She looked at me contemptuously and snorted, "You're queer, aren't you?"

I said, "The thing is, it can't happen for us just now, Sondra. That's the truth. Not this afternoon. But don't despair—I'm bisexual."

She made a little-girl look. "Tonight then, baby? You said tonight. I heard you say tonight."

"Yes," I said. "Tonight."

"What time?"

"Eight. Around eight." I'd figure a way out.

She sat up, crossed her legs, and lit a pale green Gauloise. "All right then, Donald. I've learned to be patient. I know that men have their male things they must do. Holding sales conferences, splitting wood, jerking each other off in the shower—all that pigshit. While we women sit around watching the soaps and causing static on the police radios with our defective vibrators. But it's okay. We will survive. I can wait for the ERA. I can even wait until eight o'clock tonight—for you. Hunk." She blew me a kiss.

I remained standing and said, "Tonight's social, but now's business. Look, you really have to answer a few questions for me, Sondra. Like, why had Steve been so depressed, and whether or not Mike Truckman had anything to do with it Don't you understand why I have to know these things?"

She let herself relax—or tense up—into being Harold Snyder just a bit, and said, "Yes. I do. But I don't believe there's any connection between Steve getting killed and anything else that happened. I really don't, Donnie."

"Between what else that happened and Steve getting killed?"

She sat with her back stiff, the hand with the cigarette resting on the crossed knee, like Gloria Graham in The Big Heat. She said, "That part did have something to do with Mike. What Steve was freaked out about, I mean. Steve saw something. I saw it, too, darling. But, that's—there was no connection. No, I don't think so." She grimaced, remembering it.

I said, "I'm as eager as anyone in Albany to show that Mike had nothing to do with the killing. You can help me do that by telling me what you know. It'll be between us, Sondra. Just something to clear the air. If that's what needs to be done."

"No," she said, shaking her head, "if a woman isn't loyal, then what is she?" She gave me a Greer Garson look. God.

I said, "A life was taken. Another life could be taken. The life of a man."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm terribly sorry. You have your job to do, Donald. I understand. Now you must try to understand me. And you will in time. But—does this mean—?" She sat poised.

I wasn't about to get roughed up by this one. "No," I said. "I'll be here. How could I not? Eight o'clock, then."

She stood end walked over to me. One arm came up around the back of my neck, like Grace Kelly's arm around Cary Grant's neck in To Catch A Thief.

"Till tonight, then, darling."

"Till tonight."

Our tonsils met.

As I headed down Washington Avenue, I ran the standard list through my mind:

1. It's been a long day, and I'm worn out. I'm really very sorry.

2. I drank too much tonight, it'll never work.

3. I think I've got clap.

4. I'm too nervous—this is only my second time.

5. Oh, God, I just can't do this to my lover!

6. I'm into scat, what are you into?

At seven-thirty I'd phone Harold, pick from the list at random, ask for a rain check, and that would be that. Except I did have to have a talk with Harold. Maybe what she knew about Mike Truckman was unconnected to the Kleckner killing, but I was beginning to have a sickening feeling about Truckman's involvement in all of this, and I had to find out everything I could, as fast as I could. Maybe I'd look Harold up out at Trucky's and we could talk in a public place. Sure. I'd work it that way. Wednesday night. I relaxed.

I found the landlady for Steve Kleckner's Hudson Avenue apartment in her own first-floor-front quarters. She was a plump, middle-aged woman with blue eyes, a pretty mouth, and

a small white goatee. I introduced myself as Lieutenant Ronald Firbank, an associate of Sergeant Bowman's, and she agreed to let me into Kleckner's basement apartment. She said his rent had been paid through the end of the week and that she was waiting for his relatives from Rensselaer County to pick up his belongings so she could clean the place up before the new tenant arrived on Monday. The apartment, she said, was as it had been on the night of the murder, "except for what those other policemens took away."

The woman led me outside the turn-of-the-century three-story brick building and into a narrow alleyway just off the street. We went down three cement steps into an alcove, and she unlocked the old wooden door with a skeleton key. A second door, leading from a bare passageway into the apartment itself, was opened with a key fitting into a newer Yale lock. She said, I'm

not gone in there no more till I hafta," and left me alone.

The living room had an old greenish rug over the concrete floor, a thirties-style brown velveteen overstuffed couch, two easy chairs, a black and white Philco TV resting on a vinyl-covered hassock, a large expensive Technics sound system on a wooden table, and about a thousand records, all disco, on big metal shelves against a wall. The room had been fairly recently painted a pale mauve. Dim light came from two windows that began at ground level halfway up the wall facing the alleyway.

A doorway to the right led into a tiny, windowless kitchen. The refrigerator contained a can of V-8 and a half-dozen eggs, nothing more. I checked the counter drawers and found some five-and-dime silverware. The one sharp knife was an ivory-colored, plastic-handled paring knife.

I went through a second doorway at the back of the living room and entered the small bedroom. A double bed sat in the corner, its veneer headboard against the rear wall, its left side next to a wall with a ground-level window. The bedding had been removed and I could see the big dark blotch on the mattress. I crawled onto the bed, raised the yellowing window shade, and lifted the sash; its weights clanged down inside their casing and the sash went up easily. I breathed in the fresh air from the alleyway. I groped around between the bed and the wall and pulled up the adjustable window screen that probably would have been in use on the night of the killing.

Access to the bathroom was through a door on the bedroom's right wall. I looked inside, then went back to the living room, took Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell" from the record shelves and placed it on the turntable. I waited for the amplifier to warm up, then played the record at high volume. A second set of speakers fed the sound into the bedroom.

I went back to the bathroom, closed the door securely, turned on the shower in the metal stall, and stuck my head inside. I stayed out of the direct line of spray but still got a wet face from the ricochet. I listened. I could hear an occasional bass note and, just barely, a distant thump-thump-thump. But I had to work at it. Mass carnage could have taken place in the bedroom outside and I might or might not have heard it.

I shut off the shower, dried my face with a towel on the rack by the little sink, then went out to stop the music.

The landlady was standing in the doorway. "That stuff gives me a headache," she said. "The new guy, I gottim from the deaf school. I figger, they can't hear, they won't play no loud music. I hadda do it, see. That stuff gives me a headache."

Back at the office, I called Ned Bowman. I said, "You've got the murder weapon. What kind of a knife was it? The papers just said 'kitchen.'"