A COP appeared. Since they had left Joey Compatra’s gym late that afternoon, this was the first cop that Gonzalez had seen. The cop came running in, calling out, “What’s going on here? Now what’s going on here?”

“A man has been shot.”

“Where? Where?” the cop demanded. “Where is he? Who’s been shot? Come on now, stand back.”

Gonzalez smiled wryly. He reached down and touched Sally’s hair. He was noticing things and experiencing sensations. He knew how it felt to be alive. A moment ago he had seen the cop. Now he told himself that Sally’s hair was soft.

“Soft as silk,” he told himself.

He walked over to the cop, and he introduced himself as calmly and quietly as if they were at a precinct breakfast.

“Detective Gonzalez,” he said, “from the Nineteenth Precinct.”

“Yes, sir,” The cop nodded. “What happened here?”

They were standing in front of the killer’s body. The killer lay there, sprawled awkwardly in the unco-ordinated, purposeless position of death. He lay on his back. His face was a cherub’s face, the face of a young boy, relaxed and freed from hate and passion.

“Who killed him?” the cop wanted to know.

The people who had filled the little concert hall were packed in a circle around the two policemen and the dead man. They stood on the stage, on the piano, and on the seats. They were sensitive people. Gonzalez recalled now how sensitive and concerned the people whom you saw at a concert were. Almost any concert. He glanced at their faces and realized that his conclusion held for this place too. Middleaged people, young people, sensitive, thoughtful, gentle—yet they could not drag themselves away from the circle of death. They could not break it up. Death held them and drew them and spoke to them in a dark voice more potent than music. No sensationalism held them here; it was the old, dark, grim, implacable master himself. His tones were irresistible. They remained.

Raising his voice, Gonzalez said to them, “Folks, there’s no use staying here. The performance is over. A man has been killed. He was a murderer. He has been killed in the line of a detective’s duty. Now, if the manager is within sound of my voice, would he please come here. I advise the rest of you to go home.”

The manager appeared as if by magic. A small, worried, bald-headed man, he came into the circle, rubbing his hands nervously and asking for more detailed explanations.

“Hold it for just a moment,” Gonzalez said to him. Gonzalez was explaining to the cop, “That’s right. He’s a contract man and I think he’s from the Coast. I don’t know what his name is, but we’ve been on him all day and he’s been on us all day. Look, I haven’t got time to read back the whole record for you. Just take it easy. Play it by ear from here on and you’ll get the story. Stay here. Maybe this gentleman here …” He pointed to the manager.

“Derby Clement,” the little man said. “I’m the dean of the school. Not precisely the manager, but we don’t have a manager in the sense you mean—”

“Can you find something to cover his face?” Gonzalez asked Clement.

The small man looked around and discovered a horrified young lady to transfer the problem to.

“Alice,” he said, “Alice, find something to cover him with. Do you remember the poncho we had—the one we covered the piano with? That will do if you can find it. Do you know where it is?”

Gulping and nodding, Alice replied that she thought she knew where the poncho was.

Gonzalez glanced around. Sally Dillman was at his elbow.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “What good will it do you to be here?”

“I had to look at him. Don’t you understand that I had to look at him?” Her eyes were fixed on the dead man.

“No, I don’t know why you had to look at him,” Gonzalez said.

“He’s like a little boy, isn’t he? Look at his face. You look at his face and you can’t believe that he could kill anyone. You just can’t believe it.”

Gonzalez said to the cop, “Stay with the body now. I got to call the lieutenant of the Nineteenth. Did you call in for anyone else?”

“I was on foot,” the cop replied.

“All right, I’ll take care of that. But first I got to call the lieutenant. You understand me. Stay with it.”

He raised his voice again. “Ladies and gentlemen, you might as well go home. There’s nothing constructive achieved by standing here and gawking at a corpse.”

The people responded to him and began to file out. Gonzalez took Sally by the arm and asked the dean, “You do have a telephone?”

Delighted with an excuse to get away from the corpse, the dean nodded. “Yes, of course. Let me lead you to it. It’s in the office. You have the office at your disposal, you know. But the performance is ruined. What will people think? I mean—to kill a man here in the school. It’s not right.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Sally said politely and apologetically. “Please, sir, where is a good place to be sick?”

