“Put it away, Willie,” Johnson said.

He followed her suggestion.

“He’s not armed,” she said.

“Hope not. We call for backup?”

“No.”

She stepped into the alley, with Portelain close behind.

“I made a collar in here once,” she said. “There’s that Dumpster and some garbage cans.”

“I see ’em,” Portelain confirmed, still breathing heavily, and wincing at a stitch in his side and a dull ache in his left arm.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Me? Hell, yes. Let’s go. We got a crowd.”

They took slow, tentative steps into the alley, each staying close to a wall and twelve feet from each other, eyes and ears on alert.

“Hey, dude,” Portelain barked. “Let’s not have anybody get hurt here. Let’s wise up and play it cool.”

There was no response.

They reached a point only a few feet from the Dumpster, overflowing with fragrant garbage, and glanced at each other. The sound of something hitting the Dumpster’s metal side caused them to stiffen.

“Look out!” Portelain yelled as Warren burst from behind the trash container and attempted to run between them. His sudden move caught Johnson by surprise, but Portelain reacted quickly, extending his sizable arm and catching Warren in the face, on the nose, sending the young man tumbling backwards, his head making hard contact with the Dumpster. Johnson immediately pulled cuffs from her belt and jumped on him, her knees pinning his arms to the concrete alley floor. Portelain stood over the fallen man’s head and said, “See what you done now, you dumb bastard? See the trouble you put us to?”

Warren ’s response was an anguished cry, a combination of sob and fury. Portelain helped Johnson turn Warren over and she secured his wrists with the cuffs.

“Don’t hurt my hands,” he blubbered as they yanked him to his feet. Blood ran from his nose down over his mouth and chin and bloodied Mozart. They propelled him out of the alley, to where dozens of people watched.

“What did he do?” someone yelled.

“Who is he?”

Johnson and Portelain ignored the onlookers and pushed Warren down the street in the direction of their car.

Warren balked, and shouted, “Police brutality!”

A tall, heavyset man with a white beard and ponytail yelled to someone else in the crowd, “They beat the crap out of the guy.”

The detectives urged Warren forward. They turned the corner and were almost to the car when Portelain suddenly stopped.

“What’s the matter, Willie?” Johnson asked, her right hand gripping Warren ’s cuffed wrist.

Portelain released his grasp of the manacles and sat heavily on a low stone wall. “Don’t feel good,” he rasped.

He’s having a heart attack, Johnson thought. “Wait here.” She pushed Warren to the car, where she opened a rear door and shoved him inside, facedown. She slammed the door shut and came around to the driver’s side, stopping only to glare at people who’d followed them. “Get away!” she commanded. With one eye on Warren, who struggled to right himself, she called Dispatch and asked for backup and an ambulance. Her request confirmed, she looked to where Portelain was still on the wall, head lowered, hands pressed against the top of the wall to support himself.

“I want a lawyer,” Warren said from the backseat. He now sat upright, his hands behind him. “I want somebody from the embassy. You can’t do this to me.”

“Shut up!” Johnson snapped. She was torn between staying with him and going to where Portelain sat.

She didn’t have to ponder that decision long because two squad cars and a city ambulance roared down the street, lights flashing, horns wailing, and came to a haphazard stop, blocking all traffic. Johnson grabbed the first uniformed officer she could and told him to watch Warren while she went to where two EMTs were talking with Portelain.

“You all right, Willie?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m all right,” he said. “Just got a pain, that’s all. Damned arthritis.”

Johnson took one of the EMTs aside and said, “Don’t listen to him. I think he’s having a coronary.”

“Why do you say that?” the EMT asked.

“Because-damn, just get him to a hospital.”

A few minutes later, Portelain, despite a series of vocal protests, was being slid on a gurney into the recesses of the ambulance. By now, the crowd had grown considerably and included a reporter from the Post and a TV crew. Johnson heard the female TV reporter ask no one in particular, “What happened here? What did you see?”

The big man with the white beard pushed his way to the front of the crowd and said, “This white guy was just minding his business when these two cops jump him and beat the living crap out of him.”

Someone else confirmed it.

The reporter spotted Johnson and started toward her. The detective waved her away and said to the uniformed cop standing guard over Warren, “Take him in and book him for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. I’m going to the hospital with Willie.” She stopped the ambulance driver who was about to leave and said, “I’m his partner. I’m going with him.” She ran around to the rear, opened the door, and joined Portelain and the second EMT inside. “You’ll be okay, Willie,” she said, touching his hand. “You’ll be just fine.”

The crowd dispersed. The big man with the white beard insisted that an officer take down his name as a witness to police brutality. As the cop dutifully recorded it in a notebook, thinking all the while that he’d like to practice some brutality on this guy, a homeless man with urine-stained chino pants and carrying a bulging knapsack entered the alley where Chris Warren had been apprehended. The sheaf of sheet music Warren had been carrying with him had ended up strewn over the alley floor. The homeless citizen picked up the loose sheets, examined each of them like a pawn-shop owner evaluating a ring someone was looking to hock, and tossed them one by one on top of the refuse already in the Dumpster. Sometimes you get lucky, he thought. This isn’t one of those days.

There was a time in Mackensie Smith’s life that taking an afternoon off was anathema. Catching a movie matinee was out of the question, even when there was little to do in his law office on a given day. And to enjoy a sexual episode while the sun still shone was-well, the guilt associated with it wasn’t worth the pleasure. Not guilt for engaging in sex, but for doing it during working hours.

But he’d changed.

He and Annabel had returned to their Watergate apartment after the meeting at WNO’s administrative offices and thoroughly mangled the king-size bed they’d so carefully made up that morning. Sated, they made the bed again-both were committed neatniks-and enjoyed a postcoital glass of mango juice on the terrace.

“Do you know what I thought about while we were in bed?” she asked.

“Not me?”

“Of course you. But for a moment, I pictured myself as Delila in Samson and Delila.”

He grinned. “And I was Samson?”

“Yes.”

He placed his fingers on his receding hairline. “Is that what happened to my hair?” he asked. “You cut it off to rob me of my strength?”

“I had a little help from Mother Nature. By the way, Delila in the opera is pronounced Dah-lee-la, with the emphasis on the final ‘la.’ At least that’s how Saint-Saëns pronounced it.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute. So, what’s on our agenda for the rest of the day?”

“There’s the rehearsal at seven.”

“I almost succeeded in forgetting about that.”

“Which I would never let you do. I thought I might go up to Takoma Park and ask around about Charise Lee.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know, to get a feel for how and why her murder might have happened.”

“Now, hold on a second,” he said, sitting taller and facing her directly. “Solving the young lady’s murder isn’t your business.”