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know?”
    I closed the door. “Fate?”
    “Yeah. I was just doing the biyearly here.”
    “The homicide report?”
    “Right. It’s—what’s wrong with your leg?”
    “I had a little accident.”
    “The gang thing?”
    “No. Nothing from them or anybody else about that.”
    “Good.” He leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers behind his neck. “Just as soon not have you any more in the statistics than you already are.”
    “How are things looking?”
    “Not so bad, actually. A lot of cities, they had a banner year last time ‘round, but we’ve been dropping since we hit the record with one-fifty in ‘ninety.”
    “Nice to know it’s safer out there.”
    “It isn’t.”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “It isn’t any safer. Used to be, the perps used sawed-off shotguns, then went to .380 automatics. Now the nine mil’s the weapon of choice, account of the firepower. Fifteen, even eighteen rounds some of them, and you can pick one up for a hundred on the street. Shit, Uzi’ll go for only twice that, and I was talking to a fed from ATF said they found a guy in Hyde Park with six MP-5’s in his car trunk.”
    “That’s the German thing?”
    “Heckler & Koch. Light as a pistol, accurate as a rifle, and it’ll fire thirty slugs in two seconds flat.”
    Christ. “How come the homicide statistics aren’t going up, then?”
    “We’re getting better at handling the victims. More cops on the scene faster, more EMT’s getting the wounded to hospitals, better trauma units once they get there. Hell, Cuddy, Boston ’s geographically small and our medical care’s the best there is.”
    Glad to hear it. “I don’t want to keep you from the paperwork too long.”
    “Meaning you want something.”
    “Just a little cooperation and understanding.”
    “Let’s hear about the understanding part first.”
    “I’ve been hired on a missing-person case that might be tied to an open homicide.”
    “Which one?”
    “Abraham Rivkind, the furniture guy got killed about three weeks ago.”
    “Cross drew that one.”
    “I thought she was on your squad?”
    “So did I. Then the commissioner, he noticed he had exactly two so-called minorities in Homicide, so he decided it’d look better if the one black male and the one white female weren’t both crowding the same three-person team. We reassigned folks, and with her already being a sergeant and all, Cross got to be head of her own squad.”
    Cross had a first name, “Bonnie,” but I’d never heard him call her other than by the last. “She around?” Murphy’s eyes went to slits. “I’m guessing that brings us to the cooperation part.”
    “Lieutenant, I don’t know if the killing and the missing person are related, but I figure the best way for me not to step on your toes is to find out what you’ve got and stay away from what you’re watching.”
    “Cuddy, how come it always sounds so nice coming from you in the beginning and blows up by the time you work your way round to the end?”
    “Kismet?”
    A grunt. “Best you talk to Cross, then. Be her toes you’d be stepping on, and I don’t much like your chances for a life long and happy, you do.”

    “What?”
    “Nice to see you, too, Sergeant.”
    “Cuddy, what?”
    I sat in the chair beside her desk. On the desk were stacks of manila case folders and a box of assorted Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins. Behind the desk, Cross sat in a black, padded swivel chair with her elbows on the blotter. The elbows were even with her shoulders, which didn’t need any padding to fill out the camel’s hair blazer or the buttoned-down brown blouse underneath it. Her hair matched the blouse but was pulled behind her neck in a careless ponytail. She wore small pearl studs as earrings, no other jewelry except for a Timex on her left wrist, the face of the watch peeking at me as she reached for a powdered cinnamon and popped it into her mouth.
    Around the Munchkin, she said, “For the third time,