CHAPTER 1

There were no stars as thick as bedbugs over Richmond Hill. There was only a moon. All you could hear were the faraway clunks of the avenue el, the spurt of the radio squad car parked halfway up Bessemer, and the dark, runny lull of the woods still alive with raccoon.

Eleven miles and ten thousand light years from Manhattan, elderly front porches throned inbred and bigboned cats who looked up nervously, then yawned with affectation when an ugly black runt-legged dog made his rounds industriously through the backyards and the tilted streets.

Dubbed by all as the Mayor, the dog patrolled the trestle tracks for female scent, investigated any unlocked garbage pails along his way, enjoyed a clandestine and cooling drink from Mrs. Dixon’s controversial Roman birdbath, and then headed north along old Park Lane South, going no farther in than the rim of the woods (there were things going on in there even he didn’t want to know about). Finally, back he waddled to his own front porch, job done, neighborhood checked, home just in time for the blue-bellied dawn climbing over the pin oak.

Claire Breslinsky, slender and still beautiful at thirty, slept soundly in the hammock on the porch. The Mayor padded over, cocked his head, and watched, deliberating whether or not to jump right up and nestle in. Claire’s hair, loosened in sleep, was dark as chestnut and the briney bitches of his youth. He sighed. That was years ago. He’d put on quite a bit of weight since then and doubtless he would wake up Claire. That wouldn’t do. Although she’d just returned to Queens from ten years overseas and he had only known her briefly as a pup, he felt a fond attachment to her. Claire’s accent didn’t bother him. He was English bulldog-blooded himself. At least a good part of him was. He liked her foreign ways. And at meals she fed him every bit of her meat beneath the table. Mother and Pop Breslinsky (or Mary and Stan, as he chose to think of them, with all due respect) said she had spent some years in India to boot. That would explain it.

Claire stirred. The first shaft of light had hit her on the face. She looked right at him with those eyes queerly bright and blue as the Lanergan’s Siberian husky.

“Ah,” her deep voice cracked, “good morning, your honor.”

The Mayor joggled his tail to and fro. He bolted directly onto her breast and slurped her broad mouth with his tongue. Claire pushed him firmly off her face but let him stay right there, her soft hand buried in the bristly fur of his fighter’s broad back. She put her leg out onto the porch railing and rocked the two of them back and forth, back and forth. There was no wind today. It would be hot.

They looked up and watched the garbage truck come lumbering up the block. Mrs. Dixon next door stretched her terry bathrobe around herself one extra time, slammed down the can lid, and waddled briskly back inside her house. No garbagemen were going to see her front without a sturdy brassiere. Of that they could be sure. Some things, Claire smiled, never changed. Then a decrepit Plymouth rattled down the broken street from Park Lane South and turned left onto Myrtle. And back they fell to sleep.

The old house was still for just a little while. Mary Breslinsky, up with the birds, was quick in and out of the shower and down to squeeze oranges, poach eggs, pop the toast in. News radio accompanied her as she went about with her transistor in one apron pocket, rosary in the other, eyes wide for any international catastrophe (Claire was finally safe at home, thank God, but still she liked to be the first to hear of any tragedy). The white braids curled around her neat head would quiver with excitement at just any break in a major criminal event. She’d clear her throat and store this or that away for announcement at the table. She was Irish, was Mary.

Before you knew it, she had the marmalades lined up like soldiers: blueberry for her husband Stan, apricot for raven-haired Carmela (her eldest and her fashion columnist), orange for Claire (her long-lost wandering photographer come home at last), grape for Zinnie (her good humoured, blond policewoman) and mint (again) for Michaelaen (Zinnie’s son and his grandma’s own miracle, just four years old and russet-haired like Claire used to be). Her husband Stan referred to them as his Clairol Group, and so they did look when you got them all together around the table.

Stan Breslinsky, hardware store proprietor (semi-retired), weapons enthusiast, and passionate lover of opera, shaved to the strains of Rigoletto. He hummed along. He took his time. He warbled and lingered until the last pretty notes of “La Donna E Mobile” came to a halt. Reverently, he put away his Sony tape recorder and descended the stairs for the kitchen. A spider as big as your thumb scooted down the bannister behind him.

Mary was at the Daily News, checking off her Wingo numbers. She played all the Zingos, Wingos, and Lottos. Each morning brought another chance to win a million. Her corner of the table by the stove was cluttered with all kinds of tickets, bingo circulars, crossword puzzles, coupons, and contests for prizes like a fun-filled trip to Atlantic City. Stan waited for her to be finished with the News and move on to the Post. Then he could have all his favorite funnies. The Times was lying there unopened (nobody read that thing but Carmela) and so was Newsday, the one they all read while waiting for the News or the Post to be free.

“Good morning, dear.” He kissed her on the cheek.

“They caught that fellow who was robbing all the 7-Elevens,” Mary said. “About time, too. He’s been busy as a widow at the fair.”

Stan reached into Mary’s apron pocket and switched the news channel of the radio over to WQXR, the classical station, then took his seat.

“Is today league day?” They bowled together on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then again with the league every Friday.

“Sure.” She looked at him over the tops of her reading glasses. “You might want to put your bermudas on. News says it’s going to be a scorcher.”

“Claire’s bed is empty. She sleep out on the porch again all night?”

“Mmm.”

Stan shook his head. He sipped his juice and Mary handed him the News.

“You give it back before Carmela gets it. She’ll do the crossword out from under me.”

In marched Michaelaen, stark naked and transporting a truck in one downy arm.

“Back in your room and don’t come out without your shorts.” Mary reached for the scissors and began her coupon clipping. Michaelaen returned in a moment wearing nice plaid bathing trunks. He went out the screen door and into the yard to go check on his rabbits. Zinnie came in, her short blond curls spilling this way and that, and kissed her parents good morning, all the while busily at work with a nail file.

Mary put a glass of juice down in front of her. “No guns at the table, officer.”

Zinnie removed her pistol and stuck it on top of the refrigerator. She yawned and eyed the News in her father’s hands.

Michaelaen, satisfied that his rabbits had lived through the night (no small feat with all the raccoon about), returned and climbed onto Zinnie’s lap. She spread his green mint jelly onto a piece of white bread, folded it over, and pushed it into his little mouth. He cradled his truck and chewed.

Carmela entered crisply, her usual forboding self without her coffee, so no one greeted her yet. Neat as a pin, her black hair coiled in a knot at the nape of her neck, Carmela buried herself behind the Times. She swallowed a series of pills: lecithin, rose hips, brewer’s yeast, and silica, a round of B’s, a multi, an E, and an unscented garlic. (In the winter she included cod liver oil.) She sloshed this parade down with one long gulp of black coffee.

A sirening cop car raced down Eighty-fourth Avenue and up to the woods.

“Gee, that’s close,” said Mary. “I hate sirens.” She loved them, really, but she didn’t think she should.

“Anybody got ‘Dear Abby’?” asked Zinnie.

A resounding belch from the Times alerted them that Carmela was now awake, aware, and prepared for verbal exchange. “Jesus,” she swore at a picture of a rather mannish-looking female politician. “Who the hell does this friggin upstart think she is.”

