11 “I don’t get it,” Megan said as soon as Sam’s breathing indicated that he was asleep. “What is it about Tom Radnovich that makes Sam so anxious?” “I’m certainly no expert on kids,” Betty said, “especially on how they relate to attractive men that their mothers might be interested in.” They laughed. “But my guess is that a strong male presence is something that he’s unfamiliar with and it makes him anxious. What do you think?” “That’s plausible,” Megan said, “but my gut feeling is different. It’s as if Sam was warning me away from Tom.” “Maybe you’re reading it like that because of some anxiety that you’re feeling. Can you talk about that?” Megan thought for a while. “Maybe so,” she said slowly. “It’s like... I feel ready for something, but I don’t know what – men, a man... I mean, if I see Tom tonight it’ll be a one-night stand...” “Which is what I had with him.” “Yeah, and for you it was a novelty, but I’ve had lots of those, and it would feel like I’m going back to that time. But I gave that up in order to have Sam. I’m a mother, for God’s sake.” Megan laughed, but Betty did not join her. “My mother told me about a movie she once saw,” she said. “It was called La maman et la putain, The Mother and the Whore. She told me that her best friend, another doctor, named Tina, told her that she – my mother, that is – was like that, only in one person. Not literally a whore, of course, but you know what I mean.” “I ought to talk to your mom about it. She’s been wonderful to me, and I’ve never really thanked her enough.” “She identifies with you, especially since...” Betty left the obvious unsaid. “I know, but she was great with me even before, certainly much more than my own mother, who has almost disowned me – not that she was ever all that warm to me.” Megan laughed again, and Betty managed to chuckle along. “I’d like to ask your mom how she got her groove back after you were born.” The two of them now laughed heartily. “Did you ever see that movie, by the way?” “How Stella whatever? With Paul? Are you kidding?” They laughed some more. “So what about you and Tom Radnovich?” Betty asked after some silence. “I don’t know,” Megan said. “We’ll see.” “There was something that hit me when I reread the original report of the shootout,” Claudia Quintero said as they were walking to the bank, “and that we hadn’t paid attention to.” “What’s that?” Tom Radnovich asked. The notion that Claudia had noticed something that he hadn’t produced a gnawing sensation in his stomach. “Steve Lusha said that he’d been warned that the Gremnik Boys were coming to his bar and that they were armed.” “Yes, I remember that, and that’s why he had some of his boys pack some heat, just in case.” “Yes,” Claudia said simply, as though waiting for him to go on. He felt as if he were being examined on his memory of the event. “And the Gremnik Boys said that they had just stopped for a drink. And we could never figure out who drew first. Each side swore that it was the other.” “And?” “And what?” Now he felt thoroughly frustrated. “We never found out who had warned Steve. In fact, I’m not sure we even asked.” Tom was searching his memory. In retrospect it seemed like an essential point. But the whole investigation had been rather perfunctory, if not shoddy. Once the DA’s office had decided to forgo charging anyone – there had been three other shootings in the Bronx that day, each with a much stronger case for homicide – they rushed to close the case and let the participants off with a warning. “That was sloppy on our part,” he admitted. “So what you’re saying is that whoever told Steve might have intended to precipitate a shootout, with Daniel Wilner caught in the middle.” “It may even have been whoever Daniel was supposed to meet, or someone connected with them,” Claudia said as they reached the Citibank entrance. “But it must have been, on the one hand, someone Steve trusted and, on the other hand, someone with ties to the Gremlins.” This last was Claudia’s nickname for the Kosovar gang. “It’s time for another visit to Old Nick’s,” Tom said while holding the bank’s door open for his partner. For some reason Julia Lusha’s image entered his mind. For several reasons, on further reflection. The thought of visiting Old Nick’s. She worked in a bank. She was probably someone that Steve trusted, perhaps even used as a spy. And she wore her short brown hair in a style that resembled Claudia’s, especially from behind. Even their builds were similar. Another thought about Julia struck him as they were approached by a not-quite-but-almost-plump, short young woman with an oval face that looked Middle Eastern with its oversized nose and with blond-streaked black hair hanging down to her full breasts. He suddenly understood why he had not found Julia attractive. It was not simply that her face wasn’t pretty. Short hair, he decided, flatters a pretty face, like Claudia’s or Megan’s, but a not-so-pretty face requires long hair to offset its features, as it did, say, for Voula. Jane Lewis, the Toronto cop