room. When Bill finally turned onto Trenton Street, the buildings were little more than ghosts and Bryant Park was a vast white blank.
The black-and-white Hale had promised was parked in front of 897. The words To Serve and Protect were written on the side. The space in front of the car was empty. Bill swung his motorcycle into it, kicked the gearshift up into neutral with his foot, and killed the engine. “You’re shivering,” he said as he helped her off.
She nodded and found she had to make a conscious effort to keep her teeth from chattering when she spoke. “It’s more the damp than the cold.” And yet, even then, she supposed she knew it was really neither; knew on some deep level that things were not as they should be.
“Well, let’s get you into something dry and warm.” He stowed their helmets, locked the Harley’s ignition, and dropped the key into his pocket.
“Sounds like the idea of the century to me.”
He took her hand and walked her down the sidewalk to the apartment building steps. As they passed the radio-car, Bill raised his hand to the cop behind the wheel. The cop lifted his own hand out the window in a lazy return salute, and the streetlight gleamed on the ring he wore. His partner appeared to be sleeping.
Rosie opened her purse, got out the key she would need to open the front door at this advanced hour, and turned it in the lock. She had only the faintest idea of what she was doing; her good feelings were gone and her earlier terror had crashed back in on her like some huge dead iron object falling through floor after floor of an old building, an object destined to drop all the way to the basement. Her stomach was suddenly freezing, her head was throbbing, and she didn’t know why.
She had seen something, something, and she was so fo-. cused on her effort to think what it might have been that she did not hear the driver’s door of the police car open and then chunk softly shut. She did not hear the faintly gritting footsteps on the sidewalk behind them, either.
“Rosie?”
Bill’s voice, coming out of darkness. They were in the vestibule now, but she could barely see the picture of the old geezer (she thought maybe it was Calvin Coolidge) hanging on the wall to her right, or the scrawny shape of the coat-tree, with its brass feet and its bristle of brass hooks, standing by the stairs. Why was it so damned dark in here?
Because the overhead light-fixture was out, of course; that was simple. She knew a harder question, though: Why had the cop on the passenger side of the black-and-white been sleeping in such an uncomfortable position, with his chin way down on his chest and his cap pulled so low over his eyes that he looked like a thug in a gangster movie from the thirties? Why was he sleeping at all, for that matter, when the subject he was detailed to watch was due at any moment? Hale would be angry if he knew that, she thought distractedly. He’d want to talk to that bluesuit. He’d want to talk to him right up close.
“Rosie? What’s wrong?”
The footsteps behind them were hurrying now.
She rolled mental footage backward like a videotape. Saw Bill raising his hand to the bluesuit behind the wheel of the cruiser, saying hi there, good to see you, without even opening his mouth. She saw the cop raise his own hand in return; she saw the gleam of the streetlamp on the ring he wore. She hadn’t been close enough to read the words on it, but all at once she knew what they were. She’d seen them printed backward on her own flesh many times, like an FDA stamp on a cut of meat.
Service, Loyalty, Community.
Footsteps hurried eagerly up the steps behind them. The door slammed violently shut. Someone was panting low and fast in the dark, and Rosie could smell English Leather.
10
Norman’s mind took another of those big skips while he was standing at the sink in the Daughters and Sisters kitchen with his shirt off, washing fresh blood from his face and chest. The sun had been low on the horizon, glaring orange into his eyes when he raised his head and reached for the towel. He touched it, and then, without a single break that he was aware of, not so much as an eyeblink, he