“She needs a good slam bam in the thank you, ma’am,” Zinnie agreed. “Is Claire out on the porch? What does she think, she’s still in the Himalayas? You’d better tell her, Mom. She can’t sleep out there.”

“Why not?” Carmela arched one well-plucked brow. “I’m sure she’s only levitating.”

“Better,” Stan said, “she sleeps on the porch than over there in God knows where with God knows whom.”

“Hear that?” said Zinnie. “Another siren.”

“They both seem to have stopped by the monument,” Stan lifted an ear and strained to look outside.

“It’s probably crack smokers, again,” Mary decided.

“Too early in the morning for crack smokers,” Zinnie said knowingly. “And anyway, no one wastes sirens on crack smokers.” She took a bottle of clear nail polish out of her trousers pocket and repaired a chip. “What’s Claire doing wandering around the woods by herself? Mrs. Dixon says she’s always in the woods.”

“Taking pictures,” Mary sighed. “What else?”

“Well, tell her she can’t just sashay through the woods around here anymore. This neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.”

“You tell her,” Stan said. “She listens to you.”

“I already told her not to sleep in the hammock. So where is she? Sleeping in the hammock.”

“She does have the dog out there,” Mary pointed out.

“Hah,” Carmela snorted. “A lot of good he’ll do her. He’s off half the night looking for girls.”

“He sure is,” reflected Stan with a touch of pride.

“You wouldn’t think he could still get it up at his age,” Carmela mused out loud.

“Carmela!” Mary waggled her head. “Such thoughts!”

Zinnie looked up from her manicure. “Aw, c’mon ma. We’re grown-up, divorced women.”

“Well, I’m not divorced. Neither is your father and neither is Michaelaen. Majority rules.”

“I am too divorced,” insisted Michaelean.

“Oh, yeah?” Zinnie shook him around on her lap. “Where’s ya papers, huh?”

“Claire’s not divorced, either,” Carmela added, somewhat viciously, for they all knew that Claire had been “involved” with two different men, neither of whom she’d told them much about.

“The last one was a duke, you know,” Zinnie, still impressed, reminded them.

“That and a token will get you on the subway,” Carmela said.

Zinnie helped herself to another poached egg. “A hell of a lot more interesting than that dip shit accountant you were married to.”

“At least Arnold didn’t live off my money, like hers did.”

“Right. He left you so well off. That’s why he’s got a house in Bayside and you’re back in Richmond Hill with us.”

“Arnold might be tight,” Carmela smiled, “but he never took it in the kicker.”

“Now, girls.”

“That’s ok, Mom,” Zinnie shrugged. “It wasn’t Freddy’s fault he turned out gay. And it wasn’t mine, either.”

Mary frowned. “Well, then, at least not in front of Michaelaen.”

“I don’t know why the hell not,” Zinnie buttered her English muffin. “At least when he grows up he’ll know enough to marry someone who knows what they’re there for.”

“It says here,” Stan interjected, “that they’re thinking of making the old Valencia Theatre into a landmark.”

Mary’s coffee pot suspended in midair. “I remember going there with my cousin Nancy as a girl. She took the trolley in from Brooklyn and we packed a lunch and went to the Valencia. This was the country to her, can you imagine?”

“Really, Zinnie,” Carmela snorted. “You talk as though you’d never heard of homosexuality when you married Freddy.”

“That’s just what I mean. I knew it existed in Greenwich Village, but no one ever spoke of it in normal terms. Everyone around here whispered about things like that while we were growing up. I never imagined it happened in normal people, too. What I say is, the more matter of fact you are about something, the less it can hurt you.”

Mary Breslinsky cupped her face and shook her head. “Well, if anything, this family has become more matter of fact. More coffee, Stan? Stan? Arsenic in your coffee?”

“Hmmm? Uh. Uh huh.” Stan was lost in Jimmy Breslin’s column.

“See what I mean?” She filled his cup.

“Who does this Breslin think he is?” shouted Stan. “He’s got it in for the entire NYPD!”

“Just the corrupt ones, Dad,” Carmela spoke with elaborate patience, “and there are enough of them.” Carmela had exchanged three words with Jimmy Breslin at a press party. Now she was keeper of his every motive and intention.

“No,” Stan grew agitated. “He accuses the whole force!”

“He’s practically right,” Carmela said.

“Oh, no he’s not. You’re not, Zinnie. And Michael sure as hell wasn’t.”

Mary Breslinsky didn’t look up then, because Michael was dead and had been for ten years, and it hurt just as much now as it had then. He was Claire’s twin and he had died at the hands of a young killer he’d tried to talk into surrendering. He’d looked at the thirteen-year-old, tear-stained kid huddling in the stairwell and he’d taken off his gun and walked right into the arms of death. Rookie good-hearted, valiant, stupid Michael.

The Mayor walked into the kitchen.

“I gotta go to work,” Carmela stood.

“Me too,” said Zinnie, but she didn’t move, she sat there, because she knew that if the Mayor was here, Claire was coming in, and she loved Claire, loved to look at her face. Claire had Michael’s clear blue eyes, pure as sea glass, and Zinnie hadn’t had them to look into since she was fifteen. Zinnie had thought she’d lost the both of them back then, because Claire hadn’t been able to stay home after Michael died.

“If you’re going to put on something cooler,” Mary told Stan, “you’d better get cracking.”

The Mayor, glad to see breakfast coming to such an abrupt halt—there would be that much more leftovers for the picking—jumped into Stan’s chair to oversee what Mary might unthinkingly discard. There was no sense in being wasteful. He whimpered at the sight of Carmela’s three quarters of a piece of buttered toast heading for the bin.

“What, you want that, too?” Mary looked at him skeptically. “I don’t know how you can enjoy it in all this heat. All right. Take it.” She finished up most of the dishes (Mary had a dishwasher but was rarely known to use it), left the coffee on for Claire, took her apron off irritably, and went out into the yard with Michaelaen. He’d help her water the strawberries. He was the only one who could do it without wetting the leaves.

Mary was annoyed at Stan for bringing up Michael. She knew she shouldn’t be, but she was. She didn’t want them upsetting Claire so soon after she’d come home and she might very well have been listening. That was the type she was. Michael had been the talker and she the listener. Gravy and bread. Claire had all but died herself when Michael was killed, and Mary knew inside herself what kind of suffocating pain Claire felt when she bumped into some old thing of Michael’s that they still had lying about. A picture. Or Michael’s old copies of Motor Trend that no one had seen fit to throw away. What if Claire took off again? What then? A nervous breeze unsettled the trees. Mary looked up and narrowed her eyes. The white sky glared. With any luck they’d have a thunder storm.

“Gram?” Michaelaen wrapped his hand around her thumb.

“Mmm?”

“What’s a kicker?”

Claire, in her father’s knee-length undershirt, bleary-eyed and mouth still parted from her dreams, came into the kitchen, tripped quietly over the vacuum cleaner, and dunked her whole face under the faucet. Was the cloth she dried off with the same as one she remembered from years ago? It smelled the same. Ivory Snow and Cheerios.