who had seemed to be after him, could certainly have benefited from it. He had found Tracy Schiller, with her long blond hair, appealing despite her plain face, and this girl, whose nametag read Yasmina, was another one that he could find attractive. She wore very high heels and walked on them quite gracefully, with just the right amount of sway in her hips. Like most men, or at least most straight men that he knew, Tom Radnovich did not dwell on the details of the appearance of women that he found either undeniably attractive or thoroughly unattractive. It was only the in-between ones that made his brain work out whether to place them in the I-want-her or the I-don’t-want-her category. “May I help you?” Yasmina said. Claudia flashed her badge. “We’re NYPD,” she said, “Detectives Quintero and Radnovich, and we need to see the manager.” “This way, please,” Yasmina said. Of course, Tom thought further, not feeling attracted to Julia at Old Nick’s had not prevented him from getting aroused at her place. He was a fit, healthy man in his thirties, and she was quite skilled sexually, probably quite experienced as well. Maybe, just maybe, one of the Gremnik Boys had been among her conquests. But what could she possibly have to do with Daniel Wilner? Maybe she had been set up to make the call. And then he realized that having to visit Old Nick’s that evening meant that he would have to cancel his tentative date with Megan after all. Oh well, he said to himself. He would have to content himself with using her as a fantasy object until... Until when? The next weekend when he would have neither the kids nor police duty would be in three weeks. The Fourth of July! A three-day weekend! A trip to Toronto, to escape the patriotic madness that would overwhelm New York, would be nice. He would call Megan and propose it to her. The car radio, tuned to CBC Radio 2, was playing a classical guitar piece that instantly reminded Harvey of Daniel, though he wasn’t sure if it was actually one that Daniel had played. He turned up the volume as he entered the westbound Metropolitan Expressway, newly named Autoroute Félix-Leclerc, just as CBC Stereo had been recently renamed Radio 2. He and Daniel had shared many a chuckle over the Canadian mania for renaming. He was driving to Saint-Laurent, where he and Daniel had grown up, in order to deliver to a temporarily incapacitated client some papers, including a representation agreement, that the client was to sign. The client had been involved in a traffic accident and had been charged with criminal negligence. Will Prosper, Harvey’s boss, was to defend him. Will Prosper, the lawyer who had been among the first in Canada to use DNA analysis to identify a corpse: that of Miki Wilner, who turned out to have been Betty’s, but not Daniel’s, biological father. And all because Daniel had suspected that the body that had been shipped from Israel might not be that of Miki... It didn’t take much, these days, to remind Harvey of Daniel, but since that talk with Paul on Saturday morning the presence of his late best friend on Harvey’s mind had been constant. During the past week he had taken a vacation in order to spend time with Audrey, but both of them had made a deliberate effort to avoid talking about the person who had posthumously brought them together. There were many other things to talk about. Audrey had not traveled much, except to Israel, and the bilingual culture of Montreal reminded her of Haifa, where Hebrew and Arabic – as well as Russian – could be heard side by side. She thought of the Arabs of Haifa as “good Arabs.” “So the French of Montreal,” Harvey had said jokingly, “are good French.” Absolutely, in Audrey’s view, because the French of France were anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. And so Middle Eastern geopolitics joined Daniel Wilner as a subject to be avoided. But Daniel was avoided between Harvey and Audrey because to evoke him would have been too painful for both of them. With his brother it was another matter. Harvey, for many years, had chosen not to bring up Daniel when talking with Paul because he expected Paul’s response to be nasty or snide, and this was Paul’s usual manner whenever he was the one to bring up the subject. On that Saturday Paul had topped himself, repeatedly – and gleefully – calling both Daniel and Sam a bastard. And this time, to Harvey’s surprise, he had omitted his usual addendum: “Don’t tell Betty I said that!” Harvey had heard this formula so many times that he had coined an abbreviation for it, D-T-Bist. It sounded vaguely Yiddish. When was the last time he had heard it? A couple of months earlier, in April, when Paul was beginning to plan Betty’s twenty-fifth birthday party, and when Harvey objected to a party during the mourning for Daniel, Paul burst out: “We don’t have to mourn him for a year, he wasn’t even a Jew!” The time before that? Paul complaining about having to interrupt his and Betty’s honeymoon in Venice, before they’d had a chance to visit Ravenna. And