“They’re out of the Chinatown Precinct.”
“I don’t know them.”
“They seem okay, but… well, a backup can’t stay glued to you, you know, otherwise he’ll scare off the guy you’re trying to catch.”
“Yeah, but they’ll be there if you need them.”
“I guess.”
“Sure, they will.”
“How long does it take to put out somebody’s eyes?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, really, that’s not going to help, worrying about it. Just make sure you’ve got your hand on your gun, that’s all.”
“In my bag, yeah.”
“Wherever you carry it.”
“That’s where I carry it.”
“Make sure it’s in your hand. And keep your finger inside the trigger guard.”
“Yeah, I always do.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to carry a spare, either.”
“Where would I carry a spare?”
“Strap it to your ankle. Wear slacks. Nurses are allowed to wear slacks, aren’t they?”
“Oh, sure. But they like a leg show, you see. I’ll be wearing the uniform, you know, like a dress. The white uniform.”
“Who do you mean? Rank? They told you to wear a dress?”
“I’m sorry, what—”
“You said they like a leg show…”
“Oh. I meant the lunatics out there. They like a little leg, a little ass. Shake your boobs, lure them out of the bushes.”
“Yeah, well,” Kling said.
“I’ll be wearing one of those starched things, you know, with a little white cap, and white panty hose, and this big black cape. I already tried it on today, it’ll be at the hospital when I check in tomorrow night.”
“What time will that be?”
“When I get to the hospital, or when I go out?”
“Both?”
“I’m due there at eleven. I’ll be hitting the park at a little after midnight.”
“Well, be careful.”
“I will.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Maybe I could tuck it in my bra or something. The spare.”
“Yeah, get yourself one of those little guns…”
“Yeah, like a derringer or something.”
“No, that won’t help you, that’s Mickey Mouse time. I’m talking about something like a Browning or a Bernardelli, those little pocket automatics, you know?”
“Yeah,” she said, “tuck it in my bra.”
“As a spare, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“You can pick one up anywhere in the city,” Kling said. “Cost you something like thirty, forty dollars.”
“But those are small-caliber guns, aren’t they?” she asked. “Twenty-twos? Or twenty-fives?”
“That doesn’t mean anything, the caliber. A gun like a twenty-two can do more damage than a thirty-eight. When Reagan got shot, everybody was saying he was lucky it was only a twenty-two the guy used, but that was wrong thinking. I was talking to this guy at Ballistics… Dorfsman, do you know Dorfsman?”
“No,” Eileen said.
“Anyway, he told me you have to think of the human body like a room with furniture in it. You shoot a thirty-eight or a forty-five through one wall of the room, the slug goes right out through another wall. But you shoot a twenty-two or a twenty-five into that room, it hasn’t got the power to exit, you understand? It hits a sofa, it ricochets off and hits the television set, it ricochets off that and hits a lamp — those are all the organs inside the body, you understand? Like the heart, or the kidneys, or the lungs, the bullet just goes bouncing around inside there doing a lot of damage. So you don’t have to worry about the caliber, I mean it. Those little guns can really hurt somebody.”
“Yeah,” Eileen said, and hesitated. “I’m still scared,” she said.
“No, don’t be. You’ll be fine.”
“Maybe it’s because of what I told you yesterday,” she said. “My fantasy, you know. I never told that to anyone in my life. Now I feel as it I’m tempting God or something. Because I said it out loud. About…you know, wanting to get raped.”
“Well, you don’t really want to get raped.”
“I know I don’t.”
“So that’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Except for fun and games,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Getting raped.”
“Oh.”
“You know,” she said. “You tear off my panties and my bra, I struggle a little… like that. Pretending.”
“Sure,” he said.
“To spice it up a little,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“But not for real.”
“No.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “It’s too bad tomorrow night is for real.”
“Take the spare along,” Kling said.
“Oh, I will, don’t worry.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess—”
“No, don’t go,” she said. “Talk to me.”
Suddenly, and again, he could think of nothing else to say.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “The divorce.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” he said.
“Will you tell me one day?”
“Maybe.”
“Only if you want to,” she said. “Bert…” She hesitated. “Thank you. I feel a lot better now.”
“Well, good,” he said. “Listen, if you want to…
“Yes?”
“Give me a call tomorrow night. When you come in, I mean. When it’s all over. Let me know how it went, okay?”
“Well, that’s liable to be pretty late.”
“I’m usually up late.”
“Well, if you’d like me to.”
“Yes, I would.”
“It’ll be after midnight, you know.”
“That’s okay.”
“Maybe later, if we make the collar. Time we book him—”
“Whenever,” Kling said. “Just call me whenever.”
“Okay,” she said. “Well,” she said.
“Well, good night,” he said.
“Good night, Bert,” she said, and hung up.
She felt stupid with a gun in her bra.
The gun was a .22-caliber Llama with a six-shot capacity, deadly enough, she supposed, if push came to shove. Its overall length was four and three-quarter inches, just small enough to fit cozily if uncomfortably between her breasts. It weighed only thirteen and a half ounces, but it felt like thirteen and a half pounds tucked there inside her bra, and besides, the metal was cold. That was because she had left the top three buttons of the uniform unfastened, in case she needed to get in there in a hurry. The wind was blowing up under the flapping black cape she was wearing, straight from the North Pole and directly into the open V-necked wedge of the uniform. Her breasts were cold, and her nipples were cold and erect besides — but maybe that was because she was scared to death.
She did not like the setup, she had told them that from the start. Even after the dry run this afternoon, she had voiced her complaints. It had taken her eight minutes to cross the park on the winding path that ran more or less diagonally through it, walking at a slightly faster than normal clip, the way a woman alone at midnight would be expected to walk through a deserted park. She had argued for a classic bookend surveillance, one of her backup men ahead of her, the other behind, at reasonably safe distances. Both of her backups were old-timers from the Chinatown Precinct, both of them Detectives/First. Abrahams (“Call me Morrie,” he said back at the precinct, when they were laying out their strategy) argued that anybody walking point would scare off their rapist if he made a head-on approach. McCann (“I’m Mickey,” he told her) argued that if the guy made his approach from behind, he’d spot the follow-up man and call it all off. Eileen could see the sense of what they were saying, but she still didn’t like the way they were proposing to do it. What they wanted to do was plant one of them at either end of the path, at opposite ends of the park. That meant that if their man hit when she was midway through the park, the way he’d done on his last three outings, she’d be four minutes away from either one of them — okay, say three minutes, if they came at a gallop.