They couldn't reach me, but I called in myself within the half hour and they gave me the message. After I spoke with her I found an officer I could trust and we rode up to her apartment. With Elaine's help, we got the poor bastard into his clothes. He'd been wearing a three-piece suit, and we dressed him up all right, knotting his tie, tying his shoes, hooking his cuff links. My buddy and I each looped one of his arms over our shoulders, and we walked him out to the freight elevator, where one of the building's porters had the car waiting. We told him our friend had had too much to drink. I doubt that he bought it- the guy we were dragging looked a lot more like a stiff than a drunk- but he knew we were cops and he remembered the kind of tips Miss Mardell passed out at Christmas, so if he had any reservations he kept them to himself.

I was driving a department vehicle, an unmarked Plymouth sedan. I brought it around to the service entrance and we wrestled the dead lawyer into it. By the time we had him in the car it was past five o'clock, and by the time we fought our way down to the Wall Street area the offices were closed and most of the workers on their way home. We parked across the entrance to a narrow alley off Gold Street, maybe three blocks from the man's office, and we left him in the alley.

His appointment book had the notation "E.M.- 3:30" under that day's date. That seemed cryptic enough, so I returned the book to his breast pocket. I checked his address book, and she wasn't listed under the M's, but he had her number and address with the E's, listed by her first name only. I was going to tear out the page, but I noticed other female first names listed here and there, and I couldn't see any reason to inflict all that on the widow, so I stuck the address book in my pocket and ditched it later on.

He had a lot of cash in his wallet, close to five hundred dollars. I took all of it and split it with the cop who was helping me out. I figured it was just as well to let it look as though someone had rolled our friend. Besides, if we didn't take it the first cops on the scene would, and look at all we'd done to earn it.

We got out of there without attracting any attention. I drove us up to the Village and bought my buddy a couple of drinks, and then we called it in to Headquarters anonymously and let them route it to the local precinct. The ME didn't miss noticing that the deceased had died elsewhere, but death itself was clearly a result of natural causes, so nobody had any reason to make waves. The old whoremaster died with his reputation unbesmirched, Elaine stayed out of trouble, and I got to be a hero.

I've told that story a couple of times at AA meetings. Sometimes it comes out funny, and other times it's anything but that. It depends, I guess, on how it's told, or how you listen.

* * *

Elaine lived on Fifty-first between First and Second, on the sixteenth floor of one of those white brick apartment buildings that went up all over town in the early sixties. Her doorman was a West Indian black, very dark-skinned, with perfect posture and the build of a wide receiver. I gave him her name and mine and waited while he spoke on the intercom. He listened, looked at me, said something, listened again, and handed me the phone. "She wants to talk to you," he said.

I said, "I'm here. What's up?"

"Say something."

"What do you want me to say?"

"You just mentioned a man who blew a fuse. What was his name?"

"What is this, a test? Can't you recognize my voice?"

"This thing distorts voices. Look, humor me. What was the fuse man's name?"

"I don't remember his name. He was a patent lawyer."

"Okay. Let me talk to Derek."

I handed the thing to the doorman. He listened for a moment while she assured him I was okay, then motioned me to the elevator. I rode up to her floor and rang her bell. Even after the ritual over the intercom, she checked the judas peephole before opening the door for me.

"Come in," she said. "I apologize for the dramatics. I'm probably being silly, but maybe not. I don't know."

"What's the matter, Elaine?"

"In a minute. I feel a lot better now that you're here, but I'm still a little shaky. Let me look at you. You look terrific."

"You look pretty good yourself."

"Do I? That's hard to believe. I've had some night. I couldn't stop calling you. I must have called half a dozen times."

"There were five messages."

"Is that all? I don't know why I thought five messages would be more forceful than one, but I kept picking up the phone and dialing your number."

"Five messages may have been better," I said. "They made it a little harder to ignore. What's the problem?"

"The problem is I'm scared. I feel better now, though. I'm sorry for the inquisition before but it's impossible to recognize a voice over my intercom. Just for your information, the patent attorney's name was Roger Stuhldreher."

"How could I ever have forgotten it?"

"What a day that was." She shook her head at the memory. "But I'm being a terrible hostess. What can I get you to drink?"

"Coffee, if you've got some."

"I'll make some."

"It's too much trouble."

"It's no trouble at all. You still like it with bourbon in it?"

"No, just black."

She looked at me. "You stopped drinking," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"I remember you were having some trouble with it the last time I saw you. Is that when you stopped?"

"Around then, yes."

"That's great," she said. "That's really great. Give me a minute and I'll get some coffee made."

