The federal agent gripped his sharp chin in concentration. “That’s an interesting idea. Let’s face it. This guy isn’t exactly acting in a way that fits previous homicide models. But like Paul said, all we can do so far is guess.”

Then I stood up. Heads turned toward me.

“In that case, why don’t we slow down a little and consider the possibility that the shooter has a personal connection to the victims?” I said. “This guy is a cool customer. Not just angry, emotionally disturbed, out of control, like a lot of them.”

Paul Hanbury spoke up again. “Mass murderers often plan their crimes for years, Detective,” he said. “It’s what comforts them when they’re stonewalled or hurt. The old ‘Some day I’ll come back and then I’ll get the respect I deserve.’ That buildup of frustration can have surprising results.”

“Point taken,” I said, looking straight at Chief McGinnis. “Still, I’m not completely convinced yet that he’s a garden-variety serial. Shouldn’t he have contacted the press by now?”

“So you’re saying maybe he’s just acting like he’s nuts?” Beth said to me.

“If he’s just acting,” Detective Lavery joined in from across the table, “I’d like to be the first to nominate him for an Academy Award.”

“What I’m saying is, if this guy’s got a program, maybe that gives us something to go on,” I said. “Otherwise, what’s our alternative? Just blanket Manhattan with cops, and cross our fingers that one’s around when he goes off again?”

Then McGinnis himself stood up, glaring back at me.

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do, Bennett. It’s called being proactive. Please explain your plan, Agent Lamb.”

I sat back down as the FBI agent recommended that beefed-up patrols, and especially the Counter-Terror Unit, should be stationed at certain affluent areas – Rockefeller Center, the Harvard Club, the New York Athletic Club, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Tiffany’s.

Tiffany’s, I thought. Like they needed more security! And what about MoMA and half the restaurants in the Zagat guide? This was New York. There weren’t enough cops on the force to play goalie at every high-end institution.

“And let me remind everyone that this is confidential information,” McGinnis finished. His hard stare returned to my face and stayed there.

I rolled my eyes, thinking again about defending myself, but decided the hell with it. Instead, I got another cup of coffee, took a hot, sour sip, and stared out the conference room window at headquarters’ breathtaking view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Maybe the killer would do me a personal favor and go terrorize one of the other boroughs today.

Behind his Diesel sunglasses, the Teacher squinted into the bright sunlight that hit him as he cornered the sidewalk off Eighth Avenue and onto 42nd Street.

He was into his next chameleon act, now wearing a Piero Tucci lambskin jacket over a distressed graffiti T, Morphine jeans, and Lucchese stingray-skin boots – an outfit that looked casual, but people with eyes for that sort of thing would know it cost more than a lot of monthly paychecks. He hadn’t shaved, and his fashionable stubble gave him the look of a rock or film star.

He felt like bursting into laughter as he marched toward Times Square with the mass of clueless rat-racers. The fact that he was doing all this in broad daylight was so crazy, so bold. It was like being high on the greatest drug he could possibly imagine.

Finally – being able to unload a lifetime of pent-up venom! Ever since he was little, people had tried to sell him the big lie. How great everything was, the holy privilege of being alive. Worst of all was his god-awful, annoying mother. The world is a gift from God, life is precious, count your blessings, she’d always say. He’d loved her, of course, but Christ, sometimes he’d thought her gums would never stop flapping.

She’d been gone three years now, along with her witless philosophy degree from the University of Hallmark. Near the end, at her deathbed, he’d had to restrain himself from pushing aside the IV cords that entangled her like vines in a plastic rain forest, and asking her, If life was such a precious gift, then why the hell was He such a frigging Indian giver?

He hadn’t, of course. Despite her faults, she was his mother. She’d sacrificed for him. The least he could do was to let her die as deluded as she’d lived.

But now he no longer had to play charades. Let’s face it, he thought – in this insanely decadent modern mess called society, being negative and antisocial was downright proper. He wanted no part of the pointless mistake that humanity had become.

Take today, for example. Wednesday – matinee day for the Broadway musicals. All around him, idiots by the busload were milling mindlessly. In from their flyspeck towns and suburbs, clamoring to pay a hundred bucks a pop to watch even bigger idiots in Halloween costumes sing trite, sappy love songs. This was art? The best that life had to offer?

And it wasn’t just the hicks and suburbi-schmucks, by any stretch. Right around the corner on 40th, he’d passed the supposedly très hip, in-the-know New York Times reporters and photographers flocking into the paper’s new office building for another slave shift at the Ministry of Truth. Toe that Democratic party line, comrades, he felt like yelling at them. All hail, Big Brother, and even bigger liberal government.

He slowed his pace as he came to Madame Tussauds wax museum. Crowds of tourists were swarming around a life-sized Spider-Man doll in front of the building. He shook his head in disgust. He was passing through the land of the dead.

“Fifty bucks? For a Rolex?” he heard a southern voice cry out in the crowd. “Goddamn right you got yourself a deal!”

Ten feet ahead, a skinny young man with a shaved head was about to hand over his money to the West African sitting behind a folding table of fake watches.

The Teacher smiled. So many in his old unit had been from the South – good men from small towns who still believed in simple things like patriotism and manners and doing what a man had to do.

The Teacher didn’t intend to stop, but when he spotted the USMC bulldog tat on the kid’s forearm, he couldn’t help himself.

“Whoa there, buddy,” he said to the kid. “You really think you’re going to get a Rolex for fifty bucks?”

The young Marine gawked at him, half-suspicious and half-glad to be getting advice from someone who obviously knew this turf.

The Teacher slipped off his own Rolex Explorer and handed it to the kid, exchanging it for the bogus imitation.

“Feel how heavy that is?” he said. “That’s real. This one” – he flicked the fake into the con man’s chest – “is bullshit.” The heavyset African guy started to rise up angrily, but the Teacher stared him back down into his seat.

A sheepish grin split the young southerner’s face. “Lord, what an idiot I am,” he said. “Just two weeks back from a year in Iraq, you’d think I’d have learned something there.”

He handed back the Teacher’s Rolex. But instead of taking it, the Teacher just stared at it. He remembered buying it for himself when he was twenty-eight.

Screw it, he finally thought. You can’t take it with you.

“It’s yours,” the Teacher said. “Don’t worry, no strings attached.”

“Hu-uh?” the young man stammered. “Well, thanks, mister, but I couldn’t? -”

“Listen, jarhead, I was here when they knocked down the Towers. If everyone in this city wasn’t such a piece of crap, they’d celebrate you and every other soldier who lays his ass on the line in the Middle East, like the American heroes you are. Giving this dirty old town some payback is the least I can do for you.”

Look at him, he thought. Mr. Generous all of a sudden, acting like a Boy Scout.

He was tempted to upend the table of watches into the glowering con man’s lap, but now was the wrong time. Maybe he’d come back this way again, he thought as he strode on.