I’d been trying to get rid of the big oaf for seventeen weeks but he just kept coming around. He’d ring the bell and I’d look out the window and see him standing on the stoop looking like a kicked puppy. What I needed with another kicked puppy I couldn’t tell you, since I’d taken in a little white mutt with tan spots that my cousin Jeremy had found knocked up and wandering a trailer park in Kentucky. Cousin Jeremy couldn’t keep the dog so he called me up and somehow got me to take the animal in. After making the vet give her an abortion and a rabies shot, Jeremy found the dog a ride up from Kentucky with some freak friend of his who routinely drives between Kentucky and Queens transporting cheap cigarettes. The freak friend pulled his van up outside my house one night just before midnight and the dog came out of the van reeking of cigarettes and blinking up at me, completely confused and kicked- looking. Not that I think the freak friend of Cousin Jeremy’s actually kicked her. But the point is, I already had a kicked puppy. What did I need with a guy looking like one?

I didn’t need him. But he’d ring the bell and I’d let him in, and, even if I was wearing my dead father’s filthy bathrobe and I hadn’t showered in five days, he’d tell me, You look fantastic, Alice. I knew he actually meant it, that he saw something fantastic in my limp brown hair and puffy face and the zits I’d started getting suddenly at age thirty-six. It was embarrassing. The zits, the fact that I was letting this big oaf come over to nuzzle at my unbathed flesh, the little dog who’d sit at the edge of the bed watching as me and Clayton, the big oaf, went at it.

My life was a shambles. So I vowed to end it with Clayton. I vowed it on a Tuesday at 7 a.m. after waking up with an unusual sense of clarity. I opened my eyes to find thin winter sunlight sifting in the windows of the house my dead father left me. Candy, the trailer trash dog, was sitting at the edge of the bed, politely waiting for me to wake up because that’s the thing with strays, they’re so grateful to have been taken in that they defer to your schedule and needs. So, Candy was at the edge of the bed and sun was coming in the windows of my dead father’s place on 47th Road in the borough of Queens in New York City. And I felt clear-headed. Who knows why. I just did. And I felt I needed to get my act together. Shower more frequently. Stop smoking so much. Get back to yoga and kickboxing. Stop burning through my modest profits as a modest gambler. Revitalize myself. And the first order of business was to get rid of the big oaf, Clayton. Who ever heard of a guy named Clayton who isn’t ninety-seven years old, anyway?

I got into the shower and scrubbed myself raw, then shampooed my disgusting oily head. I took clean clothes out of the closet instead of foraging through the huge pile in the hamper the way I’d been doing for weeks. I put on black jeans and a fuzzy green sweater. I glanced at myself in the mirror. My semi-dry hair looked okay and my facial puffiness had gone down. Even my zits weren’t so visible. I looked vaguely alive.

I took my coat off the hook, put Candy’s leash on, and headed out for a walk along the East River, near the condo high-rises that look over into Manhattan. My dead father loved Long Island City. He moved here in the 1980s, when it was almost entirely industrial, to shack up with some drunken harlot, right after my mom kicked him out. Long after the harlot had dumped my father — all women dumped him all the time — he’d stayed on in the neighborhood, eventually buying a tiny two-story wood frame house that he left to me, his lone child, when the cancer got him last year at age fifty-nine. I like the neighborhood fine. It’s quiet and there are places to buy tacos.

“Looking good, mami,” said some Spanish guy as Candy and I walked past the gas station.

I never understand that mami thing. It sounds like they’re saying mommy. I know they mean hot mama and, in their minds, it’s a compliment, but it still strikes me as repulsive.

I ignored the guy.

As Candy sniffed and pissed and tried to eat garbage off the pavement, I smoked a few Marlboros and stared across at midtown Manhattan. It looked graceful from this distance.

The air was so cold it almost seemed clean and I started thinking on how I would rid myself of Clayton. I’d tried so many times. Had gotten him to agree not to call me anymore. But then, not two days would go by and he’d ring the bell. And I’d let him in. He’d look at me with those huge stupid brown eyes and tell me how great I looked. Alice, you’re fantastic, he’d told me so many times I started thinking of myself as Alice Fantastic, only there really wouldn’t be anything fantastic about me until I got rid of Clayton. When he would finally shut up about my fantasticness, I’d start in on the This isn’t going to work for me anymore, Clayton refrain I had been trotting out for seventeen weeks. Then he’d look wounded and his arms would hang so long at his sides that I’d have to touch him, and once I touched him, we’d make a beeline for the bed, and the sex was pretty good, the way it can be with someone you are physically attracted to in spite of or because of a lack of anything at all in common. And the sex being good would make me entertain the idea of instating him on some sort of permanent basis, and I guess that was my mistake. He’d see that little idea in my eye and latch onto it and have feelings, and his feelings would make him a prodigious lover, and I’d become so strung out on sex chemicals I would dopily say Sure when he’d ask to spend the night, and then again dopily say Sure the next morning when he’d ask if he could call me later.

But enough is enough. I don’t want Clayton convincing himself we’re going to be an everlasting item growing old together.

Right now Clayton lives in a parking lot. In his van. This I discovered when, that first night, after I picked him up in the taco place and strolled with him near the water, enjoying his simplicity and his long, loping gait, I brought him home and sucked his cock in the entrance hall and asked him to fuck me from behind in the kitchen, and then led him to the bedroom where we lay quiet for a little while until he was hard again, at which point I put on a pair of tights and asked him to rip out the crotch and fuck me through the hole. After all that, just when I was thinking up a polite way of asking him to leave, he propped himself up on his elbow and told me how much he liked me. “I really like you. I mean, I really like you,” looking at me with those eyes big as moons, and even though I just wanted to read a book and go to sleep, I didn’t have the heart to kick him out.

All that night, he babbled at me, telling me his woes, how his mother has Alzheimer’s and his father is in prison for forgery and his wife left him for a plumber and he’s been fired from his job at a cabinet-making shop and is living in his van in a parking lot and showering at the Y.

“I’ve got to get out of Queens soon,” he said.

“And go where?”

“Florida. I don’t like the cold much. Gets in my bones.”

“Yeah. Florida,” I said. I’d been there. To Gulfstream Park, Calder Race Course, and Tampa Bay Downs. I didn’t tell him that though. I just said, Yeah, Florida, like I wasn’t opposed to Florida, though why I would let him think I have any fondness for Florida, this leading him to possibly speculate that I’d want to go live there with him, I don’t know. I guess I wanted to be kind to him.

“Just a trailer is fine. I like trailers,” Clayton said.

“Right,” I said. And then I feigned sleep.

That was seventeen weeks ago. And I still haven’t gotten rid of him.

Candy and I walked for the better part of an hour and then headed home, passing back by the gas station where the moron felt the need to repeat, Looking good, mommy, and I actually stopped walking and stared at him and tried to think of words to explain exactly how repulsive it is to be called mommy and how it makes me picture him fucking his own mother, who is doubtless a matronly Dominican woman with endless folds of ancient flesh, but I couldn’t find the words and the guy was starting to grin, possibly thinking I was actually turned on by him, so I kept walking.

Once back inside my place, I gave Candy the leftovers from my previous night’s dinner and sat down at the kitchen table with my computer, my Daily Racing Form, and my notebooks. I got to work on the next day’s entries at Aqueduct. No matter how much I planned to change my life in the coming weeks, I still had to work. It wasn’t much of a card, even for a Wednesday in February, so I figured I wouldn’t be pushing a lot of money through the windows. But I would watch. I would take notes. I would listen. I would enjoy my work. I always do.

Several hours passed and I felt stirrings of hunger and glanced inside my fridge. Some lifeless lettuce, a few ounces of orange juice, and one egg. I considered boiling the egg, as there are days when there’s nothing I love more than a hard-boiled egg, but I decided this wasn’t one of those days. I would have to go to the taco place for take-out. I attached Candy’s leash to her collar and threw my coat on and was heading to the door when the phone rang. I picked it up.

“Hi, Alice,” came Clayton’s low voice.

I groaned.

“What’s the matter? You in pain?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean? What hurts? I’ll be right there.”

“No, no, Clayton, don’t. My pain is that you won’t take No for an answer.”

“No about what?”

“No about our continuing on like this.”

There was dead silence.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“In the parking lot.”

“Clayton,” I said, “I know you think you’re a nice guy, but there’s nothing nice about coming around when I’ve repeatedly asked you not to. It’s borderline stalking.”

More silence.

“I need my peace and quiet.”

After several moments: “You don’t like the way I touch you anymore?”

“There’s more to life than touching.”

“Uh,” said Clayton. “I wouldn’t know since you won’t ever let me do anything with you other than come over and fuck you.”

Clayton had never said fuck before. Clayton had been raised in some sort of religious household. He wasn’t religious himself, but he was reserved about cursing.

“My life is nothing. Clayton, I go to the racetrack. I make my bets and take my notes. I talk to some of the other horse-players. I go home and cook dinner or I go to the taco place. I walk my dog. That’s it. There’s nothing to my life, Clayton, nothing to see.”

“So let me come with you.”

“Come with me where?”

“To the racetrack.”

“I’m asking you to never call me again and get out of my life. Why would I want to take you to the racetrack?”

“Just let me see a little piece of your life. I deserve it. Think of it as alimony.”

I couldn’t see why I should do anything for him. But I agreed anyway. At least it got him off the phone.

I took the dog out to the taco place. Came home and ate my dinner, giving half to the dog.

Times change, she thought. People don’t.

Nikki reread the last of three diaries written by a dead woman named Eileen Lavin, took a deep breath, and spied Dr. George Sheridan through the Zhumell Spotting Scope mounted on a tripod in front of her sixteenth-floor window in her Bayside condo. He was leaving his luxury shore-front home over in Douglaston.

It was 8:55 a.m. on a sunny Mother’s Day in Queens. Dr. Sheridan was dressed in his blue and white Abercrombie & Fitch tracksuit and Nikki’s zoom lens was so powerful that even clear across the half-mile of Little Neck Bay she could see the double-G imprinted on his $375 dark-blue Gucci sneakers. She knew from watching him since New Year’s that he wore a different tracksuit and rotated his designer sneakers every day.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” Nikki whispered, knotting her yellow cotton tank top at her sternum and tying the laces on her New Balance sneakers, sweat socks bunched at the tops. Her white spandex shorts could not have been any tighter, accentuating her twenty-five-year-old ass that she’d slaved to sculpt into bubble perfection on the butt buster, StairMaster, and at the aerobics dance classes in the gym in the Bayview condo complex where she’d rented an apartment for six months.

Two things she’d noticed about all the women Dr. Sheridan chased — all were in their twenties and all had bubble butts.

Several minutes later, Nikki peered through the telescope again. The sun twinkled on the blue eye of Little Neck Bay as Sheridan boarded his forty-two-foot Silverton bearing the name The Dog’s Life at his private dock behind his modernized Queen Anne — style house on a cul-de-sac off Shore Road. He climbed to the fly deck, fired up the twin engines, and aimed straight at Bayside Marina a half-mile across the water. Nikki knew Dr. Sheridan would moor The Dog’s Life there before moving down the marina walkway to the jogging path. He would run south to the end of the asphalt path at Northern Boulevard, then make a U-turn and jog three miles north to Fort Totten, where he’d turn and head back to the marina to complete his daily six-mile route along one of the most idyllic stretches of waterfront in New York City.

“He’s mine,” Nikki whispered, before hurrying out of the apartment and down the sixteen flights of stairs to work up a good sweat before jogging out into the Bayside streets, passing the old colonials, the Queen Annes, the Tudors, and the gruesome McMansions and boxy two-family condo units that looked to her like they had been designed by shoemakers.

She huffed east on Thirty-Fifth Avenue and over to the secret little emerald called Crocheron Park. Nikki ran past a fraternity of dog walkers who let their pets chase taunting squirrels through the underused meadows. She legged past the fields where a father in a Mets jacket towered fly balls to his son who wore a Yankees hat. She nodded to three chunky women joggers who gasped counter-clockwise on the one-mile inside roadway and watched a tennis volley between two seventy-something men wearing white designer shorts with indoor winter tans. They stopped the volley to ogle Nikki. Since Viagra, seventy is the new seventeen, she thought. She slowed to a walk as she approached the southern-most of the two gazebos stationed on the steep leafy hill overlooking the jogging/bicycle road parallel to the humming Cross Island Parkway. Through the budding trees she would momentarily clock Dr. Sheridan making the southbound leg of his run.

It was 9:17 a.m. now. She knew his moves better than he did. Glistening with sweat, her red headband securing her long dark hair, she gulped some Poland Spring water, then poured out all but an inch from a twenty-ounce bottle. Through the verdant trees she saw him, running hard, like someone fleeing from his own footprints.

Nikki bounded down the long stone steps from the park to the Cross Island overpass. She leaped from step to step in a graceful ballet, her body taking blurry flight between footfalls. She cut over the six lanes of the Cross Island, busy with Mother’s Day travelers, about half of them on their way to visit Mom now living in some old person’s orphanage, with a name like Shady Acres, after having been abandoned by the very ingrates she had brought into the world. Nikki gazed right and here came Dr. Sheridan hoofing toward her just as she bounced down the final ramp onto the jogging path, her breasts heaving, sweat lashing off her face in a spray of tiny sunlit diamonds.

They exchanged glances. Dr. Sheridan smiled. Nikki didn’t. A lifetime of running had kept his forty-five-year-old body as trim as Nikki imagined it had been when he was twenty. She pivoted, sprung, and ran ahead of him, ham muscles bunching in the damp white Spandex like sins waiting to be committed. Her thigh muscles rippled as she passed fishermen in rubber suits standing hip deep in the tame bay where swans and geese and mallards and ducks looped around the sailboats. A spotted hawk circled and a pair of fat black crows exploded from the wild reeds into the high trees of Crocheron.

A lone whooping crane stood on one leg on a sand spit, bleating like a traffic cop. Nikki watched a pair of young lovers, a pretty Asian girl and a skinny white boy with mousse-spiked hair, sharing the two earplugs of an iPod and strolling hand-in-hand as if never wanting this song, this walk, this morning to end. The girl gave her companion a gentle bump of her left hip in the first movement of their ephemeral dance of spring. Love him till it hurts, Nikki thought. She knew Dr. Sheridan was behind her undressing her with his eyes.

Up ahead she saw the sun gilding across the long steel bones of the Throgs Neck Bridge. A cabin cruiser grumped beneath it. Nausea rose in Nikki like a dirty tide. She contained it with her sense of mission. She was gonna make a bad thing right.

Nikki knew Dr. Sheridan would shower and change in the luxury salon of his boat before hopping in his two-door silver BMW Z4, with the MEOW1 vanity plate that he kept in one of his two rented parking spots by the marina — the second spot was for babes who spent the night on his boat. Then he’d drive the five minutes to work at his Menagerie Animal Clinic across the street from the Bay Terrace Shopping Mall. There, even on Mother’s Day, he would give comfort to the daily parade of heartsick pet owners, most of them women — divorcées, young and single, widows, unhappily married and happy to cheat — who came whenever Fido or Fluffy so much as sneezed, just to hear the soothing timbre of Dr. Sheridan’s deep voice. Observing him over four months, from winter until spring, Nikki had deduced that Dr. Sheridan didn’t mix business with pleasure. He mixed pleasure with more pleasure, she thought. Never with friends or clients. Only with strangers.

With his handsome and gray-only-at-the-temples good looks, a multimillion-dollar bay-front home, his own luxury boat, a Beemer and a Benz in his driveway, a lucrative veterinarian clinic, and membership in the local community board, Dr. George Sheridan possessed one of the most sought after naked left ring fingers in eastern Queens.

He’s waiting for her to die, Rose knows. She’s no dummy. It’s June and her son, Paulie, is once again thinking about inheriting her house on Rockaway Beach.

“You’re getting up there,” is this year’s phraseology, as if turning eighty-five begins her ascent. Up and up, she’ll levitate a little higher each birthday, while Paul, Maureen, and the kids line up on the sand waving bye bye. Paulie’s latest brainstorm is to just move in now — this weekend. “We’ll take care of you,” he insists, somehow oblivious to the way this sounds.

“Maureen’s a doctor, after all. You’ll get to play with your grandkids. All the time!”

I followed him to the platform for the 7 train at Grand Central, a place so far down below the street that I expected to meet devils with pitchforks on their way up from Hell. The tail was easy. After a couple of days on the job, I saw that he always wore the same kind of clothes, like a uniform or that crazy detective on cable. White Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, beige khaki pants, and brown loafers. But today he added a cap — navy-blue with an antique capital B on the front and little red socks at the back. A brand new Boston Red Sox baseball cap.

