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almost as much scuttlebutt as the TA--maybe more.
    "Unusual like what?" A shiver of fear traced its way up his spine.
    Corelli shrugged. "Can't say for sure. People getting lost."
    "Shit, man, what's you talkin' about?"
    "I'm talking about a woman who walked into the subway early Wednesday morning and never walked out, that's what I'm talking about," Corelli said hotly.
    "I don't know nothin' 'bout no womens." Fear gripped Willie's chest and he nervously twisted the gold cross at his neck back and forth between his fingers. "You sound kina weird, you know that, Corelli? People gettin' lost, indeed." Miguel had said Ted Slade got "lost" in the subway, too.
    "Being called weird by you, Willie, is a compliment." Corelli smiled easily, but he immediately grew serious again. "I want you to keep your eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary. Your boys are everywhere; they hear."
    "And what exactly do I tell them to look out for, Detective Corelli?"
    "If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you. Now, come on." He started toward the stairs.
    "You goin' somewhere?"
    "Coney Island. For the rest of the day, Willie, I'm your shadow."
    Willie shook his head and walked swiftly past Corelli to the stairs. "You do what you want, man, but I tell you one thing for positive: no way Willie Hoyte ever gonna have no white shadow." Despite himself, he smiled, then raced down the stairs.
    Louise Hill had mixed feelings about Labor Day. On the one hand, it was a holiday and she could take a day off from work without feeling guilty about not putting in a full eight hours in her textile-design studio. On the other hand, Labor Day meant school was starting and for the next nine months Lisa, her seven-year-old daughter, would be away most of the day. It was only with the prospect of Lisa's return to school that Louise realized how much she had come to depend on her company over the summer months.
    "Lisa, come on or we'll be late," Louise shouted down the long hallway that connected the living room to the bedrooms in the back of the apartment.
    "How can we be late for a street fair?" came a sweet, disembodied voice.
    "Never mind being smart, Miss Hill, just shake a leg." Louise frowned on mothers who bragged about their children, so she rarely confided to her few friends her belief that Lisa was an exceptionally gifted child. Why bother? It showed in everything the child did--in her vocabulary, in the infinite variety of her interests, even in her skill with that most rudimentary form of artistic expression: finger painting.
    Moments later, Lisa appeared dressed in painter's coveralls dyed a very vocal pink, a violet short-sleeved shirt, and red plastic sandals. She was every inch Louise's daughter--long black hair framed mischievous brown eyes, a pert nose, and a laughing mouth. When she reached the sunny living room she stopped, leaned up against a wall, and wriggled her foot provocatively at her mother.
    "What on earth are you doing?" It was a trap, but Louise asked, nevertheless.
    "You told me to shake a leg. Is this one okay?" Lisa's smile quickly became a convulsive belly laugh.
    "Lisa Hill, you are the silliest girl I know." Louise scooped her daughter into her arms and kissed her. "And I love you very much."
    "Me you too, Mommy," she replied in their special code.
    "Now, let's do get going before SoHo gets too crowded." At Lisa's insistence they were going to a street and crafts fair in the downtown section of New York that had grown from a refuge for artists to a fashionably arty and expensively bohemian extension of the Upper East Side. Louise hated the self-consciousness of SoHo and usually avoided it at all costs.
    "Will you buy me something, Mommy?" Lisa asked as they walked across Seventy-eighth Street toward Central Park West.
    "I'll treat you to a ride on the subway. How's that?"
    "Thanks a bunch," Lisa replied somberly.
    Louise smiled, but her daughter's reply was depressing; she'd phrased the answer just like Dave would have. He had a