wait for an answer: “I mean, okay, so he took pictures of this Woodlawn guy for Downtowner. He’s their photographer, he always does stuff like that. But I mean, he’s not in this other stuff. He’s just a mystical little guy, Mulligan. He never hurt anybody but himself.”

Mulligan lifted a hand from his pocket and pointed—and all Perkins could think of was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pointing at Scrooge’s grave. The detective was pointing at the photos on the desk beside him. “The man who delivered the photographs of Woodlawn fit your brother’s description. He was driving a car that had been rented in New Jersey in your brother’s name. When my people searched your brother’s apartment this morning, they found a secret compartment in his closet.”

“What?”

“With a peephole and special photographic equipment and sexual paraphernalia inside—all of which was almost definitely used in taking the pictures of Woodlawn and the girl.”

Perkins turned slowly again to the photographs lying on his book. The graduation shot of Nancy Kincaid was on top, but it lay askew. The photo of

Tiffany it’s Tiffany

the woman in the mask peeked out from under it. Perkins could see only the masked head but he thought of the dark freckled skin.

You don’t understand anything, Oliver, not anything.

And then, with a queasy thrill, he thought of a naked ass. Tiffany’s compact, glisteningly naked ass. And then not hers. A child’s ass. Zach’s bare ass, to be exact, his corduroy overalls down around his thighs, his cheeks purple, almost black, with bruises and the heavy brass ruler smashing into the soft flesh again; its almost silent, sickeningly silent, thud …

But I broke it. I broke the typewriter, he thought. His stomach turned, his throat thickened with dread.

“There’s something else,” said Mulligan. Perkins looked up. “We got an anonymous call this morning. Reporting that a man with longish black hair, wearing a sweater and blue jeans, had been seen entering the mews in MacDougal Alley …”

“Yeah, so? That was me.”

“… and that terrible screams had been heard …”

“What?”

“ … coming out of the place and that we should get someone over there on the double.”

“What?” Perkins stood up. “An anonymous call? From who?”

He was a head taller than the detective. Mulligan had to lift his chin in order to blink up at him.

“Well, you know what I mean,” Perkins said. “What did he sound like?”

“It was a woman.”

And again, Perkins thought: Tiffany. Tiffany! She had set him up. He almost said it out loud. She had lured him to the mews with that desperate call to Nana. Then she had called the cops so they’d catch him there. He knew there was treachery behind that angel puss of hers. She had set him up, and he was willing to bet anything in this world that she was setting up Zachary too. That car rented in Zach’s name. That stuff hidden in the closet, the secret compartment or whatever. It was all Tiffany’s doing. She had gotten herself involved in some sort of mess and now she was trying to pass it off on Zach, on Zach and him both. I know my brother, Perkins wanted to tell Mulligan. He’s not the least neurotic guy in the world, and God knows he’s had his problems. But blackmail? That girl in the mews? No way, man. It just wasn’t him. He was being set up—they both were. By Tiffany.

He wasn’t sure what kept him from speaking out right away. The instinct to silence was powerful, a physical restraint. She was Zach’s girlfriend, after all—and he had to protect Zach. In any case, his accusations died in him the way his poems did. Rising from his belly, dissipating, falling away like dew.

And then what? The detective was still blinking up at him. His face was still unreadable and dangerous. And they’d found him, Perkins, right there, right in the mews, with the body. They could charge him with murder. He’d have to stand trial. They might even …

“Now you can go,” Mulligan said.

“I … what?”

Mulligan almost sighed—it was something like a sigh anyway. His hands in his trench coat, he turned and walked away. Walked over to the windows. Fed his face up into the dusty sunlight.

“I can go?” said Perkins.

“Right. You didn’t do anything.” Mulligan seemed to give his answer to the unseen sky over Tenth Street. “The girl’d been dead for hours when you got there. Anyway, I’m talking to you and I know you didn’t do anything. Maybe the feds’ll see it differently.”

Perkins resisted the impulse to run for it. “You think I’ll lead you to Zach, don’t you?” he said.

Mulligan gazed at the windows. “I think you’ll find him. Or that he’ll come to you, yeah.”

“And you’re gonna follow me?”

“No.” He shook his head. “You’re gonna bring him to me. You’re gonna turn him in.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah.” Mulligan drew out the syllable wearily. He glanced over at Perkins, just for a moment, then turned wistfully to the light again. “A young woman who came to me for help got herself stuffed into a toilet bowl,” he said mildly. “Stuffed into a toilet, just as if she were a piece of shit instead of a girl, instead of a human being.” A meditative pause. Perkins closed his eyes a moment to erase the girl’s stare from his mind. “If you bring your brother to me,” Mulligan continued, “I give you my word that I will personally beat the living shit out of him until he tells me everything he knows about this murder.”