I noticed more people in the city wearing Boston caps after the team had won the World Series. Always brand new, never faded from the sun or stained with sweat. It was like they were previously ashamed to walk the city’s streets broadcasting their loyalty or were afraid that crazy Yankees fans would chant “1918” at them when they went for a quart of milk or to pick up their dry cleaning. I say, your team is your team no matter what and no matter what anyone says. I wore a Mets cap that wasn’t new when they won the Series in 1986, and carried a copy of today’s Post in my back pocket. The two of us waited, on this warm June night, for the 7 train to take us to Shea Stadium where the Mets and Red Sox would play the first of three interleague games.

He stood quietly on the platform, leaning against the elevator with his hands in his pockets. He stared off into space with no paper or book to read. The stale, sticky air did not seem to bother him. Next to him, a fat guy in a crappy suit with his polyester tie at half-mast, tired and heading home to Queens, mopped his face with a rumpled handkerchief. Three Korean women who could have been anywhere from forty to seventy years old stood silent and still, holding shopping bags filled with vegetables and other groceries. I disregarded them. Further down the platform, college kids wearing black awayjerseys with the name and number of their favorite Mets players on the back were obviously going to the game. The kids were playful and laughing but I knew they wouldn’t get in my way when the train pulled in. I didn’t expect the subway car to be sardine-can crowded until we got to the Queens stations.

A blast of cooler air signaled the arrival of a 7 express, which meant fewer stops and fewer chances for screw-ups. When the train stopped, we stood in front of the last car. He didn’t move to rush the doors like so many subway riders do. He followed the tinny, distorted message over the car’s loudspeakers and let the passengers off the train before getting on. I maneuvered my way into the car so that I was standing in front of him and holding the same pole in the middle of the car. A little guy wearing blue mechanic’s overalls and reading El Diario had grabbed a piece of the pole to my left. A teenaged black girl on my right was lost in the music playing from her iPod, swaying in time to the song. I was lucky that it was ’70s Philly soul leaking from her headphones, not some rap shit.

I knew that I had to make my play before Queensboro Plaza, the first stop on the ride to Shea with connections to other subway lines. The express rattled through the first two underground stations, making so much noise that I couldn’t even talk to myself, forget about talking to anybody else. When the train left the Hunters Point station and emerged into the evening sunlight five or six stories above the Queens streets, the clatter lessened to a normal din.

He was humming along with a Delfonics song from the girl’s iPod and staring out of the windows at abandoned buildings covered from rooftop to ground floor in graffiti that appeared to be carefully designed and painted, rather than the work of random punks with spray cans. He held onto the pole with both hands. He seemed not to be in the subway car but in a private place with a look of contentment on his face. It was the same expression that my second ex-wife had when she did yoga in the morning.

I startled him when I told him that he was a brave man. I saw in his eyes that he was confused and did not know whether to ignore me, to ask me what I wanted, or, like any true New Yorker, to tell me to fuck off. I continued to make eye contact and said, “You’re a brave man to be wearing a Red Sox cap to Shea.”

He relaxed and smiled, never questioning how I knew where he was going. “Oh, I don’t think so. It’s not like going to Yankee Stadium when the Sox play. The crowds there can get rowdy. Besides, we Red Sox fans have a lot in common with you Mets fans,” he said, taking one hand off the pole long enough to point to the cap on my head. “We both hate the Yankees.”

I smiled back at him. “Good point, good point. But I don’t know, man. We snatched Pedro from under your nose. And if Manny stands at home plate admiring a home run ball to show off for all his Washington Heights homeboys, it could get ugly.”

Still smiling, he shook his head but was fading back to his own personal place with his own thoughts, not the thoughts of some joker on the subway. He turned away from me to look at the midtown Manhattan skyline that now dominated the view from the left side of the train after it had pulled away from the Courthouse Square stop. I needed to keep this conversation going.

“I’m sitting up in nosebleed country. I’m gonna need one of those guides that mountain climbers use to find my seat. But what do you expect when you decide to go at the last minute? Where are you sitting?”

He still didn’t know what to make of me but was polite. “My friend’s family has season tickets. Field level behind first base.” I knew all about the friend. I was standing in front of him because of the friend.

“Nice. I’ve sat around there a couple of times. I’ve been going to Mets games since my dad first took me when I was six. Most of the guys I know follow the teams that their dads followed. It is like an inheritance, to my mind. He was a big Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I mean, a huge fan. My mother says that when O’Malley took his team to California, my father said words that he never said before or would ever say again in all the years they were married. So growing up in a National League house it was only natural that we would follow the Mets. But if the Dodgers were in the World Series or in the playoffs, my dad, until the day he died, would root for the other team. Even if it meant rooting for the Yankees.” I whispered the last part as if I were sharing a shameful family secret.

I had hooked him just in time. The subway car was beginning to get crowded as more people going to Shea got on at Queensboro Plaza. He could have easily moved away from me to grab one of the metal railings in front of the benches of filled seats. Despite the crush of Mets fans and homebound workers boarding the car, we were still standing together like two buddies having a night out at the ballpark.

“So, your dad take you to Fenway during the glory days of Yaz?”

He flinched at the question. I thought I’d overplayed my hand and lost him. I hoped that the look on his face was just the result of a sudden burst of sunshine hitting his eyes. “No. My father never took me to a ballgame. I don’t think I ever saw a baseball game when I was growing up. My college roommate freshman year dragged me to Fenway with some of his friends because he thought I studied too much. It was love at first sight, the minute I stepped into the ballpark. After the first pitch I knew that I belonged right there. I never liked the taste of beer but must have had five that day. I loved the cheering and yelling of the crowd. I loved the hustle and grace of the players on the field. When we left and the Sox had beat Baltimore 5 to 4, I was hoarse and my hands were sore from clapping. I went to dozens of games before I graduated. I read the Globe and Herald sports pages religiously and any baseball history or biography voraciously. All these years I’ve been true to the Boston Red Sox. I never get to see the team live enough, working here. Now I have one of those cable packages that allows me to see almost every game, but it’s not the same as being in Fenway.”

I gave him a name and told him that I worked on Wall Street selling mutual funds to retail brokers. I knew enough details about this kind of job that I could BS my way through a conversation if he wanted to talk about work. I know a little about a lot of things so that I can talk to almost anybody about anything, a talent I find useful in my line of work. It would have given us something else in common, though I was certain we wouldn’t be talking shop for the rest of the ride. Only baseball.

“I’m Jack Buckner,” he said, mentioning he worked for an elite, privately held Wall Street firm that only handled oldmoney clients whose net worth was a minimum eight figures. He did not mention that it was his friend’s family firm.

“Any relation to Bill? A cousin maybe, returning to the scene of the crime after so many years? Bill Buckner... letting the world championship roll between his legs during the legendary Game 6 of the ’86 World Series.”

“Billy. Buck. Did. Not. Lose. The. World. Series.” Jack emphasized each word. I’m certain that he would have poked me in the chest on the beat of each syllable if the train had not roared past a local station with enough speed to cause him to keep both hands on the pole.

I have seen criminal defense attorneys sum up before juries in high-stakes trials with flair and with eloquence. Imagine Darrow in his heyday. Think Cutler and Gotti. Remember Cochran arguing on behalf of that piece of crap? None of them showed the passion that Jack did defending Bill Buckner. Hell, years later, all I remembered was the tenth inning. Jack could practically tell you the entire game pitch by pitch.

“First of all, McNamara should never have taken Clemens out in the seventh with a one-run lead,” he began. “He claimed Clemens asked to be taken out because he had a blister on his finger. This man will be the AL Cy Young winner and the league’s MVP. You keep him in unless he needs immediate surgery on his pitching arm in the dugout. Besides, Clemens said that he never asked to be taken out, but only after McNamara was fired. In my opinion, Clemens was very honorable because he didn’t undermine McNamara’s authority in the clubhouse by contradicting him. When I look at how he has pitched since leaving Boston, the awards and the rings, I cannot believe that he quit. However, I confess that I have a soft spot for the Rocket. The Sox quit on him. He did not quit on Boston.”

He went on about some Italian relief pitcher named Calvin letting the tying run score in the eighth. Never met too many guys from Mulberry Street named Calvin. But then again, I thought Rudolph was a name for only Nazis and reindeers before Giuliani came along.

Jack was analyzing and dissecting the plays in the tenth inning when the 7 passed Fisk Avenue. So intent on making his points, he didn’t see the joke of talking about the 1986 Series above a street that shared the name of the great Sox catcher. “Bob Stanley had already tied the game on a wild pitch, so the damage was done before Wilson ever hit the ball toward Billy. At that point, Buckner should never have been in the game. Because his ankles were bad, McNamara had taken him out of every other post-season game in the late innings and put in Dave Stapleton for defense. What was he thinking? It was not as if Billy’s bat would be missed. He went 0-for-5 in Game 6. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that even if Billy makes that play, Wilson beats him to the bag. Billy was too beat up and Wilson was too fast... And, of course,” Jack added as we were about to leave the Woodside stop, “there was still Game 7. You can’t blame Billy Buck for what happened in Game 7. They would have been the champions if they’d won that game.” He paused for a breath and checked his watch when the conductor announced that the train was being held in the station.

While Jack had been commandeering facts and stats to make his point, I noticed that each platform for the local stops along this stretch of the 7 line had stained-glass windows. I could not make out the designs as the train raced by, but I was sure that they were not pictures of the Stations of the Cross. We even passed a giant red neon cross on top of a Korean church of some Protestant denomination. With each word out of Jack’s mouth, I kept thinking about that movie with Susan Sarandon and how she belonged to the Church of Baseball. Jack was certainly a member of that congregation.

When the train finally left the station, Jack said, “Buckner was the butt of a lot of jokes afterwards. But my sympathies were later with Donnie Moore.”

The name rang a bell but I couldn’t place it.

“He was the other goat of 1986. He was the relief pitcher for the Angels, who were one strike away from winning the American League pennant when Moore gave up a home run to Dave Henderson that tied the game. The Angels lost that game in the eleventh inning. They lost the next two games and the pennant. At the time I was, of course, very happy that Boston was going to the World Series. However, Moore was never the same pitcher due to physical ailments. He was hounded out of Anaheim by boorish fans and a mean-spirited front office in the middle of the 1988 season. About a year later, he shoots his wife in front of his own children and kills himself with a bullet to the head.”

With a sigh, Jack continued, “Anyway, I couldn’t believe that when Moore’s suicide became public, a reporter called Buckner to ask whether he considered killing himself after the 1986 Series. Billy said, ‘Of course not. It’s only a game.’ I can never decide whether that’s a cheery or depressing thought.”

“Depends on the day, my friend,” I said. He went quiet as the train pulled into Junction Boulevard and 103rd Street.

I tried to keep the conversation casual for the rest of the ride, just bar talk between strangers, but I could tell that Jack’s thoughts were drifting away again. He agreed with a curt “yes” that the Zambrano-for-Kazmir trade was the biggest heist since Lufthansa. I asked him who he was going to the game with, when the windows of the subway suddenly darkened. Trees densely filled with leaves surrounded the car, blocking the sunlight. It was as if, for a minute or two, the subway had left the trestles above Roosevelt Avenue and plunged into a forest. Just as suddenly, the train emerged from the tree cover and Shea, all blue, gray, and orange, appeared in front of a slowly setting sun, a stunning joyful sight. I never got an answer to the question, only a curious stare.

Even before the subway came to a full stop at the Willets Point station, the chants of “Let’s Go Mets!” could be heard. When the doors opened, everyone in the car poured out onto the elevated platform and made their way to one of the metal stairways, freshly painted a puke-green color. I was right behind Jack as we left the car. As distant and formal as when I first addressed him, he turned and said, “Nice speaking with you. Enjoy the game.” He headed off toward the stairs and began to blend into the crowd, anxious to meet his friend.

I yelled at him over the head of a father holding the hand of his young son: “Jack, wait up! Let me give you my card and I definitely want to get yours.”

He reluctantly stopped, letting people pass him to get to the staircase. We stood by a large green garbage can so we would be out of the way. He pulled a thin gold case out of his pocket to take out a crème-colored business card. I fumbled with a frayed leather case that dropped between my feet. I squatted down to pick it up, watching Jack stare at the diminishing crowd on the platform and impatiently tapping the business card against his thigh. I also removed the ice pick that was taped to the inside of my right calf and concealed it under my sleeve. The platform was now empty except for the stragglers at the top of the staircases. A quick glance across the tracks at the Manhattan-bound platform found only a teenaged couple too busy making out to notice a pair of middle-aged guys exchanging business cards.

Jack again said goodbye and turned to walk away. But he stopped beside one of the black wooden benches on the platform when he saw that the name of his boss, the name of his friend’s father, was printed on the business card I had given him.

I could imagine the confused look on his face as the handle of the ice pick slipped down into my hand. I focused on my target. There is a small indentation at the base of the skull, just below the Velcro strap of a baseball cap and aligned, in this case, with a cartoon pair of red socks. A blade thrust into this depression will sever the spinal cord from the brain. Your muscles go limp so you cannot run away. You cannot breathe so you cannot cry for help. You go into shock as your blood pressure drops to nothing. You become unconscious with barely another thought. Death is almost immediate if an expert wields the ice pick. I am an expert.

I caught him as he began to fall like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I placed him on the black bench, arranging the body so that the Mets fans exiting the next trains would think that he was just waiting to board. I took his wallet, card case, and BlackBerry so that the cops would have the always popular and distracting motive of robbery to think about. I put the Post from my back pocket in his lap so that Jack appeared to be reading the sports page with Pedro on the cover. I left the ice pick there with no prints and no trail back to me. I was halfway down the stairs before the next train pulled in.

When I came up on the Manhattan side of the platform, the young couple were still at it hot and heavy and wouldn’t have noticed me if I had shot Jack with a.45. Standing in the evening breeze, I could see the body on the bench. The latest trainload of fans was hurrying down the puke-green stairs to get to the game. No one was giving him a second look. The starting lineups were about to be announced.

Jack’s mistake was thinking with the head between his legs, not the one on his shoulders. People with assets worth in excess of eight figures don’t care who or what you fuck so long as you are discreet. When the details of your sex life appear on the disapproving lips of some dried-up matron whose name is in the Social Register, or in a blind item in a sordid tabloid gossip page, those people might take their assets to another investment boutique. But that’s just money. There is always more money to be made somewhere.

It becomes trouble when whispers and innuendos reach the ears of your boss. It becomes real trouble when, after a little snooping and a little window peeping, he learns you are screwing his college freshman son. It becomes big trouble when you tell your boss that you are the only thing that keeps his firm from being a comical relic on The Street and that, if he continues to interfere in your personal life, you will take his business and his son. Blood and money are very personal. That’s when, through a middleman or a cutout or a guy who knows a guy, I get a call.

But who knows? Maybe it wasn’t a mistake to fall for the kid. If they had baseball in common, that would have been plenty for Jack. His error was not how he used his mouth with the kid, but opening his mouth to the father. It was the blow-up, not the blowjobs. My mother often said: Be careful because a big mouth will always get you in trouble.

A Manhattan-bound local pulled in and I got on. Below me, a young man waited outside of Shea Stadium with two tickets for tonight’s game that wouldn’t be used. Probably wearing a brand new Boston Red Sox baseball cap.

Read. Just keep reading. She had to try to lose herself in the story. Let it block out the shaking and shuttering. She gripped the book with sweating hands. She rubbed her knee. There was no way in this cramped space to ease the throbbing.

The man in the seat next to her was sleeping. He had changed places with a Hasid who had refused to sit next to a woman. When this new guy first sat down, he had scared her. He looked like an Arab. His pockmarked skin gave him a sinister appearance, and she had tried not to think of him in such a prejudiced way. He had a nice smile. But hijackers could smile.

“Are you going home or do you live in the UK?” She had worked up her courage to question him while she waited behind him in line for the loo. She kept saying “loo” now, after a week with the people in the London office.

“Home,” he had said. That smile again. It did look kind of threatening. “I’m from the Bronx, and I can’t wait to get back.”

The accent was unmistakable. Bronx, for sure. He was probably Puerto Rican. “Me too. Riverdale.” She tried to smile back at him. The last word came out sounding apologetic. People from the real Bronx hated Riverdale; she was sure of that. It shamed her to have suspected him. He seemed so benign now. He could be a victim, not a terrorist.

The plane touched down with a jolt that woke him.

She wiped her palms on the rough fabric of the seat. Rivulets of rain ran over the window glass.

“Welcome to JFK,” an intimate and humorous voice began over the loudspeaker. “If I hadn’t just spent nearly eight hours cavorting with all of you on this plane, I would think we were still in London, given this gloomy weather.”

