The clerk at the Dutch Village Motel stood behind the counter, a stack of paid bills in front of him. He glanced at one, then impaled it on the old-fashioned iron desk spike. Near his elbow was the button that rang a buzzer in the back of the house. When the door opened, he looked up. A man wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat entered, the turned-up collar of his blue nylon windbreaker muffling his voice.

"Last night," the man asked, "you were on duty?"

The clerk nodded, trying to get a look at the man's face.

"An older man with a young woman," the man asked. "He checked in?"

"Yeah," the clerk said, "then checked out. Permanent."

"Someone visited them?" the man asked.

The clerk nodded, this time wary.

"Would you recognize him," the man asked, "this other fellow?"

The clerk hesitated, looking a little too hard at the man.

"What's the matter, boy?" the man asked.

The clerk went to hit the buzzer button with his palm, but the man grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

"Who you going to call?"

"I ... I wasn't."

"You were going to hit the button."

"No, I..."

"Only one other thing you could've been reaching for."

Holding the clerk's wrist, the man lifted the clerk's hand over the desk spike.

"This," the man said.

And he slammed the clerk's hand onto the spike, impaling it.

2.

Jack leaned on a fence in the city's waterfront park, watching a barge move up the Hudson River. The water smelled fetid. Rotting vegetation and spilled oil. The wind rippled the water's surface, making it look like crumpled tin foil. Sciortino sauntered up and leaned on the fence next to Jack.

"The clerk at the motel, the one Frank died in last night," Sciortino said. "'Bout an hour ago, he was murdered, stabbed half a dozen times with his desk spindle."

"If the man used an accordion file," Jack said, "maybe he'd still be alive."

"Jack," Sciortino said, heaving himself back from the fence, "we never met. I never told you any of this." He took a step away. "I couldn't have," he added. "After all, you're a suspect."

3.

Jack parked his blue Mustang convertible in front of a condominium near the Marina, a renovated boarding house, which from the 1920s to the early-1960s had doubled as cat-house and which in the late 1990s was gutted and rebuilt. The vapor lights cast a sulfurous glow on the half-empty parking lot. On the Hudson, shadowy boats rode at anchor.

Jack got out of his car, the door slam sounding hollow in the dark. Across the parking lot, a torn page from The Racing Form chased itself in circles; the wind ruffled the cuffs of Jack's slacks. His jacket over his shoulder, Jack headed toward the door of his condominium.

From the water, mist rose in strands, like a beaded curtain, which, opened, revealed other mists, elongated ghostly figures, like alien Tall Grays, drifting onto shore.

Jack felt droplets on his face.

The spectral mists passed Jack in endless procession. Muffled footsteps seemed to be hurrying by. Warning whispers seemed to swirl out of the air. And soft, dreamy music, singing? Jack couldn't make out the words.

Jack felt a tickle on his cheek. He turned and saw a cadaverous face vanishing into the mists behind him.

"What do you want?" Jack asked.

Whoever it was laughed, and the laugh sounded like ripping canvas.

"Who are you?" Jack asked.

Whoever it was began singing again. Minor strains. Words still indistinct.

Jack shivered.

"Don't start something you can't finish," the specter whispered.

When Jack was twelve years old, on the way home from a school chorus trip to a state competition, he had shared a row in the bus with a girl two years older than he was. She was already well developed. Her nipples, the size of egg yolks, pressed against her tight white ribbed pullover. What was her name? Jack couldn't recall. In the dim blue light flickering from passing streetlamps, Jack had fumbled under her top, the first time he had ever touched a woman's breasts. Daintily, she plucked up the hem of her skirt, inviting Jack to touch her nylon-covered crotch, which Jack did, finding a surprising moistness. She moaned and told Jack, "Don't start something you can't finish."

"What do you want!" Jack hissed, grabbing a wrist. Not bony as he had expected, but massive.

Out of the mists loomed a hulking man with a face ruined by bar fights and disappointment. More from disappointment. He wore a pea-green workshirt, gray work pants held up with both a belt and suspenders, and well-worn high-top old-fashioned fawn-colored lace-up work boots. Jack's older brother.

"What are you doing here, Bix?" Jack asked.

"Looking after you, Jackie," Bix said, twisting off Jack's grip on his wrist. His voice was breathy, with a whistle from when he was punched in the throat as a kid.

"Did you just see someone?" Jack asked. "Thin guy? Hear something?"

"Heard you shouting, baby-boy," Bix said.

"I'm not the baby of the family anymore."

"Sure, you are, Jackie. And just like old times, you're in trouble again."

Jack took one last glance around. The mists seemed to stand still. Rank upon rank of ghosts.

Jack opened the door to his building. Bix followed him in.

Silently, they went up in the elevator to the top floor, where Jack unlocked his apartment door. Inside the apartment-mirrors reflecting the light of the shadowy boats outside, lots of chrome and glass-Jack tossed his jacket onto a chair, turned on a table lamp, and sank into the black leather couch.

"You get the job at the prison?" Jack asked.

"Have to change my registration," Bix said. "You know the Republicans control those jobs."

"I'd help you if I could," Jack said.

"Never asked you for help, Jackie," Bix said. "Never will."

"But you help me," Jack protested.

Bix waved his hand.

"Your boss," Bix said, "these high jinks of his, not smart, Jackie."

"Everyone knew Frank had a weakness for trade," Jack said.

Carefully, Bix lowered himself into a black leather chair.

"A man like that, a lawyer and all, what's he doing in a crib like the Dutch Village with a noseful of powder?"

"After his divorce, Frank used to say, If I'm going to pay for love, it ain't going to be alimony. And the drugs? Well, here's a guy worked his way up from the docks to law school-"

"One of us, yeah."

"-got the dream job, dream wife-"

"Except it was somebody else's dream."

"He's pushing retirement, never sowed his wild oats-"

"Man should know you plant in spring, not autumn. You know, Jackie, you got a lot of Frank in you."

"Because we're both poor boys who learned how to wipe our feet before entering the parlor?"

"Your boss's death. Wasn't an accident, was it, Jackie?"

"You cut the product with cyanide, you don't get repeat customers."

"Who'd want to kill him?"

"Man's been a lawyer almost forty years. Who wouldn't want to?"

"Who'd want to frame you?"

"No frame. I was the wild card. Frank keels over. The gal calls me. I show up. That wasn't in anybody's plan."

"You think?"

"Anyway maybe it was an accident."

"Maybe tomorrow morning I'll wake up rich."

Jack shrugged.

"Who beat up the young stuff?"

"Not Frank. If he did before he snorted the cyanide, why would she call for help. And after he snorted-"

"He wouldn't have been able to see her, let alone hit her. So what are we saying? Someone comes in, sees her calling you, hanging up the phone...?"

"He hits her."

"Maybe harder than he meant to."

"Harder than he meant to a dozen times?"

Bix shrugged.

"Man likes his work. He got carried away."

"Leaves her for dead."

"And calls the cops knowing you'd show up."

"His lucky day. He's got a patsy to take the rap for the hooker."

"Except she doesn't die."

"If she ever wakes up," Jack said, "we find out who hit her. If she doesn't...?"

Jack and Bix exchanged a look.

"I'm not going back," Jack said, "not to where I started."

"You worked hard," Bix said. "No reason why you should. But things being what they are ... The old place ... No one's used it since we grew up, left..."

Jack looked out at the shadowy boats.

"Take some time out there, Jackie, a week, two. Get out of the spotlight."