“In the ladies room,” he whispered. He beckoned to another white-faced teen-age girl who was apparently attached to the school, and he said, “Please, take this young lady to the ladies room. She’s going to be sick. So if you could stay with her, that would be very nice. But please take her there quickly.”

He was not aware of Sally’s place in what had occurred, but by Gonzalez’ tone and general air of purpose, he accepted her as a part of what had happened.

The young lady led Sally away, and the dean dolefully directed Gonzalez to the telephone in his office. Gonzalez picked up the phone and dialed the number of the precinct, staring meanwhile at a series of steel engravings that lined the walls of the room. Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Haydn, Hindemith—most of them Gonzalez could not identify. He felt like a barbarian without culture and lost to a world that had real meaning. He was in a place that had meaning. His life of anger, passion, guns, and dead men had no meaning at all.

When Rothschild answered the phone, Gonzalez was annoyed and angry with himself. He said to Rothschild, “Well, I got him.”

“You got who?”

“I got the killer,” Gonzalez said. “I got the contract man.”

“What the hell do you mean you got him?”

“I killed him,” Gonzalez said sourly. “Can’t you understand? I killed him. He’s lying inside dead. It’s all over.”

“Just what the hell are you talking about?” Rothschild yelled. “Have you lost your mind? Where are you?”

“I told you where I am.”

“Like hell you did. Where are you? You know I’ve been looking all over this God-damned city for you? You know I thought you were dead and the girl was dead? What happened in Central Park? We got a report that there was shooting in Central Park—out at the Mall or the Sheep Meadow. Now where the hell are you?”

Gonzalez’ resentment collapsed. “I’m at Eighty-eight West Sixty-eighth Street,” he said tiredly. “I’m here with Miss Dillman. She’s all right—a little hysterical, but she’s all right. The contract man is dead.”

“What is Eighty-eight West Sixty-eighth Street?”

“It’s the Delphi School of Music. That’s a small music school. They were having an opera here. If you want me to be specific, the name of the opera was The Secret of Suzanna. I never heard of the opera before. That’s because I’m an ignorant, stupid cop.”

“Why don’t you get hold of yourself?” Rothschild yelled at him. “What the devil’s wrong with you? Are you cracking up?”

“When that day comes,” Gonzalez said, “I’ll have a decent and salutory excuse to resign from your lousy squad.”

“I’ll be right over there,” Rothschild said. “Stay right there. I’ll be right over there.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Suppose you get someone to notify Homicide South. I’m tired of talking. I’m tired of the whole God-damned thing, and as far as I am concerned, Lieutenant, you can go to hell!”

Rothschild didn’t reply to that. He had hung up, either before or after Gonzalez’ last remark. Gonzalez did not particularly care.

He put down the telephone and looked at the dean.

“It’s none of my business,” the dean said, “but if you don’t mind, I would like to know something about what happened out there. I know you’re very tired, Detective—”

“Gonzalez.”

“Detective Gonzalez. I know you’re very tired and I don’t want to push this, but you just killed a man in my school. You broke up the performance. You can’t go around killing people just wherever you please. Who was he?”

“He was a killer,” Gonzalez said. “He was a contract killer. In case you don’t know what a contract killer is, he is a man who kills for hire, for money. He’s hired to kill and a contract is made, and that’s why he’s called a contract killer. Don’t look surprised, Mr. Clement. He flourishes in our stinking civilization. It should not surprise you. Killing is not a thing that is rare, at any level of what we call civilization. That man out there, that dead man, is a kid who for some reason that’s beyond my understanding became a hired gun. Now that’s all I can tell you. I’m sorry I broke up your damn performance. Please excuse me.”

Gonzalez walked out of the office and back to the auditorium. The men and women who were the audience had left. There still remained some boys and girls who were students, the piano accompanist, and the actors in the opera. Two police prowl cars had arrived, and there were four cops in uniform in the auditorium and two plain-clothes men. The plain-clothes men were from the Eighteenth Precinct. Gonzalez introduced himself and let them ask questions. He was too tired to volunteer anything.