Friday. The traffic would be awful. And she had her car in long-term parking. The Triboro Bridge would be backed up. And the rain would make it worse.

She got her black rolly down from the overhead bin and waited in the aisle to get off the plane.

“Thank you for flying Virgin Atlantic,” they said by way of goodbye.

The walk to Passport Control went on forever. The specter of having to drive over the bridge haunted her. Suppose she got stuck in traffic in the middle of the bridge with her heart beating out of control. She would have to get off. She would have to. This started back in October of 2001, returning from Washington on a Sunday night — at dusk on a misty evening, driving along, sipping the latte she had picked up at the rest stop. The bottoms of her feet had gotten sweaty when suddenly there was the Delaware Memorial Bridge — the double span sticking up above some light fog. It would have looked pretty, if it hadn’t frozen her heart. She couldn’t drive up there.

She had moved behind a blue Volkswagen Passat in the middle lane and hung onto the steering wheel for dear life. She had stayed behind that car and couldn’t look left or right until they got through the toll on the other side. Heart still pounding, she had pulled over at the first opportunity. It was almost an hour before she could get back on the road.

A few months later, she had gotten lost trying to get back to Manhattan from Newark without driving on the Pulaski Skyway. Worse and worse. Two weeks ago, she had driven down through New Jersey and gone through the Lincoln Tunnel and back up to the Bronx, just to avoid the George Washington Bridge. So ashamed, she hadn’t even told her sister. But when she finally mentioned it to Roger, who was hardly a close friend, he immediately asked, “Did this start after 9/11?” The idea had shocked her.

“Go to line twenty-seven.” The short, sharp-faced African-American woman at Passport Control jabbed a finger in the direction of a booth.

The officer’s face was round and kind, but he looked at her with hard, searching eyes. She handed him her passport. He scanned it and watched the screen, then handed it back with a perfunctory, “Welcome home.”

The baggage was slow. The rain, she guessed. The Hasidic guy stood near her, waiting. The rainy weather made her knee worse. She tried to keep her weight off it.

On 9/11 she had been down in Soho, getting physical therapy. She hadn’t gone to the office that morning. A lot of people weren’t at work for odd reasons. They were late. They called in sick. She had heard a lot of stories like this. A woman who went to pick up her new eyeglasses and never got up there. A guy from Jersey whose little girl had cried and said, “Daddy, don’t go.” The father had stopped so long comforting his kid, he missed his train. The kid had saved her father.

Her knee had saved her. By rights she should have been on the ninety-seventh floor.

After her therapy appointment, while icing her knee, she felt the gym go quiet. They were all staring at the burning skyscraper on the TV, asking each other, “Which building?” “What kind of plane?”

Her office would be flooded with light. On such a sunny day, the intensity of the light always made her giddy. Working up there made you feel important, even if all you did was put numbers into spreadsheets all day. Gerry and Margaret, sitting at their desks, would be silhouetted against the windows on a day like this. Like ghosts. Only black. Only they couldn’t be sitting. Not with this going on in the other tower.

She stood, gazing at the burning building, completely silent, feeling guilty that she was thinking about how much it would hurt her knee to be walking down all those stairs with them. The second plane hit. “Terrorists,” was all she said. She went and put on her clothes.

She had a portable radio in her gym bag. Only one station was broadcasting. One tense male voice.

On her way out, she glanced over at the knot of people gathered in front of the big TV near the treadmills and Stair-Masters. Radio to her ear, she left without looking at the screen.

Out on Broadway, the air was acrid with smoke and stung her throat. People streamed up the sidewalks. Ambulances and firetrucks careened south toward the towers. An EMT vehicle with the words Valley Stream Rescue Squad on its side went screaming by. How the hell could they have gotten here so fast?

A crowd gathered around her. “What are they saying?” A short guy in a snug gray suit pointed to the radio. She held it out to him. The battery was weak and the street so noisy that he had to put his finger in his opposite ear to hear it. Two big African-American women with tears streaming down their faces stopped and asked for news. She just shrugged and gestured to the guy holding her radio.

One of them was sobbing uncontrollably. “They are jumping out of the top floors.”

They couldn’t be. No one would do that. Gerry wouldn’t do that. Harry Ardini wouldn’t do that. She looked at the other woman, who just nodded and pulled her friend away, up Broadway.

She pictured the wide expanse of her office. The fichus tree next to her chair burning. The light from it shining in the frame on her desk. Her sister’s picture smiling through the bright red reflected flames.

The guy handed the radio back to her. She put it to her ear and started walking north with the herd.

The voice on the radio was suddenly hysterical. “We’re losing it! We’re losing it! OMIGOD!”

She turned and looked down Broadway. Her building was collapsing. Boom! Boom! Boom! Like one of those structures in a demolition movie. A huge cloud of thick gray dust rushed toward them up the street. She turned again and ran. Past the church with the pealing bells. The sexton had thought to do that. As if he were in some medieval village that had the plague.

She had walked all the way to Riverdale that day. Over the Henry Hudson Bridge. Her knee never recovered, had not stopped hurting since. She never returned to physical therapy. Just the thought of physical therapy brought back that picture in the papers the next day. The guy falling though the air. Head down. The familiar building behind him. She had looked and looked at that picture. Sometimes she was sure it was Harry. Other days, it didn’t look like his hair.

The buzzer on the luggage carousel sounded and the metal belt started to move. Bags moved down the slope onto the belt in front of her. The Hasidic guy peered at a huge black one, frowned, and then let it pass. It came around again. Blood dripped from a small opening where the zippers met at the top. Bright and shining, it pooled onto the metal of the conveyor. She breathed in to scream as it went by. She held her breath. People would call her a hysteric. Seeing blood all the time, knowing that if she had jumped that day her body would have liquefied. That’s what they said. That a body hitting the ground from such a height just liquefies. The bottoms of her feet were sweating. Just like driving over a bridge.

Her bag came tumbling down the slope. She saw the green ribbons on the zipper. Not red. Not blood. She grabbed her bag, turned in her card at Customs, and dragged it to the nearest restroom. She couldn’t drive over the bridge. She just couldn’t.

In the handicapped stall, she sat on the toilet and laid the big bag down. Inside was her toiletries kit, with all that stuff you can’t carry with you on a plane anymore.

She unzipped it and pulled out a pink disposable razor. She wedged it under the toilet paper dispenser and pressed hard. It bent but would not break. She put her foot against it too and finally it popped with a loud metallic crack.

“Are you okay in there?” a voice from another stall called.

“Fine,” she said.

She retrieved the razor blade from the floor and held it carefully between her thumb and forefinger. This is better, she thought. She could stop the pictures in her head of Harry liquefying on the sidewalk. She could finally do what she was supposed to have done. She cut along the blue veins on her wrists. She held out her arms and let the blood drip on the green ribbons, running them red, like the blood in baggage claim.

I love my job. How many people can say that?

I could be working security in a department store over in Manhattan, where they make you follow old ladies with large purses and mothers with baby strollers. Or in an office tower doing Homeland Security detail, looking at photo IDs all day and pretending I care whether you belong in a building full of uninteresting lawyers and accountants, most of whom come to work hoping I’d find a reason to stop them from going in. Or guarding a bank where you’re so bored that you consider robbing it yourself or kicking one of those lousy machines that charge two dollars to do what a bank is supposed to do for free.

My friends tell me I got it pretty good because I work security at Silvercup Studios where they shoot television shows, movies, and commercials. Not to mention the fact that it’s not far from my walkup in Long Island City. My neighbors treat me like I’m a celebrity. Which is pretty funny since my mother worked at Silvercup in the ’50s baking bread and nobody ever treated her like she was somebody, except me and my father.

Yeah, okay, I see lots of good-looking men and pretty girls, famous singers and movie stars. No big deal. They’re just like you and me. Especially without the makeup and the fancy clothes. They all come in with uncombed hair, comfortable shoes, and sunglasses. Some of them got egos to match the size of the cars they drive up in. They arrive with their assistants and their entourages carrying everything from little dogs to adopted babies. Some of them pride themselves as just folks and come in on the subway. The one thing they all got in common is that I make them sign in. It’s my job. They might be celebrities, but I treat them all the same.

There are exceptions, like the directors and the producers. They don’t bother to sign in. Every day they walk past my security desk and one of their “people” will whisper to me who they are. You’d think they were royalty or something. I check their names off a special list the office gives me. The boss says that they pay the bills and we should make them happy no matter what. I guess when you’re in charge of making multimillion-dollar movies, it’s the little things that matter, like not having to write down your own name.

Then there’s everybody in between, the ones who are not movie stars — the supporting and background actors, backup singers, and the hoochie girls in the music videos. When they come in, all eager and excited, they usually put their names in the wrong places and walk through the wrong doors. Especially the first-timers. They don’t pay much attention to anything except the hopes and dreams in their heads.

Last, but not least, there’s the crew. Most of these guys I know by sight. They come in when it’s still dark outside and that’s usually when they leave too. They walk past me half asleep. It’s hard work getting up before dawn every day, unloading, setting up and breaking down and loading up again — not to mention looking after all those people. So sometimes I try to make their days a little easier. If I’ve never seen them before, they sign in. If I know them, I let them go through, but you didn’t hear that from me. You see, we got thirteen studios and they’re in a constant state of shooting something. So sometimes I have to bend the rules.

The way their banner-blue uniforms pressed up against each other — the wilting collar corners, her twitchy cocktail apron and his regulation pinman trousers — I was only a kid, but I knew it was something and it made my head go hot, my stomach pinch. Eddie worked the alley, made the lanes shine with that burring rotary machine. Carol slung beer at the cocktail lounge, heels digging in the heavy carpet, studded each night with peanut skins, cigarette ashes, cherry stems.

They were there every day, at 3:30, in the dark, narrow alley behind the pinsetting machines. And I saw them, saw them plain as day while I sat just outside the machine room on a metal stool, picking summer scabs off my knee. First time by accident, just hiding out back there, where it was quiet and no one came around.

Eddie’d been there a month, he and his wife Sherry, who ran concessions with my mother over by the shoe station. He had blue-black hair, slick like those olives in the jar at the Italian grocery store. When he walked through the joint, coming on his shift, everyone — the waitresses, even old Jimmy, the sweaty-faced manager — lit up like a row of sparklers because he was a friendly guy with a lot of smiles and his uniform always finely pressed and the strong smell of limey cologne coming off him like a movie star or something.

No one could figure him and Sherry. Sherry with the damp, faded-blond features, eyes empty as the rubber dish tub she was always resting her dusty elbows on. Cracking gum, staring open-mouthed at the crowds, the families, the amateur baseball team, the VFW fellas, the beery young marrieds swinging their arms around, skidding down the lanes, collapsing into each other’s laps after each crash of the pins, Sherry never moved, except to shift her weight from one spindly leg to the other.

Just shy of thirteen, I was at Hollywood Lanes every day that summer. Husband three months gone, my mother was working double shifts to keep me in shoes, to hear her tell it. I helped the dishwashers, loading racks of cloudy glasses into the steaming machine, the only girl they ever let do it. Some days, I helped Georgie spray out the shoes or use Clean Strike on the balls.

But I always beat tracks at 3:30 so I could be behind the pin racks. Eddie and Carol, his hands spread across her waist, leaning into her, saying things to her. What was he saying? What was he telling her?

My father announced this from a comfortable armchair by a window. Clad in good pajamas, he had “showered, shat, and shaved,” as he put it himself. In fact, this had been engineered and executed by an obese but energetic Polish lady of some thirty-eight years who was now about to leave after the graveyard shift. An old phonograph exuded Johnny Mathis or Andy Williams, I don’t know which. Or care. Schmaltzy music kept my dad quiet. It was almost as important as the nurses.

The Pole bustled back into the room, sweating already, and hung about with bags and baskets.

“A proper scavenger,” said Dad.

“You can talk,” the Pole shot back.

“Live where you’d die. Build a nest in your ear.” He eyed me crossly. We exchanged stares.

“I weel not take much more of thees,” said the Pole. “He’s gotta be put in a home. Those opiates are bedd for his hedd. Hallucinations again last night, squirrels climbing the bedroom vall and someone up a ladder—”

“She’s cleaning the house out little by little,” said my dad, “hence the multifarious bags.”

“—not to mention the insults and the smell of his excreta,” she went on.

I stood up, hoping she’d get the hint. I had no desire to discuss Dad’s excreta — or anyone else’s — with a sweaty and exhausted Pole.

“Get someone to relieve me a few nights,” she ordered, heading for the door. “I gotta lotta werk on.”

She was mixed up in illegal sweatshops, and perhaps even illegal aliens. A true wart on the heel of humanity, she even had her own off-off-illegal sweatshop, in which the most desperate of Eastern Europeans put together for her benefit little trinkets and zippered bags made from the offcuts of the real thing.

“When you kill a pig, nothing goes to loss but the squeal,” Dad pronounced as she flounced out the door.

We were alone. My son Sean hadn’t come home last night, an increasingly frequent occurrence. The big house was silent but for the ticking of old clocks, Dad’s only hobby and luxury. Every room had several of them. “Are them things gonna be bongin’ all night?” my wife had said the first night we slept there after the honeymoon.

The little girl is playing there by herself. She’s off in a corner of the yard by the alleyway where the girls come out of the Good Shepherd School at 3 o’clock when the bell rings and walk through to the street. But it’s already late, getting dark, time for all little kids to be home with their mothers. Nobody can see her there in the alley, he knows, because he’s been watching her awhile from behind the iron picket fence. She doesn’t see him, nobody sees him. For about the hundredth time, she takes her baby out of the carriage, fixes its clothes, talks to it, and puts it down again. He’s on the move now, out from behind the fence, walking quick on stubby legs down the alley. She can’t see him coming, she’s got her head in the carriage again.

“Be good now, baby,” he hears her say just as he reaches her and she straightens up and sees him. “Oh!” she says.

He pushes her hard and she flops down like a doll on her behind. He’s down the alley, out the gate, onto Greenpoint Avenue almost before she starts bawlin’.

He crosses the avenue, pushing the carriage in front of him fast as he can along the high stone wall between himself and the dead people buried in First Calvary. He dares not look left for fear of the Stone Saints high up on their pedestals standing watch over the graves. Even though he knows they can’t see him because their backs are turned to the street. He knows why this is so because his Nan has told him. Saints give fuck-all for the likes of the shanty Irish, Nan says. As he rolls across Bradley Avenue, he sneaks a look at the front door of the Cork Lounge, where Nan takes him and the dog on Saturday afternoons, after the stores for a growler of Shaeffer “to go.”

The carriage is big as him but he can push it all right. He hurtles past the people sitting on the front stoops of the houses, there like always, the mothers hanging out the windows in their parlors, resting big folded arms on windowsills all up and down the block, watching. He knows this, so he keeps his head down behind the carriage, pushing it up the block fast as he can, up and on his toes, leaning into it like the football team he’s seen practicing in the vacant lots off Review Avenue alongside the Newtown Creek.

Still, he feels the eyes on him, watching. He trips! Hits the pavement on hands and knees. The carriage rolls forward by itself, already two squares of sidewalk ahead, but he’s up! After it! Tears stinging his eyes, he grabs the handlebars, just missing the cars parked at the curb. He rights his ship and sails on up the sidewalk. His hands are dirty, right knee scraped where his overalls ripped. They’ll ask about that, he knows. He’ll say: I fell, it don’t hurt. At the corner, he wheels around onto Starr Avenue.

For the only time he can ever remember, there’s nobody on his stoop. Home free! He backs up the stoop, dragging the carriage by its handlebars up the four stone steps and into the vestibule of his tenement, then down the long, carpeted hallway to the door to the basement stairway, and parks it there in the dark. No one can see him reach in and take the doll in its frilly dress into his arms.

“Be good now, baby,” he cautions, then lays it back down in the carriage, covering it, head and all, with the pink blanket so no one can see.

He climbs the four flights of stairs, holding tight to the wooden banister worn smooth by generations of hands, all the way to the top where he lives with Nan and Aunt May. Nan’s his grandmother and Aunt May’s mother and his father’s mother. He knows this because they told him, and his home will always be with them as long as he’s a good boy, and his mother drinks and his father’s a whoremaster. He does not remember his mother because she dropped him off when he was eight months and didn’t come back. Nan keeps house and Aunt May goes to work at the phone company. And Aunt May is the boss of all of them, Nan says when Aunt May can’t hear her. There’s an old dog named Dinah lives with them, it’s Aunt May’s dog, it won’t let him walk it. He reaches up for the doorknob and goes inside.

