Meteorologist.
'I think we should suppress the Note,' Di Lorenzo said.
As news director, Avery Knowles felt the Note was indisputably newsworthy. But he wasn't the program director, so he listened.
'The Note specifically says Honey wasn't the target . . .'
'Thank God,' Jessica said.
She was a very religious person. She almost crossed herself.
'. . . which is nice for Honey, but not so good for us,' Di Lorenzo said.
'Who was in that car with you, anyway?' Millie asked.
'A friend of mine,' Honey said.
'What friend?' Di Lorenzo asked.
'A detective I know.'
'A police detective?'
'Yes.'
'That makes it even worse.'
'How so?' Avery asked.
'If he's a detective, he'll be trying to find out who did the shooting.'
'So?'
'So that's our job. That's the job of Channel Four News. Find the demented individual who decided Honey Blair was a prime target for . . .'
'But I'm . . .'
'. . . extermination.'
'. . . not He says as much in his note. He didn't even know I was in the car. Cotton was the target.'
'Cotton?'
'Cotton Hawes. The detective who was with me.'
'Is that his name? Cotton?'
'Yes. Cotton Hawes.'
She said this somewhat defensively. She didn't want to get into a brawl with Di Lorenzo because he was, after all, the program director, whereas she was but a mere roving reporter, though not quite so mere anymore, not after Friday's shooting had granted her America's seemingly obligatory fifteen minutes of fame. But shouldn't they go on the air to tell their viewers that she hadn't been the intended target at all, her fame had been ill- earned, the true focus of the attack was . . .
'Cotton Hawes,' Di Lorenzo said, shaking his head in disbelief. 'An insignificant little nobody.'
Honey wanted to say that at six feet two inches, Cotton wasn't what anyone might consider 'little.' Not
anywhere, as a matter of fact. Nor was he exactly a 'nobody'; he was, in fact, the Detective / Second Grade who'd recently helped crack the Tamar Valparaiso kidnapping case. Nor was he 'insignificant,' either. He was, in fact, well on the way to becoming what Honey considered the 'significant other' in her life. But she didn't mention any of this to Di Lorenzo because she was beginning to catch his drift and beginning to understand what his approach could mean to her career.
'What we've got here,' Di Lorenzo said, 'is someone shooting at one of our star reporters
'But he wasn't,' Millie said. 'His note . . .'
'Nobody's seen the Note but us,' Di Lorenzo said.
'I'd have to show it to Cotton,' Honey said.
'Why?'
'Because someone's trying to kill him, for Christ's sake!'
This time, Jessica actually did cross herself.
'You said he's a detective, didn't you?' Di Lorenzo asked.
'Yes, but. . .'
'So I'm assuming he knows how to take care of himself. The point is, for reasons as yet unknown to any of us, someone shot at your limo this past Friday morning. It's not our job to find this person, whoever he . . .'
You said it was,' Avery reminded him. 'Our job.'
'No. Our job is to keep this story alive. The longer we keep it alive, the longer the Great Unwashed will tune in to Channel Four at six and eleven every night. I don't care if we never find him. The point is, somewhere out there . ..'
Where did I hear that line before? Honey wondered.
'Somewhere out there,' Di Lorenzo repeated, pointing to the seventh-floor windows and the magnificent view of the skyline beyond, 'there's a killer intent on slaying
our own Honey Blair. Let's not let anyone forget that.'
He'd already forgotten the Note that said Honey wasn't the target at all.
THE LAST TIME he'd followed a woman he loved was when he was still married to Augusta. Top fashion model, should have known better than to marry her, a mere cop, should have known it would turn out the way it finally did. He hadn't felt good about following her, and he didn't feel good following Sharyn now.
He had been waiting across the street from her office on Ainsley Avenue since a quarter to five. Her usual routine was to subway over to Rankin Plaza and the Deputy Chief Surgeon's office there, where she'd stay till noon, break for lunch in Majesta, and then bus back to the city and uptown to her private practice. Deputy Chief Surgeon Sharyn Cooke in the morning, Dr. Sharyn Cooke, internist, in the afternoon. He knew he was living with a Deputy Inspector whereas he was a mere Detective/Third. This didn't matter; he loved her. He was white and she was black. This didn't matter, either; he loved her.
What mattered . . .
He'd found Augusta in bed with another man.
Almost killed the son of a bitch.
His eyes had met Augusta's.
Their eyes had said everything there was to say, and all there was to say was nothing.
Across the street, Sharyn was coming out of her office.
He turned away, still watching her in the reflecting plate-glass window of a pharmacy, a trained cop. When she started away from the building, stepping out with that quick, proud stride of hers, he turned and began
trailing her, still on the other side of the street, a hat hiding his telltale blond hair. Black and blond. A doctor and a cop. Should he have known better this time, too?
She swung into a Starbucks up the street, came out five minutes later, carrying a cardboard container. Sipping at the coffee, she strolled along almost jauntily, enjoying the mild weather, walking right past the bus stop where she could have caught a bus that would have taken her crosstown to his apartment. Tonight was his place again; tomorrow night would be hers. They alternated haphazardly; they were in love. Or so he devoutly wished.
The neighborhood in which Sharyn maintained her office had been gentrified ten years ago and was already sliding inexorably back into the morass of a full-time ghetto and slum. What had once been a pool parlor and was later transmogrified to a fitness center was now a seedy cuchifrito joint catering to the area's small Hispanic population, a minority here among the predominant blacks. A similar transformation-retransformation process had taken place when condemned tenements became sleek brick apartment buildings that were already crumbling into decrepitude. Drugs — flourishing when crack was all the rage, virtually vanquished when the Reverend Gabriel Foster launched his famously popular No Shit Now! campaign — were back on the street with a vengeance, the preferred controlled substance now being heroin, seems like old times, don't it, Gert?
In this stretch of all too sadly familiar black turf, blond Bert Kling followed the gorgeous black woman he adored, and hoped against hope that she was not hurrying to meet Dr. James Melvin Hudson.
But she was.
THE NAME OF the cafe was the Edge.
It was called this because it was on the very edge of Diamondback, in a sort of no-man's-land that separated the hood from the rest of the city. Jumping the season somewhat, the Edge had put tables out on the sidewalk, and as Sharyn approached, half a dozen patrons were sitting there in the quickly fading light, sipping coffees or teas, munching on cookies or cakes. One of them got to his feet, and walked toward her, hand