“We have bathrooms here in America for that sort of thing,” Zinnie said.

Claire turned and looked at Zinnie, all grown up and sharp as a tack. When Claire had left New York, Zinnie had still been wearing braces. Now here she was: married, a mother, divorced. There and back and no scars on the outside to show for it. But then Zinnie had been the kind of kid who would take a tumble off her bike and laugh out loud. Hard. Zinnie used to tag along with Claire and Michael all the time back then. She’d been their favorite. Claire suddenly felt too old for so early in the morning. She poured a cereal bowl half up with coffee and the other half with milk. Then she lit a cigarette.

Zinnie watched the cool blue smoke surround Claire’s tousled head. “Whadda ya takin’ pictures in the woods for?”

“Oh. It’s the people.”

“What people?”

“The old people who promenade up there. Half the survivors of Dachau and Auschwitz seem to be living right up here in the apartments at the end of Park Lane South.”

“And you like that, eh?”

“I like them,” Claire admitted, enjoying her coffee. No one who’d lived in India could ever take a luxurious cup of well-brewed coffee for granted. “They fascinate me because they survived what was impossible. They’re very sad and matter of fact and somehow not bitter at all. Numbers tattooed on their arms as though they were cattle. They have faces that shrug.”

“So you photograph them.”

“Well, I’m starting to. They’re opening up a little more now that they think I understand Yiddish.”

“Now you speak Yiddish. My sister the Jew.”

“I don’t understand it, really. But it’s not too different from Schweitze-Deutsch—Swiss-German. Between High German and Swiss, you can pretty much understand.”

“High German, Low German—it’s all Greek to me.”

“Anyway, they have extraordinary faces for black and white.”

Zinnie rolled her eyes. “If you think they’re good, I oughta take you with me on my four to midnights. You want characters, I’ll give you characters.”

Claire looked stung. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I’m having a hard enough time getting used to the idea of you being a cop … let alone drive around with you in uniform … and you deliberately conjuring up all sorts of dangerous possibilities just to make my day … even though I would give anything to photograph the authentic types you must meet up with.”

“I don’t get it. I mean, how can you get so excited about these normal creeps when you’ve been all over the world? You’ve seen just about everything, and you act all hepped-up and goggly-eyed to photograph the local riffraff.”

“You’d be enthused, too, if you’d been gone for ten years.”

“I doubt it.”

“Ah, but you would, Zinnie. You’d come back with new eyes. You only can’t see what you’re so used to you can’t see it.”

“I dunno. You’re the artist in the family. I’ll let you ‘capture’ the neighborhood while I go capture the mutts.”

“The who?”

“The mutts … perps. The inmates from our very own concentration camp: Ye Olde Ghetto.” She stood up and retrieved her gun from the fridge, slipped it into her arm holster, and covered it with her very best seersucker jacket.

The Mayor was rummaging through his toy box. He had a worn out grocery carton that housed his decade of a lifetime’s accumulation of bones and doggy toys, silly things that people give to animals to chew on: plastic frogs and purple pussy cats and, in the Mayor’s case, a fine figure of a gnawed up Barbie doll. The Mayor never gave up on a toy. He might stick it away in the box and forget about it for a year or two, but he was a sentimental old sod, and out he’d haul the smelly thing, sooner or later, give it a friendly chomp, and rest his snout on it for old times’ sake. Then he’d fall asleep, its reminiscent odors transcending him to dreams of long ago and far away. This morning it was a little french fries container, shredded and almost colorless, but a favorite just the same at times like these, when no one paid him any mind.

Claire leaned back in her chair and watched him. How easy it was, she thought, to love someone or something that could never hurt you. How wonderful it would be not to know that—to be innocent and still think that the world offered nothing more than what you wanted to take. She longed, for a moment, for the innocence she’d lost. Growing up hadn’t solved all of the mysteries. It just pushed them to the back shelf.

Out the window and across the street, an elderly figure in red tottered across her backyard lawn. Even at that distance, her gash of lipstick was visible.

Claire sat up straight. “Is that Iris von Lillienfeld?”

“Huh? Oh, sure, that’s her. Who else wears Japanese kimonos and emeralds at seven o’clock in the morning?”

“I can’t believe she’s still alive!”

“Oh, she’s alive all right. To the great dissatisfaction of every real estate agent in town.”

“I’ll bet. That house looks like Rhett Butler will be home any minute. I wonder if she’d let me photograph her?”

“Not likely. That old broad is a recluse from the get go. She thinks she’s Garbo. Ooo, this was funny. Her dog—she’s got this really themey poodle—well, this dog was in heat and you know how uh … virile the Mayor here is—”

“Ha.”

“Yeah, he practically lived over there. Wild. She won’t be bothered with people, but the dog didn’t seem to put her back up too much. At least she didn’t complain. Although how is she gonna complain, when all she bothers to speak in is German? Hey! You speak Kraut. Naw, she’d never let you in. She wouldn’t even let the city tree pruners in—”

“Do you remember, Zinnie,” Claire interrupted, “how Michael used to love that woman? He used to tell me she could read the future. Remember how he was the only one not afraid to go into her backyard? We all used to call her the old witch and throw stones and run away, and Michael used to crawl through the hedge and visit her? Remember?”

“I don’t know,” Zinnie turned her head away moodily. “I was too young, I guess. No, wait. I do remember him going over there. There was a nest of baby robins knocked out of the maple in a storm and everyone said that the cats were sure to get them and that it was too bad because you couldn’t put them in a cage or they would die in captivity. Michael went over there—I remember he did, because I was scared to death she’d put a spell on him. Yeah, and then he came back … went into the garage, put the ladder smack in the middle of the backyard, in the shade but not too close to the trees, made a nest at the top, and popped them in, and he covered, I mean completely covered, the ladder steps with thorny rose branches so the cats couldn’t climb up.”

“And Mom was furious that half of her rose bushes were destroyed.”

“Right. But those robins, they lived. Remember they lived? He left his little nest open at the top so the parent robins could go on feeding them from above, and they all lived. Every one of them. And Iris von Lillienfeld gave Michael that idea.”

They shook their heads fondly at the memory. Claire bubbled with laughter. “I can still see Pop putting bacon bits on a pole with scotch tape and hoisting it up to them.”

“They ate it, too, the carnivorous little devils. I wonder where Mom and Michaelaen went,” Zinnie bolted back to the present. “Probably up to the woods to see what all the sirens were about.” She put the ceiling fan on low. They could hear the strains of Pagliacci from upstairs.

“Zinnie, I wanted to speak to you about Carmela.”

“Oh, yeah? How come?”

“I don’t know. Is she all right?”

“Whadda ya mean? Carmela hasn’t been all right since I’ve known her.”

“Yes, but besides that. She seems so sour.”

“Yeah, well, her divorce was pretty bloody. And he took the house ’cause he supported her while she was getting her masters.”

“But why did they break up?”

“They fought all the time.”

“So does everyone.”

Zinnie looked left and right. “Promise you won’t tell anyone? Especially not Mom?”

