I knew just what it was, but I was hoping so hard that I wouldn’t let myself believe it.

I sat down on the bed next to her and pulled her over to me. She didn’t pull away. I let her head rest in my lap and ran my fingers through that long silky hair. I thought I could get her to cry it out but she wouldn’t cry, not a single tear. Her whole body was shaking with something but she wouldn’t open up and let it out. I just sat there stroking her hair and not saying a thing.

Then she looked at me and she started to cry. She cried for a long time, crying all the sickness and sadness out of her; when it was done she was better and I knew she would be all right.

It wouldn’t leave a scar.

It was done.

The walk home was a long one even with the wind behind me. He was waiting for me, and when I came in he looked at me and he knew that I knew.

He said, “She was nice, Brother John. But I’ve had better.”

I just looked at him. I didn’t bother to tell him that he never had her, that I was the only man to have her, ever.

He wouldn’t have known what I was talking about.

“You ought to get around more,” he said. “Oughta see what the rest of the world’s like. You know?”

The vein in my temple started throbbing just the way Margie’s did before.

“There’s other women. Bet you’ll find some that’s even better in the sack than she is, Brother John.”

When you’re up close a shotgun makes a big messy hole, big as a man’s fist, but when I squeezed that trigger the shell went through him like a sword through a piece of silk, like the wind blowing outside. He let out a moan and put both hands over the hole in his stomach and sat down slowly. His eyes were staring like he couldn’t believe it happened.

His eyes got glassy, but they stayed open that way, staring at me.

Outside the wind broke and it started to rain.

Fifteen months and I’ll be out. The law’s the law, but the people around here know me and they knew Brad, and the law can bend a little when it has to.

Margie will be waiting for me. I know she will.

I DON’T FOOL AROUND

FISCHER PULLED UP AT A CURB and we got out of the car in a hurry, heading for the black Chevy with the people standing around it. The precinct cop made room for us and we went on through. As far as I was concerned, this was just a formality. I knew who was dead and I knew who had killed him. Taking a good long look at the corpse wasn’t going to change that.

The punk slumped over the wheel with holes in his head had lived longer than we had expected. He was a hood named Johnny Blue, a strongarm-weakbrain who crossed some of the wrong people. He’d been due for a hit for weeks, according to the rumbles that filtered through to Manhattan West. Now he’d been hit, and hard.

One slug in the side of the face. Another in the neck. Three more in the back of the head.

“Who is he?” Fischer asked. I told him.

“A messy way to do it,” the kid went on. “Any of those shots would have killed him. Why shoot him up like that?”

My college cop. My new partner, my cross to bear ever since some genius switched Danny Taggert to Vice. My Little Boy Lost, who wanted murder to be a nice clean affair, with one bullet lodged in the heart and, if you please, as little blood as possible.

I said, “The killer didn’t want to take chances.”

“Chances? But—”

I was very tired. “This wasn’t a tavern brawl,” I told him. “This wasn’t one guy hitting another guy over the head with a bar stool. This was a pro killing.”

“It doesn’t look so professional to me. A mess.”

“That’s because you don’t know what to look for.” I turned away, sick of the corpse and the killer, sick of Fischer, sick of West 46th Street at three in the morning. Sick of murder.

“It’s a pro killing,” I said again. “In a car, on a quiet street, in the middle of the night. Five bullets, any one of which would have caused death. That’s a trademark.”

“Why?”

“Because hired killers don’t fool around,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The