before that? Some time before the wedding, when he told Harvey about a pro bono client of his, a Kosovo Albanian refugee, who had referred to Betty as “beautiful Missis Berman.” Paul had explained that she was, and always would be, Ms. Wilner, whereupon the Kosovar had asked, “Relationship of journalist Daniel Wilner?” “Her brother,” Paul had then said, “but it’s a relationship I can dispense with.” And, of course, in retelling the incident to Harvey, D-T-Bist. He suddenly realized that he had driven past Exit 67. No matter. If he took 65 he could get there just as well. He still knew his way around Saint-Laurent, though he hadn’t lived there in eight years, nor visited much in five, since his parents had moved to Westmount. But memories of countless bike rides with Daniel crowded his mental landscape. He had left Saint-Laurent in order to move in with Leslie Twigg, in an apartment in the Plateau. And remembering Leslie brought back even more memories of Daniel. Harvey and Leslie, Daniel, Alex Ferguson and Ellen Morelli had formed a band – the North American String Band – in Grade 11. The band broke up before the school year was out, but all the members remained friends, and all four survivors had come to Daniel’s memorial. It was too bad that not one of them had thought of getting together beforehand for a little practice so that they could play one of their numbers in Daniel’s memory. A few of Daniel’s mates from the Canadian students’ soccer team at Columbia had been there, and they had commemorated Daniel by singing the team song, the Maple Leaf Rag with lyrics written by Daniel. Harvey didn’t remember them, except for the refrain that went We’re Canadians, we’re Canadians doin’, we’re Canadians doin’ the Maple Leaf Rag. The number on the screen of Betty’s cell phone had a 212 area code. Who in New York had her number? Of course. Tom Radnovich. She had given it to him at Old Nick’s. “Hi, Tom,” she said. “Mmm,” a female voice said, “actually this is Claudia.” There was a slight pause before the name, and Betty wondered if the detective had hesitated between identifying herself formally and doing so amicably. “Tom is meeting with our boss, Lieutenant DePalma, discussing a new hypothesis about your brother’s case.” Did she use the erudite hypothesis rather than the common theory because she knew Betty’s academic status? As far as Betty could remember, she had not told Tom, let alone Claudia (with whom she had hardly talked at all), that she was writing her Ph.D. thesis. It may have just been Claudia’s intuition. “Could you tell me about this new hypothesis?” “Yes, we’d like to, and we’d like to get together with you again as soon as possible. Also we’ve found some things, both in his apartment and in his safe-deposit box, that may be of interest to you.” “Anything of interest to you?” Betty asked. “For the investigation, I mean.” “We don’t know yet, but we hope so.” “Should Megan be there too?” “We don’t think that would be necessary. But for now, maybe you can tell me this: do the names Renshaw and Rozowski mean anything to you?” “Rozowski does, of course. That was... let me see... my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. Not that I ever knew her; she died in the Holocaust. The only person that I knew with that name was Fela, the widow of my great-uncle Leon. Leon Rozowski, that is. But then Daniel discovered some sort of cousin with that name, in Spain, and went to visit him.” “Well, that matches. There’s a New Year’s card from Mauricio Rozowski in Spain.” “Mauricio, that was his name. What’s the other name?” “Vicky Renshaw. There’s a Christmas card from her.” “Yes, Vicky rings a bell. When Daniel went to Spain to see Mauricio he met this girl named Vicky that he actually thought he was in love with for a while.” Betty couldn’t repress a giggle. “Daniel could never really be in love. There was a girl named Cici that he dated for a long time when he was at university, but he wasn’t in love with her either.” “Funny you should mention Cici. There’s a card from her too. Anyway, Detective Radnovich, I mean Tom, and I thought that you or your mother should notify Mauricio and Vicky about Daniel.” Claudia Quintero paused. “If you don’t mind, I would like to contact Doctor Bloom, I mean Cici, myself.” “No, of course I don’t mind. Doctor Bloom? Is that her name? I thought she was Hispanic.” “She is.” Betty heard Claudia chuckle. “It’s an ex-husband’s name. But, anyway, I need to join Tom in Lieutenant DePalma’s office. When could you come to our precinct?” “Your what?” “Our station.” Claudia laughed. She had a deep, rich laugh. “In New York we call them precinct. Of course precinct means the district that’s served by a particular station, but somehow when people saw ‘such-and-such precinct’ written on the station they thought that it meant the building.” Betty now remembered hearing the word used in this way on American crime shows. “I could come any time,” she said. “I could take the subway, couldn’t I?” “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for