The hell with it! Not his problem anymore.

Beam was getting accustomed to not thinking about his past, but it still scared the hell out of him to contemplate his future. His future alone.

He still didn’t mind stepping on toes. And he didn’t feel like being involved again with the NYPD.

He knew Andy da Vinci was going to ask him to do both those things.

Beam’s eyes narrowed at the invasive morning light beyond the window. There was da Vinci, picking his way like a nifty broken-field runner through the stalled traffic before the signal at the intersection changed, engines roared, horns blared, and he might be run down and over and dragged. He was grinning, obviously relishing the challenge.

Dumb! Beam thought, but he liked da Vinci. It was just that needlessly risking a life wasn’t Beam’s game.

“Topper?”

Ella was standing next to his booth, holding the round glass coffee pot, staring down at him with a questioning look on her long, bovine features.

“Sure,” Beam said.

Horns honked wildly outside. Da Vinci hadn’t quite made it all the way across and was really dancing now, his moves a graceful series of passes within inches of bumpers and fenders. He was still grinning, now and then waving, or flipping off an irate driver.

“Look at that idiot,” Ella said, staring out the window as she poured coffee into Beam’s cup. “He’s gonna get himself killed.”

“Bet not.”

“You’re on.”

“I know him,” Beam said. “He’s on his way here. Pour him a cup of coffee. I know he’ll want one.”

“You don’t mind,” Ella said, “I’ll wait till I know it’s necessary.”

And she did. Da Vinci was safely up on the sidewalk before she brought another cup from the nearby counter and poured.

“Mine?” da Vinci asked, pointing to the steaming cup, when he’d pushed inside the diner and slid into the booth to sit across from Beam. There were perspiration stains beneath the armpits of his otherwise pristine white shirt. It was going to be a hot summer.

“Yours. And on me.”

Da Vinci flashed his handsome grin and shook hands with Beam. “It’s good to see you again, Cap.”

“No longer a captain,” Beam said.

“Hard not to think of you that way.”

“The waitress and I had a bet about whether you’d make it across the street.”

“Ah! And you had faith in me.”

“I knew you,” Beam said. “And by the way, I still think of you as Deputy Chief da Vinci.”

“Good.”

Da Vinci skipped cream but dumped three heaping tablespoons of sugar into the cup. Still living dangerously.

“Had breakfast?” Beam asked.

“Naw. Never eat it. My stomach doesn’t like it. What I came here for’s to talk.”

“My stomach doesn’t like that,” Beam said.

Da Vinci sampled his coffee and smiled. He was handsome enough to be an actor, dark wavy hair, slightly turned up nose, strong chin and clear gray eyes. Young Tony Curtis, Beam thought.

Da Vinci was in fact the youngest deputy chief ever in the NYPD. He was clever and shamelessly ambitious, but at least he was up front about it. Despite his sometimes brash and manipulating manner, Beam liked him. Da Vinci had proven himself incorruptible and dedicated, two virtues Beam admired. It was also rumored that eight years ago da Vinci, as a young motorcycle cop, planted a “throw down” gun after pursuing and shooting to death a Mafia enforcer without giving him a chance to surrender. The thug had deliberately run down and killed an assistant DA’s six-year-old daughter. A review board had, without winking, cleared da Vinci of any wrongdoing. That was fine with Beam.

“Better talk before you run out of coffee,” Beam said.

“Doesn’t matter. The waitress will top off my cup.”

“Not if she thinks I want you to leave.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Beam. Women love me, with or without coffee. I give her the word and she might chase you away.”

“Doesn’t a deputy chief have more important things to do than yak with an old retiree in a diner?”

“That’s for damn sure. Which means the old retiree oughta be wondering what it’s all about.”

“Give my friend some more coffee,” Beam said, as Ella passed close by the booth with her pot.

Da Vinci sat silently and watched as his cup was topped off. He didn’t seem at all out of breath from playing dodge with the traffic. Must still be in pretty good shape.

“Two words,” da Vinci said, when Ella had left. “Serial killer.”

“Not my favorite words.”

“But nobody was ever better at getting inside their sick minds. Especially the vigilante types who think they’re righting some terrible wrong.”

Beam knew what da Vinci was talking about. Four years ago Beam had hunted down and nailed Reverend Death, the city’s last vigilante serial killer, who had been murdering porn shop owners whose establishments the city seemed unable to shut down.

“We got one who might be cut from that same sanctimonious cloth,” da Vinci said. Two days ago a woman named Lois Banner was shot and killed in her fabric warehouse. Two weeks before that a tax attorney named B. Eder was whacked.”

“What’s the B stand for?”

“Nothing. Like with Harry S. Truman.”

“Nobody ever called Truman ‘S.’”

“Doesn’t matter. Two weeks before B. Eder, an exercise equipment salesman named Harry Meyers was murdered.” Da Vinci sipped coffee and looked at Beam. “All of the victims were shot.”

“With the same gun?”

“No doubt about it. A serial killer. The media hasn’t tumbled to it yet.”

“They will soon. The NYPD does nothing better than leak information.”

“So it won’t be long before they leak the letter J.”

“Is it something like Truman’s S and the victim’s B?”

“No, we think it stands for something. At the scene of each murder was a capital letter J. Lois Banner’s employees discovered her body under some kind of fabric, and a red cloth J had been cut out and placed on the corpse.”

“All the Js cut from red cloth?”

“No. But they’re all red. The attorney had red marking pen on his forehead. The exercise salesman had a red J torn out of a magazine ad tucked in his breast pocket.”

“But you don’t know what the Js stand for?”

“We’re not sure. But Eder was Jewish. Meyers wasn’t, but his name could have suggested in the mind of the killer that he might have been. Same way Banner, though her real name was Banion.”

“Anti-Semitism. Nasty.”

“If that’s what’s going on. Some kinda religious or political nut.” Da Vinci stared at his coffee cup, as if he didn’t like its contents, then placed the cup on its saucer and stared across the table at Beam. “I don’t really give a frig about the why of it, Beam. I just want the bastard stopped.”

“Why not give this knotty problem to a working homicide detective instead of one who’s happily retired?”

“You’re not happily retired. And you happen to be the best at this kind of investigation. And I’m gonna be honest with you. You break this case, as I know you will, and I’ll get credit for putting you on the scent. I could make chief.”

“Being nakedly ambitious becomes you.”

“I also think you’re a certain kind of cop, Beam.”

“The kind you are?”

“Yeah, only much more so. What I think of your kind of cop is that they’re Old Testament cops. Now and again, they play God. You got a reputation for bending the rules, even the law, in the interest of seeing justice done. And as you’re already retired and more or less don’t give a shit, you’ll bend whatever you have to in order to nail this letter J scumbag.”

Beam had to smile. “I’m more used to being called a dinosaur than God.”

Da Vinci shrugged. “God is a dinosaur.”

Beam thought he better not ask what da Vinci meant by that. Didn’t want lightning to strike the booth.

“You do this thing, Beam, and you’ll be on a work-for-hire basis, have a captain’s status, and all the resources of the NYPD at your disposal. And I’ll assign you a team of detectives.”