“Young man!” Aunt May calls from the parlor. He goes in to her. She’s in her housecoat, sitting in the arthritis chair by the window. Nan calls it that because Aunt May has that, and sits in it all the time. Nan’s not there, she went to the store. He sees the open window and pillow on the sill, the sheer curtain wafting in and out on the summer breeze, before dropping his eyes to the little fox terrier sitting alongside the chair, studying him, alert as if also waiting for him to account.

“I found it,” he says, staring at the dog who stares back, weighing his words with beady, angry eyes. Then, curling its upper lip to show fangs, growls from deep down in its little chest.

“Where did you find it?” Aunt May snaps.

“In the schoolyard.”

“Liar!”

“She gave it to me.”

Aunt May makes him push it all the way back. As he runs the gauntlet, he again keeps his head down, eyes to the pavement. The little girl is still there, bawlin’, with her mother and a bunch of little girls. The other little girls are bawlin’ too; he has no idea why. When the little girl sees him, she stops, runs to the carriage, snatches up her doll and hugs it. But when Aunt May holds him by the scruff of the neck in front of the little girl and tells her to give him a good slap right across his face, she starts bawlin’ again. Staked out by bloodthirsty hostiles, his face burns under their piteous stares. In sight of the Stone Saints across the street giving him the ass, he prays with all his might that all the windows in all the houses on every block be nailed shut.

Plaster dust fell lazily through the air. He watched it idly, betting on which finger it would land. His right hand was dominating his field of vision at the moment. His right hand, and the dust that drifted down from the crappy plasterboard someone had once used to patch up the ceiling, so old and crumbled that a loud noise could loosen it.

Like, say, a gunshot.

The dust fell on his ring and middle fingers, which twitched slightly when it hit them. That was a good thing, he decided. He moved the other three fingers, then rotated his hand on the floor where it rested. Even better. He was falling very much in love with the plaster dust, with his working fingers, with the hand and the wrist that turned it. He did a quick inventory of the rest of his body. Everything seemed accounted for, or at least attached. Something hurt around the right side of his rib cage.

Let’s try breathing, he thought. Haven’t done that for a while.

He sucked in air, and started to cough violently. The thing that hurt in his rib cage, which apparently had only been kidding before, began to throb badly. He used the right hand that he still liked so much to poke cautiously at the spot. It was tender and painful. But it wasn’t bleeding. Protruding slightly from the inside of the vest was the mashed tip of a bullet.

Michaels pushed himself up from the floor, pointing his gun unsteadily in front of him.

“You okay?” asked Carter, who was getting to his feet.

“Basically, yeah,” said Michaels. “Might have cracked a rib.”

Carter looked at Michaels’s vest, which had a neat entry hole on the front.

“Damn, those things actually work,” he said. “Who knew?”

“Not that guy,” said Michaels, pointing in front of him.

The man lying on the floor was groaning weakly, two bullet holes in his back and a pool of blood seeping out from under him.

“Shot his own man in the back,” observed Carter. “Just because he got in the way. That’s cold.”

A pile of blue uniforms burst through the door, guns drawn.

“Oh good, now you’re here,” wheezed Michaels. “Tell me you got him.”

“Got who?” asked one of the uniforms.

“Wasn’t someone supposed to be covering the fire escape?”

“Yeah. Merck. He’s still out there. He didn’t see anything.”

Michaels and Carter looked at each other.

“Two-bedroom apartment,” said Michaels. “There’s the door, which was us, and the fire escape, which is Merck. Where is the fucker?”

One of the uniforms called for EMS. The two detectives and the other three fanned out across the living room. Carter took a deep breath, then kicked open a bedroom door. He waited two beats. Nothing happened.

“Portillo, if you’re in there, you know you ain’t getting away,” he called. “Make this easy. No one got hurt.”

“Wait a second,” protested Michaels.

“Shut up, I’m working,” said Carter. He barged through the door, a uniform close behind.

“Clear!” they called a second later.

Carter came out and looked at the second bedroom.

“Portillo, I am not playing!” he shouted. “Don’t get any stupider on me!”

There was no response. Carter sighed, then kicked the door in.

“Fuck me, it’s empty,” he said, peering inside. “Guy did a Houdini. Where’d he go?”

“Hey, detective,” called a uniform from the first bedroom. “Take a look at this.”

They all crowded in. There was a floorboard that wasn’t quite flush with the rest. The uniform pulled, and a section of floor came up. The hole underneath was ringed by a dozen brick-sized packages wrapped in layers of plastic.

“Crawl space,” said Carter, shining a flashlight into it. “Looks like it goes all the way to the elevator shaft. He’s probably gotten to the basement by now.”

“Not one of our finer days,” said Michaels.

The EMS crew came in and went to work on the wounded man. Michaels took his first deep breath, regretting it immediately. He pried the bullet out of his vest and tossed it to one of the uniforms.

“Bag this,” he ordered. “Bag the coke. Get Evidence Retrieval in here for prints. I’m gonna ride along with the Swiss guy.”

“I thought he was Latino,” said the uniform. “How do you figure he’s Swiss?”

“’Cause of all the holes in him,” said Michaels.

The ambulance screeched up the ramp to the emergency room at Queens General, with Carter’s Corvette pulling up right behind them, his bubble light flashing on top. Two RMPs brought up the rear.

“I want him guarded 24/7,” said Carter to the uniforms. “Two men at all times, and heads up. If this guy wants to finish the job, he’ll come in blasting.”

They followed the gurney inside. There was a flurry of green scrubs and shouting, then the doors to the OR hissed shut, leaving the two detectives standing with a surgeon.

“How long for the operation?” asked Michaels.

“To take the bullets out, not long,” said the surgeon. “But we got to get Neuro down to take a look at the spine. I don’t think the guy walks again.”

“He wasn’t going anywhere, anyways,” said Michaels. “We’d like him alive and talking.”

“Don’t worry, that’s what we do,” replied the surgeon. “Welcome to Gunshots ’R’ Us.”

He vanished through the doors. Carter tugged on Michaels’s arm.

“What?”

“I figure that adrenaline rush you’ve been coasting on is about to run out,” said Carter. “Let’s get you looked at before you crash and get all whiny with it.”

Cracked rib, said the ER nurse. Cracked rib, said the X-ray tech. By the time an actual doctor came by and peremptorily taped him up, the formal diagnosis was an afterthought. The doctor pulled out a prescription pad, then looked at him quizzically.

“How much do you want it to not hurt?” he asked.

“What’s the tradeoff?” asked Michaels.

“You have any desire to be awake anytime in the near future?”

“Actually, I do,” said Michaels. “But give me something for when I need to sleep without screaming.”

The doctor scribbled something. “You’re a lucky man today,” he said as he handed it to him.

“I guess I am,” said Michaels. “Not really feeling it yet.”

He walked out of the ER. Carter was waiting for him.

“They told me you got a cracked rib,” he said.

“So I heard,” said Michaels. “How’s our boy?”

“Still in surgery,” said Carter. “And Birnbaum’s here.”

“He wants to debrief us?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Birnbaum’s moods were measured on the Richter scale. From the looks of his complexion, which was veering into the deep-purple end of red, there was major activity happening along his faultline.

“Routine execution of a search warrant, that’s what you said,” he fumed. “That is what you said, isn’t it?”

“Yes, captain,” answered Carter.

“And now I got an escaped cop-shooter with no description,” said Birnbaum. “Wonderful. Let’s call the Post and share our little victory.”

“I didn’t really get shot,” explained Michaels. “I got shot at. The bullet did not technically enter my body.”

“And my foot will not technically connect with your ass,” retorted Birnbaum.

“We did get twelve keys of coke off the street,” pointed out Carter. “And one guy to charge them against.”

“Oh, that was good work,” said Birnbaum. “Did he put up a struggle as you put the cuffs on, or was he too busy bleeding on the floor? Get Portillo, and then I can start sticking medals on someone.”

He stormed away.

“Ain’t no winning with this one, is there?” said Carter.

The surgeon came out. “You need these for evidence or something?” he asked, holding out his hand. There were two bullets in it.

“Yeah, thanks,” said Carter. “How’s the patient?”

“He’ll live, but he won’t be out of a wheelchair until someone figures out how to reconnect spinal cords.”

“That sucks,” said Michaels. “How long until he wakes up?”

“Should be soon.”

“Okay, doc, thanks,” said Michaels. He turned to Carter. “So now that they’ve sewed him up, let’s go see if he’s willing to spill his guts.”

“Not until I talk to him about his condition,” said the surgeon. “He hears that from me, not from you.”

“Look, doc, this is a serious case here,” said Michaels. “We got a shooter on the run.”

“My house, my rules,” replied the surgeon. “I’ll let you know when I’m through.”

About fifteen minutes later, he came out and gave them a nod. They went inside. The man was stretched out on a bed, a number of different monitors beeping and blinking around him. He was staring up at the ceiling, but rolled his eyes toward the two detectives as they pulled up a couple of chairs to the bed. One of his hands was handcuffed to the siderail.

“How’s it going, John?” asked Michaels.

“Who’s John?” whispered the man.

“That’s how they got you listed,” said Michaels. “You’re John Doe 375 until they find out your real name. Sorry about your situation. Guess your partner figured he didn’t want you talking.”

“I’m not talking,” said the man.

“Look at that loyalty, will you?” beamed Michaels.

“Impressive,” said Carter. “Gets shot in the back by his own boy, and still won’t give him up.”

“John — screw that, give me a name,” said Michaels. “We’ll have it by tonight with the fingerprints, so you might as well.”

“Santos,” said the man.

“Okay, Santos, nice to meet you. Here’s the thing,” said Michaels. “We took twelve keys out of the floor in the bedroom. That puts you deep into A-1 felony weight, which in real terms means a whole lotta years to life. Not only that, you get charged for what your buddy Portillo did when we came in the door.”

“What do you mean?” wheezed Santos.

“I mean two counts of attempted murder in the— Hey, I guess it’s first degree, isn’t it?”

“He was shooting at police officers,” said Carter. “Hit one. That makes it first degree in my book.”

“So that makes it another whole lotta years to life consecutive to the first whole lotta years to life,” continued Michaels.

“I didn’t shoot anyone,” protested Santos.

“Yeah, but it’s this whole acting-in-concert thing,” said Michaels. “Legal stuff, but I’m saying it means you go down for everything here.”

“He’s not my partner,” said Santos.

“Then you shouldn’t give a shit what happens to him,” said Michaels.

“I wouldn’t,” added Carter.

“You see, here’s what I’m saying, Santos,” Michaels continued. “We can give up on him and let you take the weight, and that’s a win for us. We go on to the next case, and you go upstate into maximum security...”

“That’s on account of it being a violent felony,” explained Carter.

“Where you will spend the rest of your life not being able to walk, piss, shit, or... which one am I missing?”

“Fuck,” said Carter.

“Oh yeah, fuck,” said Michaels. “On the plus side, when you get gang-banged, you won’t feel a thing. You could get some reading done while it’s going on.”

“You are going to be one well-read man,” said Carter.

“But, as you might have figured out by now...” started Michaels.

“Because you are an intelligent individual...” said Carter.

“There is a way of making this situation a whole lot easier.”

“Portillo,” said Santos.

“That’s right.”

“And you give me what? Witness Protection Program?”

“Not likely,” said Michaels. “But we could just charge you with the drugs, and there’s a lot of flexibility in the sentencing. Even probation comes into play if your info is good.”

“I can get out?”

“We could drop it down a grade or three depending on the level of cooperation we get,” explained Michaels. “This is Queens. We got a deal going with the Narcotics DA. Doesn’t mean you can go back to selling, but yeah, you can get out.”

Santos lay there, his eyes closed. “Am I ever gonna walk?”

“Not according to your doctor,” said Michaels.

“Fuck Portillo,” said Santos. “Fuck him up bad.”

“We’ll do our best,” promised Michaels. “So what have you got?”

“His sister’s kid,” said Santos. “He’s in Little League. He’s a pitcher. Portillo was always bragging on how great his nephew is. He was talking about going to see him pitch on Saturday. There’s a playoff game. He wouldn’t miss it if every SWAT team in the world was after him.”

“When? Where? What’s the sister’s name?”

“I don’t know,” said Santos.

“What’s the nephew’s name?” asked Carter.

“Portillo just called him Junior.”

“And that’s all you got? There are a thousand Little League fields in this city. How we gonna find the right one?”

Santos thought for a second. “Jews,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“He came back from this one game, I think it was last Tuesday night, and he was laughing about seeing all these Jews lining up for a bunch of school buses. He thought it was the funniest thing he ever seen.”

“Jews in New York,” muttered Michaels. “Well, that should narrow it down.”

Let’s get this party started!” Lily calls out to me from across the street. She’s late, as usual. I’ve been waiting for her by the train station on the corner of Main and Roosevelt, breathing in the greasy aroma of hot dogs and frying noodles from various sidewalk carts. Sunlight washes over Main Street and its procession of festive store signs, all red and yellow with black Chinese lettering. As Lily approaches, the traffic lights change; cars brake at the crosswalk in succession, like they’re bowing to her. She smiles brightly and bumps her hip against mine. I roll my eyes at her and don’t bump back, but inside I’m relieved that she even showed up. Today is important: I’m determined to talk to my crush, Jimmy Lee, a junior at my school. I know he plays basketball at Bowne Park on the weekends, so I made Lily promise to come with me so that I could “run into him” there. We head down Main toward Sanford Avenue, weaving around weekend shoppers and double-parked trucks.

“Think he’ll be there today?” I ask.

“Who? Yao Ming?” she says, her dimples showing.

“Stop calling him that.” I poke her arm. “You know his name.”

“Hey, look! There he is.”

My breath catches in my chest. I look around without moving my head, hoping that he’s too far away to have heard me talking about him. We’re approaching the underpass of the Long Island Rail Road station and I expect to see him perusing magazines at the newsstand, or worse, walking right toward me. But Lily points to a store window with a life-sized poster of Yao Ming, the NBA player from China, and starts cracking up.

“Oh, reeeeally funny, Lil,” I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster. I exhale through my mouth, the tension in my neck subsiding. “You almost made me puke, you know.”

She’s laughing so hard no sound is coming out of her mouth.

“Um, maybe you’re the one who’s gonna puke. You okay?”

She nods and gasps. I’m tempted to tickle her sides to make her throw up — she’s always been sensitive like that — but I’m too anxious to get going.

Jimmy Lee looks nothing like the famous athlete, but he’s 6'2" — way taller than most Asian guys — and he plays on the basketball team. That was enough for Lily to make fun of him. It made no difference to her that he’s Korean.

“Really, quit calling him Yao Ming. Jimmy’s not even Chinese.”

“I know,” she sighs. “Well, he’s far from perfect. A jock. What’s he going to do for you? Buy you pom-poms?” She catches her reflection in the window of a café and runs her fingers through her hair.

Lily Tong is the kind of girl who makes heads turn. She’s only fifteen, one year older than me, but she looks at least twenty. She’s curvy like the women in the music videos, and she wears her makeup and hair like she’s one too. As usual, she’s dressed in something slinky: an expensive, cut-up T-shirt that keeps falling off her shoulder, low-cut jeans that hug her curves, and black pumps. Dangling off her arm is a new purse, its print of interlocking letters broadcasting its expense. Along the street, old Chinese ladies carrying plastic bags full of groceries pause from scrutinizing vegetables to shake their heads at her disapprovingly. Men gawk at her from the open backdoors of restaurants; one worker almost falls from his perch on an overturned bucket into the pile of carrots he’s peeling. As usual, Lily pretends not to notice, but she lifts her chin a little bit higher, and swings her hips a little bit wider.

I hold my head higher too, proud to be her best friend. At 5'5", I’m taller than Lily, but I look like a child next to her, in my maroon tank top and green Old Navy cargo pants. Even if I had the courage to wear the kinds of clothes as Lily, everything would just hang on me loosely. My hair falls straight down in stringy strands no matter what I do to it, so I never even bother curling it like Lily does. I’m glad that I chose to paint my toenails red instead of pink; at least my feet look grown-up.

As we turn onto Sanford, someone calls out Lily’s name. We both turn around and see Peter Wong getting out of the passenger side of a gleaming black Cadillac Escalade.

He walks up to us casually and puts his arm around Lily’s shoulders. The sun glints off the rock-star shades he’s wearing. He’s older, in his twenties or maybe even thirties; I don’t know what he’s doing talking to Lily, but I figure he must know her through her father, who owns one of the biggest dim sum houses in Flushing. As a big businessman, her father knows a lot of people.

“Dai Guo!” She smiles and kisses him on the cheek. She called him Big Brother, but the way he’s looking at her is anything but brotherly. His hand lingers on her hair as he releases her shoulder. He barely looks at me when she introduces us. I know he’s headed to the park too; he and his friends are always there.