a woman alone, especially a beautiful young woman like you, to be taking the subway at rush hour. Not in New York, anyway. We could have a squad car pick you up – let me see – a half-hour from now? Five o’clock?” “Sure,” Betty said. “I’ll be in the lobby at five.” So it was four-thirty already! She looked around and saw no sign of Megan and Sam. “Okay, Betty, we’ll see you soon,” Claudia said and hung up. Then Betty saw that there was a note on her nightstand. Sam and I went out for a walk. We didn’t want to wake you. M. Wake her? Had she slept? Taken a nap? Betty Wilner? But she never took naps! She had felt tired when they got back to the hotel – the night with Tom had been fairly short, and not altogether sleep-filled – but not particularly sleepy. She remembered chatting with Megan once Sam was asleep, then reading a little of the New York Times. Much of the news was about the aftermath of the war in the Balkans, about the return of Kosovo Albanian refugees to their villages, about revelations of Serbian atrocities there. Paul had been right in helping that refugee called Dick. Where was he now? Back in Kosovo? And what was his real name? The men named in the articles had names like Ejup, Musli, Haki and Shpend. And she must have fallen asleep while musing about Albanian men’s names. A quick shower and some clean clothes would be in order, she decided, for meeting the police. It had taken Detectives Claudia Quintero and Tom Radnovich about fifteen minutes to explain to Lieutenant Rick DePalma their new theory: that the two outfits, Steve Lusha’s and the Gremnik Boys, had probably not colluded in having Daniel Wilner killed but had been manipulated into doing so by some third party with ties to both of them and with an agenda against Daniel. “It’s funny you should bring that up,” DePalma said. “I’ve heard from our DEA contact that the informant who told them about the supposed collaboration was not reliable. It turns out that he or she had misled them on other cases.” “That could mean,” Claudia said, “that the informant and the manipulator might be connected, if not the same person.” “It could,” DePalma said cautiously. “Could we find out who that was?” Tom asked. “Not likely,” DePalma said. “You know the feds and their sources.” “Even discredited ones?” Tom pursued. DePalma smiled and raised his eyebrows. “Maybe if you let my partner here talk to your contact...” Tom suggested half-seriously. Claudia didn’t mind using her femininity in pursuit of information, but only if it was on her own initiative. She hated the idea of being used in that way, and she resented Tom’s suggestion. “I’d rather not, thank you,” she said. “I’d rather proceed more directly, just like we’d discussed: let’s try to find out from Steve Lusha who had told him that the Gremlins were coming.” “There’s something I’ve got to tell you two,” DePalma said. “You can’t be working on this Wilner case full-time much longer. I let you do it last week,” he added looking at Tom, “and I haven’t been sending any new cases your way. You can keep at it the rest of this week, as long as you don’t neglect your other pending cases. But starting next week, after this weekend, since you two have weekend duty, it’s back to the normal routine, especially since” – looking at Tom again – “you’ve backed out of the Begović case, which is okay with me.” “I was just going to tell you about that,” Tom said. “They told me from the Five-One, and it’s okay with them too, especially since they need to work with Brooklyn, and there’s no point in involving too many precincts.” “You haven’t told me about it,” Claudia said with a smile. “It sounds interesting. Brooklyn?” “Yeah,” Tom said, “Lejla’s mother finally talked, and told us that the brothers have been going to a fundamentalist mosque there.” “Wow! Well, that of course rules me out,” Claudia said with a chuckle. “Anything else?” DePalma asked. “I think that covers it,” Tom said. “Betty Wilner should be coming shortly.” It was about 5:15. As Claudia turned her cell phone back on, a beep told her that she had voicemail. It was from Officer Pereira, who had previously agreed to pick Betty up at the hotel and bring her to the 40th Precinct. An incident had come up on Pereira’s beat, and the pickup would be delayed. Claudia immediately called Betty again. Betty didn’t seem at all anxious over the delay. Megan and Sam had just come back from their walk, and they had chatted for a while in the lobby before Megan went up to the room. “Tell you what,” Claudia said. “I have a little window of time now, so I’ll come down to meet you, and we’ll also chat in the lobby. I shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes.” “That’s cool,” Betty said. Megan had heard her cell-phone ringtone while pushing Sam on the baby swing in Columbus Park, and she didn’t want to interrupt his happy giggling by answering the call. She played the message back as they were strolling back to the hotel. It was Tom, explaining that urgent police work