'You got to make him take you to his stash, Albert. That's the only deal you get. Bobby goes down, you walk. Otherwise, your next high is going to be on nutmeg and coffee. Is it true that stuff can give you a hard-on like a chunk of radiator pipe?'

Albert trembles like a dog trying to pass broken glass; Albert vomits in his lap; Albert makes the plainclothes turn away in disgust.

What's it all worth?

You've got me.

The people at the top usually skate. They buy defense attorneys who used to be prosecutors for the U.S. Justice Department. A million-dollar bond is simply factored into the overhead.

Albert goes to jail, or into a diversion program, or into the graveyard. And nobody, except Albert, particularly cares which one, since Albert doesn't even qualify as a footnote.

In an adjoining room Lucinda and I questioned seven individuals-five of them black, two white-about the vigilante. But these were people who long ago had accepted the sleepy embrace of the succubus or incubus that had insinuated itself into their lives through a tied-off, swollen vein. Their concept of mortality did not extend past the next five minutes of their day. They shot up with one another's syringes, used the public health clinic as a temporary means to knock their venereal diseases into remission, looked upon AIDS as just another way of dying, and daily accepted the knowledge that a vengeful supplier could give them a hot shot that would transform their hearts into kettledrums.

Their beef was with the narcs. Their angst was centered on their own metabolism and the fact that they were about to rat out their friends. Why bargain with a couple of homicide investigators who could offer them nothing? They turned to stone.

Then one of those terrible moments happened, the kind that you dream about, that you hope will never occur in your career, that will always somehow be the misfortune of someone else. Later, you'll attribute it to bad judgment, callousness, inhumanity, bad luck, or simple stupidity, like a safety-minded fool righteously padlocking fire exits, but it remains forever as the moment that left you with the mark of Cain.

The plainclothes who had been interrogating Albert decided to tighten and tamp down the dials a little more and whipped Albert repeatedly across his nappy head with a fedora, yelling at him simultaneously, until another cop stopped it and walked him outside for a cigarette. When they came back in, the plainclothes's face was still flushed and his armpits were.gray with sweat. The thermostat switch was broken, and the room was hot and dry with the electric heat from the wall panels. The plainclothes ripped off his tie, kneaded the thick folds in the back of his neck, then hung his shoulder holster on the back of a wood chair.

Albert was shirtless, his lap soiled with vomit, his face wringing wet. His shoulders trembled, and his teeth clicked in his mouth. He begged to go to the toilet.

The plainclothes walked him into the bathroom, unlocked one cuff, then snipped it on a water pipe and closed the door.

Albert was strung out, delusional, popping loose seam and joint. His body was foul with its own fluids; his pitiful attempt at integrity had been robbed from him; his new identity was that of snitch and street rat. With luck he'd be out of town before his friend Bobby made bail.

But Albert was jail-wise and had been underestimated.

He feverishly lathered his wrist with soap and pulled his thin hand through the cuff like it was bread dough. The plainclothes stared with disbelief as Albert came through the bathroom door and tore the.38 out of the shoulder holster that hung on the chair back, his hand shaking, his eyes blood-flecked and bulging with fear, sweat streaming down his chest.

The plainclothes's face looked like a large, round, white clock that had run out of time.

'Put it down, Albert!' Lucinda shouted, pointing her nickel-plated.357 Magnum straight out with both hands from the doorway.

The plainclothes's chest was heaving; he clutched at his left breast, and his breath rose from his throat like bubbles bursting from an underwater air hose. Lucinda's feet were spread, her midriff winking above her Clorox-faded Levi's. Albert's eyes were half-dollars, his clenched right hand trembling as though it were painted with electricity.

'You don't want to do this, Albert,' she said, fitted her thumb over the knurled spur of the hammer, and cocked it back. The notched grooves and the cylinder locked into place with a sound like a dry stick snapping. 'We can all walk out of this. You'll go downtown. Nobody'll hurt you. I give you my word. Lower the gun, Albert… Wait… Don't do it, don't let those thoughts get in your head… Albert!'

But it was too late. A facsimile of a man, with the soft bones of a child and muscles like jelly, with lint in his navel and a snake feeding at his heart, was imploding inside and looking for his executioner. He gripped the pistol with both hands, squeezed his eyes shut, turned toward Lucinda, and lowered his head between his extended arms as he tightened his finger inside the trigger housing.

She fired only once. The round caught him in the crown of the skull and knocked him back against the wall as though he had been struck by an automobile.

The air was bitter with the smell of gunpowder, dry heat, and a hint of nicotine and copulation in the bed clothing. My ears were ringing from the explosion, then I saw the plainclothes pointing at the red horsetails on the wallpaper while he giggled and wheezed uncontrollably, his left hand clawing at his collar as though it were a garrote about his neck.

Three hours later, after the paperwork, the questions, the suspension from active duty, the surrender of her weapon to Nate Baxter, I drove her home. Or almost home.

'Stop at the corner,' she said.

'What for?'

'I want a drink.'

'Bad day to feed the dragon,' I said.

'Drop me off and I can walk.'

'Lucinda, this is what happens. Tonight, you'll finally fall asleep. You'll have troubling dreams, but not exactly about the shooting. It's like your soul has a headache and can't allow itself to remember something. Then you'll wake up in the morning, and for a few moments it'll all be gone. Then, boom, it'll wash over you like the sun just died in the sky. But each day it gets better, and eventually you come to understand there's no way it could have worked out differently.'

Her eyes had the unnatural sheen of an exhausted person who just bit into some black speed.

'Are you coming in or not?' she said when I pulled to the curb in front of an old wood-front bar with a colonnade on Magazine.

'I guess not.'

'See you around, sport,' she said as she slammed the door and walked into the bar, the tip of a white handkerchief sticking out of the back pocket of her Levi's, her bare ankles chafing against the tops of her dusty tennis shoes.

Bad situation in which to leave a distraught lady, I thought, and followed her inside.

It was dark and cool inside and smelled of the green sawdust on the floor and a caldron of shrimp the black bartender was boiling on a gas stove behind the counter. I used a pay phone by the empty pool table to call home. It was the second time I had called that afternoon and gotten no answer. I left another message.

Lucinda drank a whiskey sour in two swallows. Her eyes widened, then she let out her breath slowly, almost erotically, and ordered another.

'Join me?' she asked.

'No thanks.'

She drank from the glass.

'How many times has it happened to you?' she said.

'Who cares?'

'I don't know if I can go back out there again.'

'When they deal the play and refuse the alternatives, you shut down their game.'

'How many times did you do it? Can't you answer a simple question?' she said.