was up late that night. I tried sleeping and couldn't, tried reading and couldn't, and wound up sitting in the dark at my window, looking out at the rain falling through the light of the streetlamps. I sat and thought long thoughts. "The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I read that line in a poem once, but you can think long thoughts at any age, if you can't sleep and there's a light rain falling.

I was still in bed when the phone rang around ten. TJ said, "You got a pen, Glenn? You want to get one, write this down." He reeled off a pair of seven-digit numbers. "Better write down seven-one-eight, too, 'cause you got to dial that first."

"Who will I get if I do?"

"Woulda got me, was you home first time I called you. Man you harder to get than lucky! Called you Friday afternoon, called you Friday night, called you yesterday all day and all night up until midnight. You a hard man to reach."

"I was out."

"Well, I more or less 'stablished that. Man, that was some trip you sent me on. Ol' Brooklyn, it go on for days."

"There's a lot of it," I agreed.

"More than you'd have a need for. First place I went, rode to the end of the line. Train came up above ground and I got to see some pretty houses. Looked like an old-time town in a movie, not like New York at all. Got to the first phone, called you. Nobody home. Went chasin' out to the next phone, and man, that was a trip. I went down some streets that the people looked at me like, nigger, what you doin' here? Didn't nobody say anything, but you didn't have to listen real hard to hear what they thinkin'."

"But you didn't have any trouble."

"Man, I never have trouble. What I do, I make it a point to see trouble 'fore trouble sees me. I found the second telephone, called you a second time. Didn't get you 'cause you wasn't there to be got. So I thinkin', hey, maybe I'm closer to some other subway, on account of I am miles from where I get off the last one. So I go into this candy store, say, like, 'Can you tell me where the nearest subway station is?' I say it like that, you know, you woulda thought you was hearin' an announcer on TV. Man looks at me, says, 'Subway?' Like it not just a word he don't know, it a whole concept he can't get his mind around. So I just went back the way I came, man, back to the end of the Flatbush line, 'cause at least I knew how to do that."

"I think that was probably the closest station anyway."

"I think you right, 'cause I looked at subway map later an' I couldn't see one closer. One more reason to stay in Manhattan, man. You never far from a train."

"I'll keep it in mind."

"I sure was hopin' you be there when I called. Had it all set, I run the number by you, say, 'Call it right now.' You dial, I pick up an' say, 'Here I am.' Tellin' you about it now it don't seem all that cool, but I couldn't wait to do it."

"I gather the phones had the numbers posted."

"Oh, right! That's what I left out. Second one, the one way to hell an' gone out Veterans Avenue? Where everybody look at you real strange? That phone did have the number posted. The other one, Flatbush an' Farragut, it didn't."

"Then how'd you get it?"

"Well, I resourceful. Told you that, didn't I?"

"More than once."

"What I did, I call the operator. Say, 'Hey, girl, somebody screwed up, ain't no number here on the phone, so how do I know where I callin' from?' An' she say how she got no way to tell what the number is of the phone I'm at, so she can't help me."

"That seems unlikely."

"Thought so myself. Thought they got all that equipment, you ask them a number at Information an' they can say it about as fast as you can ask it, so how come they can't give you the number of your own phone? An' I thought, TJ, you fool, they took out the numbers to fuck up dope dealers, an' here you go soundin' just like one. So I dial 0 again, on account of you can call the operator all day long an' never spend no quarter, it a free call. An' you know you get somebody different every time you call. So I got some other chick, an' this time I took all the street out of my voice, I said, 'Perhaps you can help me, miss. I'm at a pay phone and I have to leave the number with my office for a call back, and someone defaced the phone with spray-painted graffiti in such a way that the number is impossible to make out. I wonder if you could possibly check the line and supply it for me.' An' I ain't even through sayin' it when she's readin' off the number for me. Matt? Oh, shit."

The recording had cut in to ask for more money.

"Quarter ran out," he said. "I got to feed in another one."

"Give me the number, I'll call you."