would keep him from meeting her that evening, and proposing a get-together in Toronto over the Fourth of July weekend, which in the States would be a three-day weekend. While she had harbored doubts over the feasibility of the evening’s date, she felt disappointed that the cancellation had come from him, not her. And a long weekend with her in Toronto, where he would presumably be staying with her? That would be something to think about. To be sure, it gave her enough time to get back on the pill. But how would Sam react to having Tom as a steady presence at the house for two or three days? She would need to call Tom back, she thought as she wheeled the stroller into the hotel room and closed the door behind her. But not that evening. If he was busy with police work – and she had no reason to doubt his sincerity – then it wouldn’t do to call him on a personal (very personal!) matter. The next day, or the one after, would do. The room began to be penetrated by the aroma of the Chinese food that she had bought along the way and that – five containerfuls in a plastic bag – occupied the stroller basket, next to a canvas bag holding Sam’s toys: a wooden truck, a plastic shovel, a rubber ball. Betty had told her in the lobby that she had to go uptown to the police station and would probably be back around six-thirty. Sam would, in all likelihood, be hungry before that time, but some crackers would hold him over. She took the food containers out of their bag and placed them in the refrigerator, not so much in order to preserve them – of course the food wouldn’t spoil in a little over an hour – but to keep the smell from overwhelming the room. She next took the toys out of the bag and put them in a triangle on the carpet. Lastly she helped Sam out of the stroller and carried him in her arms to the middle of the toy triangle, where she put him down. He immediately picked up the ball, put it in the bed of the truck and tried to scoop it out with the shovel. At the third attempt he succeeded, sending the ball flying as a jai alai player might with his cesta, until it bounced off the television screen. Sam burst into peals of laughter. “Are you hungry, Sammy boy?” Megan asked him. “Hungry Sammy boy,” he answered. “Would you like some crackers?” “Crackers!” She set three crackers on a paper plate on the coffee table. He gobbled them down, one after another, and demanded “More crackers!” before picking up the ball again. It occurred to Megan that a typical parent might use the demand as a teaching opportunity and say something like “Say more crackers please.” It was what her mother would have done. But Megan still remembered feeling that mom was not being nice when she said that, and now that she was a mother she did not want to teach politeness impolitely. “I’ll give you more crackers if you give me the ball,” she said, “so give me the ball, please.” “No,” Sam said. “All right,” Megan said. “No ball, no crackers.” She chuckled. Sam seemed to think it over, and after about fifteen seconds brought Megan the ball. “Ball,” he said. “Thank you,” Megan said. “More crackers, please,” Sam said. That was easy, Megan thought. Sam now began multitasking: with his left hand he would pick up a cracker from the paper plate and munch on it without stopping the play that occupied his right hand. Megan at last found time to think about Tom’s proposal. It was flattering, of course. Tom Radnovich, a very attractive man, obviously found her desirable, even in her current state, with her waist a little more ample, and her bosom less so, than when she was at her best. And even after having done it with Betty, who by anyone’s standard was more beautiful than Megan, as much as Betty might, with false modesty, choose to deny it. What had happened in New York followed a scenario that was familiar to her. In a number of her movies there was a pair or girlfriends or sisters or cousins, of which the older one had a date with some hunk, and somehow the younger managed to get him, either by herself or together with the other. Of course it was always May Green who played the younger girl, May Green of the baby face and of the soft, ripe body, made even riper with the help of surgery. She missed her full boobs. She had always enjoyed feeling her own breasts, and more so when they were bigger. Sam’s nursing had given her a similar enjoyment, but now that this was over, it was perhaps time to get the implants back in there. Dr. Cox, when he took them out, said it would be a snap. Maybe they could be in place for Tom’s visit. But how would Sam take to Tom spending a long weekend with them? His consistently negative reaction to Tom worried her. Was it fear? Was it jealousy? Did it say something about Tom that was not apparent to her? In another six months, perhaps, Sam might be able to tell her what was wrong, but for now she could only speculate. Sam had a precocious intellect, of that there was no doubt. But did that make him an intuitive judge of character as well? Look at Betty, Megan thought. A