Brian O'Malley was recommended for his new post of Deputy Chief Inspector in Charge of Public Affairs by Arthur Pollack, his predecessor. O'Malley had a facile mind, an easy way of controlling and guiding and turning a line of interrogation to the best interests of the Department. He had good rapport with the press and other media people; he had many friends and good connections. He could move easily into and out of a wide range of situations and leave behind him soothed egos and a sense of satisfactory responses, whether that was the case or not.

He met Karen Day when he'd been on his new assignment for less than a month.

The crime had been committed on the twelfth floor of a luxury co-op in the East 50's and it was one of the most bizarre murders any of the men present could recall. Two young women and one young man had been bound, mutilated, sexually attacked and slaughtered. The apartment reeked with violence, drapes ripped, furniture slashed, pieces of flesh hacked from the bodies, arranged, rearranged to satisfy some depraved appetite. The stereo had been set full blast as had three transistor radios and two color TV sets in the apartment. It was the electronic noises that had finally annoyed the other tenants. They claimed to have heard nothing else of an unusual nature.

Brian briefed the waiting news people in the lobby of the building; he gave the barest details allowable at the time. Names of victims to be withheld pending notification of next of kin; victims had been sexually molested; all died as result of multiple stab wounds; the Department was conducting an intensive investigation into the matter and would have no further statement at this time.

He politely stared straight ahead and pretended not to hear the repeated demands for more information. What was the relationship of the three victims? In whose name was the apartment held? Were any perversions involved? "Come on, Chief, how the hell can we deliver any copy when we don't know anything more than this?"

"See ya later, fellas." He waved and entered the elevator, which stopped on the sixth floor. Karen Day got into the elevator with him and he nodded at her, as though he knew her, then he stared at her, frankly puzzled.

"Hello, Chief O'Malley," she said in a husky voice. "I'm Karen Day. From NBC."

It didn't register immediately that she was a newswoman and had no right to be beyond the lobby. "Jesus," he said softly, "you're the living image of Karen Duvall."

"I'm Karen Duvall's daughter," she said crisply. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about the victims, Chief. You really didn't tell us anything. White or black? Homo? Lesbo? Was the apartment a setup? What did they do for a living? Come on, Chief, start me on something for the eleven o'clock."

She was very tall and she regarded him with bright dark eyes and a sharp aggressive expression. She spoke rapidly, in a deep, familiar voice, and as she spoke, she ran her long fingers through thick, straight dark hair, brushed it idly from her face.

He shook his head and said quietly, "Jesus, I used to break my neck to see your mother. I must have seen her twenty or thirty times. I remember when she sang with Dorsey-"

"And I bet you collected every record she ever cut," the girl said acidly.

Brian stared at her, at the image of the popular singer whose sad big voice had touched and remained in some vulnerable center of himself. The girl was prettier than her mother had ever been but in a cold, hard way. She spoke and moved and studied him with an assurance and arrogance that destroyed memory of another girl, denied the relationship between them.

Karen Duvall, soft, tiny, hurt by the world which both loved and tormented her, had drawn forth collective waves of protecting masculinity. By the time of her death at thirty-eight, she had been four times married, many times beaten and cured and beaten again by drink. Occasionally, some sentimental disc jockey would dig out a Karen Duvall and the powerful voice, lamenting the world, would evoke, for all who had ever been moved by her, other, simpler times.

"What did you say your name was?" Brian asked sharply.

"Karen Day, NBC News." She hooked a thumb under the press card, which was pinned carelessly to the lapel of her suede coat.

"Well. I'll tell you what Karen Day. NBC News. You get your ass the hell back down to the lobby where you belong or Mr. Jason Harris, NBC News, will get a phone call advising him that in the future you're barred from any and all police calls."

Her mouth fell open for a moment, then she said, "Who the hell do you think you're talking to, buster?"

Brian leaned toward her, tapped her press card with his index finger. "To Karen Day, NBC News. Now beat it."

Within a month, what had been a tantalizing mystery became a sordid, predictable story of perversion, drugs, cultism and various forms of insanity. Through diligent, plodding, methodical detective work, the culprits, two males and one female, were apprehended and subsequently indicted for the homicides. The story played itself out with its explanations and was of no further interest outside the judicial setting. There were hundreds of new sensations of greater interest to the news media.

One morning, Lieutenant Mike Fitzgerald, one of the bright boys, with two college degrees, early thirties, Brian's assistant, called his attention to a request made by NBC.

"What they want to do, Chief," Fitzgerald explained earnestly, "is to have a camera crew assigned to ride with a patrol-car team for a week or two. Format will be to show that with all the modernization and new technology, et cetera, the basic job of policing still involves the man out there, on patrol. The slant is okay, but..."

