The Strangler by William Landay

out on a tab?”
    “I consorted with the criminal element.”
    “You are the criminal element.”
    “I mean the real criminal element. This guy came to see me. That’s what I need to talk to you about. I need to disappear for a while, take care of this thing.”
    “What guy?”
    “Amy, really, you don’t want to know.”
    “I do.”
    His face was blank. This was the infuriating thing about Ricky, the secrecy, the way he just disappeared into himself.
    “What’s going on, Ricky?”
    He did not respond.
    “Come on,” she teased. “It’s not so hard. It’s what the little hole in your face is for; that’s where words come out.”
    “Amy…”
    “Fine, Ricky. That’s just…fine.”
    “Amy, it’s nothing. I’ll take care of it. It’s just better we don’t talk about it. Trust me, I have reasons.”
    “What reasons? Tell me.”
    “Amy, please. Just let it go.”
    She studied him. She knew, oh, she knew what Ricky did. But if he chose not to discuss it, then the subject was verboten. That was the unspoken rule. At times like this, though, it killed her to let it go, just killed her. Her temperament, her training, her every day was about finding things out. She was a born finder-out. But, good Lord, did she love that man! Everything about him. His face, his smell, his voice, his body. The more she looked at him, the more she feasted on him. It was just possible, too, that she loved Ricky the more for his tantalizing secrets. He was a story she could never quite get. In any event, there was no sense in pressing him for answers. He wouldn’t talk anyway.
    But in the next moment all that sighing, girlish acceptance was gone. How could you really know a man if you could not discuss his work? What kind of relationship was that? Where was it all headed? They’d been together all these years and still?…Oh, the hell with secrets! Were they a couple or not? Did he love her or not?
    “Ricky, it’s not fair. You can’t just show up and tell me you’re going to disappear for a while without even explaining what’s going on. It’s…”
    “This again. It’s what?”
    “It’s not fair.”
    “Not fair? How do you know that? How do you know I’m not doing this for your own good?”
    “I think I can decide what’s for my own good. I’m a big girl.”
    “Well, the answer is no. You don’t get to know this time. It’s
better
you don’t know. You’ll just have to trust me on that. Now, do you trust me or not?”
    Her mouth fell open. Trust
him
? Ricky, you hypocrite! What balls! She raised her hand to slap him in the chest, not playfully but because there was nothing else to do, no other way to reach him.
    Ricky snatched her wrist before she could strike him. He held it, and though his face showed nothing, he squeezed her arm hard. His message could not have been clearer:
Don’t snoop.
    “Ow, Ricky, stop it, you’re hurting me.”
    He released her, then shook his head, frustrated, inarticulate. “Sorry.”
    “You’re hurting me.”

15
    Joe was the man of the moment. He had rescued the girl from the clutches of the Mad Strangler, wrestled with the very monster itself—and he’d had the extraordinary good fortune to be photographed in his hour of high heroism. (The incident took place a few blocks from Newspaper Row on Washington Street, where several papers maintained their city rooms.) There was still the matter of attaching a name to the suspect and then finding him, but at least the cops had a description now. Joe received a commendation from the commissioner. True, this was the same commissioner Joe had humiliated a few weeks before on national television, but to Joe the rescue erased everything that had gone before. He presumed he would be rehabilitated. He informed Brendan Conroy that his first choices for reassignment would be Homicide or maybe Alvan Byron’s new Strangler Bureau. Neither would happen.
    One night Conroy showed up at Station Sixteen before last half to tell Joe,