The living room was as I remembered it, done in black-and-white with a white shag rug and a chrome-and-black leather couch and some matte black mica shelving. A couple of abstract paintings provided the room's only color. I think they were the same paintings she'd had before, but I couldn't swear to it.

I went over to the window. There was a gap between two buildings that afforded a view of the East River, and the borough of Queens on the other side of it. I'd been over there a matter of hours earlier, telling funny stories to a bunch of drunks in Richmond Hill. It seemed ages ago now.

I stayed at the window for a few minutes. I was in front of one of the paintings when she came back with two cups of black coffee. "I think I remember this one," I said. "Or did you just get it last week?"

"I've had it for years. I bought it on impulse at a gallery on Madison Avenue. I paid twelve hundred dollars for it. I couldn't believe I was paying that kind of money for something to hang on the wall. You know me, Matt. I'm not extravagant. I always bought nice things, but I always saved my money."

"And bought real estate," I said, remembering.

"You bet I did. When you're not handing it to a pimp or sucking it up your nose, you can buy a lot of houses. But I thought I was crazy, paying all that money for a painting."

"Look at the pleasure it's brought you."

"More than pleasure, honey. You know what it's worth now?"

"A lot, evidently."

"Forty thousand, minimum. Probably more like fifty. I ought to sell it. Sometimes it makes me nervous, having fifty grand hanging on the wall. For Christ's sake, when I first hung it I got nervous having twelve hundred dollars on my wall. How's the coffee?"

"It's fine."

"Is it strong enough?"

"It's fine, Elaine."

"You really look great, you know that?"

"So do you."

"How long has it been? I think the last time we saw each other must have been about three years ago, but we haven't really seen anything much of each other since you left the police department, and that must be close to ten years."

"Something like that."

"You still look the same."

"Well, I've still got all my hair. But there's a little gray there if you look closely."

"There's a lot of gray in mine, but you can look as close as you like and you won't see it. Thanks to modern science." She drew a breath. "The rest of the package hasn't changed too much, though."

"It hasn't changed at all."

"Well, I've kept my figure. And my skin's still good. I'll tell you, though, I never thought I'd have to put so much work into it. I'm at the gym three mornings a week, sometimes four. And I watch what I eat and drink."

"You were never a drinker."

"No, but I used to drink Tab by the gallon, Tab and then Diet Coke. I cut out all of that. Now it's pure fruit juice or plain water. I have one cup of coffee a day, first thing in the morning. This cup's a concession to special circumstances."

"Maybe you should tell me what they are."

"I'm getting there. I have to sort of ease into it. What else do I do? I walk a lot. I watch what I eat. I've been a vegetarian for almost three years now."

"You used to love steak."

"I know. I didn't think it was a meal unless there was meat in it."

"And what was it you used to have at the Brasserie?"

"Tripes а la mode de Caen."

"Right. A dish I never liked to think about, but I had to admit it was tasty."

"I couldn't guess when I had it last. I haven't had any meat in close to three years. I ate fish for the first year, but then I dropped that, too."

"Ms. Natural."

"C'est moi."

"Well, it agrees with you."

"And not drinking agrees with you. Here we are, telling each other how good we look. That's how you know you're old, isn't that what they say? Matt, I was thirty-eight on my last birthday."

"That's not so bad."

"That's what you think. My last birthday was three years ago. I'm forty-one."

"That's not so bad either. And you don't look it."

"I know I don't. Or maybe I do. That's what somebody told Gloria Steinem when she turned forty, that she didn't look it. And she said, 'Yes I do. This is what forty looks like now.' "

"Pretty good line."

"That's what I thought. Sweetie, you know what I've been doing? I've been stalling."

"I know."

"To keep it from being real. But it's real. This came in today's mail."

She handed me a newspaper clipping and I unfolded it. There was a photograph, a head shot of a middle-aged gentleman. He was wearing glasses and his hair was neatly combed, and he looked confident and optimistic, an expression that seemed out of keeping with the headline. It ran across three columns, and it said, area businessman slays wife, children, self. Ten or twelve column inches of text elaborated on the headline. Philip Sturdevant, proprietor of Sturdevant Furniture with four retail outlets in Canton and Massillon, had apparently gone berserk in his home in suburban Walnut Hills. After using a kitchen knife to kill his wife and three small children, Sturdevant had called the police and told them what he had done. By the time a police cruiser arrived on the scene, Sturdevant was dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.

I looked up from the clipping. "Terrible thing," I said.

"Yes."

"Did you know him?"

"No."

"Then-"

"I knew her."

"The wife?"