kitchen in my bare feet. Jake was thoroughly engrossed in the preparation of what smelled like a divine
'Can't you wait until dinner?' he asked, swiveling to meet my lips with his.
'I'm starving. I didn't take much out of you. How about a squeeze?'
'I'm covered in clam juice,' he said, holding his arms out away from his side.
'I really don't care, dammit.' I lifted the silk shell of my suit over my head and started undressing in the kitchen. 'It's been a long week.'
'You must have kicked ass in court today. You're awfully frisky.'
'On the contrary, I barely got out with my case intact. I may not be in such a good mood when Peter Robelon finishes cross-examining my witness on Monday, so if you want some affection, this is the night to get it.' I was standing naked in the middle of the kitchen. 'Here, you can't get food stains on anything I'm wearing. How about it?'
'These aren't even oysters and look at the effect they have on you,' Jake said, putting down the knife and taking me in his arms.
We embraced and kissed each other for several minutes before I took Jake's hand and led him into the bedroom, where we slowly made love.
I almost succeeded at forcing the day's dark thoughts from my mind as I responded to his touch. Too many times in the past months I had allowed the sad business of my work to encroach on the private emotions so essential to our relationship, and it had made my time with Jake much more difficult than it needed to be.
I rolled onto my side and let him caress me, fitting in tightly against his body with my head on his outstretched arm. 'Did you hear any news tonight?' I asked.
'I haven't had the television on. I picked up the food at Grace's Marketplace and just started to cook. Why?'
'The little boy in my case is missing. The police are putting out his picture and description tonight. I just wondered how it played.'
Jake stroked my hair with his free hand. 'We'll have a nice, relaxed dinner, and then we can check out the local news at eleven. How come you're so calm about it?'
'Major Case has the assignment. Battaglia agrees I shouldn't be the one to work it. The kid's lawyer stopped by to see me after court. He's known Dulles since he was born, and he told Mike and me that he's a very resourceful boy. That he's run away many times before, when he lived upstate, and that he always comes back in a day or two.'
'Where does he go?' Jake asked.
Riding down in the elevator, Graham Hoyt had told Mike and me that Dulles usually showed up at a school friend's home before bedtime. When he was living with his elderly grandmother, he fantasized about being part of a real family. He'd settle on a classmate whose parents were warm and loving, and where there were other children in the household, sisters and brothers with whom to laugh and play and argue. I explained that to Jake.
'How long do I have until dinner's on the table?' I asked, slipping out of the bed.
'As long as you like. Everything's ready to go.'
I went into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub, filling it with scented crystals. When the steam had clouded the mirrors and the bubbles reached to the rim, I switched on the jets and climbed in for a relaxing soak. Jake appeared with two glasses of a chilled Corton-Charlemagne, and I reached out an arm from within the bubbles to sip it. He kneeled beside the tub, took the washcloth, and gently ran it across my neck and shoulders, while I described my day in court.
It was nine-thirty by the time we sat down at the dinner table, and eleven when we settled in to go to sleep. 'Want to see the news?' he asked me.
'Guess it's wiser if I don't. Mercer would have called me the minute Dulles showed up somewhere.'
I slept fitfully, thinking of the child and his whereabouts, and was out of bed by 6A.M. I let Jake sleep while I made the first pot of coffee, struggled with the
I kissed Jake good-bye, went downstairs, and hailed a taxi to take me to my instructor's West Side studio. For the next hour I lost myself in the discipline of the ballet warm-up and exercises. I concentrated on the movements: stretches and plies at the barre, floor exercises, and choreographed routines to classic Tchaikovsky.
As we changed clothes in the dressing room, my friends and I chatted about the past week's events. I declined an invitation to join two of them for a spontaneous shopping spree to fill in their fall wardrobes, and passed up an opportunity for brunch at an outdoor cafe on Madison Avenue. I didn't often envy them their daily routines, but when my plate was filled with people whose lives were disrupted by violence, my mind drifted to thoughts of what it would be like to be as unburdened by tragedy as most of them were.
Mike Chapman's department car, a beat-up old black Crown Vic, was double-parked in front of William's building when I came out shortly after ten. He was eating a fried egg sandwich on a hard roll and had an extra coffee container in the cup holder on the passenger side for me. 'Want half?'
'No, thanks. I ate before class.'
'But you must have worked up an appetite in there. Have some,' he said, extending his arm in front of my face.
I pushed him away. 'Hear anything about Dulles Tripping?'
'All quiet. Mercer says everyone's being very cooperative. Mrs. Wykoff, your buddy Hoyt, the school authorities. Everybody's optimistic. You know the agency records show he ran away more than a dozen times in the last two years?'
'It's a lot different to spend an overnight at a friend's house in a small town than it is to try and find your way around New York City when you've only lived here for a year, and you're just ten.'
'Hey, there are no signs of a kidnapping, and no reports at any hospitals of an injured child. So don't fill that twisted head of yours with evil thoughts,' Mike said. He was eating with one hand and steering the car uptown on Amsterdam Avenue with the other.
He parked at a hydrant near McQueen Ransome's tenement building. A uniformed cop had been sent by the precinct commander to meet Mike at the stoop and let us into the apartment. Half a dozen curious adolescents followed us up the steps and asked what we were doing at 'Miss Queenie's' place. I closed the door behind us and then opened a window to let some air into the musty rooms, which had been closed tight since her death.
The whole apartment was in disarray. I could see more here than the crime scene photographs had captured. 'Was this the way you found it, or is this a result of all the cops being in here?' I asked. Sometimes the investigators made more of a mess than the perps.
'This place was turned upside down by the killer. The landlord was going to give us another week before he boxed everything up and threw it out. The lady who did her banking thought there were a couple of nieces down in Georgia who might come close out the account-there's nothing to speak of in it-and take some of the furniture and the family photo albums.'
The small parlor inside the front door had a sofa, two armchairs, a television set, and an old-fashioned record player on a side table, with a stack of 33 RPMs next to it. Mike turned it on, placing a needle on the vinyl disk that must have been the last music Queenie heard.
'Edward Kennedy Ellington. The Duke,' said Mike. 'Only fitting for Queenie.'
The piece was called 'Night Creatures.' The distinctly American jazz sound filled the room and lightened the pall that the old woman's death cast over us.
The living room walls had a collection of photographs more sedate than that over Queenie's bed. Most of them featured Queenie. Several looked to be posed with family and friends.
'This must be her son,' I said to Mike. She was dressed in a light-colored suit, the slim skirt covering her calves, and a Mamie Eisenhower-style hat and handbag complementing the outfit. She had her arm around the boy's shoulder, and he looked even younger than Dulles Tripping. They were standing at the base of the Washington Monument.
'You think this kid is African-American?' Mike asked, looking at the fair-skinned child with the sandy blond