“Certainly I promise,” Claire crossed her heart. She liked the idea of a secret with Zinnie. Particularly since Zinnie had come across her twice talking to herself since she’d come home.

Zinnie lowered her voice. “Right when Carmela was working on her finals, she got pregnant. And she got an abortion. Without telling Arnold.”

“What?”

“Sure. You know nothin’s-gonna-stand-in-my-way Carmela. The only reason I found out was because she started hemorrhaging afterward and she called me up to take her back to the clinic. He wound up finding out about it anyway. She hit him with it during one of their famous shouting matches. You know, top of the ninth and the bases are empty? She just laced it into him ’cause she had nothing else left to hit him with, I guess. Anyhow, that was the beginning of the end. Now she’s all wrapped up in this therapy shit. Even the people she hangs out with are these intellectual, overanalytical uptown types.”

“Too much Freud, not enough roast beef?”

“Yup. Exactly. Now she writes about ‘winter- or summer-palette people’ and ‘hemline psychosyndromes’ and she calls herself a columnist. She makes me sick. I mean, she has such a good mind and it’s all off in the wrong direction. The divorce just sent her off the deep end, Claire, I swear it did.”

“You and Freddy went through it. And you had Michaelaen. You seem all right.”

“Do I? I was pretty shaken up at the time. But with Freddy and me it was different. We were friends growing up. I still love him, you know it? I always will, the sap. I mean, behind all the fresh-out-of-the-closet fruitcake, Freddy’s a stand-up guy … and he pays all of Michaelaen’s bills, without being asked to. He’s got a steady boyfriend already, can you imagine? They’re opening a restaurant on Queens Boulevard.” She laughed ironically. “May they live happily ever after.”

Zinnie stretched as though she didn’t give a hoot. “God, I’m tired,” she moaned. “I just get used to one shift and they put me on another. Say, Claire? Whatever did happen with that duke guy?”

“Wolfgang? The last time I saw him he was leading some Brahmanic heiress around by the nose.”

“You still hurting?”

Claire’s eyes went out the window and all the way up Park Lane South. “It’s difficult to describe. I feel lighter. After I left Wolfgang in Delhi, I spent six months on my own in the Himalayas. In a place called Dharam Sala. McLeod Gange, Dharam Sala. It’s a sort of refugee camp for Tibetans. Anyway, after one sort of difficult but illuminating month, I couldn’t figure out why I’d stayed with him as long as I had. In Dharam Sala, I started looking at things in a different way, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Those Himalayas’ll clean your eyes right out.”

“Aw, c’mon Zinnie. Not you, too.”

“All right, go on. The Himalayas cut your cataracts. And then?”

“And then I decided that as long as I was changing half of my life, I might as well change the rest of it. No more working for travel brochures or fashion magazines. I didn’t have too much money left over so I sold my pearls—”

“Those luscious pearls from the German doctor? How could you?!”

“They didn’t exactly go with my life-style anymore,” Claire laughed. “They hadn’t for a long time.” (No sense mentioning all the other things she’d had to sell.) “Anyway, to make a long story short, without Wolfgang’s expensive tastes to support, I figured I could do what I wanted for a while. You know, the ‘virtue of selfishness’ and all that.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. You usually bolshevize everything.”

“Not anymore I don’t. Not after Wolfgang.”

“Tell me something. Did he do coke?”

“Sure he did coke. That’s why his allowance from home was never enough.”

“Did you?”

“Oh, God no. I got high on my mantras.”

“Huh?”

“Meditation.”

“Oh. Well, just don’t go doin’ none a that stuff around here,” Zinnie warned. “Bad enough Mom’s got Michaelaen going to church with her.”

Claire stood up and paced to and fro. “I don’t pray anymore,” she scowled. “I’m so full of self-congratulation when I do that I disgust myself. It’s like, I’ve done this, so now I deserve a reward … or … or progress, at least. My motives are all egotistical and self-serving, which is not the point at all, or it shouldn’t be.” She threw her arms up in a hopeless, almost comical gesture. “I’m much better when I’m not so good.”

They looked at each other.

“And,” she added, “I did used to smoke hashish occasionally. Does that make you feel better?”

“Not really. So then what happened with Wolfgang?”

“I guess I started seeing him for what he was.”

“Yeah, a pimp.”

“I wouldn’t call him a pimp.”

“I would. He sent you out to work and he collected, right?”

“He helped me, Zinnie. I have to say that. He got me lots of clients and he can be very charming. He kept things running smoothly on the shoots.”

“Like I said. A pimp. What are you defending him for, huh? So you wised up and got him out of your life. Next?”

“You’re funny. You really are a cop, aren’t you? Okay. I thought I’d start all over, you know? Back to go. I’ve been trying to get a book together for years. Only my best stuff. When I came home I started looking around me. Zinnie, the Himalayas are magical, but this is real life. This place is a photographer’s dream.”

“I get the idea. Real life is what you photograph after you’ve photographed all the dreams. But you don’t wanna go along even on a day tour with me. And how are you going to support yourself while you’re being artsy-craftsy?”

“I’ve got enough money saved to pay Mom and Pop rent, and I thought I’d ask Mom if I could make a small darkroom down in the cellar.”

“In all that junk?”

“I only need a sink and darkness, Zinnie, not atmosphere.”

“So make a darkroom. Maybe you’ll meet some nice guy in Manhattan when you try and sell your pictures.”

Vexed, Claire rummaged through a little bin of blueberries. “I don’t want to meet anybody,” she said. “I want to stay around here and shoot pictures that tell stories without words. I want to shoot anything I well please and not what some art director thinks will sell.”

“And the first time you hear someone mention they’re going to clean up Michael’s grave … you’ll hightail it off to some ashram and not come back for another ten years.”

Claire shook her head slowly. “No, Zin. I came to terms with Michael’s death a long time ago. I carry it always, in my heart, like you do. New York doesn’t bring me any closer to it.”

Zinnie, angry and embarrassed by her own emotion, blurted, “It’s New Yawk, jerk! This ain’t no David Niven film.”

They laughed together at themselves, relieved not to speak about Michael. Zinnie sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe this is a David Niven film and I’m the one going off the deep end.”

Impulsively, Claire threw her arms around Zinnie and held her. “Of all of us, I think you’re the one who’s the most together.”

“That’s not saying a hell of a lot,” Zinnie smiled.

“You’ll be just fine,” Claire said. “Although I’ll never understand how you can be a cop. You’re so beautiful and smart. You did so well in college. Why don’t you go to law school?”

“I don’t want to, Claire,” Zinnie pulled away. “You’re not the only one who loves what she’s doing, you know.”

“I know. Those aren’t the reasons why I don’t want you to be a cop, anyhow.”

They watched each other carefully, each checking the other one out for emotional scars from Michael’s death. Claire knew that a good part of Zinnie’s joining the force had been because of him. She hoped there had not been too much revenge in her reasoning. Zinnie, on the other hand, remembered just how devastated Claire had been at the time. She wondered how difficult it was for Claire to watch her go out the door with a gun. Whatever she felt, that pain would always be there between them as a bond, and there was nothing either of them could, or wanted, to do about it.