The poet let out a mirthless snort. “So why would I bring him to you?”

Mulligan faced him from across the room. His glasses flashed. His face remained impassive. “Because as pissed and humiliated and panicked as I am,” he said, “I am only exactly half as pissed and humiliated and panicked as the Federal fucking Bureau of Investigation. Right? And if they get hold of your brother before I do, they are going to gun him down and announce that the case is solved. They are going to kill him, Perkins. I know this for a fact.

“If the feds get to him first, your brother is going to be dead.”

The phone on the desk kept breeping.

This, Nancy thought, is very bad.

Dr. Schoenfeld lay at her feet. Curled on his side, half covered by the chair that had fallen on him. Blood was still pulsing from his shattered nose. It stained his mustache. It ran into his mouth. Nancy stared at him.

Bureep. Bureep. The phone shrilled. A voice shrilled in Nancy’s mind: Who did this? What kind of person would do this? Keen as the phone, just as insistent. What kind of monster would do this, Nancy?

Shut up—I don’t know—this is so bad—I have to think. She held her hands over her ears. She stared down at Dr. Schoenfeld. She could still hear the phone. She could still hear the voice in her mind: What kind of psycho …?

She heard Dr. Schoenfeld now too. He started moaning: “O-o-o-o-oh …”

I’ve got to get out of here.

What kind of vicious …?

Shut up, shut up! We’ll take questions later. God!

Desperately, she looked around her. It was like being trapped in a box; in a coffin under the ground. Hemmed in by table, desk, and chairs. Sealed in by the closed door. No room to move. The fallen doctor covered almost the whole floor. His tweed jacket touched her foot.

“O-o-o-o-oh …” he moaned. He spit weakly: a bloody tooth fell out of his mouth.

Bureep. Bureep.

“God!” Nancy whispered.

She had to do something. She stepped over the doctor. Into the narrow space between the doctor and the desk. Now she could feel the back of his head resting against her ankles. His soft hair on her skin.

The phone breeped: What kind of a person are you, Nancy?

“Shut up,” she whispered. God, she hated being schizophrenic! She leaned over the desk. Pushed papers aside. Her open folder—Nancy Kincaid printed on the top form. Blood spattered over the letters. She pushed the pages away. She needed a weapon. Anything.

The phone shrilled.

The doctor’s ballpoint. She picked it up. She could brace it against her palm, she thought. Drive the point into someone’s throat.

“O-o-o-o-oh …”

What kind of savage …?

“Shut up!” she hissed. She threw the pen aside. A pen was no good. No one would be afraid of a pen. She yanked open the desk drawer.

A letter opener! She seized hold of it. Lightweight. A flat handle. A brass blade.

The doctor’s chair fell off him onto the floor.

“Christ. Help me.”

Nancy whipped around, looked down. Young Schoenfeld had rolled onto his back. His bearded cheek was pressed to her leg. His shoulder pinned her foot. His smoky eyes appealed to her. He coughed blood.

“Help me …”

She might have to give him the old stomperoo, she thought. Really put him out.

The phone shrieked wildly. She pulled her foot free. Grabbed hold of a chair for support as she stepped over him. She was at the door. With one hand on the knob, she palmed the letter opener in the other. Blade up along the wrist, handle hidden in the hand. Then she cracked the door open. Peeked her head out.

The hall was empty for the moment. She could see down it into the narrow room beyond. The slumped figures in the plastic chairs. Three nurses gathered at the far end. The cop—she couldn’t see him from here, but she knew he was there: the cop and the metal detector at the entranceway.

“Someone help …,” Dr. Schoenfeld murmured. She heard him shift on the floor behind her.

Shit!

She had to get somebody’s attention—fast. She peered feverishly at the cluster of nurses.

And a door opened. She brought her head around. It was one of the doors down the hall. It opened and someone came backing out. A broad white wall of a someone.

Mrs. Anderson.

“All right, Doctor,” Nancy heard her say. “I’ll bring that right to you.”

The squat black woman backed into the hall, shutting the door as she came.

“Mrs. Anderson,” Nancy hissed.

But the nurse didn’t hear her. She turned away from her. Started walking away, down to the end of the hall. Nancy watched helplessly: the wide stride of her elephant legs, the swing of her black-sausage arms.

“Mrs. Anderson!”

The nurse stopped.

The phone in the office breeped again. “Oh Jesus,” Dr. Schoenfeld said from the floor. His voice was getting louder.