They continue walking together, Lily between us so I can’t hear most of their conversation. He calls her Xiao Mei — Little Sister — and coos at her as if she’s a baby. She’s all giggly with him, which I think is gross. Still, I wonder what it would feel like if a guy like him paid so much attention to me, if I were that beautiful. He tells her about the kinds of things he can get for her from his “connections.”

“I already have a Prada bag,” I hear her pouting. “Can you get me a Louis Vuitton?” She pronounces it Loo-iss Voy-tahn.

As we near the entrance to the park, we can hear people on the basketball court, the slap of rubber on cement followed by occasional grunts and metallic dunks. The park, or Bowne Playground as it’s officially called, is divided into sections separated by chain-link fences: The basketball court takes up the most space and is flanked by a kiddie playground and a treelined yard where old men pass their retirement days on its benches, reading Chinese newspapers or feeding pigeons. I scan through the trees for a glimpse of Jimmy, but I can’t recognize his voice over the faraway laughter of children.

We reach the yard first and I see Peter’s friends there — four guys and three girls. Most of them go to my school, seniors reputed to be gangsters. They have claimed the concrete chess tables set in the corner, but instead of chess pieces, there are mah-jongg tiles. Despite the heat of the day, the guys are in black and have spiky hair like Peter, and the girls wear their hair long and carefully frozen into voluminous curls. They’re all smoking cigarettes; I wonder how smart that is, given all the hair spray in the air. Snippets of Cantonese, Mandarin, and Fujianese rise from their conversation.

I recognize one of the guys from my algebra class. He’s a few years older, but he’s in my class because he doesn’t speak much English. We’ve never talked to each other, so I just kind of nod at him. He gives me a strange look, as if he recognizes me but doesn’t know why.

To my dismay, Lily follows Peter to the girls’ table, where a new game of mah-jongg is about to commence. It’s hard to look away from the mesmerizing whirl of pink and green, as pretty manicured hands shuffle and stack the jade tiles expertly.

“You play MJ?” Peter is actually addressing me as well as Lily.

“Uh, not really.” I learned how to play from watching my mom and aunts, but I couldn’t see myself doing it, here, with them. It strikes me as just so Chinese. I mean, sure, I’m Chinese, but not the same way they are, or even the same way Lily is. I was born and raised on Thirty-Ninth Avenue, but my neighbors were Dominican and Jewish, not just Chinese. My parents work in Manhattan’s Chinatown and commute from Flushing on the dollar vans, my mom to a doctor’s office and my dad to a TV repair shop. I grew up hearing almost as much Spanish as Chinese, whereas Lily’s parents made sure that she stayed immersed in Chinese culture and cultivated friendships only with Chinese kids.

Lily nudges me and answers that of course we play. Peter motions for one of the girls at the table to make room for us as he goes to join the guys at the other table. One of the guys hands Peter something wrapped in a crumpled paper bag, from which he takes a swig. The girl, a senior I don’t know, scoots right over and starts resetting the table, scowling at Lily. She’s not the only one scowling, but Lily isn’t fazed.

I look through the chain link to the other side of the park and finally spot Jimmy on the ball court. His brow is furrowed with intensity, his muscular arms outstretched as he motions for Eric Martinez, another junior, to pass him the ball. Eric responds, twisting away from his guard and whips the ball to Jimmy, who in one smooth motion catches it and shoots it into the basket for a three-pointer. Despite myself, I cheer along with the folks on the other side of the fence, which gets me strange looks from my seatmates, Lily included.

I lock eyes with Lily and talk to her under my breath.

“Are you coming with me or not?” I tilt my head ever so slightly toward the court.

“No! I’m staying here.” She presses her lips into a fine line and whispers, “You should stay too. Forget about Jimmy. This is cool.” She accepts a Newport cigarette from a spiky-haired senior whose name I still don’t know.

“Fine. I’m going to go watch the game.” I get up, nod at the table, and walk away. There’s a large enough crowd over there that I feel comfortable heading over by myself. I take a seat at the edge of the bleachers. By now I’m so irritated with Lily that I don’t even have time to get nervous when Jimmy plops down next to me. He has a towel wrapped around his neck and his cheeks are flushed.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” He is speaking to me. He knows who I am.

“Oh, you know, just visiting a friend.” I look down and tuck my hair behind my ear. If I were Lily I would look up at him through my eyelashes and flirt. But I’m not, so I focus on how red my toenails are.

“You mean those gangsters over there are your friends?” He jerks his head in their direction. A few of the guys are talking with some Latino kids from the neighborhood. They all stand stiffly in a semicircle, menacing expressions on their faces. Peter seems to be negotiating with their leader, a dark, stocky guy with a shaved head and an oversized basketball jersey. They all relax when Peter and the guy shake hands, which they do in a hip-hop sequence: fists up, they grasp each other’s hands as if they’re going to arm wrestle, yank themselves toward each other, and bump chests. As their palms separate I catch a glint of light off little plastic bags.

“Those guys? Nah. I’m here with my friend Lily.” Who is over there with those gangsters, I’m thinking. Lily is studying her tiles, but even across the park I can tell she’s watching me from the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t know you were going to be playing here. You’re really good.”

“Um, thanks...” He’s pulling the ends of the towel, rubbing it back and forth over his neck. “I uh... I’m glad you’re here.”

Before we can say anything else, he’s called back into the game. The sun feels good on my face.

When the over-muscled hulk in the studded leather jeans smacks the fat guy in the polka dot sundress, the eight patrol officers gathered around the small TV in the muster room cheer loudly. The body builder is a prostitute, the fat guy a prominent New York politician. The video is evidence discovered in the apartment of an extortionist.

Groans and cat calls greet the white guy’s flabby thighs and flaccid penis when the hulk tears off his dress. When the fat guy turns to reveal a cotton-white ass the size of a watermelon, the boys nearly fall off their chairs.

I’m the only woman in the room, Officer Jill Kelly, and I feel sorry for the fat slob in the dress. I wonder what it’s like to be a City Councilman, a Catholic, a husband, a father, a transvestite in a hotel room with a leather boy. The truth is that I can smell his desperation. The truth is that some cop’s gonna leak the tape and the fat guy’s life is gonna drop out from under him like a body through the trap door of a gallows.

“Jill? The captain wants to see you.”

“Thanks, Crowley. I need to get away from this.”

Bushy enough to conceal small game, Sergeant Crowley’s eyebrows rise to form lush semicircles as he jerks his chin at the TV. “I woulda predicted this was right up your alley.”

“I want you to find my husband’s killer.”

I knew what words the woman would say even before she said them. I knew the instant she spotted me, said goodbye to the man she was talking to at the counter of the Acropolis Diner, and headed straight for my table. She was dressed all in black, her mascara smeared because she’d been crying. I figured that since she was only two days into her new role as widow, she was entitled.

I sat back in the booth, considering her where she had taken the seat across from me. I’d also known what she was going to say because I knew her. And had known her husband. Mihalis Abramopoulos had owned and operated the Acropolis Diner on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Queens, for the past thirty years. Ever since he’d come over from Greece in the early ’70s. Not unlike many of Astoria’s Greek population that had been trying to escape military coups and martial law and were looking for a safe environment in which to raise their kids. Hey, my parents had done it in the ’60s, before the colonels had staged a military junta in Greece and taken over control of a country that was still trying to get its shit together after the civil war. I’d been seventeen at the time, but I’m told I still speak like I’d just arrived on the last plane over the Atlantic. Usually after I’ve had one too many glasses of Johnnie Walker Black and was trying to figure out the mystery of my life rather than one of the many cases on my desk back at the agency.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. My name’s Spyros Metropolis and along with my silent partner, Lenny Nash, I run Spyros Metropolis Private Detective Agency, which is located on Steinway Street halfway between Broadway and Ditmars. While most of my family gravitated toward the Broadway end of Astoria, I preferred Ditmars. Mostly because my family gravitated toward Broadway. I didn’t live in the rooms above the agency, partly because they’d need extensive restoration to make them livable. Mostly because I preferred to keep my business life separate from my personal life.

I eyed the widow across from me. So much for that philosophy.

Then again, being a twice-divorced P.I. with alimony and child support payments, where else was I to take my meals if not a diner?

“My condolences, Kiria Abramopoulos.”

Hermioni blanched, possibly tired of like sentiments even though her husband wouldn’t be lowered into the ground until the day after next, when the M.E. officially released the body. “Can you do it? Find my husband’s killer? I’ll pay your going rate.”

Probably she didn’t know what my going rate was. Probably she would change her mind if I told her. “Kiria Abramopoulos, I’m sure the police will find your husband’s killer.”

And I had every confidence that they would. Not because I was a big fan of the NYPD, but because I used to count myself as one of them.

“The police have their hands full with the blackout. Mikey’s death is a low priority.”

The blackout. Over 100,000 Queens residents had gone without power for almost two weeks, predominantly in the Astoria area. LaGuardia Airport had been closed down, parts of the subway, and even Rikers Island’s jails had to rely on backup power for the duration. Many businesses were forced to close their doors. But the diner had remained open, Mike relying on propane burners and a grill set up out back to offer a short menu of items, and a generator to operate a couple of fans and a cooler.

The blackout had coincided with a heatwave that left residents scrambling to find someplace with air-conditioning or sweating it out. And all my good shirts bore sweat stains to prove it.

Then the night before last, the lights came back on. Revealing Mike Abramopoulos lying on his diner floor in a pool of his own blood. The floor I was looking at filled now with white orthopedic shoes as Petra, the young Albanian waitress I’d come to know since she hired on eight months ago, approached to top off my coffee cup. I noticed her smooth alabaster arms as she poured, as well as her other fine parts; she was a very attractive kid. She asked if Hermioni wanted coffee. The widow waved the girl away.

There had been a rash of restaurant robberies in the Astoria area of late, perhaps blackout-driven, perhaps not. Chances are, Mike was a random victim. Greeks worked hard for their money and were loathe to give it up. Especially to a masked man who would make in two minutes what it had taken the Greek all day to earn. It was the principle of the thing.

It was also what tended to get Greek business owners into heaps of trouble.

Hermioni covered my hand with hers where mine held my coffee cup, a damp Kleenex between her skin and mine. I grimaced and pulled my arm back and pretended to fix the right cuff of my white long-sleeved shirt that I had rolled up to my elbows. My wardrobe was limited to white shirts, plain ties, and dark slacks in the summer, and varied little in the winter except for the addition of a black trenchcoat and hat. My appearance had never been a priority for me beyond staying neat. I’d been cursed with a Greek nose that my brother said you could see turning a corner at least half a minute before I did. And the march of time on my hairline couldn’t be stopped with a lifetime supply of minoxidil.

“Please, Spyros. I... need to know who killed my husband. I need justice.”

Dishes and silverware clanked where Stamatis, the busboy, cleared the table behind Hermioni. The widow slanted him a glance that told him he could have picked a better time. I agreed. Stamatis ignored us both.

I drew my attention back to Hermioni. “Did Mike have any enemies?”

“No, no.” She smiled feebly. “Aside from me, of course.” An attempt at humor. “But you know I could never do that to him.”

Did I? Over the course of my career, I’d seen a lot of things I’d originally thought were impossible. Learning that Hermioni did away with Mike so she could take over the diner and move in with an Ethiopian half her age would rate somewhere on the less-shocking end.

“So you’ll take the case then?”

I told her my going rate.

I had to give the old gal credit. She didn’t even blink.

“I’ll bring the retainer by the agency this afternoon,” she told me.

My intention had been to scare her away. Instead, I’d just let her in the front door.

The week after he placed the advertisement in the India Today matrimonial pages, he received fifty-six requests. Not all, of course, had paid the $200 he charged through PayPal. But twenty-one had. He did a criminal background check of the ten men and eleven women. He ran their credit histories and sent the reports:

With the astrology business and now the Matrimony Investigating Agency up and running, things were looking good. Raj treated himself to a masala dosa at India Grill. “Add more mirshe,” he always reminded them, or else the dosa lacked the requisite zing. He relished the spiced potatoes and the sweet masala tea. All around, families, business people, and ladies sat and gossiped, some in English, some in Punjabi, and some in Gujarati. Almost everyone was Indian. Why, he sometimes thought, Queens is more Indian than India. He took out some quarters, left two as a tip, and went to the register to pay.

It was a Saturday; he would sit and wait for any walk-in business. He headed into the Sari Palace, past the mannequins in langas and saris, nodded his greeting to the ladies setting up the register, and up the stairs to his office. It was best not to speak to them, he had realized, or else they’d draw him into their gossip. Then he’d have to listen to the not-so-subtle suggestions about some cousin or niece who was ready to marry, who cooked so well and sang beautifully. Would you like to see her photo? Best to avoid the tedious talk.

The walls of his second-floor office were bare but for three posters of the most beautiful woman who had ever lived, the 1950s Indian film star, Meena Kumari. When he procured the lease to the office, he had allowed himself the extravagance of taking some publicity photos he’d had since his teens to the copy center and enlarging them. Her gaze never escaped his.

He flicked on the neon Open sign in his window, under a hand-lettered one that read, Vedic Astrology, and checked his e-mail.

He scanned the few requests for matrimonial character checks. One e-mail caught his eye:

Raj read the e-mail over several times and mulled the “full dossier” request. What should be the quote for such a report? $400? This one doesn’t want a report that reassures him that his child will be fine coming to America and marrying his intended. He wants dirt. The salacious detail of depravity. That she drinks, smokes, and dances.

He responded:

Within ten minutes, he received confirmation of a payment and a name: Ritu Rani. Ritu Rani? He smiled and dug through the stack of Little India magazines on his desk, finding the one from four months ago. There she was on the cover: Miss Little India, Queens 2006 — Ritu Rani. He remembered every curve of her delicate body. She was back in his life again.

He waited two days before responding:

Within minutes of sending his report, he received a most pleasant offer.

This time it was signed with the full name: Manny Sharma.

“Lakshmi, praise be to you,” Raj said out loud. Manny Sharma. The Manny Sharma needs his services. How fortunate is his cusp. He must do his horoscope to see what other good karma is coming his way. Manny Sharma needs him. A wayward only-son entangled with a woman. Well, one man’s bad luck is another’s good fortune.

Raj read his work over with care and wondered whether the $95 was high enough to show his worthiness but not too high to make him seem greedy. He changed it to $85 before sending the e-mail.

Raj was so pleased with himself that he left right away for some paan. It was important to sweeten one’s mouth at good news so that it would linger longer. He walked to the corner of 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue. Vinod had set up a paan stand inside the sweet store. Raj came here a few times a week, as nothing was as satisfying as the taste of a freshly made paan. As Vinod wrapped the betel leaf and added areca nut and mineral lime, then sprinkled some spices, sweet mixture, and whatnot, they chatted. But Vinod was always looking for some free advice. What’s an auspicious date for buying stock? Good dates for traveling? Today Vinod wanted to know about his sister’s marriage. What good dates are coming? Nothing annoyed Raj more. Astrology was an ancient and sacred art. It required precise calculations. It was not gossip material. But he loved paan, and Vinod was the only game in town, so he held his tongue and gave general information. “Well, till the eclipse on the thirteenth, not good to set the date.” He finally got the paan, plopped it in his mouth, and chewed.

As he walked back to his office, he stopped at the DVD store at the corner of 37th Road to see what latest Hindi movies they had. All the usual trash. He rented two and headed to his office, feeling satisfied that now his moment had come and Manny Sharma himself would be the vessel.

Manny was around fifty, ten years older than Raj. Manny had made a fortune in the Indian steel business. When Raj had taken his correspondence course in astrology a few years before, Manny’s horoscope had been his final project. Raj remembered that even with all of Manny’s money, the chart showed difficulty in the fifth house — some fracture with a child. And since Manny had but one son... Well, well, well, Manny and Raj’s fortunes intertwined.

Now Raj did a more extensive moon chart of Manny, which showed him to be a ruthless man who destroyed his competition and cared little for others. So it is only fair, Raj reasoned, that though he have a fortune (he was, after all, born in the Shukra ascension), his lack of humility must bring him pain in some other area of his life. And nothing would concern the great Manny Sharma more than the thought of his prince marrying a loose woman.

Neal Sharma was an MBA student at the Stern School at NYU. Raj had no trouble locating him the next day. Raj presented himself in the lounge of the Stern building and waited. Soon classes were over and he spotted Manny’s son with a group of other young men. Neal was handsome, slim, and decidedly casual for being the son of one of the wealthiest families in India. Raj watched and studied him. Was he a good kid? He seemed to be enjoying the company of his friends. No pretentiousness. Not the strongest personality in the group. Not the most handsome. But a good enough fellow.

