"Yeah," she said, and fell suddenly silent. I guess

'i'll have to call my mother, huh?" she asked. "Might be a good idea,"

Carella said. "Let her know what happened." "Mm."

"What time is it in London?"

"I don't know," Carella said.

"Five or six hours ahead, is that it?"

Hawes shook his head, shrugged.

Priscilla fell silent again.

The champagne glass was empty now. "Why'd you hate her?" Carella asked. "For what she did to herself."

"She didn't cause the arthritis," Hawes said. "She caused the alcoholism." "Which came first?"

"Who knows? Who cares? She was one of the

She ended up a nobody."

"Enemies," Carella said again.

don't know of any."

it had to be a burglar," Hawes said again.

"Who cares what it was?" Priscilla asked. "We do," Carella said.

It was time to stop the clock.

Time was running by too fast, someone out there had killed her, and time was on his side, her side, whoever's side. The faster the minutes went by, the greater would become the distance between him, her, whomever and the cops. So it was time to stop the clock, hardly a difficult feat here in the old Eight-Seven, time to pause for a moment, and reflect,

time to make a few phone calls, time to call time out. Carella called home.

When he'd left there at eleven last night, his son Mark was burning up with a hundred-and two-degree fever and the doctor was on the way.

Fanny Knowles,

the Carella housekeeper, picked up on the third ring. "Fanny," he said, "hi. Did I wake you?" "Let me get her," Fanny said.

He waited. His wife could neither speak nor hear. There was a TDD telephone answering device in the house, but typing out long messages was time consuming tedious, and often frustrating. Better that Teddy should sign and Fanny should translate. He waited.

"Okay," Fanny said at last.

"What'd the doctor say?"

"It's nothing serious," Fanny said. "He thinks it's the flu."

"What does Teddy think?"

"Let me ask her."

There was a silence on the line. Fanny signing,

Teddy responding. He visualized both women in their nightgowns Fanny some five feet five inches tall, a stout Irish woman with red hair and gold-rimmed eyeglasses, fingers flying in the language Teddy had taught her. Teddy an inch taller, a beautiful woman with raven-black hair and eyes as dark as loam, fingers flying even faster because she'd been doing this from when she was a child. Fanny was back on the line.

"She says what worried her most was when he started shakin like a leaf all over. But he's all right now. The fever's come down, she thinks the doctor's right, it's only the flu. She's going to sleep in his room, she says, just in case. When will you be home, she wants to know." "Shift's over at eight, she knows that." "She thought, with the lad sick and all ..." "Fanny, we've got a homicide. Tell her that." He waited.

Fanny came back on the line.

"She says you've always got a homicide."

Carella smiled.

I'll be home in six hours," he said. "Tell her I love her."

"She loves you too," Fanny said.

"Did she say that?"

"No, I said it," Fanny said. "Its two in the mornin, mister. Can we all go back to bed now?"

"Not me, Carella said.

Hawes was talking to a Rape Squad cop named Annie Rawles. Annie happened to be in his bed. He was telling her that since he'd come to work tonight, he'd

met a beautiful Mediterranean-looking woman and also a beautiful piano player with long blond hair.

"Is the piano player a woman, too? "Annie asked. Hawes smiled.

"What are you wearing?" he asked.

"Just a thirty-eight in a shoulder holster," Annie said.

"I'll be right there," he said.

"Fat Chance Department," she said.

The clock began ticking again.

Every hour of the day looks the same inside a morgue. That's because there are no windows and the glare of fluorescent light is neutral at best. The stench, too, is identical day in and day out, palpable to anyone who walks in from the fresh air outside, undetectable to the assistant medical examiners who are carving up corpses for autopsy.

Dr. Paul Blaney was a shortish man with a scraggly black mustache and eyes everyone told him were violet, but which he thought were a pale bluish-grey. He was wearing a bloodstained blue smock and yellow rubber gloves, and was weighing a liver when the detectives walked in.

He immediately plopped the organ into a stainless-steel basin, where it sat looking like the Portnoy family's impending dinner. Yanking off one of the gloves, presumably to shake hands, he remembered where the hand had recently been, and pulled it back abruptly. He knew why the detectives were here. He got directly to the point.