ey, Amie. Gotta talk."

"Sure."

Sachs was driving to Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan, on her quest for the Frank Sarkowski homicide file. But she wasn't thinking about that. She was thinking of the clocks at the crime scenes. Thinking of time moving forward and time standing still. Thinking of the periods when we want time to race ahead and save us from the pain we're experiencing. But it never does. It's at these moments that time slows interminably, sometimes even stops like the heart of a death-row prisoner at the moment of execution.

"Gotta talk."

Amelia Sachs was recalling a conversation from years earlier.

Nick says, "It's pretty serious." The two lovers are in Sachs's Brooklyn apartment. She's a rookie, in her uniform, her shoes polished to black mirrors. (Her father's advice: "Shined shoes get you more respect than an ironed uniform, honey. Remember that." And she had.)

Dark-haired, handsome, bulging-muscle Nick (he too could've been a model) is also a cop. More senior. Even more of a cowboy than Sachs is now. She sits on the coffee table, a nice one, teak, bought a year ago with the last of the fashion modeling money.

Nick was on an undercover assignment tonight. He's in a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans and wearing his little gun — a revolver — on his hip. He needs a shave, though Sachs likes him scruffy. The plans for this evening were: He'd come home and they'd have a late supper. She's got wine, candles, salad and salmon, all laid out, all homey.

On the other hand, Nick hasn't been home nights for a while. So maybe they'll eat dinner later.

Maybe they won't eat at all.

But now something's wrong. Something pretty serious.

Well, he's standing in front of her, he's not dead or wounded, shot down on an undercover set — the most dangerous assignment in copdom. He was going after crews jacking trucks. A lot of money was involved and that meant a lot of guns. Three of Nick's close buddies have been with him tonight. She wonders, her heart sinking, if one of them was killed. She knows them all.

Or is it something else?

Is he breaking up with me?

Lousy, lousy... but at least it's better than somebody getting capped in a shootout with a crew from East New York.

"Go on," she says.

"Look, Amie." It's her father's nickname for her. They are the only two men in the world she lets call her by the name. "The thing is —"

"Just tell me," she says. Amelia Sachs delivers news straight. She expects the same.

"You're going to hear it soon. I wanted to tell you first. I'm in trouble."

She believes she understands. Nick's a cowboy, always ready to pull out his MP-5 machine gun and exchange lead with a perp. Sachs, a better shot, at least with a pistol, is slow to squeeze the trigger. (Her father again: "You can't take back bullets.") She supposes that there's been a firefight and that Nick has killed someone — maybe even an innocent. Okay. He'll be suspended until the shooting review board meets to decide if it was justifiable.

Her heart goes out to him and she's about to say that she'd be there for him, no matter what, we'll get through it, when he adds, "I got busted."

"You —"

"Sammy and me... Frank R too... the heists — the truck-jackings. We got nailed. In a big way." His voice is shaking. She's never known him to cry but it sounds like he's a few seconds away from bawling his eyes out.

"You're on the bag?" she gasps.

He stares at her green carpet. Finally a whisper: "Yeah..." Though now he's started the confession, he doesn't need to pull back. "But it's worse."

Worse? What could possibly be worse?

"We were the doers. We jacked the trucks ourselves."

"You mean, tonight, you..." Her voice has stopped working.

"Oh, Amie, not just tonight. For a year. The whole fucking year. We had guys in warehouses tell us about shipments. We'd pull the trucks over and... Well, you get it. You don't need to know the details." He rubs his haggard face. "We just heard — they've issued warrants for us. Somebody dimed us out. They got us cold. Oh, man, did they get us."

She's thinking back to the nights he was out on a set, working undercover to collar hijackers. At least once a week.

"I got sucked in. I didn't have any choice... "

She doesn't need to respond to this, to say, yes, yes, yes, my God, we always have choices. Amelia Sachs doesn't offer excuses herself and she's deaf to them from others. He understands this about her, of course, it's part of their love.

