“But gosh, Harry, I hope I don’t sound as if I’m suggesting that either one of them might have—”

“It’s just routine,” I told her. “One of them might remember something, or know things you don’t. Anymore?”

The only other one she could tag was an Arthur Leeds. She thought he was a musician and she gave me another Village address, on Jones Street this time. I told her to get some sleep.

Coffey had been checking the addresses in my directory when I repeated the names. “No women, huh?” Brannigan said.

“There wouldn’t be.”

“This Kline girl. She came home at eleven, was there all night until she called you?”

“For crying out loud, Nate—”

“Just asking. She’ll have to make a statement anyhow, this afternoon will be good enough. I’ll see her then.” He took the phone and dialed headquarters about something. I went into the bedroom and dug out a.38 Police Special and a shoulder holster to replace the empty Luger sheath. Dan followed me in.

“I got all the time in the world if you want anything,” he said quietly.

I’ll call you.”

“Be at the office. Don’t strain it, huh, fella?”

I stood there a minute after he went out. I took out Ethan J. Spragway’s card and looked at it. Spragway spelled backward was Yawgarps. I stuck the card in a drawer. The sour-faced plainclothesman from outside was just coming up when I went back out front.

“The wagon will be here any minute, Waterman,” Brannigan told him. “Stick around after it leaves. You’ll be called about relief. And take that MG when you go in. Give him the keys, will you, Harry?”

I tossed them over. Waterman dropped them. He bent to pick them up with the same sick-of-it-all expression that he probably had when he made love to his wife. Brannigan had turned to Coffey.

“All right,” he said, “Fannin and I will check out those three intimates, but first we’ll take a look around that Perry Street place, give it a run-through for address books, mail, all the rest. I want that Moss kid seen again, and I want his alibi authenticated. Pete’ll know pretty quick if there’s any local sheet on him. I also want to know if Bogardus is still telling the same story he told this morning. After that you can start checking the hotels up near where that MG was parked on Broadway. I want all of them for three blocks in every direction. A clerk just might remember Sabatini going out for smokes and the girl ducking out five minutes later. Maybe she said something, asked a question, looked scared. You can pick up a partner first, anybody who’s unassigned. If it looks like you’re going to have to waste a day waking up off-duty clerks call in for an extra team. Keep Pete posted on the desk every hour or so.” Coffey grunted in acknowledgment. Maybe in disgust, it was an ambiguous sort of sound. He was leaning against the wall near the door, sucking a flat toothpick.

“You got any questions or are you just learning to like it here?”

“Nuts,” Coffey said. He started for the door, threw Brannigan a salute which could just as easily have been translated into an obscene gesture as anything it was supposed to mean, and went out. The toothpick lay on the carpet where he’d been standing.

I looked at Brannigan. He was still working the unlighted cigar and he did not say anything.

“What the hell is all that?” I asked him. “You guys give him white mice to play with when he wants them, too?”

“Tell you later,” he muttered. “Let’s go, huh?”

I stood there a minute after he was gone, then I knelt next to the door and lifted the raincoat away. Woodsmoke would have had more color than her face. Waterman was watching me. I went downstairs.

The stenographer had taken one of the cars. Coffey was just pulling out in the second one and Brannigan was waiting at the third, one without insignia. “Counting Waterman it looks like three vehicles for four men,” I said when I got in. “Evidently the whole departments gone soft.”

Brannigan looked at me, made a face, then finally got rid of the decimated cigar. “Guys who came with Coffey and Pete have been checking out every apartment on this block for an hour and a half,” he said almost indifferently, “trying to rouse up somebody who might have had insomnia and been staring out a window when the deed was done. I’ve once in a while been known to give a legitimate P.I. his head, Harry, but I don’t particularly sit on my butt and read Ralph Waldo Emerson while I’m letting him run. Four other officers are out pulling hack drivers out of bed to see if any of them noticed that red MG on the streets last night, or any red MG, and where, and every patrolman who was on duty is being asked the same thing. We’ve already talked to everybody in your building, and it may also interest you to know that your office has been pulled apart and put back together again, just in case you might be working on something that could have tied in with this, or for that matter to see if you’d had any communication from the deceased lately which you might not want to mention. Also I used your phone to call and check the figures on that Troy heist. You can bill us on it, I suppose. You got anymore questions or are you beginning to like it here, too?”

“The Perry Street apartment’s in the block between Fourth and Bleecker,” I told him.

He’d had the car idling. He grinned at me, shifted and swung out. He went across to Second Avenue and straight down. He drove like most cops, treating the general run of working men’s cars like moving targets. Once or twice he gave me a nudge and I opened the siren for him. If I’d been in a better mood I would have watched the street corners for familiar faces to wave to.

“You were going to tell me about Coffey,” I said after a while. “What the hell, he walks around as if he knows where the department hides the bodies.”

He stopped the shenanigans with the car when I asked him that, punching his tongue into the side of his cheek for a minute before he answered. “Coffey’s all right,” he said then. “His wife and kid were killed in an auto smash up near Poughkeepsie about two months ago. Son of a bitch driving the other car was drunk as a calf and walked away without a bruise. They booked him on vehicular manslaughter but I don’t suppose that helps Coffey much.”

“He’s going to work it off, you think?”

“Either that or he’ll walk in on some trigger-happy junkie one afternoon and not get his own gun out in time, and who’s going to know whether he was really trying or not? I talked it over with the day chief. At least he still gets things done. He’s thorough.”

“He would be,” I said meaninglessly. I sat there remembering how I’d needled him.

We cruised through the Village slowly. Brannigan cut west on Charles Street, so that we could come back along Perry with the one-way traffic. “I want to roll by once,” he told me. “Perry’s left-side parking only, so the stake-out will be on my side. I’ll tell him to give us a horn signal if anything comes up while we’re inside.” He glanced at his watch. “Not that anything will, though. Sabatini’s had more than three hours since he slugged you. He was probably down here long before I had a chance to put anybody on it.”

“He’ll be back,” I said.

“You got reasons?”

“Two. He still doesn’t know she’s dead. Also he won’t be expecting badges. He thinks I’m in it alone. I’m the same kind of grafter he is.”

We had made the turn from Hudson Street and I could see Sally’s building up ahead. I pointed it out but Brannigan was more interested in locating his stake-out. He was moving on little more than half a horsepower. “Ought to be along in here. Yeah, the Ford. Joe Turner. Now what the silly hell’s he got his motor running for?”

We stopped next to the Ford. The detective named Turner was being busy with a day-old Journal but he had spotted us before we came alongside. He gave Brannigan a nod instead of a salute, showed me a sallow, pock-marked face I had seen in a squad room once or twice and was talking before Brannigan could say anything.