"You picking me up?"

"Be ready in ten. And save yourself fifty cents on tomorrow's news. It's curtains for Joe Berk. Another banner day for the tabs, photo of the old guy lying in the gutter-that's their money shot- his life captured in a single word: ZAPPED!"

"Times Square, Crossroads of the World," Mike said, stepping out of his department car just off the main intersection of Broadway and 44th Street, a few minutes before eleven o'clock on Sunday evening. He pointed up at the sky. "You can fly into LaGuardia at night and read a book sitting by an airplane window without your overhead light on, just from the electricity generated in this neon canyon."

One hundred years ago, when Adolph Ochs moved his daily newspaper to this midtown site known as Long Acre Square, it was renamed Times Square in honor of the great publication. This once elegant residential neighborhood had given way to what were then called silk-hat brothels, and when railway hubs and subway stations made the area the commercial center of Manhattan, the theater district followed here soon after.

This time there was no yellow crime-scene tape. Uniformed cops had cordoned off the hot zone with orange no-parking cones and three Con Ed trucks blocked off the entrance to the street as workmen scrambled to repair the damage.

"Works on the same principle as Old Sparky," Mike said, referring to the electric chair at Sing Sing that had not been used since 1963. "One good jolt and you're off to meet the devil. Joe should have known those friggin' velvet slippers wouldn't have grounded him."

One of the cops led us to the chief of the crew, who was explaining the problem to a couple of guys from the mayor's office. We introduced ourselves and joined the conversation.

"What does it look like?" Mike asked.

The Con Ed crewman pointed to the apparatus down on the street across from the marquee of the Belasco Theatre at 111 West 44th Street. "It's that junction box. Another damn maintenance situation. Improper insulation."

One of the mayor's men was already doing the math. "This'll cost the city a few million. Shit. It's only the first quarter of the year and we've already had more than forty complaints about hot spots. That's way ahead of last year."

"How does it happen?" I asked. "I mean these accidents."

"The wires in the boxes, ma'am, they're supposed to have two layers of insulation, one made with plastic tape and the other with rubber. When the rubber wears off, the exposed end of the wire comes into contact with the metal frame on the service box."

"The manhole cover?" Mike asked.

"Looks like about fifty-five volts of electricity ran up the side of the box to the plate-the manhole cover-above it. More than enough to kill you."

"You got more of these?"

"Two hundred fifty junction boxes in the city."

"Any other deaths?" Mike asked. "I haven't; seen one of these before."

The guy from the mayor's office, who was measuring civil law-suits if not human lives, answered. "A month ago they had one downtown. Manhattan South responded. Woman walking her dog in the East Village. This seems to be the season."

"Why's that?"

"There was a lot of snow this winter," the Con Ed man said. "When the city salts the streets, the cable insulation corrodes and cracks."

The mayor's representative shook his head, not willing to shoulder the liability for the anticipated lawsuit. "Salt is not the reason Joe Berk died. That last service box was too small and crammed too full of cable. It pushed those wires to the top, snapped them, and electrified the whole thing. You should have had a limiter in there."

"What's that?"

"It's like a fuse," he said, answering Mike before continuing to excoriate the Con Ed chief. "When's the last time this box was inspected? You haven't got enough workmen on the street and you haven't developed an adequate way to test the manholes."

"Forty complaints?" Mike asked. "You don't mean forty people have died."

"No, no, no. Hot spots. Electrified metal utility covers like this or even on areas of sidewalk. Usually it's only twenty or thirty volts- enough to give you a good scare or bounce a dog in the air. People call them in every week. Wastes a hell of a lot of our time because these hard hats can't get it through their hard heads to fix the problem."

Mike stepped away from the huddle and we walked around the orange cones, crossing the street to the front of the Belasco, its wide facade of warm red brick set off by the white stone pediments of its neo-Georgian architectural style.

Another rookie cop stood at the door that led upstairs to Joe Berk's apartment. Mike flashed his badge. "Anybody inside?"

"There was a gentleman with Mr. Berk when he went down in the street. Might even be his son. He went back upstairs when the ambulance took off with Berk. Said he had to make some calls, then headed over to the hospital. I asked him to leave the key with me. There's nobody up there right now."

"Good thinking. Ms. Cooper and I are going to take a look around."

The kid passed over the key. We walked to the elevator in the rear of the building and took it up to the fourth floor, which was as high as it went, letting ourselves in to the dead man's quiet apartment.

The room we entered was the office in which we'd talked to Berk yesterday afternoon. The dark oak paneling on the walls and ceilings took on a somber cast now, and all Mike could find for lighting was the single bulb of the desk lamp.

"We're looking for…?"

"Anything to link Joe to Galinova. Anything to point us in another direction, in case he didn't really deserve that last blast of energy as his final send-off."

"So how do you feel about a search warrant, Detective Chapman?"

"The mope is dead. Why? He's still got standing in a court of law? Clarence Thomas is gonna go out on a limb on this one?" Mike had put his rubber gloves on and was pushing and lifting pieces of paper on Berk's large desk. He tossed another pair to me. "You can just stare at me and continue to be useless or you can poke around here."

I pulled the latex over my fingers and reached for several small manila envelopes that Mike removed from his jacket pocket.

He pointed at the lounge chair. "You want those long white hairs, don't you?"

"1 won't be able to use anything I take out of here in Talya's case, if that's what you're suggesting."

"Abandoned property, Coop. Guy passes on and leaves staff behind. Think of the poor cleaning lady who has to pick up after him. You're doing her a favor. C'mon. Help yourself."

I brushed some loose strands into the envelope and put it in the pocket of my jeans.

Mike handed me a memo pad with a "to do" list for Monday, the following morning.

There was a list of names and phone numbers, meeting times, and a luncheon appointment. I grabbed an empty sheet of paper and copied all of the notations.

The correspondence was stacked in neat piles. One tall stack seemed to be all about the settlement of a grievance between Broadway producers and the union that represented stage actors and man-agers. Negotiators had reached a tentative accord to avert a major theatrical strike, and Berk seemed to be in the middle of the mix, refusing to give in to demands from Actors' Equity and drawing the ire of union leaders.

Another folder overflowed with papers on the upcoming Tony awards, the equivalent of Hollywood's Oscars. The televised ceremony was a couple of months away.

"Just make a list of these files," I said to Mike. "We can't take this stuff with us, and I can't find anything at all relevant to Galinova. This one's all about the Tonys. Looks like some of Berk's shows are up for the big prizes."

"They make a difference?" Mike asked, opening drawers and scanning their contents.