Brian scanned the notes he'd been presented with quickly and looked up. "But what? What's the problem?" There had been similar accommodations in the past. As long as they were handled carefully, a good patrol team in a good location, it could turn out to the benefit of the Department.

"Well, the thing is, the reporter is a girl." Fitzgerald clearly didn't think much of the situation.

Brian looked closely at the official request for departmental cooperation. It was signed by Karen Day, NBC News. "I'll look into it myself, Mike," Brian said.

He watched her on the eleven o'clock news that night. She had one quick spot-report about a school board meeting.

He called her the next day and invited her for a drink.

It ran as a three-part five-minute addition to the Eleven O'Clock News Roundup and Brian thought it caught the pace of the men who worked the car to advantage. The camera stayed with them through routine patrol, which included answering two crime-in-progress calls, the fortunate apprehension of a liquor store holdup man fleeing the scene of the crime, the delivery of a baby to a bewildered Puerto Rican mother with the incredibly lucky fact that one of the patrolmen had a good smattering of Spanish. It added a nice warm human touch.

After the third part had been aired, Karen Day called him.

"Well, what did you think of it?"

It had been a fair, intelligent job and showed the Department in a good light. That was always his first concern.

"Fine. I think you handled it very well."

Her voice came through the telephone clear and sharp. "It was pure shit. It was edited down to absolute shit. The bastards cut my best footage. They promised me a straight thirty minutes, primetime viewing. They left me with the merry adventures of Patrolman Huff and Patrolman Puff, five minutes here and five minutes there. It didn't convey any of the feeling I was trying for." Abruptly she said, "Meet me for a drink. I'd like to see you. Come on over to my place tonight."

If he'd expected something exotic, he was disappointed. She looked as though she didn't belong in the expensive, beautifully furnished apartment. She wore faded dungarees and a body-hugging jersey top which emphasized her thinness. She pulled her bare feet onto the sofa and rested her hands on her knees. She jerked her head vaguely toward the bar. "Help yourself, O'Malley."

Brian didn't move. "In a little while."

He didn't like the way she sat there, studying him, evaluating, measuring. Deciding. There was a great deal about her that irritated him, not just her sloppiness and the fact that she hadn't bothered to put on any make-up, not even a little lipstick. She gnawed on her index finger for a moment and there was a flash of that familiar face: Karen Duvall, with the great pain-filled black eyes, the helpless quality of a trapped animal.

She laughed suddenly and rocked back on the couch, her face to the ceding, then she finger-combed the long, straight dark hair. "Boy, that got to you, right? You really must have been stuck on Mama, huh? I can do her for you if you want me to." She stood up, moved toward him. "I can even get that little 'oh-gee-gosh' catch in my voice. 'Gosh, mister, see, I'm just so damn open and honest and trusting that I was born to be a loser, but no matter how many times I fall-'"

Brian grabbed her by the shoulders roughly. "Okay, knock it off." The parody was too good. It was vicious and bitter, more so because she had her mother's face and could imitate the voice perfectly.

Karen pulled away from him. She hooked her thumbs into the empty belt loops. "Jesus, it's a long time since I ran into a genuine Karen Duvall freak. It's really funny. I mean, you're defending her and you don't even know who the hell she was. Well, O'Malley, she was a fucking lush, baby."

He didn't know why he felt so angry but he wanted to hit her. It made him even angrier to know that she was daring him, trying to provoke him. Without moving, his voice steady, he said, "I don't like pretty girls with dirty mouths."

She smiled and shifted her body, took a deliberate, posed stance, one sharp hipbone higher than the other. Her dark eyes moved slowly over him, studied, lingered, speculated. Her voice went low and husky and warm. "Well, what do you like, O'Malley?"

Tersely, he said, "I like to make my own moves, for one thing."

"You scared off by aggressive girls? They threaten your whole male thing? You're supposed to make the advance? That's the way things should be?" She walked to the bar and poured a drink for herself. As she brought the drink to her lips, Brian took the glass from her and drained it in one steady swallow.

"Thanks for the drink, Karen. Good night."

She folded her arms across her chest and raised her face toward him. "Hey, O'Malley. I'll tell you why I asked you here tonight. I thought you might be good in the sack. I won't say I thought you might be a good fuck, because you don't like pretty girls with dirty mouths."

He cupped his hand under her chin and when she closed her eyes expectantly he turned her face and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"Good night, baby. I'll let you know when."

He watched her on the late news every night for a week before he went back to her apartment. She opened the door, stared at him for a moment, then shook her head.

"Uh-uh. I don't think so."

