"You sewed their mouths up?"
"Otherwise the jaw drops open during the memorial service. Then you end up with the beloved in the casket who is not only dead but who also looks stupid."
"My life was better before I knew that," Gray said. When a jogger passed close to the bench he pulled in his legs. The runner trailed Joy perfume behind her.
"You also sew their eyes closed. My dad would fine me half a dollar for every eyeball I punctured with the needle. I never got the hang of it, and some days I'd have no take-home at all."
A woman carrying a Saks bag walked her dachshund past the bench. The dog pulled the leash taut to sniff Coates's shoe.
Coates said, "Lady, I don't like wiener dogs smelling my wingtips."
With an imperious lift of her nose the woman pulled her dog away.
Still rubbing his foot, the detective turned back to Gray. "But worse than all that was the sore feet. You can't work on bodies sitting down, so I had aching feet all the time. I became a cop instead of a mortician. Shows what I know about anything."
"Your father still around?"
"Gone fifteen years. Every time I see a body I think of him. How far did you run today?"
"Ten miles, give or take a hundred yards. It's quite a luxury, actually, not being allowed into my office because everyone is afraid to stand near me. I've got a lot of time on my hands."
"You don't feel nervous running along, knowing there's a rifleman out there following you?"
"I'm the safest person in New York. He's had three clear chances to nail me and he hasn't. It's everybody else who should be worried."
They were in a portion of Central Park called Cedar Hill near the mid-seventies. Gray had been jogging and wore a line of perspiration across his forehead. His T-shirt was stuck to his chest with dampness. Gray bent over to wipe his sweaty hands on his socks. Coates was wearing a narrow blue tie that was loose at the neck and a sports coat so frayed it looked as if he buffed his car with it. Their bench was in front of a granite outcropping and was surrounded by red maple, sycamore, and paper birch trees. The path fed a stream of joggers, walkers, bicyclists, and baby strollers past them. Overhead an orange and blue Japanese kite sliced through the wind. The distant sounds of a children's soccer game sounded like wind chimes.
Gray glanced over his shoulder. "This must be the only place in the park where you can't see a window or a building on Fifth or over on the West Side. We're completely enclosed by leaves and branches. Not by chance, I'd guess."
"Sitting near you out in the open might open up my mind, literally."
"You've used this bench before?"
Coates pulled a sack of Planters peanuts from his pants pocket.
"When a puke wants to talk to me, he doesn't want to do it in Brooklyn or down in Little Italy, so we meet here."
"You talk to the law-enforcement people in Virginia?"
"The Prince William County sheriff told me he had two dozen men looking for the shooter's tracks, led by a bloodhound named Old Blue."
Taking a peanut, Gray said, "They're all named Old Blue."
"They followed his trail for a quarter mile as the shooter rounded the hill, but the trail ended at a roadside where he must have gotten into a car."
Gray smiled at a parade of ten preschoolers as they slowly passed the bench, each child tightly grasping a loop in a long rope that kept them together. A young woman led the troop and another brought up the rear.
Gray's hand moved so quickly the detective started. It was an abrupt blur that ended in a fist.
Gray held his balled hand at eye level and asked, "Can you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Catch a fly in midflight like I just did?"
"You caught it just now?" Coates regarded him narrowly. "Is this one of your boy John's jokes?"
"I always thought snipers were made, not born," Gray said. "I'm not so sure now."
"What do you do with the fly now that you've caught it?"
"Maybe I was destined to be a sniper. I had no choice."
"Am I missing something?" Coates dug for another nut. "What's catching a fly have to do with being a sniper?"
"My point is that I can snatch a dragonfly or a mosquito or a fly out of the air every time I try. I never realized before my talk with Arlen Able yesterday that few other people can. How could I have missed it?"
"Each and every time?" Coates stared at Gray's fist. "No way. Nobody can do that, and I've got a beer that says you can't either."
Gray smiled. He slowly opened his hand. The fly remained motionless on his palm for an instant, then shot angrily into the air toward the sun, a flicker of vanishing iridescence. But Gray was faster. He had to partly rise from the bench, his hand in the fly's wake. Gray's hand snapped shut. He lowered himself again to the bench.
He held his fist up to Coates's nose. "It's in here again. You owe me a beer."
"That's the goddamnedest thing I've ever seen."
"There is a Homeric quality to it, you have to admit," Gray said.
"Mr. Gray?" The new voice came from the south, ten yards away at a bend in the path. "Are you Owen Gray?"
Gray jerked to the voice, wincing as if he had been caught smoking in the boys' lavatory. He quickly released the insect.
A woman in a rumpled maroon business suit and carrying an attaché case stared at him. "After watching this little exhibition, I'm praying you aren't Owen Gray."
"Then I've got some bad news for you," Gray said.
"And you are Pete Coates?" She took a few tentative steps forward. "Two grown men? Playing with bugs?"
"He's a policeman." Gray pointed at Coates. "He made me do it." He smiled but she wouldn't return it.
She circled in front of the bench as if afraid to approach them. "I worked my tail off in Moscow. An emergency, I was told. I haven't slept or had a good meal in a week. Then I fly five thousand miles into JFK, call your office to locate you and Detective Coates, and race here in a cab."
"I'm honored, truly," Gray said. "Who are you?"
"And then I find you out in a park catching insects." She watched them both with cold surmise. Then for an instant it appeared she might laugh. But she mastered herself. Her hair was crow-black. Her eyes were a glacial blue. "I'm Adrian Wade."
Coates quickly rose from the bench. "You're the ace Don Shearson at the FBI told me about."
"Shearson contacted me after it was determined your sniper's shell was Russian. I work for the Security Section of the State Department in Moscow."
Rising to his feet, Gray offered his hand. A twist of distaste crossed her face.
"You don't need to look like a martyr shaking my hand," Gray said lightly. "The fly is gone."
"It's not the fly," she replied, lowering her briefcase to the path. "It's your Marine Corps file. I've read it."
Coates said hurriedly, "Don said Adrian has learned as much about the Russian criminal investigative system as has ever been allowed an American."
"Maybe you should've also learned about tact," Gray said.
Earlier in his life Gray had decided he had seen too much and done too much to tolerate ball-busters, men or women who try to dominate by their willingness to inflict their self-importance on others. His usual tactic was to remain silent, looking slightly bored, only occasionally nodding in a woolly way, contributing nothing and refusing to engage in the exercise until the ball-buster realized Gray was happily off somewhere more pleasant. Gray's boss, Frank Luca, never did get it, thinking Gray's silences a mark of understanding and agreement and therefore immense intelligence.
Gray had been slow to realize that he brought from his military service anything but torment, but his unwillingness to suffer unsufferables came from that time. As was his refusal to measure himself by others' opinions. So vast was the difference in experience between Gray and almost everyone else that he distrusted others' judgments about him. They hadn't looked through the scope. They didn't know and would never know.