"Can't. I ain't in Brooklyn now, I didn't happen to con nobody out of the number for this particular phone." The phone chimed as his coin dropped. "There, we be all right now. Pretty slick, though, way I got the other number. You there? How come you ain't sayin' nothing'?"

"I'm stunned," I said. "I didn't know you could talk like that."

"What, you mean talk straight? 'Course I can. Just because I street don't mean I be ignorant. They two different languages, man, and you talkin' to a cat's bilingual."

"Well, I'm impressed."

"Yeah? I figured you'd be impressed I got to Brooklyn an' back. What you got for me to do next?"

"Nothing right now."

"Nothin'? Sheee, ought to be something I can do. I did good on this, didn't I?"

"You did great."

"I mean, man didn't have to be a rocket scientist to find his way to Brooklyn an' back. But it was cool how I got the number out of that operator, wasn't it?"

"Definitely."

"I was bein' resourceful."

"Very resourceful."

"But you still ain't got nothin' for me today."

"I'm afraid not," I said. "Check with me in a day or two."

"Check with you," he said. "Man, I'd check with you anytime you say if only you was there to be checked with. You know who oughta have a beeper? Man, you oughta have a beeper. I could beep you, you'd say to yourself, 'Must be TJ tryin' to get hold of me, must be important.' What's so funny?"

"Nothing."

"Then how come you laughin'? I be checkin' with you every day, my man, because I think you need me workin' for you. An' that is final, Lionel."

"Hey, I like that."

"Thought you would," he said. "Been savin' it up for you."

IT rained all day Sunday and I spent most of the day in my room. I had the TV on and switched back and forth between tennis on ESPN and golf on one of the networks. There are days when I can get caught up in a tennis match but this wasn't one of them. I can never get caught up in golf, but the scenery is pretty and the announcers aren't as relentlessly chatty as they are in most other sports, so it's not a bad thing to have going on while I sit thinking about something else.

Jim Faber called in the middle of the afternoon to cancel our standing dinner date. A cousin of his wife's had died and they had to go put in an appearance. "We could meet someplace now for a cup of coffee," he said, "except it's such a lousy day outside."

We spent ten minutes on the phone instead. I mentioned that I was a little worried about Peter Khoury, that he might pick up a drink or a drug. "The way he talked about heroin," I said, "he had me wanting some myself."

"I noticed that about junkies," he said. "They get this wistful quality, like an old man talking about his lost youth. You know you can't keep him sober."

"I know."

"You're not sponsoring him, are you?"

"No, but neither is anybody else. And last night he was using me like a sponsor."

"Be just as well if he didn't formally ask you to be his sponsor. You've already got a professional relationship with his brother, and to an extent with him."

"I thought of that."

"But even if he did, that still doesn't make him your responsibility. You know what constitutes being a successful sponsor? Staying sober yourself."

"It seems to me I've heard that."

"From me, probably. But nobody can keep anybody else sober. I'm your sponsor. Do I keep you sober?"

"No," I said. "I stay sober in spite of you."

"In spite of me or to spite me?"

"Maybe a little of both."

"What's Peter's problem, anyway? Feeling sorry for himself because he can't drink or shoot up?"

"Snort."

"Huh?"

"He stayed away from needles. But yeah, that's most of it. And he's pissed off at God."

"Shit, who isn't?"

"Because what kind of a God would let something like that happen to a wonderful person like his sister-in-law?"

"God pulls that kind of shit all the time."

"I know."

"And maybe he had a reason. Maybe Jesus wants her for a sunbeam. Remember that song?"

"I don't think I ever heard it."

"Well, I hope to God you never hear it from me, because I'd have to be drunk to sing it. Do you figure he was fucking her?"

"Do I figure who was fucking who?"

"Whom. Do you figure Peter was fucking the sister-in-law?"

"Jesus," I said. "Why would I think that? You've got a hell of a mind, you know that?"

"It's the people I hang around with."