Mrs. Anderson glanced over her shoulder, puzzled. Had someone called her? Yes: she spotted Nancy. Her big brown face went stony, her eyes narrowed.

“Mrs. Anderson! Hurry!” Nancy gestured toward the office with her head. “It’s Dr. Schoenfeld. Hurry. Please.”

Mrs. Anderson didn’t think twice. She came down the hall like a locomotive, her fat arms pistoning. In a moment, she was at Nancy’s side, blotting out everything behind that monumental face.

“What’s happening, honey? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. Dr. Schoenfeld …”

And right on cue, the doctor moaned loudly: “Oh God, somebody …”

Nancy jumped back out of the way as Mrs. Anderson charged across the threshold. The nurse stopped short as she saw the wounded doctor. She stood in all her massiveness, looking down at him.

Behind her, Nancy quietly shut the door.

The phone squealed. Mrs. Anderson knelt down beside Dr. Schoenfeld.

Nancy stepped up in back of her. She grabbed a handful of her hair.

“Ah …!” said Mrs. Anderson.

Nancy yanked her head back. She pressed the blade of the opener against her throat.

“I can kill you with this. Don’t be stupid.” The words sounded strange in her small voice.

“Help me …” The doctor had rolled onto his side again. He was lifting his head. Trying to push himself up out of his own blood.

Mrs. Anderson’s head was all the way back. Her face was toward the ceiling. Her mouth was forced open. Nancy felt her stiff, lacquered hair tugging against her fist. She was trying to nod, to acquiesce.

“Good,” Nancy whispered. The nurse winced as she tightened her grip.

Dr. Schoenfeld shifted again. He lifted his arm, reaching blindly for purchase. His hand fell on the overturned chair. He grabbed hold of it. Started to pull himself up.

“Phone,” he gasped. The phone answered shrilly.

“You’re going to walk me out of here,” Nancy whispered to the nurse.

Mrs. Anderson tried to shake her head. Nancy held her hair tightly. “Can’t do it,” Mrs. Anderson managed to say. “HP—the hospital police.”

“I don’t care. You have to do it. You have to do it or you’ll die. Now stand up.”

She yanked on Mrs. Anderson’s hair. The big woman put her arms out for balance. She got hold of the edge of the desk. She braced herself as she worked her legs under her.

Right beside them in the tiny room, Dr. Schoenfeld was now trying to scale the overturned chair. Slowly, he was climbing over it toward his desk. The phone breeped, its light blinking. Schoenfeld forced his eyes open wider at the sound.

Nancy got Mrs. Anderson to her feet. She still had a grip on her hair, still had her head pulled back and the opener at her throat. She pressed her own back against the doctor’s desk. Dr. Schoenfeld was next to her, pulling himself onto the desk, dragging himself toward the phone.

“Listen,” said Nancy breathlessly. She held her mouth close to Mrs. Anderson’s ear. “Listen: I’m sick.”

“I know that, honey,” Mrs. Anderson said. “But we can help you, truly we can …”

“Shut up. Damn it. I don’t mean that. I mean, we’re going to pretend that I’m sick. You’re going to hold me and help me walk. Put your arm around me. You’re going to walk me out of here.”

“We can’t just—”

“Shut up. Just shut up. I mean it.”

Bureep. Bureep. Dr. Schoenfeld stretched out his arm. “Phone,” he gasped. He stretched his fingers toward the phone. He touched the base of it. “Phone …”

With a quick snap, trip-hammer hard, Nancy drove her fist down, drove the handle of the letter opener into Schoenfeld’s temple.

Mrs. Anderson cried out. Dr. Schoenfeld dropped—a marionette with cut strings. Hands flailing, legs limp, he collapsed onto the overturned chair. Tumbled off it onto the floor again. He lay still, unconscious, wheezing quietly.

And the letter opener’s blade was back at Mrs. Anderson’s throat before she could blink. Her whole body had gone rigid. Any notion of escape was gone.

Good, Nancy thought. “All right,” she said softly. She brought the opener down from Mrs. Anderson’s throat to her side. She dug the point into her ribs. “There’s your heart. You’re a nurse. You know.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Anderson.

“I go in and twist and you’re dead before you hit the floor.”

“Okay. I hear ya.”

Is this any way for Daddy’s little button to …?

“Shut. Up!” Nancy barked.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I’m not talking to you!”

“Oh. Okay.” Mrs. Anderson did not seem reassured.

Nancy shut her eyes, tried to steady herself. The phone—couldn’t they call back later?—it sliced into her. She was busy, for Christ’s sake!

