and patted his back.
"Thanks again, Bob. I really appreciate it."
"No problem, Twitch. I'm glad I could help."
Robert Swinster walked away from Bernstein's desk as Sara hobbled toward it.
"Hi, Max."
He smiled at her.
"Glad you could get here so fast. Have a seat."
Sara examined the man and his desk. All the usual signs were there his red eyes, the ragged edges of his fingernails, the thought lines in his forehead, the fingers twiddling with the pencil, the paper clips he had snapped in half lying all over the desk, the hand constantly rubbing his unshaven face.
For two days Max and his men had investigated the sensational murder of young Bradley Jenkins by the now-infamous Gay Slasher. A distraught Senator Jenkins had gone into hiding and would make no comments to the press about the rumors swirling around his son's death. His Senate spokesman continuously spewed a standard line the murder was clearly a ploy by certain subversive groups to destroy the senator's reputation and personal life.
Max had interviewed Senator Jenkins yesterday, after his son's funeral.
Bernstein had seen during his years in homicide what a tragedy like this could do to even the strongest of men, but he was still taken aback by the senator's appearance. His skin was ashen, his eyes wide and uncomprehending, his shoulder slumped, his whole demeanor defeated.
The senator had answered Max's questions in a flat, distant voice, but it seemed that the man knew very little that would help find the killer.
"Who was that?" Sara asked.
"Robert Swinster," Max replied, "a handwriting analyst. He was rechecking Bruce Grey's note."
"Did he find anything?"
The phone on the desk buzzed. Max put up a finger to signal for her to wait and picked up the receiver.
"Yes?"
"Daily News on line five again. ABC-TV on line eight."
"I'm not talking to the press right now," he snapped. He slammed the receiver back into the cradle.
"Damn reporters," he muttered.
"Enough to drive a man crazy."
"Temper, temper."
"Everyone keeps screaming how we're not doing our job. How the hell are we supposed to get anything done with the press breathing down our necks all the time? Bunch of vultures present company excluded, of course. You know something? I think the media hopes the psycho will strike again, the sick bastards."
"Comes with the territory," Sara replied.
"I know," Max said, "but the pressure on this one is unbelievable. At the press conference the other day I felt like fresh meat in front of starving Dobermans. And that's not the half of it. The mayor's demanding answers in that holier-than-thou way of his. Every gay activist is coming out of the woodwork accusing the fascist police department of discriminating against homosexuals. I've had a dozen phony confessions today alone.
Everyone suddenly wants to be the Gay Slasher." He took a deep breath.
"Ah, screw it. So how's Michael?"
"Feeling better. His teammates are visiting him now."
"Good. I needed to talk this over with you right away."
"Bouncing time, eh?" Max nodded and smiled wearily. Several years ago Sara had been instrumental in helping Max find a cop-killer who had randomly gunned down four of Max's fellow officers in one week.
Max had learned from that experience that he liked bouncing ideas off an intelligent listener, and Sara was about as sharp a listener as there was. Very often they said some crazy things to each other, came up with some crazy hypotheses, even called each other crazy, but eventually the irrational statements began to mesh with the more rational facts, often forming solid solutions.
"Is this case harder for you than most?" she asked.
"Meaning?"
"You know what I mean."
He smiled nervously, checking to make sure that no one was within earshot.
"It'd make an interesting news angle, huh? The fag detective in charge of finding the Gay Slasher?"
She said nothing.
"Sara, you're still the only one who knows aside from Lenny and my mother." He swallowed, his Adam's apple visibly sliding up and down.
"I wish I could say something, but do you know what would happen to me if the force found out?"
"I can imagine."
"I'd lose everything. I'd be lucky if they let me work as a meter maid."
"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Max."
He nodded, his eyes lowered to the floor.
"By the way, Lenny says hello."
"How is he?"
He shrugged.
"He's a nag, but I love him."
"As long as you're happy."
"You sound like my mother. Can we get back to the case now?"
"Okay" Sara said, "what have you got so far?"
"Not much. We got a wino who saw Bradley's body being dumped behind the Black Magic early in the a.m.