"It must be. No, I don't think he was. I think he's just feeling sad, and I think he wants to drink and take dope, and I hope he doesn't. That's all."

I called Elaine and told her I was free for dinner, but she'd already made arrangements for her friend Monica to come over. She said they were going to order Chinese food in, and I was welcome to come over, that way they could order more dishes. I said I would pass.

"You're afraid it'll be an evening of girl talk," she said. "And you're probably right."

Mick Ballou called while I was watching 60 Minutes and we talked for ten or twelve of them. I told him in the same breath that I had booked a trip to Ireland and that I'd had to cancel it. He was sorry I wasn't coming over but glad I'd found something to keep me busy.

I told him a little about what I was doing, but not the sort of person I was working for. He had no sympathy for drug dealers, and occasionally supplemented his income by invading their homes and taking their cash.

He asked about the weather and I said it had been raining all day. He said it was always raining there, that he was finding it hard to recall what the sun looked like. Oh, and had I heard? They'd come up with evidence that Our Lord was Irish.

"Is that so?"

"It is," he said. "Consider the facts. He lived with his parents until He was twenty-nine years old. He went out drinking with the lads the last night of His life. He thought His mother was a virgin, and herself, a good woman, she thought He was God."

THE week started slowly. I hammered away at the Khoury case, if you want to call it that. I managed to get the name of one of the officers who'd caught the Leila Alvarez homicide. She was the Brooklyn College student who'd been dumped in GreenWood Cemetery, and the case belonged not to the Seventy-second Precinct but to Brooklyn Homicide. A Detective John Kelly had headed the investigation, but I had trouble reaching him and was reluctant to leave a name and number.

I saw Elaine Monday and she was disappointed that her phone hadn't been ringing off the hook with calls from rape victims. I told her she might not get any response, that it was like that sometimes, that you had to throw a lot of baited hooks in the water and sometimes you went a long time without a bite. And it was early, I said. It was unlikely the people she spoke to would have made any calls until the weekend was over.

"It was over today," she reminded me. I said if they did make calls it might take them a while to reach people, and it might take the victims a couple of days to make up their minds to call.

"Or not to call," she said.

She was more discouraged when Tuesday passed without a call. When I spoke to her Wednesday evening she was excited. The good news was that three women had called her. The bad news was that none of the calls looked to have anything to do with the men who had killed Francine Khoury.

One was a woman who had been ambushed by a solitary assailant in the hallway of her apartment house. He had raped her and stolen her purse. Another had accepted a ride home from school with someone she took to be another student; he had shown her a knife and ordered her into the backseat, but she had been able to escape.

"He was a skinny kid and he was alone," Elaine said, "so I thought it was stretching it to figure him as a possibility. And the third call was date rape. Or pickup rape, I don't know what you'd call it. According to her, she and her girlfriend picked up these two guys in a bar in Sunnyside. They went for a ride in the guys' car and her girlfriend got carsick so they stopped the car so she could get out and vomit. And then they drove off and left her there. Can you believe that?"

"Well, it's not very considerate," I said, "but I don't think I'd call it rape."

"Funny. Anyway, they drove around for a while and then they went back to her house and they wanted to have sex with her, and she said nothing doing, what kind of a girl do you think I am, blah blah blah, and finally she agreed that she'd fuck one of them, the one she'd been more or less partnered with, and the other one would wait in the living room. Except he didn't, he walked in while they were getting it on and watched, which did little to cool his ardor, as you might have figured."

"And?"

"And afterward he said please please please, and she said no no no, and finally she gave him a blow-job because that was the only way to get rid of him."

"She told you this?"

"In more ladylike terms, but yeah, that's what happened. Then she brushed her teeth and called the cops."

"And reported it as rape?"

"Well, I'd be willing to call it that. It escalated from please please please to Get me off or I'll kick your teeth down your throat, so I'd say that qualifies as rape."

"Oh, sure, if it was that forceful."

"But it doesn't sound like our guys."

"No, not at all."