He pushed the door with his shoulder and was inside the apartment before she could stop him. Until the instant he saw her, standing beside the open door, those huge black eyes confronting him, the vaguely forlorn quality beneath the toughness, he didn't realize how much he wanted her. He'd been watching the electronic image for a brief few minutes each night but it wasn't the electronic image that aroused him. It had been the haunting, ghostlike image of her mother which had somehow transmitted itself from the television screen more insistently than through the medium of her actual flesh. It had been the ghost of her mother that had brought him to her apartment. It was the daughter, Karen Day, who aroused him now.

"I told you I'd let you know when."

She stood against the closed door, arms folded over the man's large shirt worn over her dungarees. "Tonight, sweetie," she said with acid in her voice, "you go fuck yourself. That's what I had to do the other night."

That triggered his anger as precisely as if she had planned it, but her startled cry was as much of surprise as of pain when he grabbed her arm and pulled her through the apartment. He swung about from the kitchen, found the bedroom door and shoved her ahead of him.

"I told you I don't like girls with dirty mouths, so cut it out." She started to say something; her mouth twitched but she bit her lip, let her teeth linger on her lower lip until he pressed his mouth on hers. Her teeth went into his lip but he didn't notice until she bit hard and tasted his blood. He pushed her back and touched his mouth, saw blood on his fingertips.

"You little bitch. Get outta your clothes. Now." She shook her head slowly and smiled. "You undress me."

"Your way?" He pulled off his own clothes as she watched, then grabbed her by the shirt. "How about my way instead?" He ripped the shirt, pulled it from her, broke the zipper on her dungarees and pushed her onto the bed. She tensed her legs to make it difficult for him to strip her but the struggle changed, took on a different quality. She relaxed her foot when he slid the bikini underpants down and threw them to the floor.

She was bone thin, model thin. His hands could feel the structure of her body through the smoothness of her skin. His mouth moved along her throat, upward along the sharp cheekbones; his tongue tasted her ear; his breath made her shake her head from side to side until his mouth contacted hers; then he pulled away sharply.

"Don't bite. Damn it, that hurts!"

He felt her tense beneath him, saw her mouth set with determination as she tried to force her strength against him. He relaxed, enjoyed her exertions, felt the fullness of her resolve as she managed to slide from beneath him, as she leaned over him, breathing quickly, glittering with triumph. She grinned down at him, leaned toward his face, then twisted suddenly and bit his shoulder and wouldn't let go until he lurched over, his full weight on her, diminishing her now with his own strength.

She struggled against him until he found her moistness, entered her, moved relentlessly to his own rhythm until she began to follow, to become part of it, and he continued until he could feel her response grow, until he could feel her gasp and shudder and stiffen, a soft surprised moan from her mouth, and then, freed of all thought of her, he allowed his own physicality to overwhelm him.

"You know," she mused, "it's so damn strange."

He ran his fingertips along the clearly defined segments of her spine, over the small, neat, hard roundness of her buttocks, under the curve where a buttock became thigh. He explored her quietly while she glanced over her shoulder at him.

"Why are you so thin?" he asked.

She lifted her face, rose on her elbow and started to turn onto her back but he pushed her lightly to her stomach again. "It's part of the whole damn thing. I don't come by this fleshless build naturally. God, I literally starve myself to stay thin for the almighty camera. If I gain so much as one pound, it shows up like ten. Tell me, who'd give a fuck if Cronkite put on twenty pounds?"

He slapped her sharply on the bottom with his open palm. "If you're going to be my girl, you'll talk the way I want my girl to talk."

Karen laughed and rubbed her finger over her mouth thoughtfully. "That's what's so damn strange. You're everything I'm opposed to in a man. There you are, a whole summation, the whole statement, the whole chauvinist thing. What I can't figure out is"-she dropped her head to her arms and slowly stretched her body under his touch, then rolled onto her back-"that you do something to my body that is totally, completely, irrationally removed from my head. I don't understand why I'm so damned attracted to you. Just plain old-fashioned lust, I guess. My God, you've got no subtlety, no love play, no preliminaries, nothing. Just the rough old jump and roll. Chemical, animal, have at it, wham hang."

He moved up beside her. Her tough voice was incongruous; her body was elegant, her face childlike. But her barrage of words, her attempt to pinpoint him, to categorize him, annoyed him.

"That wasn't rough stuff, baby."

She pulled her mouth down, her brows went up. "Oh, that wasn't 'rough stuff.' Drag and push and shove and rip the clothes off my back wasn't rough stuff?"

"That wasn't rough stuff, and you know it." His hand caught in the thickness of her hair. "That was all careful and controlled and designed to please the lady."