Zinnie touched Claire’s hair. “What about you? You wanna come out with me tonight? Do a little trip the light fandango up at Regents Row?”

“Me? Oh, no, thanks. I’ve had it with men.”

“Is that right? And how do you expect to hold them off, eh?”

“Don’t you worry about me. I’ve got castration toxins leaking out of my eyeballs.”

“I’ll bet,” Zinnie sneered.

“Anyway, I’ve got no time. I want to finish my black-and-white series as soon as possible. The colors around here are just too tempting in this season. Look at the dog! He’s playing catch all by himself! Look!”

“Oh, he’s just showing off. So. You think this neighborhood is great, eh? Let me see. You’ve got the old Jews and the young Israelis north of the park. You’ve got your mafia fledglings along Lefferts. And you’ve got your Puerto Ricans, Colombians, and Indians down on Jamaica. You’ve got some taste, kid.”

Claire didn’t say anything then, because she couldn’t describe what she felt when she saw an Indian woman in a shocking-pink sari gliding past an el train covered with graffiti. She’d have to shoot the scene and show it to her. Claire’s heart swelled when she thought of all the ideas she had for portraying the neighborhood. She’d show the standing-stillness in all the flurry of transition. She’d achieve something true. And then maybe Zinnie wouldn’t look at her with that suspicious, worried face. “Look, Zinnie,” she said, “I want to get one thing straight. No, listen to me. Don’t look off as if you weren’t listening. I just want to tell you that I’m not running off again. Not anywhere. And I won’t have you and Mom and the rest of them pussy-footing around me as if I were a ghost. When I said I was over Michael’s death, I meant it. Will you tell them that? Will you help me try and make them understand?”

Zinnie pried a perfectly good cuticle up with her teeth and bit it off. “Sure,” she said. She would have said more, but then Stan came back into the kitchen, lilly-legged in his bermuda shorts, and announced that he was heading on up to the woods to see what all the commotion was about.

“Wanna come?” he asked.

Claire shook her head no.

“I was looking out the bathroom window. They’ve got the brass up there,” he tempted Zinnie.

“Okey-doke,” Zinnie agreed.

I’ll not be left out of this, the Mayor thought, and he hoisted his broad beam up on all fours.

Claire wandered around the old house while they were gone, sipping her bowl of coffee, enjoying the dark rooms and the full sun blasting against the screens. She sat up in the dining room, window seat, always her favorite place, and felt the house—just her and the house. This was where she’d curled up as a child and pored through each new issue of National Geographic, struck with wonder at the glossy, important-looking pages alive with color and exotic cultures. This was where it had all begun for her. The tall-ceilinged rooms were littered with dusty books and her father’s homemade cannons. All of these things, she thought, so long in their same old spots that you forgot they were there. She bet nobody in the family ever saw the stained glass window over the pantry anymore. Well, maybe Michaelaen did.

Michaelaen saw a lot of things the others didn’t. He was an intense child, very involved in his four-year-old world of animals and mechanics. Michaelaen seemed to have inherited his grandpa’s love of junkyards. That’s what the two of them would do for fun: visit junkyards and collect “treasure,” odd bits of copper and brass and all sorts of rubble that could only attract little boys and old men. It was a good education for the boy, Stan swore. He was learning the value of real resources, he said. There was some question as to who enjoyed these jaunts to the junkies more, Stan or Michaelaen.

The cellar was so full of their accumulations that a ragged path was all you got when you had to make your way through. Stan and Michaelaen found enough place to do things down there. They would hammer and fiddle and come up the stairs all covered with dirt. Stan would dust his knees off proudly and say, “He’s all boy, that kid.” The only trouble was, he’d say it over and over again, as if he were trying to reassure himself.

“Shut up, Pop, willya?” Zinnie would finally look up from the TV and snap at him. And Michaelaen would busy himself with some toy car, pretending not to understand for fear their feelings would be hurt.

Claire smiled to herself. Six days home and already she knew their ways. Any minute now they’d all be back and full of the news from the park, bubbling and scandalized, each with his or her own private theory, clattering in and out and filling up the now-still rooms.

White sheets hung on the line in the yard. A small breeze rippled, and the spaces revealed the distant figure of Iris von Lillienfeld, ruby red across the street in her own very green backyard. Claire froze. Then, like a huntress stalking her prey, she crept across the room to her camera bag, whispering to herself, “Please, God, don’t let her move”; and hurriedly, trembling, she attached a zoom lens to her camera, expertly and swiftly loaded a thousand ASA color film, and turned to wait. “Come on, God, now give me back that little breeze. Oh, come on, don’t let me down.” And framed by a sudden ripple of the weightless white and sturdy clothespins was Miss von Lillienfeld, now close through the magic of zoom, standing still with brittle grace and contemplation and a pigeon on her pillbox hat.

All the mantras and the prayers and even the gange Claire had smoked trying to lose herself, and always her consciousness had been there, a leering monkey on her back, an ever-present watching, observing her efforts and plaguing her sincerity. Now here she was doing what she loved, and this was what she couldn’t feel because she wasn’t there. She was lost in what she was doing, looking out instead of in and only coming to herself when she was through—when all the frames were full.

Claire was just putting away her camera bag when they came back. Anticipating their excited chatter, she was surprised when her mother came speedily in gripping Michaelaen, her lips pressed into a hard, drawn line, her face white as chalk, the Mayor trotting busily behind.

“What’s going on?” asked Claire.

Mary, making a sign that consisted of nothing more than a nod of the head but that meant, “Not now, Claire,” and “Not in front of Michaelaen,” and “What in God’s name is the world coming to” all in one movement, marched through the rooms with a determined gait and left her standing open-mouthed and alone once again in the kitchen. A moment later Stan came in solemnly, shaking his head as he sat down at the table.

“Gee, Pop … what’s—”

“It was murder, Claire. Up in the woods. Jeez …” He covered his face with a great freckled paw.

“Who—” she whispered. “Who was murdered?” Claire remembered with fresh, cold pain the moment they’d told her that Michael was dead.

“A boy,” Zinnie answered dully from the doorway. “A little boy. It was really bad, Claire.” Zinnie looked as though she were going to be ill.

“Sit down, Zin,” Claire’s heart beat with morbid curiosity. “Did you see?”

“Yeah, I saw. The rest of them had to stay down by the monument, but they heard enough. It was up in the pine forest. An old man found the body. One of your old Jews, Claire. Taking his morning stroll. He was wailing like a banshee when we got there. They had to take him to the hospital for shock. Christ, that kid was really messed up.”

“Nothing like this ever happened before in this neighborhood,” Stan murmured. “I’ve never heard of anything like that around here.”

Mary came in swiftly. “Michaelaen’s in his room watching ‘Woody Woodpecker,’” she said to Zinnie. “I don’t want anybody talking about it in front of him. You got that?”

“Sure, Mom,” “Of course, dear,” they all nodded in agreement. You didn’t argue with Mary when she meant business, and she meant it now. She took a frozen fruit bar from the freezer and started to leave, then stopped in her tracks.

