Hark!

She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. She seemed preoccupied, but she often got that way while getting ready for bed. Lots of things a woman had to do before bedtime. Even so . . .

'Thing is, that's not his usual style,' Kling said. 'Announcing a murder, I mean.'

Sharyn spit into the sink.

'We think he killed this woman last week, but that may have been getting even for her betraying him or something. Mayhem is more his style. Subterfuge. Leading us in one direction and then moving in another.'

'He sounds like a real pain in the ass,' Sharyn said, and came back into the bedroom. She was wearing a baby-doll nightgown, no panties, fuzzy pink slippers.

'A supreme pain in the ass,' Kling said. 'But dead serious.'

'Are you cold in here?' Sharyn asked. 'Or is it just me?'

'It is a little chilly,' he said. 'Such a nice day, too.'

'Lovely.'

The room was silent for a moment.

'How'd your day go?' he asked.

'Okay,' she said.

He hesitated. Took the plunge.

'What'd you do?'

'The usual,' she said. 'Parade of the halt and lame at Rankin, lunch at a Chinese restaurant, march of the poor and oppressed up in Diamondback. Same old, same old.'

She took off her slippers, climbed into bed beside him.

And afterward?' he asked.

'After what?'

After work?'

'Bought a coffee at Starbucks, and caught a bus borne. Come warm my feet,' she said, cuddling close to him.

9.

IT WAS ALREADY one o'clock on Tuesday morning, the eighth day of June. Despite the light drizzle wetting the streets and dampening the libido, the stroll in Ho Alley had been underway since eleven or so last night.

There was a time when Ollie might have found these nocturnal adventures exciting . . . well, actually had found them exciting, never mind the 'might have.' Half the girls out here looked like they were parading in their underwear. The other half were wearing skirts cut high on their thighs, some of them slit up the side to expose even more flesh, barelegged, with strapped stiletto-heel sandals or boots of the dominatrix variety, leather laces up the side. If you were a red-blooded American male, how could you not get excited?

Especially when these girls reeked of everything forbidden. He didn't mean just the casual blowjob; junior high school girls were giving those away free nowadays. He meant the very concept of Anything Goes. In a society becoming more and more restrictive, here on this five-block stretch of turf, everything was permitted. Anything imagined by the Great Whores of Babylon had been refined to perfection over the centuries and was now for sale in this outdoor bazaar where girls talked freely and seemingly without fear of arrest about such delicacies as the Moroccan Sip, and the Acapulco Ass Dip, and the Singapore Slide.

There ought to be a law, Ollie thought.

There was, in fact, a law, but you couldn't guess it

existed on this street at this hour of the night. As short a time ago as only last month, Ollie would have found all these flashing legs and winking nipples and glossy wet lips . . . well . . . arousing. Even now, he felt a faint stirring in his groin, but he suspected that was a conditioned response and not anything generated by true desire. Or maybe it was because one of the girls had just grabbed his genitals and asked, 'What you got here, Big Boy?'

'Nothing for you, honey,' he said.

'Sure about that? I'm a virgin from Venezuela.'

'And I'm a bullfighter from Peru,' he said.

'Less see what you got there, torero.'

'Unzip him, Nina.'

'Want me to suck your espada?

'Come on, torero, less see that acero you got there.'

'Or maybe juss a puntilla, eh?'

'Feels like a nice big package here, Anita.'

'Wha' you say, matador?

'We have our'sess a real fiesta brava, eh?'

'Some other time, girls,' he said, and walked away.

'You'll beeee sorrr-eeeeel' they chanted in unison behind him.

Ollie wondered if he might be coming down with something.

For the past half-hour, he'd been looking for a girl named Wanda Lipinsky. From all accounts, Wanda was not Jewish. She had chosen the surname only because of its echoing proximity to the name Lewinsky, which slant rhyme seemed to promise all sorts of oral delights. Toward that end (and no pun intended) Wanda could be recognized, he'd been informed, by the thong panties she affected in imitation — if ever anyone got past her mouth to explore the hidden treasures under her skirt. But these

were not the good old days, and these promised delectations, ah yes, were not what interested Ollie about Ms. Lipinsky, whose real name, he was further told, was Margaret O'Neill.

Little Margie, it seemed, was a freelance like the Carmela Sammarone who had possibly aced the pimp who'd given her up to the Boys of Grover Park. Little Margie, it further seemed, had gone on the town with Little Mela this past Wednesday night, cruising the hotels midtown, where Mela had scored, but not, alas, the thong-wearing Lewinsky sound-alike. Or so the grapevine maintained, and Ollie had no reason to doubt a story now corroborated by three skimpily dressed hookers freezing their asses off in what had turned into a somewhat chilling rain.

In the old days, there might have been something exciting about these girls — white, black, Latina, Asian, there was pure democracy in Ho Alley — shivering in their underwear and openly peddling their wares. But now, on this early morning in early June . . .

Surely he was coming down with something. . . . they seemed only poor damn creatures who needed to be helped and comforted. Or perhaps even pitied.

Frowning, puzzled, he hunched his shoulders and moved on through the falling drizzle.

HE DID NOT find Wanda Lipinsky until two that morning. She was backing her way out of a blue Chevy Impala where she'd undoubtedly just blown the little spic behind the wheel, her skirt halfway up her ass, exposing her buttocks and the red silk ribbon of a pair of thong panties buried in her crack.

He waited till she was clear of the car, waited until she

turned, tugging at the short skirt, and began walking off.

'Wanda?' he asked.

She stopped dead on the sidewalk.

Turned toward him with a hooker's welcoming smile on her face. She was not an unattractive girl — woman, he guessed — in her mid- or late twenties, with long brownish hair and what he perceived in the near-dark to be blue eyes. Short tight skirt, the line of the thong panties clearly visible. Low-cut, swoop-necked blouse, uplift bra thrusting her breasts in his face. Eyebrows raising slightly. Do I know you?

'Police,' he said, and showed the tin. 'Few questions I'd like to ask you.'

'Sure,' she said wearily.

Another night in the cooler, she was thinking.

HE WANTED TO know about last Wednesday night.

'Were you with Carmela Sammarone last Wednesday night?' he asked.

'Carmela . . . ?'

'Sammarone. You know who she is, Wanda. Were you with her?'

They were sitting in an all-night joint on Carson and Mclntyre. Wanda was nursing a beer; she still had a long night ahead of her. She hoped. Ollie was sipping a club soda with a slice of lime in it; he was officially off duty, but he wanted to keep his wits about him. He had a feeling that Little Margie O'Neill here could turn out to be a slippery little customer.

'Carmela Sammarone,' he said again.

Wanda said nothing.

'You do know her, don't you?'

'Never heard of her.'

'Were you with her last Wednesday night?'

'Wednesday night, Wednesday night,' Wanda said, rolling her eyes, thinking.

'Yes or no, Wanda?'

'I don't recall.'

'Wanda,' he said, 'don't fuck with me.'

'Language,' she scolded.

'I need to find her. I understand you went downtown cruising

'I told you I don't remember.'