Raj continued his investigation by doing Neal’s chart. His instincts were correct: Neal was a boy of unquestionably good moral character. Would have a happy family life. Three children. And, of course, lots of wealth. How to play this out? Raj wondered. He felt he was still missing something and so he’d sleep on it. He dreamed all night of Miss Little India, Queens.

Raj woke up with a plan that made him feel young. He knew where his destiny lay. He did not doubt the stars. He went to the electronics store and haggled a digital camera. He knew where Ritu lived and went to her apartment building five blocks away. Soon enough, he saw her. She wore a skirt that covered her knees and a simple pink top. No makeup. Flat sandals. Just the sight of her made his heart beat faster. He moved to the other side of the street.

And took her picture.

For the first time in years, he was hungry for something. His brain — which, as a young man, had been routinely praised for its discipline and quickness — was perhaps going to be used again. Maybe it had just been resting till now. Wearing a hat and dark glasses to obscure his appearance, he went in search of the couple. It wasn’t hard. He waited outside her building, and soon he saw Neal buzzed in. They came out together not ten minutes later, and he took photos of them walking. They went to lunch at Chat Hut. He slid into the table behind her, and she never noticed him. How could she, when all she did was look at Neal and smile? They were chatting about this and that, in the meandering way young couples do when smitten. He had a paper due, she had a job interview; he wanted to go to a movie that night, she said earlier was better. Neal was eating channa with puri and she had a dahl chat plate. She fed him a spoon full of her chat.

“Ritu, I can’t wait to take you to the chat place in Delhi, baby, you will love it,” Neal said as they got up to leave.

It’s never good when you open your front door and the first thing you see is uniforms. Only this time, they were military dress green, not 110th Precinct blue, and lucky for us they wanted the house next door. Bad luck for the Mantilla family, whose oldest boy, Freddie, joined up seeking the fast track to citizenship. And now he’s going to get it — posthumously.

The following Thursday I’m standing with the family as the flag-draped coffin is about to be lowered into a hole overshadowed by the Long Island Expressway and a recycling plant. The last notes of “Taps” float by on the wind, mingling with the Doppler-shifting wee-oo-wee-oo of a passing police siren. Someone’s not at peace with the Lord out there.

A white-gloved finger presses the play button on a boom box, and the crash of angry Spanish ghetto rap rips the stillness to shreds. Freddie chose this music as his final shout-out to the world, and, if I know Freddie, as a final screw-you to all the white boys in his unit who would have gone with “Amazing Grace.” The honor guard salutes stiffly as cars roar by on the overpass.

I go up to the cops who brought Freddie’s uncle here, and ask them to take the guy’s handcuffs off for five minutes so he can hug his family. It takes a moment, but they do it for me.

“You on a case?” says Officer Sirota.

“Friend of the family.”

“Uh,” he grunts. “Say, you know what that’s about?”

There’s a group of mourners dancing around a grave across the street in Mount Zion Cemetery. I tell him it’s a splinter sect of Orthodox Jews who believe that their former leader, Rabbi Aaron Teitelboym, is the Messiah, so every year they gather at his grave on the anniversary of his death to celebrate his imminent resurrection.

“That so?” says Sirota. “How long’s he been dead?”

“Nine years.”

“Nine years? Man, it only took Jesus three days. So I guess that’s one up for our side.”

The lieutenant presents Freddie’s mom, Irene, with the purple heart and bronze star, and salutes her. She presses the medals to her chest, and hugs a color photo of her smiling boy, the sharp-eyed soldier who waved his comrades away from the roadside bomb that shattered his skull and left a smoking crater of that handsome young face. It was a closed casket service.

Too soon, they snap the cuffs back on Uncle Reynaldo and escort him to the squad car. I wait my turn as close relatives go up and hug my neighbor. She’s clutching Freddie’s brother Felipe, who’s already sprouting a teen mustache and getting pretty big for a twelve-year-old.

Felipe wrenches his arm away from her and seeks out the masculine ritual of swapping greetings with his cousin Ray Ray, who I once helped dodge a graffiti rap that could have gotten nasty if the cops had felt like pressing it. Just being caught with “graffiti instruments” is a Class B misdemeanor, and it doesn’t help that in order to get proper respect as a graffiti writer in the barrio, the supplies have to be stolen. Reparations were costly, but worth it, since that dark-skinned Dominican kid is now working on a twenty-one-game hitting streak carried over from his previous season at Newtown High School, and the rumor is that he’s being scouted by the Mets.

That night we climb up onto the roof so Felipe can look at the glittering crown of Shea Stadium on the horizon.

“Yo, Filomena,” he says. “I hear los Mets are gonna put their game on real thick this year.”

“They definitely have a shot at it.”

“Remember the subway series when that cabrón de Yanqui Clemens threw the broken bat at Piazza?”

“Sure.”

“Freddie got some tickets for me and Ray Ray. We was in the upper deck, the three of us doing mad daps all around.” He points at the bright lights as if the exact spot is marked for all time, which I suppose it is, in a way. I know what he’s thinking, but he says it anyway. “Some day Ray Ray gonna be playing center field out there.”

Phisto remembered it like it was yesterday. The first time he saw a dead body. It was in the embalming room of his father’s funeral home. He was almost twelve years old, already bored with school and given to playing hooky, cruising around in stolen cars with his new friends from a Bloods gang that controlled the Baisley Projects.

That day the police had stopped them in a stolen green Caddy on Archer Avenue and had taken the older boys off to jail. He later found out the only reason he’d escaped a trip to the lockup was because one officer had known his old man. Turned out the tough-love cop wasn’t doing him any favor by not taking him to jail.

The cop drove him home and he almost bluffed his way out of trouble. But the guy refused to release him without first speaking to his parents. The house was empty that afternoon. His mother had died earlier in the year, and soon afterward, his eighteen-year-old sister ran off with the pastor who conducted his mother’s funeral.

The cop took him down to his father’s funeral parlor over there on Guy Brewer Boulevard about a mile away from where they lived on 178th Place, a quiet leafy neighborhood of one-and two-family homes dense with Caribbean immigrants like his father who’d settled there in 1960.

Phisto had never visited the funeral home until that day. He knew what his father did for a living. He knew that his father buried people. And made a pretty good living from it, evidenced by the latest appliances and new furniture they had in their one-family brick house, but it was never talked about in his company.

While the officer explained to his father why Phisto had arrived there in the back of a patrol car, his father showed no emotion, merely nodding and shaking his head. Moments after the blue-and-white drove off, his father exploded, displaying a temper that Phisto had heard his mother talk about but had never seen before.

His father took him down into the basement and ordered him to strip. Defiant, Phisto grabbed his crotch, aping the bad-boy posturing he’d picked up on the street. With this bluff, he tried to walk away. His father grabbed him in a choke-hold and slammed him to the ground. Phisto was surprised by his father’s strength. The slightly built man from the island of St. Kitts, though no more than a few inches taller than his son, was well-muscled with surprising power in his upper body from cutting sugar cane and working construction in his youth. With a piece of electrical cord, he tied his scrawny son to a chair next to the dead body he was preparing for burial and proceeded to rip Phisto’s clothes from his body until he was naked in the cold room.

Then the mortician went back to his work. The smell of embalming fluid soon filled Phisto’s lungs. The prickly odor knifed through his toughness and singed his palate until he puked all over himself. His father paid no attention to him at all. Singing cheerfully and going about his business, stepping over Phisto sitting there in his own vomit, admiring how craftily he’d restored the young woman’s face, mutilated by a jealous boyfriend after he’d killed her.

With nothing left in his stomach, Phisto leaned against the table leg. He was weak and bleeding where the wire chafed his wrist. Slime dripped from the corners of his mouth. From where he sat he could see the blood and fluid draining from the woman’s body, flowing down into the waste receptacle.

He glanced at the corpse’s face and felt a strange relief, a sort of bonding with something outside of himself. Quietly, as if he’d somehow acquired the facility to remove his spirit from his body, he stared at the pathetic little boy with spittle drooling from his mouth, trembling at his father’s feet. He saw himself, the pathetic little boy, rise up and walk over to his father and put his arm around the man’s shoulder and whisper, Thank you.

Then he headed out of the room, pausing at the door for one final glance at the sniffling kid sitting in vomit.

Phisto stored that dead woman’s face in his mind, embracing that stillness characterized by death as a part of himself. By the time his father released him two hours later, the smell of vomit and the sickly odor of embalming fluid had disappeared from his senses. He wasn’t even aware of the cold anymore. He could’ve sat there for another two hours as comfortably as if he were lounging poolside at the Four Seasons in Miami.

Years later, he came to realize that in those two hours he sat in that frigid room while his father worked on that body, he’d formulated the virtue that would rule his life: Feel no pain or remorse.

In 1984, he quit school at sixteen and started selling weed. In three months he had moved onto powder, making as much as $8,000 off an ounce. He struck a deal with some Colombians and by the end of the year was flipping $100,000 a week with rock houses in South Jamaica. In two years, he controlled the large housing projects which dominated the two sections of the southside. But he knew that this game wasn’t going to last, so he started taking business classes in sales and real estate. By the time the crack craze was over, he’d amassed a fortune and an army, and while maintaining his stranglehold on the drug trade, exporting to as far away as Texas, he had diversified his holdings into real estate in Atlanta, Miami, and the Caribbean.

People saw him as a drug lord. A gang leader. A killer. A psychopath. He laughed whenever he read those kinds of descriptions in the news. America worshipped psychopaths and other miscreants in the name of business. Just pick up Business Week or the Wall Street Journal or any major business magazine and you found profiles of men who ran businesses, who on the surface appeared to be legal, but with a little digging were discovered to be looting the companies, stealing employee pensions, and knowingly selling products that killed people. The newspapers and magazines lauded those muthafuckers as visionaries, but condemned people of a similar personality profile like himself, who did business on the margins of society. Ain’t that some shit.

Was he any different from the CEOs of big corporations in this country? He was just as charismatic, as visionary, as tough as a Steve Jobs. In fact, you could say he was tougher. He had never operated any business at a loss. If his businesses were listed on the stock market, the share values would rise every year. His underlings worshipped him just as shareholders worshipped the Bernie Ebberses or Jack Welches of the world. He did whatever he had to do to get the job done. Just as they did. And just as they were celebrated and applauded by their peers and profit-worshippers for their willingness to take chances, to be aggressive and visionary, so was he by the many people who depended on him for their survival.

There were two codes he lived by. They were ruthless, but effective. His first motto: Snitches must die. The silencing of witnesses was the rule he lived by and everyone in his orbit, including all the Baisley Projects, paid heed. Neither the NYPD nor the Feds had ever built a case against him.

The second motto: Accept no disrespect.

Which was why he had no choice but to put down Fred Lawrence in view of everyone in the playground in Baisley Pond Park. It was as necessary as any CEO firing a junior executive who disrespected him in public. As much as he liked the youngster, if he let the upstart get away with this, the mystique of being Phisto Shepherd would be destroyed. Forever. The youngster had stepped to him in a way that no one in their right mind should be tempted to do. And bragging on top of it. You disrespect Phisto and walk around bragging? That’s asking to be cut down. There’s no surer way to commit suicide than to disrespect Phisto Shepherd and brag on it.

When Phisto claimed a woman, she was his for life. Only when he said the relationship was done could the woman walk away. And until such time, all other suitors were expected to wither way, to drop into the gutter like rats running from the exterminator. This young pup, Fred Lawrence, had laid some pipe on one of his women and then told the world that the girl had begged to be his bitch. Said she would give up Phisto and all his money for another night with him.

Phisto had reached a point in his life where he seldom handled disputes personally. There were any number of young guns in his organization he could call on to quash a beef. Of any sort. If the resolution needed to be quick and permanent, he had enough specialists for every day of the week. If gentle nudging or mediation was required in a sensitive matter, there were people who could be trusted to be discreet.

But he had to show the world that he was still Phisto Shepherd. That the Phisto who survived his father’s beat-down, who remade himself into a fire-breathing dragon to create the baddest outfit in Queens, wasn’t finished, as many were beginning to whisper on the street after word got around that Fred the baller had fucked Phisto’s woman. He’d taken on the dreaded Jamaican Shower Posse for turf and sent them scampering back to Miami. He’d ordered the hit on a corrupt cop who tried to shake him down, and he’d gotten away with it. Why hadn’t this youngster heeded his warning? When the message was conveyed to the kid, he’d signed his own death warrant with a laugh.

Once in a while, even with the large army at his disposal, Caesar still had to go out and slay somebody to remind his soldiers why and how he became Emperor. This one wasn’t a head-cracker. The youngster had to be bodied, and he would do it himself.

Fred Lawrence was a talented young baller who’d just finished his senior year at LSU. Some pundits thought he was sure to be drafted by the NBA. Maybe not a first-rounder, but definitely a second or third. He was that good. Phisto had seen him play and didn’t like the kid’s game as much as others did. Not enough range on his jumper, but the quick first step and the physical nature of his game reminded Phisto of Stephon Marbury. Fred could have gotten his shot.

That is, had he not come back from Louisiana thinking he could spit in King Kong’s eye. Thinking he could steal Fay Wray and not suffer the consequences. Thinking his dribbling skills would get him a buy after dissing Phisto.

Like everyone else who tried to fuck with Phisto’s program without considering the consequences, the young man had to pay. The beating and humiliation Phisto took from his father that day in the mortuary taught him never to bluff. Once you bluff you have to back down. And when you back down you lose respect.

His core crew had advised him to let the matter drop. Why knuckle up with this young stud? But he knew they were begging for the youngster’s life simply because they were in love with his game. Phisto knew they converged on the park on Saturdays and Sundays, just like everybody else, to watch the muscular youngster play. Everyone on the southside loved this young man, wanted to see one of their own make it in the NBA. Putting the grip on him wouldn’t go down well with the residents.

Nevertheless, Phisto’s code was his code. The situation reminded him of when his father was shot to death on 121st Avenue during a robbery in 1995. By that time his father had disowned him and he and the old man hadn’t spoken in more than ten years. But everyone in the neighborhood knew this was Phisto’s father, and accorded him due respect. Phisto found the young killer, and in sight of other customers spaded him as he sat in the barber’s chair. Phisto was arrested the next day. But the case never made it to trial. The man who had identified him to the police was Bobby Tanner, a retired postal worker. Tanner got a bullet in the back of the head for his trouble. Word soon got around that Bobby Tanner got tagged for snitching. The next Sunday, Phisto visited the church where another of the witnesses worshipped. The bloated man saw Phisto’s six-foot, 275-pound frame blocking the sidewalk and, fortunately for him, fell down in the street from sheer fright. No one ever appeared in the grand jury to finger Phisto.

Contrary to what his advisors believed, Phisto didn’t actually want to put the youngster under at first. He would’ve let the matter go had the young stud not been stupid enough to woof that he had more dog in him that Phisto. After that, his hands were tied.

That summer evening, the sun had left a band of endless purple across the sky. An unusually high wind curled the young tree limbs and stirred leaves and dust in the park. It blew hard and heavy against the houses on Sutphin Boulevard, rattling the sign on the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Baisley Boulevard.

A storm was coming. Colored balloons, left over from an abandoned family picnic, hung from tree limbs. Yet the approaching inclement weather wasn’t enough to delay the fitness fanatics doing laps around the track, or to arrest the pick-up game on one of the three courts behind the racquetball wall.

The few daring souls on the sidelines that evening who’d scoffed at the looming bad weather witnessed a near flawless performance from Fred Lawrence on the court. The perfection of his long lean body, snaking through small spaces, piercing the tough wind and a tougher defense, twirling and swerving around defenders with precision, left most people shaking their heads in disbelief.

Fred scored on a driving, twisting lay-up off the glass, using a classic crossover move that left his defender flat on his back. The small crowd screamed. Fred ran back down the court pumping his fist in the air, yelling, “You forgot your jock, bitch!”

The next time down the court, Fred took a pass on the wing and without breaking stride elevated past a closing defender for a rim-rattling dunk.

People were whooping and hopping up and down and spinning around in circles of disbelief.

“Did you see that?”

“No he didn’t!”

“Replay! Replay!”

“Jordanesqe.”

“Better than Jordan.”

Phisto’s black BMW pulled up on 155th Street behind a white Explorer. The doors of the truck were open and Jay-Z’s latest joint was blasting full force. Phisto wanted to tell the idiot to turn his music down, but decided to ignore the disturbance and walked the short distance across the grass to the courts.

