Mike and the other men from the task force quelled the crew and took the two combatants to opposite wings. We cleared the entire central area so the cast and crew could get back to work.

Another loud creaking noise and a giant gap yawned in the floor of center stage. I stepped farther back, away from the monstrous black hole it created as the boards rolled apart. Seconds later, raised by some kind of lift below the auditorium, the eerie funeral set from the Temple of Vulcan-the crypt in which Aida and Radames would be entombed, buried alive-rose onto the stage,

I turned my back to it and followed Mike to the door that exited stage right, to the medical office where the limping man had walked.

Mike told the nurse to give us a few minutes with her patient and she left the three of us alone in her room. "You want to tell me what this is about, or do I start with the guy who threw the punch."

"It's none of your business. It's outside the opera house."

"That's not what it sounded like to me. Let me see your I.D."

The man lifted the chain from around his neck and passed it to Mike, as I leaned in to study it with him.

"Ralph Harney," Mike said aloud. "What's your date of bath?"

Ralph answered with the date that matched his credentials, as well as his street address.

"You still live in Hoboken?"

"Yeah. Right through the tunnel."

Mike handed the card back to him. The picture was a couple of years old, and the scraggly facial hair he sported exaggerated his age and now made him look more dissipated.

"What's got your pal so angry? Were you working the performance on Friday?"

"I'm on the night gang. I don't come on till after the show's over. Part of the crew who break down the sets."

"Well, did you do that on Friday?"

"Yeah."

"So what's the beef? Why does he say you're lying?"

"'Cause he hates my guts."

"Any reason in particular?"

"His sister. I was engaged to marry his sister."

"You broke it up? That's why he's angry?"

Ralph Harney didn't answer.

"Yo. I'm talking to you. You broke it up?"

"She got killed in a car crash."

"And who was driving?"

A pause before he answered. "Me. I was hurt bad, too."

Harney picked up his head to show Mike the scar that trailed from the corner of his eyelid down across his cheek. I thought I could see scratch marks-relatively recent ones-healing on the skin above his goatee.

"But the girl died. Any charges?"

"What?"

"Criminal charges. Speeding? Intox driving?"

"Nope. No charges. Like I said, it was an accident." Harney was grimacing with pain. He pulled up the leg of his pants and the skin was sliced through to the bone. Blood had caked around the wound and dripped onto the top of his boot. "Can you wait with this or what?"

"You shouldn't have walked on it. You don't want to compound it if it's fractured," Mike said, stepping out to tell the nurse she could get to work on her patient.

We exchanged places with her and walked down the corridor to find the guy in the green-plaid shirt. Two of the other detectives had casually penned him in near the rear of the stage, where the loading dock opens into the garage, letting him smoke a cigarette. Mike signaled them to move off as we approached.

"Mike Chapman," he said, holding out his hand. "You're?"

"Dowd. Brian Dowd."

"You want to tell me the story?"

"What'd Harney say? He's the storyteller."

"That you've got it in for him."

"He's a scumbag."

"I'm sorry about your sister. He told us about that."

"Told you that he killed her?"

"That she died in an accident."

"You call it an accident when a guy's had five or six vodkas with beer chasers and then gets in the car to drive home? I call it murder."

"Was he arrested?" Mike asked, testing the story Harney told us against Dowd's version of events.

"No, no, he wasn't locked up. You know why? "Cause his body was thrown from the car is what he says. Got all disoriented and had a traumatic head injury is what he says. He conveniently didn't show up at the hospital till the next afternoon, when he'd sobered up and his blood alcohol didn't test off the charts anymore."

Mike paused, understanding Dowd's rage at his sister's killer. "How long ago?"

"Less than a year. I tried to get the car keys away from him that night. Harney was so wasted he could barely stand up straight. My sister promised me she'd drive but she couldn't control him either. She-her body-was in the passenger seat when they found her, same as always."

"And this is somehow related to Friday night?"

Dowd dropped the cigarette to the floor and crushed it with his boot. "I suppose he told you he worked late?"

"Yeah. The night gang."

"Then how come he was downstairs in the locker room before the curtain went up? Eight o'clock, I swear to God. Drinking beer and playing solitaire."

"Who were you with when you saw him?"

Dowd sneered at Mike. "My word isn't good enough? You need a crowd?"

"Two would be a good round number."

"I got new glasses. Haven't had them a week. I left them in my locker and had to go back downstairs. Everyone else on the stage crew was in his place. That's how come I was alone when I saw him."

"And that's what you started fighting with him about just now?"

"Partly."

"You must have enlisted a couple of coconspirators."

"I didn't need anybody to deck that coward."

"And somehow the wagon just started rolling, ready to crush his legs once he was down on the floor?"

"It's a busy place, this stage. Got to watch your step all the time."

Mike had his hands in his pockets, walking toward the loading dock.

"Jerks."

"You say something else?" Mike asked.

"Yeah. Your cop friends are jerks."

"Anyone in particular?"

Dowd was taking deep breaths now. "You think you've got us all figured out?" he said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. "You think you know everything about us, have a sample of our DNA?"

"That's what we've been trying to do for the last week."

"Ralph Harney. Better check that one again, you're so fucking smart."

"Something wrong with the information he gave us?"

Dowd laughed. "Only thing wrong is that he didn't give it to you."

"That's easy to check. I'll just see if there's a card for him upstairs. The detectives have interviewed almost everybody in the crew."

"You're missing the point, Chapman. Harney isn't the one who talked to your boys. He had his cousin come in here in his place, the day he knew he was supposed to be questioned."

"How'd he get past the security?" I asked.

"First cousins. Hal Harney. They look like brothers, the two of them. Hal's in the same union, maybe a year older than Ralph. Works down at the Majestic."

Mike was agitated now, running his fingers through his hair. We had been told the theatrical jobs were incestuous, that the union membership was passed along from family member to family member- fathers and sons, uncles and cousins-hard for an outsider to break in through the ranks.

"Showed his pass and walked right through the door. Like who's gonna realize it if you don't know Ralph well enough to tell the difference? So Hal sits for the interview with these cracker jack detectives instead of Ralph."

"And it's Hal's DNA sample we've got down at the M.E.'s office waiting to be tested," Mike said. "We don't have Ralph's."

"That's why you're jerks," Brian Dowd said, practically jabbing at Mike's chest with his finger. '"Cause Ralph knows it'd match up with what you got before. That you'd look at him a little more close, ask him who mauled his face the other night."

"Got what before?"

"DNA. You've already got Ralph Harney's DNA. That's why be wanted Hal to sit in for him this time."