“It was drugs, wasn’t it, Stan? Only Colombians murder children for vendettas.”

“It looks like it, Mary,” Stan agreed.

Mary swept out of the room to try to further distract her grandson. They waited until the sound of her footsteps reached the top of the stairs.

“Not for nothing, Dad,” Zinnie locked eyes with her father, “but that was no Colombian’s revenge.”

“Those Latinos have pretty short fuses, honey.”

“Cut the crap, Pop. I’m on the job, remember? I saw him.”

“I know. I know. Only not in front of your mom. Not one word.”

“That bad?” Claire caught her breath.

“The killer was a maniac.”

“Anybody who would kill a little boy is a maniac,” Stan fumed.

“Yeah, but Pop, this was as sick as they come. It was … evil.”

Claire shuddered.

Zinnie’s upper lip was beaded with sweat. “And he was … uh … abused, you know? Just a little kid. Maybe seven or eight. I used to see him up in the playground. He was a real good-looking little kid, you know? I think it was him. It was hard to tell.” Zinnie’s voice caught in her throat. “He was lying there in a clearing of pine needles … he had this look on his face, his … his eyes were open …”

“All right, Zinnie,” Stan patted her on the shoulder.

“I’m okay.” Zinnie brushed his hand away, the way she would when she was truly upset. “The press didn’t get it. Not yet. They got him out of there and into the body bag quick. You never saw those Queens boys work so fast.”

“But they’ll get the story from the old man,” said Claire.

“Sure they will. But they’ll keep him sedated so long, he won’t be giving interviews till later. They’ve got to do a positive ID on the body. At least the press won’t have pictures. They’d have a panic out there.”

“A panic is better than another murder,” Claire said.

“Not until they notify the parents, it ain’t,” Zinnie snapped. “And I don’t want Michaelaen riding his bike up there with this going on.”

“He’ll come bowling with your mother and me. And we’ll just have to take shifts keeping an eye on him.”

“Listen, Claire,” Zinnie pointed a finger at her, “You’re another one I don’t want up in the park. Not for a minute, you hear me?”

“Oh, Lord, Zinnie, I wouldn’t even think of going in deep—”

“Not even on the rim, dammit! Don’t you hear what I’m saying?!”

“Okay, okay. I won’t go into the woods till all this blows over, all right, sheriff?”

“Promise!”

“I promise.”

Zinnie stood. “Now I really gotta go.”

“You going to stop in at the one-o-two?” Stan asked her.

“I can’t do that, Pop. You know that. My precinct’s in the city.”

“I know. I know. Just unofficially, I mean.”

“No. They’ve got a whole new staff over there. I don’t know anybody in there anymore, except Furgueson. It’s all new. And look. You keep Carmela’s nose out of this. You know, ‘Miss Reporter.’ That’s all we need is her poking her nose around up there and getting into trouble.”

“God forbid,” agreed Stan.

“So just don’t tell her about it. Let her hear Mom’s version.”

“Fine,” said Claire, feeling all at once as though Zinnie were the elder and she the younger.

Zinnie went to say goodbye to Michaelaen. Then she climbed into her gray Datsun. Claire and Stan sat silently and watched her drive away. The ceiling fan went slowly round and the sink faucet dripped.

“Pop?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing, but early this morning, when I was out in the hammock, I saw this car drive by.”

“So?”

“No, I mean very early. Before the sun was quite up. An old Plymouth came down from the park.”

Stan’s eyes focused on her own. “You see the driver?”

“No, but I remember part of the license. I remember because it had three numbers from … well, three numbers or three other numbers. They were either Buddha’s estimated year of ascension or the year of his birth. I don’t know which of the two it was, now, because I went right back to sleep, but it was definitely either one or the other.”

“Jesus, Claire, which numbers??!”

“Well, it was either 563 or 473.”

“You’re sure?”

“I don’t remember which, but it was definitely one of those. I’m sure of that.”

“We’d better go over to the precinct.”

“Oh no, Dad, not me. I don’t want any part of detectives. You go. You tell them, all right? Don’t get me involved.”

“I understand.” He put his big hand on top of her small one. “I’ll go. And not a word to your mother. Tell her I just ran over to the store. Tell her I went to look in on how the new kid is doing and I’ll be back in half an hour. She’ll fall for it.”

“Pop?”

“Yuh?”

“Don’t bring any cops home, all right? I don’t want to go through it.” She stood on the back stoop and watched him until he was out of sight. When she turned to go back in the kitchen she could have sworn she saw Iris von Lillienfeld looking dead at her from a half-closed window across the street.

Michaelaen sat quietly on his bed. He listened. Grandma was down in the cellar putting in the laundry. Aunt Claire would not come walking in without knocking. He shook his head to himself. She acted like he was a grown-up. Michaelaen went into his closet bottom, carefully moved his folder of Spider Man stickers, and pulled out the tackle box Grandpa had given him for his very own. He carried the box back to the bed. For a moment he just sat there and held the box fondly. Then he blew on it. A nice powder of dust made a storm in the sunshine. He watched it settle on the wooden floor and then opened the box. There was Daddy’s fine school ring, safe and sound. There was the ivory elephant Aunt Claire had sent from India, the insect corpses he loved best, a magic blue jay feather, an abacus from Chinatown, and a cat’s eye marble. It was the best cat’s eye marble he had ever seen. Probably worth a lot of money. Ah, there it was. The cufflink. A genuine roulette wheel. He gave it a good spin and his eyes lit up to follow the golden ball round and around. Eleven. Red. He laughed out loud. It was a shame he couldn’t show it off. But he had sworn he’d never tell, right before Miguel had pressed it into his hand. That was the deal. He wouldn’t tell what they were up to, looking at those pictures and all, and Miguel would let him keep the cufflink. Only he must never tell. No matter what.

Johnny Benedetto parked the silver Triumph Stag on the hill behind the pizza place. It was still broiling at three PM. He loosened his tie and removed his jacket. A large big-jointed man, he never felt comfortable in a suit and there were days he forgot he wasn’t still wearing a uniform. Johnny took off his shoulder strap and slipped his gun into the Velcro holder in his sock. He needed a shave. His thick black hair curled onto his collar. The sharp hazel green eyes caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror. That was another thing. A haircut.

Swiftly and with a thin-waisted grace for one so broad and hulkish as himself, Johnny sprang from the car and headed for the Row. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday and this wasn’t the kind of man who took his appetite lightly. There came a point when he had to eat.

Regents Row was dark and cool, was reasonably priced, served magnificent steaks, and catered to the force. Not that you were treated special in there, mind you. You waited your turn for a table no matter who you were. Hizzy ran that place the same way Captain Furgueson ran the station house: no favors for no one, no freebies. And Hizzy never forgot your name. Johnny respected that, too. It showed control.

He slung his jacket over one shoulder and crossed the street, oblivious to the admiring glances of the housewives coming and going from the supermarket and the Homestead Deli. His shin was throbbing like a bastard but he hardly noticed. One more medal from Nam that congratulated him every time rain was expected.