There was a hush as Fred got the ball back on a steal. He veered left and was met by an agile defender. He slipped the ball between his legs and dribbled backward, looking for another opening. Shifting the ball from side to side, through his legs, and then a glance to his left as if searching for someone in the crowd. Everyone knew what was coming. Fred jabbed to the right and the defender bit on the fake. The elusive youngster changed direction and in a split second flew by his defender for another dunk.

Oh, the ecstasy of the crowd. Fred soaked up their response for a full second, posing under the rim.

And then, praack! praack!

Heads jerked around. Too loud for a firecracker. Too close to be the backfire of a car. People scattered when they saw Fred stumble and fall to the ground. Even his friends on the court ran and left him.

Seconds later, only five people were left. Phisto handed the.45 to someone in his three-man posse to dispose of it. He walked over to the only person who hadn’t run away.

“Do I know you?” Phisto said.

“I don’t know.”

Phisto took hold of the man’s face, digging his fingers through his scraggly beard into his jaws. “Do you know me?”

“Yeah, I know you.”

Phisto laughed. “Why didn’t you run away like the rest?”

The man hesitated. “Why?”

Phisto’s eyes screwed up and he lifted the man’s dark glasses from his face. “What’d you say, muthafucker?”

“Why? I didn’t think the game was over.”

Phisto laughed. “You think you’re funny.”

“I mean, he was so amazing, the way he defied gravity. I thought he was Superman. I thought he would get up and fly above that rim again.”

“He was amazing, wasn’t he?” Phisto said.

“Yeah. Amazing.”

Phisto said, “Did you see anything else here?”

The guy took his sunglasses from Phisto’s hand and put them back over his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly. That’s what I mean,” Phisto replied, turning away. “You better bounce. Cops gonna show any minute.”

“I am a cop,” the man said.

Phisto turned slowly, his face scarred with a dark smile. “For real?”

The man adjusted his dark glasses and smiled. “Just fucking with you.”

Phisto relaxed. “I should kill you for fucking with me.”

“Actually, I wasn’t. I’m really a cop.”

The man opened his jacket. An NYPD detective badge hung from a chain around his neck. Phisto also noticed the 9mm stuck loosely in his waistband.

Phisto gauged the distance between him and the man. “You gonna arrest me?”

“No.”

“If you ain’t gonna arrest me, what you gonna do?”

“Shoot you between the eyes.”

Phisto laughed.

The man wriggled his fingers. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re gonna shoot me between the eyes?”

“Yeah.”

Pointing at the dead baller, Phisto said, “For him?”

“No.”

“Is this personal?”

“Remember the cop you ambushed in that crack house?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He had a son. That son became a cop.”

“And that son...”

“Would be me.”

Phisto turned to the member of his crew holding the.45. “Shoot this muthafucker.”

Nobody moved.

Phisto made a quick grab at the.45. His hand closed on the grip and that’s when he felt a jolt to his chest as if he’d been kicked by a mule. He bounced against the white wall of one of the racquetball courts and slid to the ground on his back.

Phisto had often thought of what this moment would be like for a person. The moment that separated life from death. Was there some brilliant light to illuminate your path into the next world, as some people claimed who’d had so-called near-death experiences? Was there such a thing as coming close to death? He knew what death looked like. His father had made sure of that.

He looked up and saw streams and streams of white clouds. And then he felt a strange relief swell in his chest, a sort of bonding with an energy entering him. A sadness overcame him and he wanted to cry. He saw the faces of his crew and knew that he’d been betrayed. By one or all of them. He also knew it didn’t matter anymore. The light was approaching fast.

Frankie tapped his foot and wished the clerk would hurry up. How long could it take to scan a couple of items and punch the keys on the cash register? He lifted his baseball cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead, then slipped it back on, pulling the bill lower. The heatwave was taking its toll on everyone. The air-conditioning inside the store helped a little, but the customers still looked like they were wilting.

Finally, the cashier got her act together. She handed him the transaction slip and her pen. He scribbled Gerry Adams in the signature space. In the past, Frankie had passed himself off as Billy Clinton, Charles Prince, and Johnny Depp. The cashier counted out crisp currency and gave it to him along with a command to have a nice day. Her name tag read Rochelle.

“Thanks, Rochelle,” he said, and asked her for the receipt. She stared vacantly at the piece of paper. “Oh. Sure,” she said, then handed it to him and wandered off.

Frankie glanced around the customer service desk. What a misnomer. The three clerks behind the counter were doing anything but servicing customers. One was chatting on her cell phone with her back to the store. Another was deep in thought, staring intently into the middle distance. The third mindlessly folded and refolded the same article of clothing. He spied a roll of thermal cash register tape sitting out on the counter. Somebody had probably started changing the tape and then forgot about it midstream. Nobody was paying any attention to him, so he swiped the tape and tucked it into the white plastic bag. He was sure he could find some use for it.

He hopped into his black SUV and merged into traffic on Northern Boulevard. He headed toward his next stop near the Queens Center Mall. Most of his NYPD colleagues worked extra jobs on their RDOS. Having regular days off gave them an opportunity to land good gigs like guarding one of the Commerce Bank branches. Stand there for eight hours in uniform, flirting with the tellers. Nice.

Frankie sighed and looked at the list his wife had made for him. This was how he spent his RDOS — running from store to store. He thought about his wife and their two kids and sighed again. For the millionth time, he questioned the way his life was unfolding. Shouldn’t he try to land a private-pay job with a bank for his days off? Or maybe with a store? He grimaced. It was only July, but the kids would need new school supplies soon, and then Christmas... Always something.

He pulled into the left lane on Queens Boulevard and waited for the light to change. One of the guys in the livery cab that sailed through the light on his right looked familiar, but he couldn’t be sure. He tried to think who it might be. The memory came to him just as he pulled into the Marshall’s parking lot.

On his first day in the Police Academy, Frankie had buddied up with three other recruits: Thompson, Edwards, and... the third guy’s name escaped him. The group had coffee before classes, studied together, and ate lunch in a diner two blocks from the Academy. The man in the black car reminded Frankie of the last member of the Fearsome Foursome. (How young they’d been! That name had sounded so cool at the time.) He was a lanky, raw-boned shit-kicker from the hills of West Virginia. The guy had heard an ad for the NYPD on his short-wave radio and had spent a day driving northeast to take the test. Everybody thought he was stupid because of his hillbilly accent, but Frankie copied his homework every chance he got.

Williams — that was his name. Frankie must have been the first Mexican-American Williams had ever seen. Right off the bat, the guy made a remark about Frankie’s nose. Frankie, who thought his nose was regal, like the profile on the statue of an Aztec warrior, was slightly insulted. “What do you know?” he’d asked Williams. “Your last girlfriend was probably a sheep.”

The other guys chuckled, but Williams took it seriously. “We never had no sheep in our family,” he said. “I had an uncle once, kept goats. He was pretty tight with one of them — called her Priscilla.” He looked puzzled when the other three recruits doubled over with laughter. He must have figured he’d made a slight miscalculation because he tried to backtrack. “I don’t think he was improper with Priscilla or nothin’,” he protested. “They was just real good companions.”

Frankie could hardly catch his breath, he couldn’t stop laughing. “They never got married, huh, Williams? Your uncle and his goat?”

“That’s disgusting,” Williams said. He refused to speak to the other three for the rest of the day.

One of the guys found out later that Williams had a degree from some Bible college, but it was too late. He’d earned himself the nickname Officer Goatfucker. Nobody called him that anymore. He was a captain now, working out of the 115th Precinct. Now they called him Captain Goatfucker. Behind his back, of course.

Frankie smiled, thinking about the old days. Fifteen years had slipped by. He sometimes regretted that he didn’t have more to show for the time besides a few gray hairs and occasional heartburn. He’d been so naïve when he first came on the job. Thought everything was the way they showed it on TV. Boy, did he know better now.

Ramzi Saleh wondered how this nation had become the most powerful in the world. The despicable little urchins who turned up to harass him at Richmond Hill High, where he taught math to ninth graders, were indifferent to his lessons. They cheated him of his time on earth.

It was with no little pleasure that he contemplated being an instrument of their demise, those cocksure boys and strutting girls. Now that winter had set in and the sidewalks were treacherous with ice, he was spared the exposed flesh that assaulted him every warm day. What sort of parents let their daughters out wearing less than what would pass for acceptable underwear at home? And the boys were little better. He found their lack of modesty and wayward attitudes blasphemous.

Ramzi pulled the collar of his overcoat tight against a biting wind. Above him, the 7 train rattled by, its brakes screeching as it pulled into the Roosevelt Avenue station. Beneath his feet the sidewalk trembled. Two levels underground, a subway train, maybe the E he’d just gotten off, was pulling up or leaving.

He knew no one here, at least not in person. He kept walking, and soon caught a whiff of fennel as he approached his destination: the paan seller on 74th Street. It seemed that Satan himself had a hand in his being here. How else could he explain the impulse that had propelled him to the E train? He told himself that he was going to pray, but when he got to Sutphin Boulevard, instead of leaving the station and making his way along Jamaica Avenue toward Azis’s mosque tucked away on 146th Street, he’d raced onto the E, which brought him straight here to Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights.

This neighborhood meant peril. At how many points along the way could he have abandoned his quest and gone to Azis’s, or even home to Liberty Avenue? But now his destination was Little India. He stopped outside the paan shop. Why not? He’d resisted for as long as he could, but the first time he’d slid the paan inside his cheek to an explosion of flavor, he’d known he was lost.

He was supposed to avoid his countrymen and spend his time among the gora. Not that Richmond Hill was Infidel Central. But many of the Asians there were West Indians who had lived in the Caribbean for generations before coming to America. The neighborhood was mixed, not exclusive, and while the roti shops had few rivals, the paan could not compete. He should take it home. He should eat it unobserved in his recliner, but he couldn’t.

At times it seemed to Ramzi that America offered nothing but temptation. Could a man be wise, let alone moral, living among such sirens? Was his sophisticated Jackson Heights palate evidence that the Great Satan had corrupted him? Perhaps he should buy two paan? One for now, and one he could put in the fridge for after dinner.

As he pressed toward the paan seller, his worst fear was realized: He recognized a man ahead of him in the line. They had been at camp together in Afghanistan. The fellow licked his lips and inched closer to the booth as if mesmerized by the vendor’s red-gummed grin and nimble fingers as he smeared red kathha and chuna on a fresh betel leaf. The veins in Ramzi’s neck throbbed. Even if the fellow recognized him, they would not acknowledge each other.

His breath quickened. Their time at camp was long ago, and he wondered if this man was part of the same mission? He knew little about his task other than that he was to assimilate and wait. On that glorious day of victory, when, with the rest of the world, he’d watched the Twin Towers fall, he’d hoped his time among the infidels would end. But it was not to be.

The man from camp took his paan, looked around with the sly delight of a thief, and, using his thumb, thrust it inside his cheek and disappeared into the throng.

The paan seller remembered Ramzi. “Meetha paan, no coconut,” he said, his eyes bright with the pride of a man who knows his customers.

Despite his inward panic at being known, Ramzi smiled and nodded. “How do you do it?” he asked. “Every time, your paan is delicious.”

“It is all in the balance of chuna and kathha,” the paan seller said, rolling his head from side to side as he smeared a leaf with his special masala.

The proportion of betel nut to lime paste was crucial to a good paan, but Ramzi came to this fellow for his perfect masala — no one around mixed the spices and chutneys quite like he did. Now he behaved as if Ramzi was one of his regulars. Was that good or bad? To leave one or two footprints might be for the best. Ramzi imagined the Queens Chronicle story following his mission... They’d quote this man. A paan seller on 74th Street described Ramzi Saleh as a polite man, quiet and predictable. “He loved my meetha paan, but it was always, ‘Hold the coconut.’” Ramzi smiled to himself. Not a bad epitaph.

He stuffed the folded packet inside his cheek and turned toward the street to watch the bustle of rush-hour traffic nudge by. The heady smells of curry leaves, cardamom, and incense wafted from the many restaurants and swirled around him. In his time at Richmond Hill High, he had not met one child — well, there was one — who was grateful for the education his cover required him to provide. His teaching was scrupulously average, he knew. His biggest challenge: to remain invisible.

He had a talent for teaching. He had been plucked from the rubble of an earthquake, all his parents’ properties ruined, and had been educated by the charity of the Great Satan itself. But it had promised and not delivered. Before the earthquake his family had been among the wealthiest in the village; afterwards they had nothing. When the American aid workers left, he was no longer hungry and ignorant, he was hungry and educated.

When the mujahideen entered his village in western Pakistan as they fled the Russians, he had seen fear in the village elders’ eyes. He had vowed to teach all who wished to learn, so that no Pakistani would ever again know ignorance and hunger, but he was still hungry himself, as were all his pupils. He craved to be the cause of that fear he saw in his elders — he saw the respect it inspired. From the day he joined the jihad, he lost the knowledge of hunger. That was nearly twenty years ago.

Saliva stimulated by the paan built in his mouth and he spat a stream of red liquid onto the sidewalk. Behind him a door opened and Hindi music spilled out to compete with the sounds of traffic. Ramzi’s nose twitched at the blasphemy. Bloody Hindus with their Devil’s music, idolatry, and fuzzy logic. There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah. And yet lounging in the street, chewing paan, and feeling contemptuously superior to Hindus brought a deep comfort and satisfaction to Ramzi. Oddly, it was like going home — his real home, not the squat little one-bedroom, eat-in-kitchen apartment on 115th Street off Liberty Avenue. There were Hindus in Richmond Hill, but not nearly so many. He lingered to drink in the sights of brazen, sari-clad Hindu whores, their faces fully exposed to him, and to the world.

Allah is merciful. He led Ramzi to Azis. Azis had helped him find the righteous path. At the training camp he had learned the art of destruction. The American education taught him that he would always be less than they were. When the time came he would play his part.

The earthquake had taken everything from his parents and denied him his future as a landowner. But this loss left him free for jihad. In due course, the Americans would lose their livelihoods. Husbands would lose wives, though Ramzi wondered if that would cause them pain. He doubted it. In this godforsaken nation, whores were elevated and virtuous women despised. A young girl in salwar-kameez skipped by clutching her mother’s hand. Something about her brought back the image of his laughing sister the day before the kitchen collapsed on her, and a sharp pain stabbed at his chest as if someone had slammed a knife into his heart. Soon their sisters would be taken away: a mass of bloody, twisted bodies and tangled limbs all that remained.

The Great Satan was so naïve — had helped him to immigrate when he had shown them his certificate from the Peace Corps. And now, between his salary as a teacher and his payments from al-Qaeda, he would be able to take another wife, maybe two — virtuous Muslim women to keep his current wife, Fatima, company and produce more mujahideen for the cause.

A group of women wearing saris and salwar-kameez glided by. How much more beautiful and elegant than the jeans and T-shirts of Richmond Hill. He should not have come to this neighborhood. The sight of these glorious hussies stirred long-dormant yearnings in Ramzi and he silently cursed himself for giving into temptation. Tears welled in his eyes, but he steeled himself. He missed his wife and children, and understood he might not live to see them again, let alone take another wife. He had pledged his life to this holy war and would do whatever was asked.

He turned back toward the subway and headed for Azis, exchanging the noise and crush of the street for the noise and crush of Mexicans, blacks, and West Indians packed like sardines into the E. Perhaps there would be word. Perhaps today his long wait would end.

He remembered the anticipation he felt when he first arrived in Queens. Back then, he thought his mission was imminent, and he would take the stairs down from the J train two at a time in his rush to get to the mosque. Always his heart pounded in his chest as he waited for Azis. Was today the day? He would catch Azis’s eye, his own face hot with anticipation, but Azis would shake his head discreetly and lower his eyes. Ramzi waited. He undertook reconnaissance as instructed. He reported to Azis. Time passed. In his daily life he was indistinguishable from every other Pakistani immigrant. Familiar, reliable, recognizable, known by no one.

He knew that he should stop by the mosque on the way home. There was no excuse. He’d be right there at Sutphin Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue. But he felt no enthusiasm, no anticipation. Jihad had become rather like his day job. He went through the motions.

By the time he got to Liberty Avenue it was dark, and the roadway was treacherous to cross. In the shade of the elevated A line, the ice never melted, and if he slipped and fell in his haste to be out of the cold, it wouldn’t be the first time. He turned onto 115th Street and climbed the steps to his front door. In his mailbox he found the usual array of bills and magazines. He clicked his tongue. What a country this was, so many magazines, so much information. The day an issue of the Herald arrived in his isolated village, the men would gather at the tea house and Ramzi would read it out loud. It was never less than six months out of date, but they were hungry for its wealth of knowledge.

