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“It is.”

“Sure, so what was I getting so upset about? A man paying me a compliment? I kept thinking all this while I drove in, and then I put it out of my mind when I got to the hospital because the only thing I wanted to do then was find the person in charge and let him know a police department representative was here now and that the cop in there better get the best medical treatment in the world or there’d be holy hell to pay.”

“Is he all right now?”

“Yes, he’s all right. Shot twice in the leg. He’s all right.”

“I hate cops getting shot.”

“Tell me about it,” Sharyn said, and nodded grimly. “Anyway, I didn’t think about it again, about you again, about your calling and being so persistent on the phone, until the cop was safely on his way to Buenavista, where he won’t scream in the middle of the night, thank God, and no one’ll come. I was going out to my car, figuring I’d drive back out to C.P., when all at once I thought again of you saying you were willing to drive out there after you’d put in eight hours, just to have a cup of coffee and talk. And I thought about the cop getting shot and bringing me into the city, and I said to myself Listen, who’s being the stupid one here, you or him?”

“Who was it?”

“Anyway, I was starving to death.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I hate to eat alone.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I called you.”

“And here we are,” he said.

“Alone at last,” she said.

Alone with him in bed that night, she told him how frightened she’d been. How frightened she still was.

“No, no,” he said, “don’t worry.”

Soothing her. Stroking her thighs, kissing her nipples and breasts, kissing her lips.

“Everything happened so fast,” she said.

“No, no.”

“Someone’s bound to realize…”

“How could they?”

“People aren’t stupid, you know.”

“Yes, but how could…?”

“Suppose someone saw us tonight?”

“But no one did.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No, but…”

“Neither did I. No one saw us. Don’t worry.”

Kissing her again. Gently. Her lips, her breasts. His hand under the gossamer gown, stroking her, touching her.

“Everything’s happening so fast,” she whispered.

“It’s supposed to.”

“They’ll ask…”

“Sure.”

“Me. You. They’ll ask.”

“And we’ll tell them. Everything but.“

“They’re not stupid.”

“We’re smarter.”

“They’ll realize.”

““No.”

“Hold me, Johnny, I’m so scared.”

“No, baby, no, Michelle, don’t worry.”

4

THE TWO BLUES SEARCHING THE ALLEY WERE COMPLAINING that nobody in this city would’ve gave flying fuck about a stabbing if the victim hadn’ta been a celebrity.

“Also,” one of them said, “the only perp tosses a weapon is the pros. They use a cold piece, they throw it down a sewer afterwards, we find it, we can shove it up our ass. A person ain’t a contract hitter, he don’t throw away no weapon. Even a knife costs money, what d’you think? A person’s gonna throw it away cause he just juked somebody with it? Don’t be ridiculous. There’s switchblades cost fifty, a hundred bucks, some of them. He’s gonna throw it away cause it’s got a little blood on it? Gimme a break, willya?”

“Who’s the vic, anyway,” the other one asked, “we’re searchin this fuckin alley in the rain?”

“The fuck knows,” the other one said. “I never heard of her.”

It was really raining quite hard again.

Both of the blues were wearing black ponchos, and rain covers on their hats, but their shoulders and heads were dripping wet, anyway, and the drilling rain made it difficult to see in the dark alley here at close to two o’clock in the morning, even though they were industriously fanning every inch of it with their torches. Although they hadn’t expressed it quite this way, they were right about fame in that a stabbing in this city — especially so soon after there’d been so many stabbings in Grover Park last Saturday — was a relatively insignificant occurrence that might have gone virtually unnoticed if the victim hadn’t been an actress who once upon a time had played the lead in a road show production of Annie. Instead, here they were in a fuckin dark alley looking for a knife that had given some unknown “star” a scratch on the shoulder.

Well, something more than a scratch maybe, but according to what each of them had seen separately on television before they’d come on tonight, Michelle Cassidy’s shoulder wound had been truly superficial. How bad could it have been if they’d released her from the hospital within several hours of her admission to the emergency room? So if this was just a scratch here, then it couldn’t possibly be the required “serious” physical injury for Attempted Murder or even Assault One. What they had here was an Assault Two, maybe, where there’d been just a plain physical injury by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument. Which is why they were looking for a knife in the rain, they guessed.

“A fuckin Class D felony,” one of the blues said.

“Seven years max,” the other one said.

Get a sharp lawyer in there, he’ll bargain it down to Assault Three.”

“A Class A mis.”

“Is what we’re wastin our time on.”

“This country, anything happens to you,” the first blue said, “you automatically become a star and a hero. All these shmucks came back from the Gulf War, they were all of a sudden heroes. I can remember a time when a hero was a guy who charged a fuckin machine-gun nest with a hand grenade in each hand and a bayonet between his teeth. That was a hero! Now you’re a hero if you just went to the fuckin war.”

“Or if you get yourself stabbed,” the other one said. “It used to be if you defended yourself against the perp, and grabbed the knife away from him, and shoved it down his fuckin throat, then you were a hero. Now you’re a hero if you just get stabbed. The TV cameras come in on you, this is the person got stabbed on the subway tonight, folks, he’s a hero, look at him, he got himself stabbed, give him a great big hand.”

“A hero and a celebrity, don’t forget,” the first one said.

“Yeah, but this one here is really supposed to be a celebrity, though.”

“You ever hear of her?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. Michelle Cassidy? Who the fuck’s Michelle Cassidy?”

“She’s a Little Orphan Annie.”

“She’s bullshit is what she is. Anybody gets hurt in this country, he becomes a hero and a celebrity, they give him a fuckin ticker tape parade. You notice how everybody knows exactly how to be interviewed on television? There’s a tenement fire and the television cameras are there, and all at once this spic in her nightgown, she just got here from Colombia the night before, she’s standin in the street can hardly speak English, she’s giving an interview to the reporter, she sounds as if she’s the guest star on The Tonight Show. ‘Oh, si, it wass so terrible, my baby wass in huh creeb in dee odder room, I dinn know wah to do!’ An illegal from Colombia is all at once a fuckin celebrity givin interviews.”