A few minutes later Sally Dillman came back into the auditorium. She was very white, pale as a ghost, and hardly steady on her feet. Gonzalez took her by the arm and led her to a chair at the back of the auditorium. He sat down on another chair, facing her.

One of the plain-clothes men from the Eighteenth Precinct came over to ask Gonzalez who she was.

“She’s been under a lot of pressure. She was the quarry.”

“What do you mean—quarry?”

“I like literary words,” Gonzalez said. “It makes me feel cultured. She was the mark. That son of a bitch who’s lying dead up there at the front of the place was hired to hit her. That’s how the damned thing started.”

The man from the Eighteenth Precinct nodded his head to indicate that he understood. He didn’t know why Gonzalez was angry and he had no desire to provoke him further. He went back to the other cops. Gonzalez faced Sally Dillman and asked her, “How do you feel?”

“I feel good, but I feel very rotten, terribly rotten. I feel like I vomited out everything that is terrible and everything that is good, and all that’s left now is a shell. But the shell is myself and now I can let it fill up. Do you understand me, Frank?”

“I understand you,” he said.

“Frank, you know in all this, in everything that happened, it never occurred to me—I mean it occurred to me, but I never put it together into words or into something I could understand—the fact that you saved my life, that all through today you saved my life.”

“Well, that’s wrong,” he said bluntly. “I didn’t save your life. I didn’t use my brains. I did about five things wrong, terribly wrong, and I almost got you killed a couple of times. I wouldn’t call that saving your life.”

“But in the end,” she insisted, “you saved my life.”

“In the end I shot that poor bastard there. You know, Sally,” Gonzalez said, “I never killed anyone before. All the time I’ve been a cop I would say to myself, ‘Someday it’s going to come to this,’ but I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t believe that I could go on and kill someone and remain a rational human being after it was over. I’ve done a terrible thing, Sally. I won’t ever be the way I was again. And I don’t think I’ll be a cop any more.”

“You had to do what you did,” she argued.

“No, no, that doesn’t wash it away. Look, Sally, you know a little about me already. You’ve got to know a lot more. Do you know, I guess there isn’t a day in my life when I don’t say to myself, ‘Gonzalez, if you had a shred of conscience or deep, human decency in you, you’d become a vegetarian.’”

“I don’t understand that,” she said, puzzled.

“I mean, it’s the question of meat—the question of eating meat. Every time I eat meat I say to myself, ‘I am a human being. I am supposedly a civilized human being, and I’m eating the dead flesh from a living creature.’ Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I’m trying to tell you, Sally?”

“I think so.” She nodded. “But you don’t have to tell me this now, Frank.”

“I do,” he said. “I got to tell it to you now, Sally. You know, any minute now that bastard—do you mind the way I swear all the time? That’s an occupational disease too. I mean, maybe I could break it, but not easily. Do you mind terribly?”

She shook her head. “No, I never met anyone who swore as much as you do,” she said. “You use very bad language. Right from the beginning I noticed how bad your language was. No, I don’t mind it. I mean I do mind it, but, like you say, it will take some time for you to change.”

“Because,” Gonzalez went on, “as I said, in a minute or five minutes Lieutenant Rothschild is going to walk in through that door and he’s going to walk in screaming, and from then on I’ll know no peace. I mean I’ll know absolutely no peace at all. So before that, if I don’t say this to you now, I’ll never have the nerve to say it to you again. I mean, Mother of God, why do you think I’m thirty-three years old and I’m not married?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Well, it doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong with me. That’s the last thing in the world that you should even think about. It’s the kind of a person I am. The kind of nature I have. But now, right here this minute, I don’t know you. I mean, my God, we’re like strangers. We’re like strangers, and besides that I’m a Catholic. I mean I’m a lousy Catholic. I’m not even a Catholic. I guess if—if they knew in Rome the way I am, they’d excommunicate me in twenty minutes, but still I’m a Catholic. What are you?”

“Well, what difference does it make?”

“Well, can’t you answer a question? I’m asking you directly a thing of importance.”

“My father was a Presbyterian,” she said. “My mother was a Unitarian.”

“What? Oh—no! Not a Unitarian!”