Her voice came out in whispered spurts. “All right. You hold me. Okay? Hold me like this.” She let go of Mrs. Anderson’s hair. She squeezed around in front of her, between her and the doctor’s body. She pressed herself against the nurse’s front, against her breasts. Clutched her uniform with her free hand. She kept the opener to Mrs. Anderson’s ribs, hidden under her own body. “Hold me against you. Now!”

Slowly, cautiously, the nurse put her big right arm around Nancy’s shoulder. She pressed Nancy’s head into her bosom.

“Remember the knife,” Nancy said.

“It won’t slip my mind, honey, believe me.”

“Good. Now we go out the door, down the hall to the exit. Right past the cop.”

“I gotcha.”

Mrs. Anderson started walking, holding Nancy to her breast. A step to the door.

“Open it.”

Nancy felt the nurse hesitate, only for a moment. Then she felt her shift, reach. Heard the door click open. She clung to the front of the big woman, held there securely by the powerful brown arm. They moved together out into the hall.

“Close the door.”

She heard the door click shut.

“Now move,” she said.

They started toward the narrow waiting room. Mrs. Anderson was no fool. She moved at a swift but stately pace. Nancy moaned into her shirtfront for effect.

“O-o-o-oh …”

“There, there, honey,” Mrs. Anderson said. She played it just right. Patted Nancy’s shoulder. “We gonna get you up to the ER, you gonna be just fine.” It was perfect.

They came out of the corridor into the waiting room. A row of distorted faces stared from the white walls. Nancy pressed against the big nurse. She smelled her smell; a musty Negro smell. Sweat and laundry detergent and some smooth, flowery skin lotion—Jergens, possibly. Nancy closed her eyes. Such a deep liquid pool of breasts under the cool linen. She moaned again.

“There, there, honey,” Mrs. Anderson murmured. Her voice was warm and deep, like bathwater. Nancy gave a little whisper of pleasure as she pressed deeper into her softness. I’m sorry, she thought. I was a teenager and I was angry and crazy and I’m so sorry. It made no sense but the words came to her anyway. So sorry, sorry …

“You got a problem there?”

A man’s baritone, right beside them. Nancy’s eyes snapped open. They had reached the wooden gateway, the metal detector. Nancy could see only the white field of the nurse’s uniform. Blurry stares from the maniacs’ gallery just beyond. But she sensed the cop was standing behind her. She dug the blade into Mama Anderson’s side.

“Everything’s fine,” the nurse said. Casual but authoritative. “Doctor wants her upstairs for tests.”

And the baritone of the cop: “You want me to call for escort?”

Nancy moaned.

“Yes, yes, there, there,” said Mrs. Anderson, patting her. “No thanks,” she said to the officer, “we’ll be fine.”

And that was it. They were moving again. Under the wooden canopy. Into the …

The metal detector! Nancy tensed against the great bosom. The metal detector: Would it pick up the opener, the brass blade?

But they were already through. The metal detector had not made a sound and they were already out the doorway. Twisting her head a little, Nancy saw the white hall. They were in the long white entrance hall where she had been brought in. Dragged in, screaming.

Mrs. Anderson released her. “All right,” she said. “Go on then, if you’re going.”

There was a pause—a moment before Nancy pulled herself away from the nurse’s musty depths. Then she straightened. Looked down the corridor toward the door at the end. The door had a glass pane. She could see the daylight through it. The concrete bay where the cop car had parked. Oh, she could almost smell the cool, the free, the open autumn air.

She glanced back gratefully at Mrs. Anderson. At the granite dignity of the round brown face. “Go on,” the nurse said.

I’m not really like this! Nancy wanted to cry it out to her. To fling herself back into her arms, back against her breast. This is not who I am, Mrs. Anderson. I’m really nice! Really! Nice!

As if she had heard, Mrs. Anderson said quietly: “You sure you don’t want to just come back in now? No one’s gonna hurt you. I’ll just walk you right back in.”

Nancy’s lips parted. “I can’t,” she whispered. “There’s someplace I have to …” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Quickly, she pivoted away from her. Without another glance, she started running down the hall, toward the door. Toward the light. Her hands moved at her side, right fist clutching the letter opener. She heard her feet flapping faster and faster against the floor.

What kind of person …? She heard it in the rhythm of her own steps. What kind of monster does these things?

Not me, she thought as she ran. Not me. Not really. Not really me.

Behind her, far away it seemed, she heard Mrs. Anderson shouting. The door ahead came closer to her. The light at its window brightened. The car bay—its concrete columns—loomed.

And then a police officer moved into the square of glass. The light went out. And it occurred to Nancy as she ran toward that square of shadow that Mrs. Anderson was shouting very loudly. She was sounding the alarm—to everyone—at the top of her lungs:

A madwoman has escaped!