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and beer. He'd never said he loved her, or called her darling. He had enjoyed torturing her by telling her anybody who was her partner was guaranteed to die in a shootout since he ranked her the worst shot in the entire department. Jimmy didn't approve of ambition in women and went so far as to threaten not to marry her if she made sergeant. Lucky for her she'd broken up with him before his threat could be tested. In addition to all this, a five-days' growth of beard yielded a very sparse display on his face. Why she'd ever liked him in the first place was now a mystery to her.
    In comparison, Mike encouraged her to enjoy life, to advance in her career as far as she could, and called her darling in Spanish in front of everybody whenever he felt like it. His thick and luxuriant mustache was long enough to skirmish with his top lip and often quivered with emotion, causing palpitations in her stomach. During moments of deep concentration he sucked pensively on the ends of it. After April had started working with him, she learned that he was also the best detective she knew.
    "You have a problem with my being here?" he asked now.
    "Uh-uh. It's just your day off ... so I wondered who called you," she said.
    "You're in my thoughts, so you must have," he murmured. That sounded good to him so he smiled. This was going to be a really big case, after all, and no one liked being left out of big cases. "Oh, come on, you're glad to see me, admit it."
    She shook her head, didn't want to.
    "Fine, don't admit it," he said cheerfully, with every appearance of confidence in his ability to win all his battles with her in the end.
    "I could handle this myself," April insisted.
    Mike hummed some Spanish love song. At her level of mastery of the Spanish language April was able to make out the words somos novios, which mean "we are boyfriend/girlfriend. We are lovers." She bit back a smart remark. They were not lovers. They were not engaged. They were hardly even speaking to each other. Then he seemed to remember the awful task in front of them and fell silent as he put the car in gear and pulled out without spinning the tires.

4
T he Park Century was twelve blocks north on Fifty-seventh Street. Mike and April headed up Eighth Avenue without speculating whether Frederick Douglass Liberty would be at home to receive them at four in the morning. Patrice Paul had told April that Mr. Liberty was out of town. The restaurant manager had been in tears, almost hysterical the whole time April questioned him. Over and over he had begged her to let him try to reach Liberty on his cellular phone and inform him of what had happened. He didn't want Liberty to hear about the tragedy on the news. Though it might have seemed a reasonable request, April could not let him contact Liberty. She needed to cover some ground about precipitating events. What had happened during the evening. How was the restaurant run. What were the relationships of the people involved. She did not give Patrice a single opportunity to be alone. Even now he was getting a ride home to Brooklyn in a squad car.
    April would not have let him make the call and give away any information under any circumstances. But in this case there was something worrying about the nature of the restaurant manager's extreme distress. April wondered why he was so eager to be the first one to reach his employer, as well as someone he called his friend, with such devastating news. Informing relatives was the worst job anyone could have. April hated those moments more than any other in her job.
    But maybe Patrice Paul was glad Merrill Liberty was gone forever. April didn't have to remind herself that she had to be careful here. Really careful. The race issue made her uneasy. Sure, it was always there, and it always complicated everything. The chemistry of every case was affected by what sort of person was the primary detective managing it and what sort of people were the suspects. Class made a difference, as did the