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catch them . . ."
    ". . . we'll have two ganja-soaked goons who shot each other in the dark and ran like hell,"
    Carmaggio said, belching. He picked up a newspaper. " Vigilante Killer Strikes? Christ, where do these people get their ideas, the Sci-Fi Channel?"
    The other detective shrugged and moved his chin toward the TV set over the bar. The words were inaudible, but they both knew what the carefully-tousled reporter was saying. Mostly that nobody knew anything about the Warehouse Massacre.
    "And by now those two punks have probably decided that Martians are moving in on the crack trade."
    Jesus shrugged. They also both knew that there was nothing more unreliable than the eyewitness testimony of the untrained. Particularly if the witness had any time to think about what had happened; people could do things to their memories that Hollywood FX masters and film-editors could only dream about.
    "They might know something," Jesus pointed out gently.
    Henry smiled back. Getting old. Getting pessimistic. Had he ever been that bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? Not since I landed in Saigon, he decided. Mind you, that had its advantages. Even police work in New York couldn't be worse than the Cambodian border.
    He hoped.
    "Well, this case sure as shit isn't going to go away. No matter how much the Captain burns our ass.
    Not that he'll stop trying; too much pressure from on high."
    The policemen nodded somberly in unison and finished their beers. No doubt about that.
    "Maybe I should have kept that promise to God and become a priest," Carmaggio said.
    "?Qué es?"
    Henry shrugged.
    He'd gone out the door of the chopper fifty feet up, when the burst went ptank-ptank down the length of the tail boom and blew three holes through the man next to him. Out without knowing it happened, until he hit mud that was deep and clinging. He landed on his back, so he didn't drown like a lot of the grunts pinned down that day, but it ran into the corners of his mouth. Stunned like an ox in the slaughterhouse by the fall, spitting out a taste of oily rot, bleeding from a pressure-cut on his scalp where the helmet had struck. The reeds closed above him, the friendly reeds, four feet tall in the marsh. Hiding him from the gook snipers in the trees.
    The helicopter augured in a hundred yards away, men hanging from the skids. He could feel the heat of the explosion as the fuel went up, like sun on his face. When the .51-caliber machine guns opened up from the treeline, the slugs went by six inches from his face, and each cut reed had a perfect semicircle of glowing red at the severed end—just like touching a lighted cigarette to a piece of Kleenex.
    Intelligence thought there was one VC company in the woods. Fucked up, as usual. Two fucking battalions of NVA.
    Four hours until the fast-movers came in and laid snake and nape, two hours before the next wave coptered in. Victor Charlie moving through the reeds, singsong gook talk, shots and screams as they finished off the American wounded. Lying waiting for a coolie hat and a Kalashnikov to show over the reeds, waiting and praying and promising God . . .
    " De nada, " he said. "Let's get you back to your new wife."
    There were some things you just couldn't talk about to anyone who hadn't been there.

CHAPTER THREE
    "Detective, can you confirm that this is the work of the Warehouse Massacre killer?"
    The reporter thrust a microphone at Carmaggio's face. How would you like that up your ass? he thought, squinting into the lights. He knew that made him look like an Italian Neanderthal, but pretty wasn't his long suit.
    "We're investigating all possible leads," he said politely. The words were polite, at least. "You'll be informed as soon as we have definite information."
    So you can blab it to the perp and help him get away, he added to himself, cutting through the crowd outside the tenement with an expert shoulder-first motion. Fortunately, the uniforms were keeping civilians and the press out of the actual