It was part of their love.

And he stops trying. "I fucked up, Amie. I fucked up. I just came by to tell you."

"You going to surrender?"

"I guess. I don't know what I'm going to do. Fuck."

Numb, there's nothing she can think of to say, not a single thing. She's thinking of their times together — the hours on the range, wasting pounds of ammo; in bars on Broadway, slogging down frozen daiquiris; lying in front of the old fireplace in her Brooklyn apartment.

"They'll look into my life with a microscope, Amie. I'll tell 'em you're clean. I'll try to keep you out of it. But they'll ask you a lot of questions."

She wants to ask why he did it. What reason could he possibly have? Nick'd grown up in Brooklyn, a typical good-looking, street-smart neighborhood kid. He'd run with a bad crowd for a while but had some sense smacked into him by his father and gave that up. Why had he slipped back? Was it the thrill? Was it the money? (That was something else he'd hidden from her, she realized now; where'd he been socking it away?)

Why?

But she doesn't have the chance.

"I've got to go now. I'll call you later. I love you."

He kissed the top of her motionless head. Then out the door.

Thinking back to those endless moments, the endless night, time stopped, as she sat staring at the candles burning down to pools of maroon wax.

I'll call you later...

But no call ever came.

The double hit — his crime and the death of their relationship — took its toll; she decided to quit Patrol completely. Give it up for a desk job. It was only the chance meeting with Lincoln Rhyme that pulled her back from that decision and kept her in uniform. But the incident sealed within her an abiding repulsion for crooked police. It was something that was more horrific to her than lying politicians and cheating spouses and ruthless perps.

This was why nothing would stop her from finding out if the St. James crew was in fact a circle of bad cops from the 118th Precinct. And if so, nothing would stop her from bringing down the crooked officers and the OC crews working with them.

Her Camaro now skidded to the curb. Sachs tossed the NYPD parking identification card onto the Chevy's dash and climbed out, slamming the door fiercely as if she were trying to close a hole that had opened between the present and this hard, hard past.

"Hell, that's gross."

In the upper floor of the parking garage where the Watchmaker's SUV was found, the patrol officer who made this comment to his colleagues was looking down at the figure, lying on his belly.

"Man, you got that one right," one of his buddies replied. "Jesus."

Another offered the uncoplike declaration, "Yuck."

Sellitto and Bo Haumann jogged up to the scene.

"Are you all right? Are you all right?" Sellitto shouted.

He was speaking to Ron Pulaski, who stood over the man on the ground, who was covered with pungent trash. The rookie, decorated with garbage himself, was gasping. Pulaski nodded. "Scared the hell out of me. But I'm fine. Man, he was pretty strong for a homeless guy."

A medic ran up and rolled the attacker over on his back. Pulaski'd cuffed him and the metal bracelets jingled on his wrists. His eyes danced madly and his clothing was torn and filthy. The body stench was overwhelming. He'd recently urinated in his pants. (Hence, "gross" and "yuck.")

"What happened?" Haumann asked Pulaski.

"I was searching the scene." He pointed out the stairwell landing. "It appeared that the perpetrators made their exit through this locale... "

Stop it, he reminded himself.

He tried again. "The perps ran up those stairs, I'm pretty sure, and I was searching up here, looking for footprints. Then I heard something and turned around. This guy was coming for me." He pointed to a pipe the homeless guy had been carrying. "I couldn't get my weapon out in time but I threw that trash can at him. We fought for a minute or two and I finally got him in a chokehold."

"We don't use those," Haumann reminded.

"I meant to say I was successfully able to restrain him through self-defense methods."

The tactical chief nodded. "Right."

Pulaski found the headset and plugged it back in. He winced as a voice blasted into his ears: "For Christ's sake, are you alive or dead? What's going on?"

"Sorry, Detective Rhyme."

Pulaski explained what had happened.