Johnny opened the door and his heart sank. The bar was filled with women, church social women, waiting to be seated for their Rosary Society lunch. Hizzy came right over and extended his plump hand. “How ya been, Johnny?”

Johnny gave him one of his rare, disarming smiles. “Yourself?”

“Hey, I’m fine,” Hizzy pumped his hand, then waved in a broad, all-encompassing sweep. “Sorry about all this. Every month, like a clock. You can’t get ’em seated and then you can’t get ’em to leave.” He squinted at Johnny. “Bad doings up in the park, huh?”

Johnny looked at his feet and said nothing. Hizzy knew better than that. “I gotta go, Hizzy. Good to see ya an all but I gotta get something to eat real quick and then get some sleep.”

“Why doncha come back in the kitchen and I’ll have Irwin fix you up a couple a sandwiches to go … how bout it?”

“That’s okay, Hizzy. Next time. I’ll get something at the pizza place. Short and sweet.” He knew Hizzy was dying to get some inside dope on the murder. So it had spread this far that quick, eh? Terrific. Nice can a worms this was gonna be. He left as fast as he’d come in and walked across the hot white boulevard. Johnny slapped himself in the head. He must be punchy. He’d told Furgueson he’d try and check out that crackpot license number story. Furgueson had said it was probably a waste of time but Johnny had said he’d look into it anyway. It could wait until he’d had some sleep. It was gonna have to.

The pizza place was pretty empty; at least it was cool and shaded under the canopy on the street. He ordered three slices and a large Coke and sat down at one of the little tables outside. Johnny rubbed his eyes with both hands and looked down the street. He wished the weather would make up its mind. One minute dark clouds threatened and the next you thought you should be at the beach. He was tired. Real tired. He’d just been going off duty when this whole mess had started, and this was the first moment he’d had to sit down and think.

A group of young paisan, the criminal sort with nothing much to do with their daylight hours, cavorted like Gay Parisians at the next two tables. Coke spoons dangled from 18 karat gold chains and silk shirts were opened the obligatory four buttons.

Each passing female was graded with uproarious detail. Plans were made for Saturday night’s rent-a-limo. A blond flight attendant’s phone number changed hands.

They didn’t know who Johnny was (what cop drove a 1972 Triumph Stag?) and so they spoke openly, sometimes in Sicilian, among themselves. He understood most of what they said and on another day would have been remarking every word. As it was, he had other things on his mind, some sort of psychopathic, child-molesting monster whose evil he could still see in his mind’s eye and probably always would, and he wasn’t paying them much mind.

The boy came out with his pizza and Johnny inhaled two of them, swallowed his entire Coke, ordered another, then sat back and enjoyed the third slice. God, he loved good pizza. In all his thirty-three years he must have consumed seven thousand pizzas. Nobody cooked for him, that was for sure. Nobody ever had.

Johnny Benedetto had no family to speak of, unless you counted his old friend Red Torneo. He’d had a wife for about four months. She was lucky she was still alive. He’d found her in bed with her hairdresser. Jesus. He’d put all his clothes in one lousy suitcase while the two of them cowered in the bed like the little pieces of shit that they were, and he’d walked out and he’d never gone back. The next time he’s seen her, and the last, had been at the divorce hearing six months ago. That was it.

Johnny played a hard game of handball, racquets, anything that would keep his massive frame in check and his mind from exploding. He didn’t drink much—once in a while, but not too often. He knew he had to watch his temper. When he was younger, he had often found himself out of control. There were plenty of broken noses walking around New York thanks to him as it was.

What Johnny loved, what made him really tick, were cars. Or, more precisely, engines. Lately he hadn’t even had time for that. Nowadays when he got home to his apartment after work he had all he could do just to climb into bed, roll over, and drift off to sleep, all-encompassing sleep, far away in the land of nod, where there were no murders, no body bags, and no ten-year-old broken bodies, no bodies at all … just the vapor-held swell of a fine-tuned machine doing ninety and the cut-and-dry hum of perfection.

Johnny was a born mechanic, and when he had a problem or just wanted to wind down, that’s what he’d do, go down to Jojenny’s Garage and work on a wreck. If he had nothing of his own to work on, he’d work on somebody else’s. By the time he’d have the thing running, he’d usually have his own problem sorted out in his head.

As a matter of fact, if Johnny hadn’t met Red Torneo as a kid, that’s probably what he would have been, a mechanic.

Red Torneo had been a cop in Bensonhurst, where Johnny’d grown up. Red was a “big brother,” a term used for men who donated their spare time to fatherless kids in the neighborhood. Although Johnny had hated Red with a passion at the beginning, Red had kept after him long after another man would have figured good riddance to bad rubbish, for that was the sort of riffraff Johnny had chosen to hang out with and emulate in his street corner days. Red had taken a real interest, bringing Johnny down to the precinct garage when he’d recognized Johnny’s potential as a mechanic. Though he’d hated to admit it, Johnny was happy. Covered in grease, he’d found acceptance among the “hair bags,” or old-timers, once they’d noticed that suddenly, their crummy cars were running without a hitch. For the first time in his short life, Johnny had had a family of sorts. Red had thought that Johnny was the best damn mechanic he’d ever known, and it’d knocked him for a loop when he’d found out through the desk sergeant that Johnny was taking the police academy test. The more he’d thought about it, though, the more sense it had made. Johnny was the kind of guy you might call extreme, or fanatic, depending on your point of view. Once he made a decision, it was absolute. Better he should stay on this side of the law than the other.

Red was prouder than he’d cared to admit. He liked his beer and he liked to go fishing, so when he’d retired he’d opened up a little bar by the docks down in Sheepshead Bay. Christmas and Easter, Johnny always showed up. Where else did he have to go? That little tramp Johnny had married wasn’t around anymore, thank God, but he’d known from the start that that wouldn’t work out. He hadn’t said nothing, but he’d known. She wasn’t good enough to shine Johnny’s shoes. Johnny had been so broken up at the end that Red had thought he might go under. Only he hadn’t. Not Johnny. He was pretty much over it already, from the scuttlebutt … working the graveyard shift and anything else he could get his hands on. Now that he’d made detective Johnny would be all right. Maybe. He hadn’t been around to see Red in a couple of months.

Johnny Benedetto looked over at the lowlifes at the next table and thought of Red. Shit. If it hadn’t a been for Red, that would probably be exactly where he’d be sitting. Dealing coke. Forget the mechanic idea. If it hadn’t a been for Red, he wouldn’t have even had the cars to work on, let alone persuade to performance, enjoy for a couple of months, and then sell for the next wreck to work on. If it hadn’t been for Red, he’d more likely be stealing them. After they cleaned up this case he was gonna take a ride down to Sheepshead Bay and pay him a visit. What the hell.

