“Right now?”

“I think I just asked that.”

“Washing dishes. Jenny and I just had Sunday brunch with my brother and his wife. We went to the farmers’ market with the kids. It’s a blast. Do you and Detective Sachs ever get to-?”

“You’re at home then. And not doing anything.”

“Well. The dishes.”

“Leave ’em. Get over here.” Rhyme, a civilian, had no authority to order anybody in the NYPD, even traffic cops, to do anything.

But Sachs was a detective third-class; while she couldn’t order him to help them, she could formally request a shift in assignment. “We need you, Ron. And we might need you tomorrow too.”

Ron Pulaski worked regularly with Rhyme, Sachs and Sellitto. Rhyme had been amused to learn that his assignments for the quasi-celeb forensic detective elevated the status of the young officer within the department. He was sure that the supervisor would agree to hand over Pulaski for a few days-as long as he didn’t call Malloy or anyone else downtown and learn that the case wasn’t a case at all.

Pulaski gave Sachs the name of the commander at the precinct house. Then asked, “Oh, sir? Is Lieutenant Sellitto working on this one? Should I call and coordinate with him?”

“No,” blurted both Rhyme and Sachs.

A brief silence followed, then Pulaski said uncertainly, “Well, then, I guess I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just, can I dry the glasses first? Jenny hates water spots.”

Sundays are the best.

Because most Sundays I’m free to do what I love.

I collect things.

Everything you can imagine. If it appeals to me and I can get it into my backpack, or into my trunk, I’ll collect it. I’m not a pack rat like some people might say. Those rodents leave something in place of what they’ve taken. Once I find something, it’s mine. I never let go. Ever.

Sunday’s my favorite day. Because it’s the day of rest for the masses, the sixteens who call this amazing city home. Men, women, children, lawyers, artists, cyclists, cooks, thieves, wives and lovers (I collect DVDs too), politicians, joggers and curators…It’s amazing the number of things that sixteens do for enjoyment.

They roam like happy antelope through the city and the parks of New Jersey and Long Island and upstate New York.

And I’m free to hunt them.

Which is what I’m up to right now, having deflected all the other boring distractions of Sunday: brunch, movies and even an invitation to go play golf. Oh, and worship-always popular with the antelope, provided, of course, that a visit to church is followed by the aforementioned brunch or nine holes of smack-the-ball.

Hunting…

Right now I’m thinking of my most recent transaction, the memory tucked away in my mental collection-the transaction with young Alice Sanderson, 3895-0967-7524-3630, who was looking fine, very fine. Until the knife, of course.

Alice 3895 in that nice pink dress, accentuating her breasts, flirting at the hip (I also think of her as 38-26-36, but that’s a joke on my part). Pretty enough, perfume the scent of Asian flowers.

My plans for her had only partly to do with the Harvey Prescott painting that she was lucky enough to snatch off the market (or unlucky, as it turned out for her). Once I was sure she’d received the delivery, out would come the duct tape and I’d spend the next few hours with her in the bedroom. But she’d ruined it all. Just as I was coming up behind her she turned and gave that nightmare scream. I had no choice but to slice her neck like tomato skin, grab my beautiful Prescott and sneak out-through the window, so to speak.

No, I can’t stop thinking about pretty-enough Alice 3895, in a skimpy pink dress, her skin floral-scented like a tea house. So, bottom line, I need a woman.

Strolling along these sidewalks, glancing at the sixteens through my sunglasses. They, on the other hand, don’t really see me. As I intend; I groom myself to be invisible and there’s no place like Manhattan to be invisible.

I turn corners, slip along an alleyway, make a purchase-cash, of course-then plunge into a deserted area of the city, formerly industrial, becoming residential and commercial, near SoHo. Quiet here. That’s good. I want it peaceful for my transaction with Myra Weinburg, 9834-4452-6740-3418, a sixteen I’ve had my eye on for a while.

Myra 9834, I know you very well. The data have told me everything. (Ah, that debate again: data…plural or singular? Data has told or data have told? Merriam-Webster’s assures us either is correct. By myself, I tend to be purist: data plural. But in public I try hard to treat the word as singular, like most of society, and hope I don’t slip up. Language is a river; it goes where it will and if you swim against that current you get noticed. And that, of course, is the last thing in the world I want.)

Now, the data on Myra 9834: She lives on Waverly Place, Greenwich Village, in a building the owner wants to sell as co-op units via an eviction plan. (I know this, though the poor tenants don’t yet, and judging from incomes and credit histories, most of them are totally screwed.)

The beautiful, exotic, dark-haired Myra 9834 is a graduate of NYU and has worked in New York for several years at an advertising agency. Her mother’s still alive, but her father’s dead. Hit and run, the John Doe warrant still outstanding after all these years. Police don’t pull out the stops for crimes like that.

At the moment Myra 9834 is between boyfriends, and friendships must be problematic because her recent thirty-second birthday was marked with a single order of moo shu pork from Hunan Dynasty on West Fourth (not a bad choice) and a Caymus Conundrum white ($28 from overpriced Village Wines). A subsequent trip to Long Island on Saturday, coinciding with local travel by other family members and acquaintances and a large bill, with copious Brunello, at a Garden City restaurant of which Newsday speaks highly, made up for the solitary evening, I imagine.

Myra 9834 sleeps in a Victoria’s Secret T, a fact I deduce because she owns five of them in a size too big to wear out in public. She wakes early to the thought of an Entenmann’s danish pastry (never low-fat, I’m proud of her for that) and home-brewed Starbucks; she rarely goes to the coffee shops. Which is a shame, since I do like to observe in person the antelope I’ve had my eye on, and Starbucks is among the best places on the veldt to do so. Around eight-twenty she leaves her apartment and heads for work in Midtown-Maple, Reed & Summers advertising, where she’s a junior account executive.

Onward and upward. I continue on my way this Sunday, wearing a nondescript baseball cap (they account for 87.3 percent of all men’s headgear in the metro area). And, as always, eyes down. If you think a satellite can’t record your smiling face from thirty miles up in space, think again; somewhere in a dozen servers around the world there are hundreds of pictures of you taken from on high, and let’s hope all you were doing when they snapped the shutter was squinting away the sun while you glanced up at the Goodyear blimp or a cloud shaped like a lamb.

My passion for collecting includes not only these daily facts but the minds of the sixteens I’m interested in, and Myra 9834 is no exception. She goes for drinks with friends after work with some frequency and I’ve noticed that she picks up the tab often, too often, in my opinion. Clearly she’s buying their love-right, Dr. Phil? Possibly had acne during the adolescence terrible; she still sees a dermatologist once in a while, though the bills are low, as if she’s just debating dermabrasion (completely unnecessary from what I’ve seen) or checking to make sure the zits aren’t returning like ninjas in the night.

Then, after the three rounds of Cosmopolitans with the gals, or a visit to a fit-and-start health club, it’s home to phone calls, the ubiquitous computer and basic, not premium, cable. (I enjoy tracking her viewing habits; her show selections suggest extreme loyalty; she changed networks when Seinfeld did, and she blew off two dates to spend the night with Jack Bauer.)