LITMIR.BIZ

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you can do anything you want.”

      O’Ryan must’ve spotted us leaving the restaurant. Sneaking up behind us, he suddenly shoved the actor up against a closed store-front. The icy sidewalk forced Holden to grab hold of O’Ryan to regain his balance, at which point O’Ryan slipped backwards on the ice and fell right on his ass.

      “I’m so sorry,” the actor said, unable to avoid a snicker as he extended a hand. “I’m Noel Holden.”

      Slapping it away, O’Ryan sprang to his feet and yelled, “I know who you are, asshole! That doesn’t give you the right to harass a police officer!”

      “Pardon?”

      “It’s okay,” I told O’Ryan.

      “If you ever disrespect a cop again,” O’Ryan said, shoving his long index finger into the man’s pretty face, “I don’t care who you are.”

      “Was I disrespecting you, my dear?” the handsome one asked me innocently. Of course he wasn’t, but I couldn’t say that. You were supposed to back up your partner. I simply turned away and walked east. O’Ryan followed.

      Female civilians are constantly flirting with male cops—I couldn’t count how many times I’d seen O’Ryan enjoying this—but when a guy did it, apparently it was harassment. Nearly a month had passed since Eddie’s failed deflowering of me, and he still hadn’t so much as mentioned it.

      It wasn’t until we turned down Ninth Avenue that I finally said, “What the hell is your problem, Eddie?”

      “It’s just—I thought he was coming on to you.”

      “What if he was?”

      He looked away, red-faced. “I saw you coming out of that restaurant with him trailing you,” he said contritely, “and I thought you might be in trouble.”

      “Did I look like I was trouble?”

      “What were you doing in there anyway?”

      “I had to use the goddamn bathroom.”

      We proceeded silently down Ninth Avenue, searching for quality-of-life violations or anything that might put the awkwardness behind us.

      “Help! Police!” we heard as we reached the corner of Thirty-fifth Street.

      We turned to see our sergeant grinning at us from his patrol car. Warm air seeped from his half-lowered window as he asked, “So which one of you wants your first big murder case?”

      “What do you mean?” O’Ryan asked.

      “I got a crime scene needs protecting.” Sgt. McKenner said.

      Security guard work. O’Ryan didn’t say anything, so I said, “I’ll take it.”

      O’Ryan often bragged about his pals in City Hall and was hoping for some big administrative appointment in the Mayor’s office sooner or later. He had offered to take me with him when it came through, but back then all I wanted was to be in homicide. Still, he usually would’ve fought to be on a murder scene, so I figured he was trying to make amends.

      “Pick up some lunch. You’re going to be there a while.”

      “Where?”

      “The Templeton, southeast corner of Forty-second and Ninth.”

      “We just passed there.” The hotel was half a block east of the pricey restaurant where I had just peed. It was a dive.

      “The body was called in this morning, but the murder probably took place last night,” the sergeant explained. “I need you to go and relieve the first on the scene.”

      I grabbed another tea on the way. Rookies always caught the jobs no one else wanted. We were constantly being tossed into line-ups or watching investigation sites. And if we were lucky, we occasionally guarded a murder scene.

      Several police cars were parked out front of the Templeton. In the lobby was a sloppily dressed clerk who silently pointed to the metal gate to his right. When I went over to it, he buzzed me in, then I went up a flight of stairs.

      The browning wallpaper looked more like flypaper. The lighting was permanently dim, and the floor tiles were worn down or missing altogether.

      A yellow ribbon sagged loosely across the end of the second-floor corridor. As I stepped over it, I heard a police radio and traced it to Room 236. A big, middle-aged patrolman named Lenny Lombardi was leaning in the doorway finishing a hotdog.

      “What’s up?”

      “It’s the Blonde Hooker thing,” he replied. Somebody had killed two prostitutes within the past two months, both of them tall and blonde. I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but there were rumors that the murderer had mutilated the bodies horribly.

      “So what exactly does he do?”

      “Believe me, you don’t want to know. And you don’t want to go in there.” He pointed behind him with his half-eaten hotdog.

      “I’ve seen bodies before,” I replied, although actually I had only seen new ones. At that point, childbirths were my one claim to fame. I had driven one bursting mama to Roosevelt Hospital, and on another occasion I’d arrived in the middle of a labor in process and helped in the delivery.

      “The killer pulled this one apart limb by limb, numbered the pieces, then taped her back together.” An annoying strand of sauerkraut was hanging from Lenny’s large right cheek.

      “Numbered her?” Inside I could only see the back of one of the gloved and masked CSU investigators. He was on his hands and knees, going over the worn carpet with a lint brush. Since the window was open and it was about thirty degrees, he had kept his Northern Exposure parka on. The other technician had Crime Scene Unit printed on the back of his jacket, and was dusting the end table for fingerprints. Their metallic suitcases were open in the corner of the room.

      When I took a step inside the room, I saw the vic. With her blood-splattered arms and legs thrust in the air, it looked as if she’d died in the Happy Baby yoga pose. I couldn’t understand how the limbs were defying gravity until one of the forensic people moved away. Several tight coils of transparent tape glistened in the sunlight. The tape encompassed the victim’s elbows and wound its way up her wrists. A black bracelet with large onyx-like pieces dangled from her left wrist, and between her slightly curled fingers the killer had apparently slipped a business card for some local establishment. Another spiral of tape was wrapped around her knees and connected her ankles. More tape tied her upper and lower limbs together.

      Not until I looked closely did I see the full barbarity of the crime. The victim had been raggedly decapitated. Nestled on her abdomen, within the tightly woven confinement of taped-up arms and legs, was her head. I slipped back out to the hallway.

      “Anyone know who she is?”

      “Pross.”

      As I watched the technicians dusting the surfaces and the bedside lamp, I asked, “When did they find her?”

      “Maid found her this morning,” Lenny said.

      “No one saw the john?”

      “The desk clerk said the girl signed for the room. A guy was with her, but he couldn’t even give an age or race,” Lenny explained. I knew he was tired of talking about it.

      “So whose case is it?”

      “Hernandez already came and went.” He was one of the precinct homicide detectives.

      When a murder occurred, the precinct detectives came first. If it was an isolated killing, as it usually was, it belonged to them. After they ran it through the database, if a preexisting pattern turned up—an open case—they would call for homicide investigators from Manhattan South. They caught everything south of 59th Street.

      As he pulled on his scarf and buttoned up his coat, Lenny said, “About ten minutes ago, the

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