“Well, I don’t see why you should react like that at all. Here you’ve been talking about being a vegetarian. Now what is a Unitarian except a person who tries to live religiously like a human being? I respect my mother’s religion—”

“Of course you do.” He nodded. “Of course you do. I wasn’t derogating Unitarians. Absolutely not! Nothing of the kind! Look, I don’t know you, but I want to marry you. You’ll have a lot of time to think about it. I’ll give you all the time in the world. You want to think about it. Only now tell me yes or no. Will you marry me, Sally? Will you?”

“I think so,” she said.

“You thought about it? We only met today.”

“Yes, I thought about it,” she said.

“When did you think about it?”

“When we were in the gym. I mean, that’s the first time I really thought about it. But I didn’t think you’d ask me whether my mother was a Unitarian. That’s the last thing in the world I thought about with a person like you. I thought I knew something about you, but evidently—”

At that moment Rothschild entered. He came in with long, swinging steps and roared, “Gonzalez! Gonzalez! Where the hell are you?”

Gonzalez turned around in his chair and stood up. Rothschild saw him and bore down on him with purpose and anger.

“Just what the hell happened here tonight?” Rothschild yelled.

“Ask them,” Gonzalez said, pointing to the plain-clothes men at the front of the room. “They’re from Homicide South, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know where they’re from, and when I ask you a question, I want an answer. Now what happened here tonight?”

“Ask them,” Gonzalez said tiredly. “I had my night. I did my overtime. I’m through with today. I’m going to take Miss Dillman here back to her hotel, and then I’m going home. You want to fire me, fire me. You want to suspend me, suspend me. You want to send me out to the sticks, send me out to the sticks. You want to put me back in uniform, put me back in uniform. The hell with it! I don’t care! I’ve had it! Up to here!” Gonzalez motioned violently with his finger. “That’s all. I’m going home—with Miss Dillman. You got anything to say about that, Rothschild?”

“Lieutenant Rothschild.”

“Lieutenant Rothschild.”

“No, I got nothing to say about that,” Rothschild said. “It’s time you went home anyway. You’re groggy. You can’t talk straight. You can’t see straight. You shot him—right?”

Gonzalez sighed and nodded. “Yes, I shot him.”

“He’s the contract man?”

“That’s right. Same one. We been tagging each other all day.”

Rothschild’s attitude and his voice changed. “We’re all tired, kid,” he said with surprising gentleness. “We all had a rough day. Can you give it five minutes more? Then you can take Miss Dillman home.”

“I can give it five minutes more,” Gonzalez agreed.

“Come up here with me for a minute,” Rothschild said and led the way to the front of the room.

Gonzalez followed him. The plain-clothes men had emptied the boy’s pockets and laid out his possessions in a row on the edge of the makeshift stage. There was his gun—a .32-caliber automatic pistol. There were sixteen unused cartridges. There was a blood-soaked handkerchief, some keys on a ring, and some car keys. About forty cents in silver, and in a metal bill holder five hundred and twenty-two dollars in cash. A billfold out of which a detective had taken a driver’s license and a Diner’s Card. The driver’s license said James Fennington. It gave a San Francisco address. The Diner’s Card had another name and was evidently stolen.

Rothschild looked at the stuff and then turned to Gonzalez. “That’s him,” Rothschild said.

“What do you mean by him?”

“We got a make on him—out of San Francisco. His name is James Fennington. He’s just a lousy punk kid gone bad and wild. He comes of a good family. Or what they call a good family in the newspapers and in the books. I don’t know what kind of a family he comes from. Whatever it is, they got nothing to be proud of.”

“This isn’t a proud night,” Gonzalez said. “It’s a lousy night. Who’s got what to be proud of? I killed a man.”

“It happens,” Rothschild said.

“What do you mean, it happens? It doesn’t happen, Lieutenant. We plan it. We connive at it, because inside of us, sitting deep down somewhere, there’s a killer, and we were nursed on killing and we sucked the milk of a place that breeds killers. So the killer is inside of you as well as inside of everything else, and it was inside of me, and I planned to kill him and I prodded it and I pushed it every step of the way. I killed that poor, crazy kid. There could have been some other way. He could have been taken. No, I had to kill him.”