Claire had to buy some film. She was reluctant to go all the way into the city to the lab. It would take too much time and she wanted to be back for Michaelaen when her parents returned from their bowling at four. She liked Michaelaen. He reminded her a little bit of … oh, well, he was himself. She liked him for himself. There was a camera store up on Lefferts where she could go. Twice the price, but that couldn’t be helped. Tomorrow she’d take the train and pick up the chemicals she’d need for her lab. All morning she’d been clearing away years of junk from one corner of the cellar, unburying equipment that was dusty but almost certainly still good. This way her mother couldn’t say, “Of course you can have a corner in the basement for your lab. One day, when we get around to clearing away all that stuff.…” Now it was done and there was nothing Mom could do about it. Heh heh.

Claire helped herself to a clean, fluffy towel and went into the shower. You couldn’t beat hot- and cold-running water. Claire arched her brown back and met the needling shower spray head on. It was like music, strong, steady music, and she gave herself up to it, flooded in steam, pouring baby shampoo all over her body, turning this way and that till the stretching coiled backward and forth in some dance of her own graceful rhythm. No. Claire stopped herself from reaching. It would do no good. Not really. Tales of blindness hadn’t sprung from vision itself but from something deeper … more spiritual in its sightlessness. She’d come too far to go back to that, no matter how much it seemed to want to leap out of her. Her dreams would quake inside of her and wake her up but she wouldn’t return to that solitary loneliness she’d used to substitute for fulfillment all during her last relationship.

She left the shower dripping, wiped the fogged-up mirror with the heel of her hand, and looked into her eyes. Yes, it was true. There was a power there that came from overstepping weakness. She winked at her image and busied herself with the hair dryer, now wondering what sort of consciousness the murderer of that small boy must live in. Did he know what he had done? Did he remember? Did he justify his rage? What on earth had made him that way? She remembered the lumbering weight of that rusty gold Plymouth this morning. Could the murderer have been in there, sated and wary? Oh, for goodness sakes, no, she shuddered and laughed to herself. Life was good. She was home. And she mustn’t let her imagination run away with her.

Claire put on a pair of her gauzy white pantaloons from Jaipur and a matching long shirt. In the fall she would have to buy herself some western clothes. The Indians had the right idea about clothes in this weather, though. Too see-through for the neighborhood, she covered herself with a brocaded ivory vest from Kashmir. Claire didn’t put on any makeup, just lined her blue eyes automatically with kajal, not bothering to look in the mirror.

She put her small silk purse across her shoulder, locked the door, and walked down the steps, engulfed all at once by the hot afternoon air. Claire stopped. She had the eerie feeling of being watched. Quickly she looked toward the von Lillienfeld house but no one was there, just a heavy Siamese calmly licking his paws. The murder had her unreasonably jumpy. Halfway down the block she turned again and noticed the Mayor following her. She threw back her fine head of dark hair and laughed. “All right, your honor. I suppose you can take care of yourself in traffic if anybody can. And probably me, too, hmm? Are you coming along to look after me?”

Of course he was coming along to look after her, the Mayor snorted to himself. Why else did she think he’d hung around the house? And this the fish store’s biggest day.

Together they made their long way up the hill. Claire grudgingly kept to the opposite side of the street on Park Lane South. She would have liked to take the woods path but she didn’t dare. She didn’t know which she feared more: the murderer (who was most likely long gone) or Zinnie’s fiery wrath, should she find out, and so she stayed on the other side which was actually very pleasant, lined with mansions from another era and walled in luxurious privet hedging, thick with the unfenceable scents of late wisteria and roses.

Claire told the Mayor all about India as she walked, her memory jogged from the broad yellow heat and the smells and the comfortable shade of the trees. Her sandals made small cushy sounds on the slate and the Mayor’s long nails scratched along. She told him things she’d never tell the others. They would just laugh or shake their heads or not believe her anyway.

The street was crowded up on Metropolitan; they pushed along past the piles of Korean vegetables, neat and brilliant in their tropical rows, then past the antique shops, up Lefferts, by the Jewish temple, and past the cluster of apartment houses until finally they came to the village, old-fashioned and European in style with Tudor walls and crockety red tile roofs. The Homestead Deli, with its good-looking wursts necklacing the lead-paned windows, might just as well have been a village shop in Munich or Zurich. And Regents Row resembled any pub in England. It was a potpourri and charming layout, Claire decided, delighted with the mixture of old world and new, the modern supermarket and the oriental music leaking from the Pakistani Spice Shop. One really could settle down here, so near and yet so far from anything-can-happen Manhattan. Why couldn’t the murder have happened there, where it would seem to belong, instead of here, so close to her family? Hadn’t they been through enough as it was? The dry dead face of Michael in his coffin came back to her in a rush and her mood was ruined. It was too hot after all, she’d just run into the camera shop and hurry back home. Now where on earth was the Mayor?

A clattering of voices and the beginnings of shouts near the corner jolted her out of her reverie.

It was … good God, it was the Mayor tug-of-warring a kosher chicken from a scull-capped, aproned shopkeeper! The Italian louts who held court in front of the pizzeria were howling with laughter and—what else?—rooting for the dog.

Claire, fleet-footed and all business, flew down to the hubbub and yanked the tooth-dented chicken from the fangs of the Mayor.

“Bravo!” the Italians whistled and applauded, “Bravo, bella signorina!”

The shopkeeper, highly offended, flailed his arms and whined and yelled a Yiddish tirade.

Truly sorry, embarrassed, and angry at the Mayor to boot, Claire reached into her purse and hauled out ten dollars.

“So eine scheisse!” the shopkeeper droned on and on, “Schauen Sie mal was der verdammte Hund mit meinem Laden gemacht hat!”

A small crowd had gathered. Claire peered into the cool darkness of the shop and saw, indeed, that the sawdust had been strewn with torn gizzards and three or four other hens, good as new.

She reached back into her purse and pulled out the last of what she had on her, a twenty dollar bill. The shopkeeper, sweat and dandruff glistening from his voluminous neck folds, yammered on in his guttural tongue. “Tya!” he wailed. “What good is that little bit of geld when my entire store was kaputt?” He went on to inform his audience that Claire was a “Schikse pipi mädchen” with a “shit dog.”

That was it for Claire, who’d understood each nasty word. “Is that right?!” she threw the chicken into the street and the contents of her purse right after it.

“This is what I think of your store that has been so totally disheveled! You’re not only an exaggerator, you’re … you’re without resiliency! My dog is not a ‘shit’ as you so loudly proclaim, he happens to be the mayor of this town. And I am no Schiksa floozie but an American who finds you extremely constipated!”

Well, this was all too much for the crew of Italians. Claire’s rage was just too magnificent. They collapsed into peals of laughter and a barrage of lewd Sicilian expletives.

Infuriated, Claire whirled around and yelled, “Stati zita, imbecile!” right in Johnny Benedetto’s minding-his-own-business face.

“Listen, honey—” Johnny protested.

“Don’t call me ‘honey’!” hollered Claire and she snapped away, tripped, and flew over the chicken, marched past the astonished shopkeeper, and hurried down the hill, her knees still trembling with indignation and the face of that … that thoroughly obnoxious Italian. Mollified by all of this off-with-their-heads, the Mayor followed at a respectful distance, his tail muscled down between his legs in solemn retribution, his snout a neat mask of the called-for chagrin. But, by jove, he was pleased.