'It was stolen?'

'Let's just say I didn't get no bill of sale. Fellow who sold it to me, he never said it was stolen. All he said was he'd take a hundred dollars for it. I should have picked that up when I got the photograph. See, I bought it 'cause I liked it, and then I gave it to her because I wasn't about to wear it, see, and I thought it'd look good on her wrist. Which it did. You still think she had a boyfriend?'

'I think so.'

'You don't sound so sure no more. Or maybe you just sound tired. You tired?'

'Yes.'

'Knockin' on too many doors. Wha'd this boyfriend of hers do besides buy her all these presents that don't exist?'

'He was going to take care of her.'

'Well, s.h.i.t,' he said. 'That's what I did, man. What else did I do for that girl but take care of her?'

I stretched out on the bed and fell asleep with my clothes on. I'd knocked on too many doors and talked to too many people. I was supposed to see Sunny Hendryx, I'd called and told her I would be coming over, but I took a nap instead. I dreamed of blood and a woman screaming, and I woke up bathed in sweat and with a metallic taste in the back of my mouth.

I showered and changed my clothes. I checked Sunny's number in my notebook, dialed it from the lobby. No answer.

I was relieved. I looked at my watch, headed over to St. Paul's.

The speaker was a soft-spoken fellow with receding light brown hair and a boyish face. At first I thought he might be a clergyman.

He turned out to be a murderer. He was h.o.m.os.e.xual, and one night in a blackout he had stabbed his lover thirty or forty times with a kitchen knife. He had, he said quietly, faint memories of the incident, because he'd kept going in and out of blackout, coming to with the knife in his hand, being struck by the horror of it, and then slipping back into the darkness. He'd served seven years at Attica and had been sober three years now on the outside.

It was disturbing, listening to him. I couldn't decide how I felt about him. I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry that he was alive, that he was out of prison.

On the break I got to talking with Jim. Maybe I was reacting to the qualification, maybe I was carrying Kim's death around with me, but I started talking about all the violence, all the crime, all the killings. 'It gets to me,' I said. 'I pick up the paper and I read some d.a.m.n thing or other and it gets to me.'

'You know that vaudeville routine? "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." "So don't do this!" '

'So?'

'So maybe you should stop picking up the paper.' I gave him a look. 'I'm serious,' he said. 'Those stories bother me, too. So do the stories about the world situation. If the news was good they wouldn't put it in the paper. But one day it struck me, or maybe I got the idea from somebody else, but it came to me that there was no law saying I had to read that c.r.a.p.'

'Just ignore it.'

'Why not?'

'That's the ostrich approach, isn't it? What I don't look at can't hurt me?'

'Maybe, but I see it a little differently. I figure I don't have to make myself crazy with things I can't do anything about anyway.'

'I can't see myself overlooking that sort of thing.'

'Why not?'

I thought of Donna. 'Maybe I'm involved with mankind.'

'Me too,' he said. 'I come here, I listen, I talk. I stay sober. That's how I'm involved in mankind.'

I got some more coffee and a couple of cookies. During the discussion people kept telling the speaker how much they appreciated his honesty.

I thought, Jesus, I never did anything like that. And my eyes went to the wall. They hang these slogans on the wall, gems of wisdom like Keep It Simple and Easy Does It, and the sign my eyes went to as if magnetized read There But For The Grace Of G.o.d.

I thought, no, screw that. I don't turn murderous in blackouts. Don't tell me about the grace of G.o.d.

When it was my turn I pa.s.sed.

TWENTY.

Danny Boy held his gla.s.s of Russian vodka aloft so that he could look at the light shine through it. 'Purity. Clarity. Precision,' he said, rolling the words, p.r.o.nouncing them with elaborate care, 'The best vodka is a razor, Matthew. A sharp scalpel in the hand of a skilled surgeon. It leaves no ragged edges.'

He tipped back the gla.s.s and swallowed an ounce or so of purity and clarity. We were at Poogan's and he was wearing a navy suit with a red stripe that barely showed in the bar's halflight. I was drinking club soda with lime. At another stop along the way a freckled-faced waitress had informed me that my drink was called a Lime Rickey. I had a feeling I'd never ask for it by that name.

Danny Boy said, 'Just to recapitulate. Her name was Kim Dakkinen. She was a big blonde, early twenties, lived in Murray Hill, got killed two weeks ago in the Galaxy Downtowner.'

'Not quite two weeks ago.'

'Right. She was one of Chance's girls. And she had a boyfriend, and that's what you want. The boyfriend.'

'That's right.'

'And you're paying for whoever can give you the skinny on this. How much?'

I shrugged. 'A couple of dollars.'

'Like a bill? Like a half a K? How many dollars?'

I shrugged again. 'I don't know, Danny. It depends on the information and where it comes from and where it goes. I haven't got a million dollars to play with but I'm not strapped either.'

'You said she was one of Chance's girls.'

'Right.'

'You were looking for Chance a little over two weeks ago, Matthew. And then you took me to the boxing matches just so I could point him out to you.'

'That's right.'

'And a couple of days after that, your big blonde had her picture in the papers. You were looking for her pimp, and now she's dead, and here you are looking for her boyfriend.'

'So?'

He drank the rest of his vodka. 'Chance know what you're doing?'

'He knows.'