The Smithsonian had arrived. He went inside and dropped into his recliner. Such luxury, if only Fatima could see his leather chair. He flipped through the magazine to examine the pictures. Then he read the headlines and breakout paragraphs. He always did this to decide the order in which he’d read the articles. Then he’d put on a pot of coffee, slide back into his recliner, and read every word. Today he broke his routine. Five pages in he found a piece on the science of biological weaponry. The infidel never tired of telling him all he needed to know. He would not rise again until he’d read it at least twice.

So Edwin Stuckey had not believed in miracles. Couldn’t have. By the third hour of services at the Crusading Home of Deliverance in southeastern Queens — when the bellow of the preacher rang out like a toll that beckoned to repent and reform, and the congregation of twenty-eight had sprung to their feet in a fervor — I, who had so often scoffed at organized religion, was on my feet as well. All about me, the jiggle-jangle of tambourines being slapped on open palms reverberated. Shouted hallelujahs stung my eardrums. Tears were shed; wails directed heavenward. Was I praying?

I should’ve been taking notes.

Instead, I now found myself exercising total recall on the F train. It had been a week since the call had come in on the police scanner: a “1010” announcing a possible death at Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue. I was a reporter, a novice in the newsroom of a weekly in Richmond Hill, where the Maple Grove Cemetery kept us a safe distance from Jamaica, the neighborhood of this particular call. Jamaica, Queens intimidated the other staff reporters — all four of whom were white — for no other reason than its inhabitants were largely black, and so we tended not to report there. The paper was a rag anyway, housed in bright yellow corner boxes and valued mainly for its classifieds. I worked there to prove to my folks that the money they’d shelled out for my J-school tuition hadn’t been a complete waste.

I still lived with my parents, and a great aunt, in a Brooklyn brownstone that had been in my family for three generations. I’d been happy there. We were privileged upper-middle class, or, rather, my parents were, being members of fraternal organizations, committees, and social clubs with established roots in the African-American community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Despite my precarious employment, I was still considered a catch within my circle; I’d escorted no less than three females to their debutante balls. I supposed that sooner or later I’d have had enough of my journalism career and would join an uncle on Wall Street.

The call came in while I was alone in the office. Later — when things had run their course — I thought of a photograph that I had tacked to the wall in my college dorm.

The picture showed a house on a hill in Hollywood, California, circa 1962. It was taken by Diane Arbus, so, of course, it looked like no other house on a hill in Hollywood, or anywhere else. The hill was all tangled vine and bare tree limb, and the house was appropriately dark and stoic, and made of cardboard. It was a prop. But the sky above it was lovely. Who, what, when, where, why, and how: No photo — or story, for that matter — ever told the whole truth. The most important lesson I learned in J-school.

There was no ambulance nor squad car at the scene when I arrived. I didn’t feel too confident as I rapped on the door of the modest wood-frame house. You could feel on the street that the neighborhood was tight: Loungers on their front porches eyed my unfamiliar self with suspicion. But I needed to get a byline under my belt.

“Yes?” The door swung open immediately and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties eyed me over his glasses.

“Evening, uh, morning, sir,” I stammered, to no acknowledgment. I hoped I wasn’t too late. “I’m a reporter for the—”

“Who is it, Gershorn?” A thick, squat woman with a hairdo that looked as if it had been roller-set for two days appeared at the man’s side. With her elaborate coif, and skin the color of a gingersnap, she could’ve been an aged starlet. In reality, she was a housewife, as evidenced by the formality of an apron tied over her blue housecoat.

The man bristled. “We were expecting someone, but not you,” he said. “What is your business here, young man?”

Where the skin of the woman remained taut and unlined and shone with the assistance of petroleum jelly, every second thought and hardship that had ever befallen the man was noted in some wrinkle or frown line that caused his face to sag like a deflated mahogany balloon. His gray hair was coiled in tight, generous ringlets on his scalp. He was tall, standing nearly two heads above her.

“I’m Doug, Douglass Nichols, and I’m a reporter for the Weekly Item.” I extended my hand. “I’m responding to a call that came over our police scanner regarding a possible death...?”

The man stared at me blankly. He did not shake my hand. I glanced at my notepad to confirm the address.

“Sir, was there an incident here tonight? The police came?”

The man contemplated my question before opening the door to me. “A crime, young man, not an incident. Come in.”

I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me and clasped his hands behind his back.

“Claudette,” he called to the woman. “Tea. Tea for our guest.”

In no time at all the woman reappeared with a lone cup on a saucer, which she extended to me. I balanced it on my notepad. The man motioned for me to take a seat.

On either side of the doorway stood a pair of ivory ceramic Rottweilers like sentinels. Potted plants generously dotted the living space, barely allowing me room to sit down upon a brocaded sofa sheathed in plastic. It was positioned between two end tables that supported lamps bearing shades of heavily braided fringe that must have smoldered every time the light was switched on.

The walls were teal; the lamps were gold. I committed the room to memory, to be described later in my story.

“Do you take sugar?” the woman asked haltingly.

I shook my head.

The man sat down beside me, and the woman took a seat across the room at a dining room set of heroic proportion. It spoke of some other time — a time in which there were castles and feudal systems — with elaborate inlaid carvings, mounted on claw feet. An unframed oil painting of a Caribbean landscape hung above it.

“The Bel-Air Mountains, yes,” the man nodded approvingly as I studied the painting. “That was once the view from my own window. See there?” He rose to his feet and approached the image, pointing. “Those mules, those pigs foraging in the garbage pits? Those palms, those coconuts? Is all Haiti. Is my home.”

He turned to face me, scrutinizing me.

“I am Mr. Stuckey,” he said finally. “And this is Mrs. Stuckey.”

I nodded and waited for him to continue. He did not.

“You say your son was murdered,” I ventured.

Mr. Stuckey nodded, satisfied with my inquiry. “In that room, there.” He pointed down a darkened hallway.

Now it was my turn to give him the eye. What’s going on here?

Noting my skepticism, the man rose to his feet. “Follow me.”

Midway down the hall, he paused and flicked on a light switch. A door stood open adjacent to it, though the other doors on either side of the room were closed. Warily, I peered into what appeared to be a child’s bedroom or, rather, the room of an adolescent boy. It was painted a dense, cornflower blue, and decorated with outdated pop culture posters. A large, weathered Table of Periodic Elements hung on one wall, attached with brittle and yellowed tape.

“That once was mine,” Mr. Stuckey noted proudly, indicating the poster. “When I was a boy, it hung in the classroom of my secondary school, the Petion National Lycée.” His back stiffened with pride at the mention of the name. “It was given to me by the headmaster, a gift. I was to be a great scientist, then.” He paused. “As was Edwin too.”

The room was small. Shoved under a window that opened onto brick was an unmade twin bed, and not two steps from it stood a modest desk, bowed by a stack of books whose titles were turned away from me. A boom box also sat perched atop the desk, and there — How had I not seen that! — rested an overturned chair and a noose hanging limply from a light fixture above it.

“Jesus!” I stepped backward and clutched the doorframe in reflex.

“Yes,” Mr. Stuckey nodded solemnly. “My son was murdered right here. He was twenty-two years old.”

“Same age as me,” I whispered.

Mr. Stuckey turned off the light and we returned to the front of the house in silence. I took my seat back on the couch. My tea had grown cold.

“You will help us?” Mrs. Stuckey piped up.

“What time did the police arrive tonight?” I asked, pen poised to record the details in my notepad.

“The police,” she clucked dismissively with a wave of her hand.

“The police do not come here anymore,” Mr. Stuckey added.

Anymore? “Were you home then, when the intruder broke in?”

“The intruder was already here,” Mr. Stuckey corrected.

“So there are suspects?”

“Oh,” he nodded enthusiastically, “there are suspects.”

‘”Nice,” I added, in spite of myself. “If you could give me a list of the names you gave to the police...”

“The last time the police were here, they took no names. No. Nothing from us,” Mrs. Stuckey fumed.

The last time? “The last time this evening, the last time...?”

“The last time one month ago,” Mr. Stuckey said stoically.

“A month ago?” I closed my notepad. “Sir, listen. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, or what it is you want me to—” I fell silent as I shifted my position on the sofa, making sure that I had all of my belongings. The Stuckeys looked at me helplessly, and I was beginning to feel spooked.

At that, a girl stepped into the room from the hallway.

“I’ll talk to him, Papa,” she said. “I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” The girl was brazen. She stood with her hand on one hip, and she blinked her eyelashes once she was done taking me in. She wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that was knotted tightly in the center of her back. Her speech was not the patois of her West Indian parents, who only nodded as she signaled me with a beckoning finger to the door.

Once we stepped off the porch, she immediately lit a cigarette. “I heard everything,” she said, exhaling.

“I’m a reporter for the—”

“I said everything.” She rolled her eyes. “Walk with me.”

The girl pirouetted gracefully as a ballerina and took off down the block. She was short, like her mother, barely over five feet, and though I was nearly six feet, I had to jog to keep up with her.

“So, you from around here?” I asked, falling back on my usual opening line. Dumb! Some reporter I was, but I didn’t know where to begin with this girl. I was ecstatic just to be walking with her. In an instant, my street cred had risen to the umpteenth degree, and the few brothers hanging out seemed to be getting a kick out of watching a dude like me, in my skippies and Polo, pursuing a sister like her, whose mane of naturally red ringlets blew behind her like a superhero’s cape.

She didn’t respond to my lame attempts at flirting, and we walked along Jamaica Avenue in silence, passing the gated entrances of fast-food restaurants, 99-cent stores, and discount clothing outlets with names like Foxy Lady and Tic Tock. The sky above us had a chunky, textured look about it; mounds of cloud clung stubbornly to the midnight blue, as often happened after a storm. It had been an uncharacteristically stormy summer. A crushed can of Colt 45, however, still balanced precariously on the fence post of King’s Manor.

“I don’t know why people drink that swill!” I knocked the can over in an attempt at irreverence, accidentally splashing my sneakers with stale beer. Shit.

The girl led me a little further to a Salvadoran café with Christmas bulbs and plastic flowers in its window.

“I’m Janette,” she said, as we slid into an upholstered booth.

“Dougie,” I grinned.

“Dougie, huh? That’s cute.” She drummed her fingernails on the table between us. “I hate that you can’t smoke anywhere anymore.”

“Been smoking long?”

“Since I was thirteen.”

“Nasty habit.”

She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. I ordered beer for both of us. Music and words incomprehensible to me floated from a juke box somewhere in the place.

“My brother committed suicide,” Janette said suddenly. My beer caught in my throat and a bit of it dribbled down my chin. “You’re conducting an investigation here, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So, here.” Janette reached into her back pocket and shot a scrap of paper across the table at me. “That’s the name of the detective.”

“Detective?”

She shook her head at me in disbelief. “What the fuck? Are you a reporter or what?” She rolled her eyes. “The detective working my brother’s case, you moron.”

“Right, right.” I took a pull on the neck of my beer, trying to recover. “Here’s the thing,” I said, leaning toward her across the table. “Your pops said this happened a month ago.”

“A little less than a month ago. We’re just really stressed about how long all this is taking, you know?”

“Right, but a month ago?” I sit up straight. “A month ago is not a story today. After a month, there’s no story. I’m sorry.”

“But my brother is dead.” Janette’s aggressive demeanor crumbled.

“You’re talking suicide here.” I shook my head sympathetically. “That’s tragic, but I can tell you straight up: If your brother chose to kill himself, we ain’t gonna run it in the paper now, know what I mean?”

“My brother did not choose to kill himself.” Janette’s eyes flashed angrily.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, call the detective.”

“Wait.” I wave the waiter over for another round. “If you already have a detective working the case, why the call on the scanner?”

Janette ignored my question and turned to the waiter. “I’ll have a Jack and ginger.”

“And,” I continued, “if you already know he took his own life, why not just grieve and clean out that bedroom and move on?”

She remained silent.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended,” she shrugged. “Your questions are valid.”

“Any answers?”

“If I had answers, would I be sitting here talking to you?” She smiled slyly. “I think not.”

Jillian Abbott's short stories have won awards in the United States and Australia. She is a reporter at the Queens Chronicle and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Writer Magazine, and many other publications. She’s currently at work on a new mystery series as well as her second Morgan Blake thriller. She lives in Queens.

Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award — nominated author of Queenpin, The Song Is You, and Die a Little, as well as the nonfiction study, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. She lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

Shailly Agnihotri was born in India, grew up in Baton Rouge, and now lives in New York City. She is a filmmaker and recently completed a documentary entitled Three Soldiers. Her other projects include a feature film, Sangrita (in pre-production), and a novel, East River. She likes to consult Vedic astrologers, buy silver jewelry, and eat spicy chat in Jackson Heights.

Mary Byrne was born in Ireland and now divides her time between teaching, translating, and writing. She collaborated with Lawrence Durrell on his final book of essays, and her short fiction has been published in Ireland, England, France, Canada, and the United States. Byrne won the 1986 Hennessy Literary Award and currently lives in France.

Tori Carrington (a.k.a., Lori and Tony Karayianni) has published nearly forty titles, including those in the Sofie Metropolis, P.I. series, which are set in Astoria, Queens.

Jill Eisenstadt is the author of two novels set in Queens, From Rockaway and Kiss Out. She is an occasional contributor to the New York Times, among other publications, and is a part-time writing professor at The New School’s Eugene Lang College. Her Queens Noir story, “The Golden Venture,” is based on a real event in the borough’s history.

Victoria Eng was born and raised in Chinatown and Queens. She is a graduate of Hunter College and holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. Her work has been published in The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings about New York City. She lived in New Mexico and Costa Rica for seven years, and is currently back in New York working on a historical novel set in Chinatown.

Maggie Estep has published six books and is working on her seventh, Alice Fantastic, which came to be when Robert Knightly asked her to write something for Queens Noir. Her favorite parts of Queens are the Kissena Velodrome, Aqueduct Racetrack, and Fort Tilden in Rockaway.

Belinda Farley resides in Harlem, not Queens, and is currently at work on a novel.

Alan Gordon is the author of the Fools’ Guild Mysteries, including the forthcoming novel The Moneylender of Toulouse and, most recently, The Lark’s Lament. He has been a resident of Queens’ second oldest co-op since 1987, and is a defender of the borough’s alleged miscreants as a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. Gordon is the father of one genuine Queensian, and has been a Little League coach for six years, which has taught him all he needs to know about hard-boiled types.

Joseph Guglielmelli grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. He cultivated his love of mysteries by reading golden age classics found while browsing in tiny bookstores in the shadow of the elevated tracks of the 7 train. For the past thirteen years, Joe has been coowner of The Black Orchid Bookshop, which was the 2006 recipient of the Raven Award given by Mystery Writers of America.

Denis Hamill writes a column about Queens for the New York Daily News and has written ten novels, including, Fork in the Road, recently purchased by Alexander Payne’s company for a feature film from Fox Searchlight. He lives in Queens.

Patricia King is the author of four books on business subjects, including Never Work for a Jerk. Her forthcoming book — The Monster in the Corner Office — will be published in 2008.

Robert Knightly moved to Jackson Heights in 1995 and works as a Legal Aid criminal defense lawyer in the Queens courts. As a teenager, he dug graves one summer in First Calvary Cemetery in Blissville, where he set his story for this volume. His short story “Take the Man’s Pay,” from Akashic’s Manhattan Noir, was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. As an NYPD officer and sergeant he patrolled Brooklyn and Manhattan for twenty years.

Glenville Lovell has published four novels: Fire in the Canes, Song of Night, Too Beautiful to Die, and Love and Death in Brooklyn. His stories haved appeared in Conjunctions, Shades of Black, Wanderlust: Erotic Travel Tales, and Hardboiled Brooklyn. For more information, visit www.glenvillelovell.com

Liz Martinez has lived in Woodside, Queens, for the past fifteen years. She is currently collaborating on a mystery anthology with fellow award-winning Mexican-American writer Sarah Cortez. “Lights Out for Frankie” was inspired by an organized retail crime case solved by legendary police detectives Eric Hernando and Sergeant Louie Torres of the Holmdel, New Jersey police department.

Stephen Solomita is the author of sixteen novels. He was born and raised in Bayside, Queens, not far from College Point, the setting for “Crazy Jill Saves the Slinky.”

Kim Sykes is an actress and writer who lives in New York City. She frequently works at Silvercup Studios.

K.J.A. Wishnia's first novel featuring Ecuadorian-American P.I. Filomena Buscarsela, 23 Shades of Black, was a finalist for both Edgar and Anthony Awards, and was followed by four other novels, including Soft Money and Red House. He lived in Ecuador for several years, and taught English at Queens College, CUNY. Wishnia gives special thanks to his students at Suffolk Community College, especially Victor Nieves, for providing him with the authentic ghetto phraseology.