super-bright girl, but she got stuck with that jerk Paul Berman, and is just now, after eight years, maybe realizing the fact. The door was being opened. “‘Tie Betty,” Sam said with a smile on his face, a smile that gave his mother’s innards the warm feeling that an eggnog, lait de poule as it was called in Montreal, might give one on a Canadian Christmas. And, sure enough, Betty it was. “Back so soon?” Megan asked, having read Betty’s note about going to talk to the police. “Yes,” Betty said with her usual giggle. “I was supposed to go to the precinct – that’s what they call the police station in New York...” “I know. I watch Law and Order.” Betty giggled again. “Well, the cop who was supposed to drive me there got involved in something, so Claudia came here and we met downstairs in the lobby. They’ve made a major find: Daniel had a safe-deposit box in a bank where he had no other accounts, and that box wasn’t on the schedule of assets of the will because there was nothing of monetary value in it, but what they found was computer disks with a lot of Daniel’s writings, and memory cards from his camera. The tech guy at the station made me a copy of the stuff that was on the disks, on a CD, and they’ll send me another CD of some of the photos when they get them sorted out. Claudia thinks that there may be a whole draft of a book on those disks. And if there is...” Betty paused. “Yes?” “Then,” Betty answered slowly, “I think that I would like to edit it and get it published.” Suddenly she spoke fast. “I need to pee, but we can talk after I’m done. And let’s eat! It smells fabulous in here!" ”That was productive,” Tom said when they were outside Old Nick’s, walking away from its slowly closing door, with the noise inside gradually subsiding in his ears as it was replaced by the sound of mid-evening traffic. It was the third time in four nights that he had a woman beside him in this very place, and he felt self-conscious. A light rain was falling, and he found the feel of it on his bare head refreshing. “I guess so,” Claudia said, slipping the hood of her poncho over her head. “What do you mean you guess so? You asked some good questions that should’ve been asked last year and weren’t.” “I wouldn’t know about last year. I wasn’t there. I just followed routine procedure.” “Don’t rub it in, Claudia,” Tom said when they reached her car, a blue 1993 Toyota Paseo. She unlocked the passenger door before moving to the driver’s side. “I’m not,” she said when they were seated and she turned on the engine. “But asking questions isn’t the same as getting answers, and getting answers isn’t the same as getting useful answers.” She backed the car and moved out of the tight loading-zone space in which it had been parked. “I mean,” she went on, “by this time Steve Lusha could say with some semblance of honesty that he doesn’t remember who called him about the Gremlins coming with weapons. And nothing contradicts their story, they just went there to have some drinks.” “Well,” Tom countered, “I thought it was very useful to find out that Wilner hadn’t been seen at Old Nick’s before. It confirms the idea that he was there to meet with someone, probably someone who would be a source for him, and that person told him to sit at that particular table.” He paused for a reaction from his partner, but she gave him none. “And this was arguably the person with the untraceable number that he’d called ten minutes before, probably because they hadn’t shown up on time, and that called him back at that fateful moment.” They were stopped at a red light. “Maybe,” Claudia said with some initial hesitation, “that person was right there at Old Nick’s and knew the precise moment to call Daniel and get him distracted.” Brilliant, Tom thought. “In fact,” he said, “maybe that person even fired the first shot, possibly a blank, to make the two gangs think that the other had fired.” “Quite a plot,” Claudia said with a smile as the light turned green, “but plausible. This Mister X – let’s say for argument’s sake that it’s a male – arranges to meet with Daniel, somehow knows that the Gremlins will be at Old Nick’s, calls Steve Lusha about it, and calls Daniel’s cell at the right moment.” “So he must’ve had a connection with the Gremnik Boys. At the very least we can be sure that it’s an Albanian from Kosovo, maybe from the KLA.” A clap of thunder was heard, though the rain didn’t seem to intensify. Maybe, Tom said to himself, it’s that mysterious SR from Wilner’s e-mail to himself, or someone posing as SR, or acting on his behalf. They had arrived at the 40th Precinct. They both had a few minutes’ worth of housekeeping to do at the station. “It’s raining,” Claudia said. “Want me to drive you home?” It would be a detour for her, going from the Bronx to Queens by way of the Upper East Side. She had done it before, back when they were partners of a different kind, but in those days she would make a stopover at his place. Was that what she was proposing? “Sure, if you don’t mind,” he said. Claudia smiled.