it."
I joined her on the couch and ran a hand over her fine hair. The sprinkling of gray hair enhanced its attractiveness. She looked at me for a moment out of those bottomless gray eyes, then let the lids drop.
I kissed her and she clung to me.
We necked some. I touched her breasts, kissed her throat. Her strong hands worked the muscles in my back and shoulders like modeling clay.
"You'll stay over," she said.
"I'd like that."
"So would I."
I freshened both our drinks.
Chapter 9
I awakened with church bells pealing in the distance. My head was clear and I felt good. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and met the eyes of a long-haired cat curled up at the foot of the bed on the other side. He looked me over, then tucked his head in and resumed napping.
Sleep with the lady of the house and the cats accept you.
I got dressed and found Jan in the kitchen. She was drinking a glass of pale orange juice. I figured there was something in it to take the edge off her hangover. She'd made coffee in a Chemex filter pot and poured me a cup. I stood by the window and drank it.
We didn't talk. The church bells had taken a break and the Sunday morning silence stretched out. It was a bright day out, the sun burning away in a cloudless sky. I looked down and couldn't see a single sign of life, not a person on the street, not a car moving.
I finished my coffee and added the cup to the dirty dishes in the stainless-steel sink. Jan used a key to bring the elevator to the floor. She asked if I was going out to Sheepshead Bay and I said I guessed I was.
We held onto each other for a moment. I felt the warmth of her fine body through the robe she was wearing.
"I'll call you," I said, and rode the oversized elevator to the ground.
An Officer O'Byrne gave me directions over the phone. I followed them, riding the BMT Brighton Line to Gravesend Neck Road. The train came up above ground level at some point after it crossed into Brooklyn, and we rode through some neighborhoods of detached houses with yards that didn't look like New York at all.
The station house for the Sixty-first Precinct was on Coney Island Avenue and I managed to find it without too much trouble. In the squad room I played do-you-know with a wiry, long-jawed detective named Antonelli. We knew enough of the same people for him to relax with me. I told him what I was working on and mentioned that Frank Fitzroy had steered it my way. He knew Frank, too, though I didn't get the impression that they were crazy about each other.
"I'll see what our file looks like," he said. "But you probably saw copies of our reports in the file Fitzroy showed you."
"What I mostly want is to talk with somebody who looked at the body."
"Wouldn't the names of officers on the scene be in the file you saw in Manhattan?"
I'd thought of that myself. Maybe I could have managed all this without coming out to the ass end of Brooklyn. But when you go out and look for something you occasionally find more than you knew you were looking for.
"Well, maybe I can find that file," he said, and left me at an old wooden desk scarred with cigarette burns along its edges. Two desks over, a black detective with his sleeves rolled up was talking on the phone. It sounded as though he was talking to a woman, and it didn't sound much like police business.
At another desk along the far wall a pair of cops, one uniformed and one in a suit, were questioning a teenager with a mop of unruly yellow hair. I couldn't hear what they were saying.
Antonelli came back with a slim file and dropped it on the desk in front of me. I went through it, pausing now and then to make a note in my notebook. The victim, I learned, was a Susan Potowski of 2705
Haring Street. She'd been a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two, separated from her husband, a construction laborer. She lived with her kids in the lower flat of a two-family semi-detached house, and she'd been killed around two o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon.
Her
I joined her on the couch and ran a hand over her fine hair. The sprinkling of gray hair enhanced its attractiveness. She looked at me for a moment out of those bottomless gray eyes, then let the lids drop.
I kissed her and she clung to me.
We necked some. I touched her breasts, kissed her throat. Her strong hands worked the muscles in my back and shoulders like modeling clay.
"You'll stay over," she said.
"I'd like that."
"So would I."
I freshened both our drinks.
Chapter 9
I awakened with church bells pealing in the distance. My head was clear and I felt good. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and met the eyes of a long-haired cat curled up at the foot of the bed on the other side. He looked me over, then tucked his head in and resumed napping.
Sleep with the lady of the house and the cats accept you.
I got dressed and found Jan in the kitchen. She was drinking a glass of pale orange juice. I figured there was something in it to take the edge off her hangover. She'd made coffee in a Chemex filter pot and poured me a cup. I stood by the window and drank it.
We didn't talk. The church bells had taken a break and the Sunday morning silence stretched out. It was a bright day out, the sun burning away in a cloudless sky. I looked down and couldn't see a single sign of life, not a person on the street, not a car moving.
I finished my coffee and added the cup to the dirty dishes in the stainless-steel sink. Jan used a key to bring the elevator to the floor. She asked if I was going out to Sheepshead Bay and I said I guessed I was.
We held onto each other for a moment. I felt the warmth of her fine body through the robe she was wearing.
"I'll call you," I said, and rode the oversized elevator to the ground.
An Officer O'Byrne gave me directions over the phone. I followed them, riding the BMT Brighton Line to Gravesend Neck Road. The train came up above ground level at some point after it crossed into Brooklyn, and we rode through some neighborhoods of detached houses with yards that didn't look like New York at all.
The station house for the Sixty-first Precinct was on Coney Island Avenue and I managed to find it without too much trouble. In the squad room I played do-you-know with a wiry, long-jawed detective named Antonelli. We knew enough of the same people for him to relax with me. I told him what I was working on and mentioned that Frank Fitzroy had steered it my way. He knew Frank, too, though I didn't get the impression that they were crazy about each other.
"I'll see what our file looks like," he said. "But you probably saw copies of our reports in the file Fitzroy showed you."
"What I mostly want is to talk with somebody who looked at the body."
"Wouldn't the names of officers on the scene be in the file you saw in Manhattan?"
I'd thought of that myself. Maybe I could have managed all this without coming out to the ass end of Brooklyn. But when you go out and look for something you occasionally find more than you knew you were looking for.
"Well, maybe I can find that file," he said, and left me at an old wooden desk scarred with cigarette burns along its edges. Two desks over, a black detective with his sleeves rolled up was talking on the phone. It sounded as though he was talking to a woman, and it didn't sound much like police business.
At another desk along the far wall a pair of cops, one uniformed and one in a suit, were questioning a teenager with a mop of unruly yellow hair. I couldn't hear what they were saying.
Antonelli came back with a slim file and dropped it on the desk in front of me. I went through it, pausing now and then to make a note in my notebook. The victim, I learned, was a Susan Potowski of 2705
Haring Street. She'd been a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two, separated from her husband, a construction laborer. She lived with her kids in the lower flat of a two-family semi-detached house, and she'd been killed around two o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon.
Her
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