Just as a man in a civilian overcoat, a fedora, collar up, steps out of the building onto the top of the small stoop. Ray Kelly. The commissioner. He sees Ali, removes gloved hands from his pockets. There are two other cops behind him, blocking the narrow doorway. The odor of burned wood and fabric is stronger here. But clearly the fire is out. Kelly comes down the steps and goes directly to Ali Watson.
— Don’t go in there, Ali, Kelly says softly.
— For Chrissakes, Ray. It’s my wife!
— I know. That’s why you’re not going in.
— I gotta—
— It’s an order, Ali. Come on. We’ll take a walk.
2:32 a.m. Sam Briscoe. His loft on Greene Street, SoHo.
The phone rings in the darkness. From his bed, Briscoe glances at the night table. The bright green phone with caller I.D. From the paper.
— Sam here.
— Mr. Briscoe, it’s the desk and—
— Put him on.
Briscoe sits up, swings around with his feet on the floor. Then he hears Matt Logan’s voice.
— Sorry to bother you, Sam. But we got a big one.
— Tell me.
— A double homicide in the Village. One of them we think you know. Named Cynthia Harding and—
— What?
— And her secretary, a black woman named Watson. Mary Lou Watson. Her husband’s a cop. Fonseca’s at the scene. No details yet. How they died. Suspects. Nada, Sam.
— Call Helen.
— She got here ten minutes ago.
Briscoe switches on the lamp.
— The paper’s locked up, Logan says. Maybe we can do a wrap, front and back.
— Yeah. Call Billygoat at the plant. See if we can do the wrap. Have Helen write the lede. Fonseca can write the scene. The clips should have a lot of stuff on Cynthia Harding, charities, the public library. Two husbands.
— Right.
— One more thing, Matt. Tonight she had a small fund-raiser at Patchin Place. For the library. I know because I was invited, but couldn’t go. See if Fonseca can get a guest list, then you know what to do.
— Right.
— I’ll get dressed and head to Patchin Place for a bit. Maybe call in a few things. Then I’ll come to the paper. And Matt? One more thing.
— Yeah?
— Tell Helen she can smoke.
Briscoe hangs up. Mumbling in the emptiness of the loft. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Cynthia? Dead? Christ Allfuckingmighty. No. It’s bullshit. No. Wrong address. But Matt has Mary Lou’s name too. Oh, Cynthia… If I’d gone to the party, maybe I’d have picked up something, something wrong in the rooms, something about the guests or the mood. But helclass="underline" Cynthia’s a grown-up. She knows what to look for too. So does Mary Lou. She sees like a cop. Like her husband, Ali.
Briscoe moves quickly to the bathroom, splashing water to wake himself up. Dries himself while looking out the back window. The rain is over. Cynthia? Cynthia dead? His heart is beating furiously. His stomach contracts, expands. Cynthia. My Cynthia. He sees fragments of her face. Many angles, always shifting, depending on age, emotions, the light. He sees the intelligence in Mary Lou’s eyes. And her permanent skepticism. But Cynthia… Oh Jesus fucking Christ.
He pulls on socks, the gray trousers, thinking coldly now, becoming the newspaperman again, the craft that always protects him. Murder at a good address always leads the paper. Then remembers his breakfast meeting with the F.P. Eight-thirty in the morning. Very important. I’ll bet. Yeah. Briscoe knots his tie. He is filled with a sudden rush of things ending. Cynthia Harding is dead. Along with Mary Lou Watson.
Oh.
Going cold again. Displacing the human. Displacing the enduring privacy of his life, and hers.
Cynthia Harding has been murdered.
He shoves some files in his leather bag, grabs a fedora and trench coat, and goes down to the street. He finds a cab on Sixth Avenue. He and the driver travel uptown in silence. The man doesn’t play the radio as he moves north through the emptiness. Briscoe loops the chain of his press card around the collar of the coat. He gets off at Barnes & Noble on the corner of 8th Street, overtips, hurries toward the aura of bright white police lights and red domes. He sees the group of curious citizens, the cops, the firemen, the huddle of reporters. A few nod. He nods back. Fonseca is there too, and Briscoe motions him aside.
— How bad is it?
— Pretty bad, Fonseca says, looking at a notebook. Both women stabbed to death, Mr. Briscoe. Kitchen knife, maybe. There’s one missing from one of those racks. The cops are searching sewers. It looks like the Watson woman got it first, in the hall outside the bedroom door. Then the Harding woman opened the door, they figure. And she got it. She was naked under a bathrobe. The Watson woman was fully clothed. There’s blood all over.
— God…
Briscoe inhales the wet ashy air, lets it out slowly.
— Watson’s husband is a cop, Fonseca says. Ali Watson. Ray Kelly was here and took him away somewhere, I guess to comfort him. Wouldn’t let him in the house, for obvious reasons. I got a picture of Kelly and Watson on my cell phone, sent it already.
— Ali Watson’s a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Briscoe says. Tell Helen, but tell her I said she shouldn’t put that in the paper. I’ll tell Matt to keep Ali’s face out of the paper too. Who knows what he’s working on. Do they have any suspects?
He hears his own voice. Cold and flat, with a slight tremble.
— I don’t know, Fonseca says. They’re not saying much at all. The women were killed, then whoever did it used some kind of an accelerant to cover himself. Maybe from some kind of old-fashioned oil lamp. If it’s a him. The firemen kept the damage to one room, top floor. Mostly scorching.
The bedroom, Briscoe thinks. Up past the paintings by Kuniyoshi and Lew Forrest.
— Who’s running this? he says.
— A lieutenant named Brennan.
— He’s a good cop. Tell him you know there was a party here last night, a fund-raiser for the library. Ask him if he has a guest list. If he lets you, then write down the names and we’ll call each one of them. Don’t do any of this in front of the other reporters.
— Right.
— Also ask if he’s got the name of the caterer. And the waiters. Cynthia Harding always used a caterer for these things. They’d be the last to leave. Or one of them maybe stayed. If Brennan won’t tell you shit, then do a sidebar right here, while you’re waiting. Neighbors, everything. On the scene itself.
— Someone said that E. E. Cummings lived here. And John Reed.
— And a bunch of other people, including Anaïs Nin. I’ll edit your piece and fill in any blanks.
— Great.
— See ya, Briscoe says, and slips away, walks to Greenwich and hails a cab.
2:33 a.m. Bobby Fonseca. Patchin Place.
He watches Briscoe go, then searches the corner crowd for Victoria Collins. No sign of her. His heart sank when the cell phone found him in the taxi. Matt Logan. Double murder in the Village. Go. He thought Victoria would be furious. Instead, she was excited.
— I want to go with you, she said.
— You got a press card? Fonseca said.
— An old one, a student I.D. from Columbia. Laminated. And—
— You probably can’t get very close, he said. The cops—
— Come on, Fonseca. Let me try. I can work the neighborhood. Talk to people who might have known the victims. Whatever. I’m a good reporter. And I got this little recorder too. I can feed you my notes. Please.