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a neat search, leaving no marks of his passage; likewise, he figured Blaine to be a slob, scattering debris behind, leaving dirty pawprints in his wake. In reality, it was the other way around. When Roy Nevetski finished poring over the contents of a drawer, the floor at his feet was littered with discarded papers, while Carl Blaine inspected every item with care and then returned it to its original resting place, exactly as he had found it.
    “Just stay the hell out of our way,” Nevetski said irritably. “We’re going to pry into every crack and crevice in this fuckin‘ joint. We aren’t leaving until we find what we’re after.” He had a surprisingly hard voice, all low notes and rough edges and jarring metallic tones, like a piece of broken machinery. “So just step back.”
    “Actually,” Rebecca said, “now that Vastagliano’s dead, this is pretty much out of your hands.”
    Jack winced at her directness and all-too-familiar coolness.
    “It’s a case for Homicide now,” Rebecca said. “It’s not so much a matter for Narcotics any more.”
    “Haven’t you ever heard of inter-departmental cooperation, for Christ’s sake?” Nevetski demanded.
    “Haven’t you ever heard of common courtesy?” Rebecca asked.
    “Wait, wait, wait,” Jack said quickly, placatingly. “There’s room for all of us. Of course there is.”
    Rebecca shot a malevolent look at him.
    He pretended not to see it. He was very good at pretending not to see the looks she gave him. He’d had a lot of practice at it.
    To Nevetski, Rebecca said, “There’s no reason to leave the place like a pig sty.”
    “Vastagliano’s too dead to care,” Nevetski said.
    “You’re just making it harder for Jack and me when we have to go through all this stuff ourselves.”
    “Listen,” Nevetski said, “I’m in a hurry. Besides, when I run a search like this, there’s no fuckin‘ reason for anyone else to double-check me. I never miss anything.”
    “You’ll have to excuse Roy,” Carl Blaine said, borrowing Jack’s placating tone and gestures.
    “Like hell,” Nevetski said.
    “He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Blaine said.
    “Like hell,” Nevetski said.
    “He’s extraordinarily tense this morning,” Blaine said. In spite of his brutal face, his voice was soft, cultured, mellifluous. “Extraordinarily tense.”
    “From the way he’s acting,” Rebecca said, “I thought maybe it was his time of the month.”
    Nevetski glowered at her.
    There’s nothing so inspiring as police camaraderie, Jack thought.
    Blaine said, “It’s just that we were conducting a tight surveillance on Vastagliano when he was killed.”
    “Couldn’t have been too tight,” Rebecca said.
    “Happens to the best of us,” Jack said, wishing she’d shut up.
    “Somehow,” Blaine said, “the killer got past us, both going in and coming out. We didn’t get a glimpse of him.”
    “Doesn’t make any goddamned sense,” Nevetski said, and he slammed a desk drawer with savage force.
    “We saw the Parker woman come in here around twenty past seven,” Blaine said. “Fifteen minutes later, the first black-and-white pulled up. That was the first we knew anything about Vastagliano being snuffed. It was embarrassing. The captain won’t be easy on us.”
    “Hell, the old man’ll have our balls for Christmas decorations.”
    Blaine nodded agreement. “It’d help if we could find Vastagliano’s business records, turn up the names of his associates, customers, maybe collect enough evidence to make an important arrest.”
    “We might even wind up heroes,” Nevetski said, “although right now I’d settle for just getting my head above the shit line before I drown.”
    Rebecca’s face was lined with disapproval of Nevetski’s incessant use of obscenity.
    Jack prayed she wouldn’t chastise Nevetski for his foul mouth.
    She leaned against the wall beside what appeared to be (at least to Jack’s unschooled eye) an original Andrew Wyeth oil