“Get that kind of rot out of your system,” Rothschild said, with just an edge of disgust. “Get rid of it. The hell with that kind of thinking! You knew the score today. I knew the score today. Compatra dead, Mendoza dead. Look, get out of here, will you, Gonzalez? Get the girl and take her home, and then go home yourself and get a night’s sleep. Tomorrow you’ll feel better.”

“Tomorrow maybe I won’t be a cop.”

“Tomorrow you’ll feel better and you’ll still be a cop. Now get out of here.”

“O.K., Lieutenant.” Gonzalez held out his hand. Rothschild took it.

“Good night, Lieutenant.”

“Good night.”

Gonzalez walked over to Sally Dillman and said to her, “How about it, kid, do you think you can walk? Do you think you can make it outside? I’ll get a prowl car to run us over to the hotel.”

“I think I can walk,” she said.

She stood up and he took her by the arm. Rothschild had thought of the same thing evidently, because one of the cops in uniform came over to them and said, “Suppose I run you downtown, Detective Gonzalez.”

“We’d appreciate that, Officer.”

The three of them went out to where a prowl car was parked with its motor running. As they left, an ambulance gang entered and behind them more cops from Homicide. Outside in the street there were about two hundred people standing and waiting. As Gonzalez and Sally got into the prowl car, a TV truck pulled up.

“Get us out of here quickly, Officer,” Gonzalez told the driver.

He was a good driver and he didn’t waste time. A few minutes later they were at the St. Regis. Gonzalez got out of the car and helped Sally out. They entered the lobby and Clare Kennedy was waiting for them, and he fell on Gonzalez with a stream of questions. Gonzalez shook his head and said, “Later, Kennedy. I can’t talk about it now. I’ll take the kid up to her apartment and then I’ll come down. You can hit me on the way out.”

“All’s well that ends well?” Kennedy asked.

“I suppose so,” Gonzalez agreed.

He took Sally into the elevator. Neither of them spoke as they went up to the eleventh floor, and then at the door of her room Sally said to him, “Do you want to come in?”

“For a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” Gonzalez said. “I want to call my mother.”

“Of course,” she said, “of course. Please use my phone. Do you want me to send down for a drink?”

Gonzalez shook his head. “When you feel the way I do, a drink is no good at all.”

“That’s the way I feel,” Sally said. “The thought of a drink is no good—not that I ever drink too much, but there are times when I like a drink—not now.”

“Not now,” Gonzalez agreed.

He walked over to the telephone and sat down. Sally kicked off her shoes and sprawled on the couch. Then she got up and went to her purse and took out cigarettes.

“These are the cigarettes I went downstairs for.”

She took a cigarette and asked Gonzalez if he wanted one. He nodded and she gave it to him. She lit his cigarette and then her own and sprawled on the couch again, asking him, “Do you want me to go into the next room? Do you want privacy?”

“To speak to my mother?” he asked in astonishment.

“Well, you just might,” she said.

He shook his head and gave the operator the number. Sally puffed lazily and watched him. She saw him physically now. She had not truly looked at him before in plain terms of his physical appearance. He was a strong, tall, well-set man. He was educated, and he talked decently. Sally put herself in her dead mother’s place and then had a mental argument with her own mother.

Her mother would disapprove. Her mother would have a dozen sober and convincing arguments, but in the end she could have beaten her mother down. Her father would have presented more of a problem. He came from the kind of Presbyterian background that looks upon all Catholics with suspicion. Add to that the fact that the man she intended to marry was a Puerto Rican. That would have done it.

But underneath all her father had been a tolerant man. He had been tolerant in his own way. Not the way a college professor is tolerant, but the way a locomotive engineer is tolerant.

Her thoughts dissolved and she was listening to Gonzalez as he said to his mother, “But, Mama, the man who telephoned you was a fool. I tell you he was a fool. He was also not telling you the truth. I was not in danger today. I was not out on any special assignment. No, no, I was not running after murderers. I was not shooting and being shot at. Mama, look, you will hear all kinds of stories, and please don’t listen to the stories and just listen to what I tell you. I know better than anyone else what the truth is.”