She had underestimated him and was puzzled by him. He was someone who did have unknown dimension and she felt she had lost the upper hand. Quickly, impulsively, she said, "How old are you, O'Malley?"

He shook the lock of hair. "You're a real little bitch, aren't you? I'm forty-nine."

She ran her tongue along the edges of her lips and grinned. "That's great. No, really, I'm not kidding. I'm twenty-seven and my father is just about your age. Hey, do you have a daughter?"

Carefully he said, "Yeah. Why?"

"How old is she?"

"About your age...Why?"

She moved closer to him and jabbed an index finger into him. "That's absolutely great! Don't you get it? I can screw my father and you can screw your daughter without any of the Freudian complications."

He yanked her hair hard enough to force her head to the pillow, then pulled his hand free. "Jesus, you are really some kind of a nut."

She could see it was an effort for him to control his anger, to leave the bed, cross the room for a cigarette. She began to laugh. "Oh, my God, O'Malley, you're a prude! That's terrific. I never would have expected it No, really, don't be mad. I mean it as a compliment. Any man as good as you in bed, well, the whole puritan thing just doesn't go with what you can do. Ah, come on, share the cigarette with me and stop looking like you want to strangle me."

"I'm not mad, Karen, only let's have a few guidelines, okay?"

She started to laugh again, a surprisingly fresh, young, relaxed, spontaneous sound, again reminding him of someone hauntingly innocent and vulnerable. She laughed so hard she began to cough. He pulled her into a sitting position, slapped her back while she caught her breath.

He watched her move from her closet to her bureau as she arranged her clothing casually over the back of a chair. She left the long folding door of the closet pushed back, displaying an array of colors and fabrics. As she came from the bathroom, easily moving naked about the room, seemingly unaware of him, he called to her.

"Karen. Do something for me, if you have time."

"I have time. What?"

"Model for me. Put on some of those things for me. Come on. A private show."

She took off the shower cap and tossed it to him. "Oh, boy, and I thought you were strictly a straight, O'Malley. Why, you're nothing but an out-and-out pervo. All right, if it gives you a kick, I'll parade around with my clothes on, for God's sake!"

She moved with a model's expressionless, gliding, stylized quick grace, stared blankly through him as she paraded past the bed. She spoke in a flat voice in a rapid tempo.

"You will notice the daring plunge of backline." She turned, lightly touched the backless dress, which revealed the beginning curve of buttock, then slid around, ran her fingertips across the flat bustline. "Because of the superb construction of Monsieur Clondet's creation, it would of course be sacrilegious to wear anything but oneself beneath this gown."

She slipped into a one-piece outfit with tight little shorts and long narrow sleeves.

"You will notice that for this playsuit, one must possess the contours of a little boy; not necessarily frontwards, but"-she turned and shook her bottom at him-"from this point of view."

Finally, she put on a floor-length bright-blue silk garment, narrow and elegant, with a high Chinese collar and full flowing sleeves. She changed. The blank model's expression was gone. The flirtatious short-pants-clad gamine disappeared. She moved toward him serenely, her expression no longer remote. She took on elegance and cool desirability as she moved. The gown touched and brushed her body, hinted at her contours with subtle sensuality.

She started to speak, but something about Brian stopped her. His expression had changed as she had changed. His eyes moved over her body, then held on her face, and he stood up and came toward her and tilted her face and kissed her gently.

He moved his hands along the front of the gown, pulled each hidden snap, reached along her shoulders and removed the silk from her body and let it drop to the floor. He held her against him and for just one instant felt her tense and stiffen but he pressed her to him and whispered, "It's okay, Karen. It'll be good this way, too. Let me show you."

This time he moved slowly, touched slowly, lightly, whispered to her, caressed her, tasted her skin, explored her, found her slowly rising need and again set a tempo which she at first struggled against but he persisted, encouraged her, controlled and directed and led her into the very center of herself, and this time it was perfect because he was right there with her and it was hard to separate their shared sensations.

"My God," she told him, "I don't know you at all, do I?"

"Maybe I'll even introduce you to yourself." Finally, he pushed her toward the edge of the bed. "Now, get the hell into the kitchen and make me some coffee."

She looked down at him for a minute, then yanked the pillow from under his head and tossed it at him. "Make it yourself, chauvinist. I have to shower and fix my hair. I've a show to do at eleven."

She picked the yellow shower cap off the floor and pushed her hair into it. He heard her turn the shower on, then she came back into the bedroom. "You know, O'Malley, you're a damn good lay." She paused, timed it for the right effect, then added in a tough voice, "For a man your age."

He threw the pillow at her and leaped for her but she managed to close the bathroom door and get into her shower.

"You little bitch," he said good-naturedly. He heard her singing and she didn't sound anything like her mother.