"I got their numbers just in case you want to follow up on them, and I told them we'd call if the producer decided to pursue it, that the whole project was kind of iffy just now. Was that right?"

"Definitely."

"So I didn't come up with anything helpful, but it's encouraging that I got three calls, don't you think? And there'll probably be more tomorrow."

There was one call Thursday, and it had seemed promising early on. A woman in her early thirties taking graduate courses at St. John's University, abducted at knifepoint by three men as she was unlocking her parked car in one of the campus parking lots. They piled into the car with her and drove to Cunningham Park, where they had oral and vaginal sex with her, menaced her throughout with one or more knives, threatened various forms of mutilation, and did in fact cut her on one arm, although the wound may have been inflicted accidentally. When they were done with her they left her there and escaped in her car, which had still not been recovered almost seven months after the incident.

"But it can't be them," Elaine said, "because the guys were black. The ones on Atlantic Avenue were white, weren't they?"

"Yeah, that's one thing everybody agrees on."

"Well, these men were black. I kept, you know, returning to that point, and she must have thought I was racist or something, or that I suspected her of being a racist, or I don't know what. Because why should I keep pounding away at the color of the rapists? But of course it was all-important from my point of view, because it means that she's out of the picture for our purposes. Unless sometime between now and last August they figured out how to change color."

"If they worked that out," I said, "it'd be worth a lot more than four hundred thousand to them."

"Nice. Anyway, I felt like an idiot, but I took her name and number and said we'd call her if we got a green light on the project. You want to hear something funny? She said whether it leads to anything or not she's glad she called, because it did her good to talk about it. She talked about it a lot right after it happened and she had some counseling but she hasn't talked about it lately, and it helped."

"That must have made you feel good."

"It did, because up to then I'd been feeling guilty for putting her through it under false pretenses. She said I was very easy to talk to."

"Well, that comes as no surprise to this reporter."

"She thought I was a counselor. I think she was leading up to asking if she could come in once a week for therapy. I told her I was an assistant to a producer, and that you needed pretty much the same skills."

THAT same day, I finally managed to get hold of Detective John Kelly of Brooklyn Homicide. He remembered that Leila Alvarez case and said it was a terrible thing. She'd been a pretty girl and, according to everyone who knew her, a nice kid and a serious student.

I said I was doing a piece on bodies abandoned in unusual locations, and I asked if there had been anything unusual about the condition of the body when it was found. He said there'd been some mutilation and I asked if he could give me a little more detail and he said he thought he'd better not. Partly because they were keeping certain aspects of the case confidential, and partly to spare the feelings of the girl's family.

"I'm sure you can understand," he said.

I tried a couple of other approaches and kept running up against the same wall. I thanked him and I was going to hang up, but something made me ask him if he'd ever worked out of the Seven-eight. He asked why I wanted to know.

"Because I knew a John Kelly who did," I said, "except I don't see how you could be the same man, because he would have to be well past retirement age by now."

"That was my dad," he said. "You say your name's Scudder? What were you, a reporter?"

"No, I was on the job myself. I was at the Seven-eight for a while, and then I was at the Six in Manhattan when I made detective."

"Oh, you made detective? And now you're a writer? My dad talked about writing a book, but that's all it ever was, talk. He retired, oh, it must be eight years now, he's down in Florida growing grapefruit in his backyard. Lot of cops I know are working on a book, or say they are. Or say they're thinking about it, but you're actually doing it, huh?"

It was time to shift gears. "No," I said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"That was crap," I admitted. "I'm working private, it's what I've been doing since I left the department."

"So what do you want to know about Alvarez?"

"I want to know the nature of the mutilation."

"Why?"

"I want to know if it involved amputation."

There was a pause, long enough for me to regret the whole line of questioning. Then he said, "You know what I want to know, mister? I want to know just where the fuck you're coming from."

"There was a case in Queens a little over a year ago," I said. "Three men took a woman off Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven and left her on a golf course in Forest Park. Along with a lot of other brutality, they cut off two of her fingers and stuck them in, uh, bodily openings."