Then he listened. He listened for at least a minute, spreading his free arm and staring helplessly at Sally. He nodded wordlessly several times and then he said:

“All right, Mama, you want me to tell you exactly what I did today? I will. I spent today with a girl whom I’m going to marry. That’s right, Mama, I am going to get married. I know, Mama, it was wrong for me to make a decision like this with a girl whom you never met, but that’s only because it was a sudden thing. It came quickly. It was a decision I came to only today. As a matter of fact, Mama, the truth is I met the girl today.”

Again Gonzalez listened. Sally watched him as he listened, and she said to herself, “He would make a good husband.” She realized that if her mother were watching him in the same way, her mother would have agreed. He had a certain docility toward women that Sally had always felt was necessary to the best type of husband. It was inbred in him. He might be very brave, and he might act very tough, and he might make all sorts of gestures, and he could even kill a man when the desperate necessity to kill a man arose. But underneath all that he was docile, and docility, she believed, was the first quality necessary to a good husband-and-wife relationship. That is, docility in the male.

“Mama,” Gonzalez said, “what can I say to you? Can’t you trust me when it comes to a girl? Mama, whether she is a Catholic is not everything that I require in a girl. Whether she is a Puerto Ricano is also not everything that I require in a girl. No, Mama, she is not Jewish. She is a Protestant, and, Mama, look, don’t get hysterical. Don’t begin to scream at me. Please, please, she will love you and you will love her. She will love your cooking.”

Again Gonzalez listened.

“Mama, what kind of a statement is that, that she will hate your cooking and that she will not eat in your house? This is ridiculous. When you—how can you say that a Protestant will not eat in your house? I can bring you from today until two weeks from today a stream of Protestants who will be honored to eat in your house, believe me, and they will say that your cooking is the most superb, the most extraordinary Spanish cooking in New York City. And at the same time, Mama, believe me, I can bring you Catholics who will not like anything you cook. I’m not arguing. All right, Mama, all right.”

Again he listened.

“All right, Mama, I promise you, yes, I’ll be home in two hours—three hours—I don’t know, Mama, but not longer. I’ll be home. No, I’m not going back to the police station. Mama, I am coming straight home. This I promise you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Good night, Mama.”

He replaced the telephone and turned to Sally.

“Was she terribly upset?” Sally asked him.

“No more than usual,” Gonzalez replied. “Do you like Spanish cooking?”

“I majored in Spanish,” Sally said. “In fact, if I had gotten to teach the eighth grade, that would have been my specialty. You see, that was a new thing that we were doing up at Timmerville, starting language in the eighth grade, in what you in New York here call junior high. I think my Spanish is all right, but I never ate Spanish food.”

“You’ll like it,” Gonzalez said.

“I think I will. What else did your mother say?”

“She said I should bring you home to dinner tomorrow night.”

“You mean I won’t see you until tomorrow night?” Sally asked him.

“I’ve got a job. I mean I think I have, unless I resign tomorrow, and even if I resign, it’s not something you do on the moment. You give your notice and you move out after a certain time. No, I got a job tomorrow. I can’t change that, Sally. I’m on duty.”

“Tomorrow night,” she said with resignation.

“It will come. Tomorrow and then many more tomorrows, Sally. Believe me, it will come.”

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“You know I’d like to stay here tonight,” Gonzalez said. “You know it’s not prudery. It’s not a sense of anything like that that’s sending me away. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know.” Sally nodded.

“It’s just the kind of weariness we have tonight. We, each of us, must get it out of ourselves alone. You alone with yourself. Me alone with myself.”

“I know.” Sally nodded.

“But well see each other tomorrow night,” Gonzalez said.

“Tomorrow night,” Sally repeated.

He went over to her and kissed her lightly upon the lips. “Sleep well, kid,” he said to her.

Then he went to the door. At the door he turned to look at her. She was sitting primly on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in her lap, smiling. He smiled back and said, “Sleep well.”

She nodded without speaking. Then he closed the door behind him.

After Gonzalez left, Sally sat there for almost ten minutes, just that way, hands clasped in her lap. Her cigarette burned itself out in the ash tray. Then she got up and went into the bedroom and took her clothes off and put on a nightgown.

She kneeled down next to the bed but said no prayers. She just stayed there a moment, her head bent with weariness. Then she crawled in under the covers and within seconds she was asleep.