"You're all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

"Good," the criminalist said. "Now, tell me why the fuck your weapon was inside your overalls."

"An oversight, sir. Won't happen again, sir."

"Oh, it better not. What's the number-one rule on a hot scene?"

"A hot —"

"A hot scene — where the perp might still be around. The rule is: Search well but watch your back. Got it?"

"Yessir."

"So the escape route's contaminated," Rhyme grumbled.

"Well, it's just covered with garbage."

"Garbage," was Rhyme's exasperated response. "Then I guess you better start cleaning it up. I want all the evidence here in twenty minutes. Every bit. You think you can do that?"

"Yes, sir. I'll —"

Rhyme disconnected abruptly.

As two ESU officers pulled on latex gloves and carted off the homeless guy, Pulaski bent down and started to remove the trash. He was trying to recall what there was about Rhyme's tone that sounded familiar. Finally it occurred to him. It was the very same mix of anger and relief when Pulaski's father had a "discussion" with his twin sons after he'd caught them having a footrace on the elevated train tracks near their home.

Like a spy.

Standing on a street corner in Hell's Kitchen, retired detective Art Snyder was in a trench coat and old alpine hat with a small feather in it, looking like a has-been foreign agent from a John le Carré novel.

Amelia Sachs walked up to him.

Snyder acknowledged her with only a brief glance and, after looking around the streets, turned and started walking west, away from bustling Times Square.

"Thanks for the call."

Snyder shrugged.

"Where're we going?" she asked.

"I'm meeting a buddy of mine. We play pool up the street here every week. I didn't want to talk on the phone."

Spies...

An emaciated man with slicked-back yellow hair — not blond, but yellow — hit them up for some change. Snyder looked at him closely and then handed over a dollar. The man walked on, saying thanks, but grudgingly, as if he'd been expecting a five.

They were walking through a dim part of the street when Sachs felt something brush her thigh, twice, and she wondered for a moment if the retiree was coming on to her. Glancing down, though, she saw a folded piece of paper that he was subtly passing to her.

She took it and when they were under a streetlight, she looked it over.

The sheet was a photocopy of a page from a binder or book.

Snyder leaned close, whispered, "This's a page from the file log. At the One Three One."

She looked it over. In the middle was an entry:

File Number: 3453496, Sarkowski, Frank

Subject: Homicide

Sent to: 158 Precinct.

Requested by:

Date Sent: November 28.

Date Returned:

"The patrolman I'm working with," Sachs said, "said there was no reference in the log to it's being checked out."

"He must've only looked in the computer. I looked there too. It probably was entered but then it got erased. This is the manual backup."

"Why'd it go to the One Five Eight?"

"Don't know. There's no reason for it to've."

"Where'd you get this?"

"A friend found it. Cop I worked with. Stand-up guy. Already forgot I asked."

"Where would it've gone in the One Five Eight? The file room?"

Snyder shrugged. "No idea."

"I'll check it out."

He clapped his hands together. "Fucking cold." He looked behind them. Sachs did too. Was that a black car pausing at the intersection?

Snyder stopped walking. He nodded toward a run-down storefront. Flannagan's Pool and Billiards. Est. 1954. "Where I'm going."

"Thanks again," she told him.

Snyder looked inside then glanced at his watch. He said to Sachs, "Not many of these old places left in Times Square... I used to work the Deuce. You know —"

"Forty-second Street. I walked it too." She looked back again toward Eighth Avenue. The black car was gone.

He was staring into the pool hall, speaking softly. "I remember the summers most. Some of those August days. Even the gangbangers and chain snatchers were home, it was so hot. I remember the restaurants and bars and movie theaters. Some of 'em had these signs up, I guess from the forties or fifties, saying they were air conditioned. Funny, a place that advertised they had air-conditioning to get people inside. Pretty different nowadays, huh?... Times sure change." Snyder pulled open the door and stepped into the smoky room. "Times sure as hell change."