"You got a reason to think it was the same people did both women?"

"No, but I have reason to believe that whoever did Gotteskind didn't stop at one."

"That was her name in Queens? Gotteskind?"

"Marie Gotteskind, yes. I've been trying to match her killers to other cases, and Alvarez looked possible, but all I know about it is what wound up in the papers."

"Alvarez had a finger up her ass."

"Same with Gotteskind. She also had one in front."

"In her—"

"Yeah."

"You're like me, you don't like to use the words when it's a dead person. I don't know, you hang around the MEs, they're the most irreverent bastards on earth. I guess it's to insulate themselves from feeling it."

"Probably."

"But it seems disrespectful to me. These poor people, what else can they hope for but a little respect after they're dead? They didn't get any from the person who took their life."

"No."

"She had a breast missing."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Alvarez. They cut off a breast. From the bleeding, they say she was alive when it happened."

"Dear God."

"I want to get these fucks, you know? Working Homicide you want to get everybody because there's no such thing as a little murder, but some of them get to you and this was one that got to me. We really worked it, we checked her movements, we talked to everybody who knew her, but you know how it is. When there's no connection between the victim and the killer and not much in the way of physical evidence, you can only take it so far. There was very little on-scene evidence because they did her somewhere else, then dumped her in the cemetery."

"That was in the paper."

"Same thing with Gotteskind?"

"Yes."

"If I'd known about Gotteskind— you say over a year ago?" I gave him the date. "So it's been sitting in a file in Queens and how am I supposed to know about it? Two corpses with fingers, uh, removed and reinserted, and here I am with my thumb up my ass, and I didn't mean to say that. Jesus."

"I hope it helps."

"You hope it helps. What else have you got?"

"Nothing."

"If you're holding out—"

"All I know about Gotteskind is what's in her file. And all I know about Alvarez is what you just told me."

"And what's your connection? Your own personal connection?"

"I just told you I—"

"No, no, no. Why the interest?"

"That's confidential."

"The hell it is. You got no right to hold out."

"I'm not."

"Well, what do you call it, then?"

I took a breath. I said, "I think I've said as much as I have to. I have no special knowledge of either homicide, Gotteskind or Alvarez. I read the one's file and you told me about the other and that's the extent of my knowledge."

"What made you read the file in the first place?"

"A newspaper story a year ago, and I called you on the basis of another newspaper story. That's it."

"You got some client you're covering for."

"If I've got a client, he's certainly not for perpetrator, and I can't see how he's anything but my own business. Wouldn't you rather compare the two cases yourself and see if that gives you a wedge into them?"

"Yeah, of course I'm gonna do that, but I wish I knew your angle."

"It's not important."

"I could tell you to come in. Or have you picked up, if you'd rather play it that way."

"You could," I agreed. "But you wouldn't get a damn thing more than I already told you. You could cost me some time, but you'd be wasting time of your own."

"You got your fucking nerve, I'll say that for you."

"Hey, come on," I said. "You've got something now that you didn't before I called. If you want to cop a resentment I suppose you can hang on to one, but what's the point?"

"What am I supposed to say, thank you?" It wouldn't hurt, I thought, but kept the thought to myself. "The hell with it," he said. "But I think you'd better let me have your address and phone, just in case I need to get in touch with you."

The mistake had been in letting him have my name. I could find out if he was enough of a detective to look me up in the Manhattan book, but why? I gave him my address and phone and told him I was sorry I wasn't able to answer all his questions, but I had certain responsibilities to a client of mine. "That would have pissed me off when I was on the job," I said, "so I can understand why it would have the same effect on you. But I have to do what I have to do."

"Yeah, that's a line I've heard before. Well, maybe it's the same people in both cases, and maybe something'll break if we put 'em side by side. That'd be nice."

That was as close to "thank you" as we were going to get, and I was happy to settle for it. I said it would be very nice, and wished him luck. I asked to be remembered to his father.