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disagreement under a quick tide of jokes and gossip, Guy took Rosemary away soon after, at a few minutes past twelve-thirty.
    The night was mild and balmy and they walked; and as they approached the Bramford’s blackened mass they saw on the sidewalk before it a group of twenty or so people gathered in a semicircle at the side of a parked car. Two police cars waited double-parked, their roof lights spinning red.
    Rosemary and Guy walked faster, hand in hand, their senses sharpening. Cars on the avenue slowed questioningly; windows scraped open in the Bramford and heads looked out beside gargoyles’ heads. The night doorman Toby came from the house with a tan blanket that a policeman turned to take from him.
    The roof of the car, a Volkswagen, was crumpled to the side; the windshield was crazed with a million fractures. “Dead,” someone said, and someone else said, “I look up and I think it’s some kind of a big bird zooming down, like an eagle or something.”
    Rosemary and Guy stood on tiptoes, craned over people’s shoulders. “Get back now, will you?” a policeman at the center said. The shoulders separated, a sport-shirted back moved away. On the sidewalk Terry lay, watching the sky with one eye, half of her face gone to red pulp. Tan blanket flipped over her. Settling, it reddened in one place and then another.
    Rosemary wheeled, eyes shut, right hand making an automatic cross. She kept her mouth tightly closed, afraid she might vomit.
    Guy winced and drew air in under his teeth. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, and groaned. “Oh my God.”
    A policeman said, “Get back, will you?”
    “We know her,” Guy said.
    Another policeman turned and said, “What’s her name?”
    “Terry.”
    “Terry what?” He was forty or so and sweating. His eyes were blue and beautiful, with thick black lashes.
    Guy said, “Ro? What was her name? Terry what?”
    Rosemary opened her eyes and swallowed. “I don’t remember,” she said. “Italian, with a G. A long name. She made a joke about spelling it. Not being able to.”
    Guy said to the blue-eyed policeman, “She was staying with people named Castevet, in apartment seven A.”
    “We’ve got that already,” the policeman said.
    Another policeman came up, holding a sheet of pale yellow notepaper. Mr. Micklas was behind him, tight-mouthed, in a raincoat over striped pajamas. “Short and sweet,” the policeman said to the blue-eyed one, and handed him the yellow paper. “She stuck it to the window sill with a Band-Aid so it wouldn’t blow away.”
    “Anybody there?”
    The other shook his head.
    The blue-eyed policeman read what was written on the sheet of paper, sucking thoughtfully at his front teeth. “Theresa Gionoffrio,” he said. He pronounced it as an Italian would. Rosemary nodded.
    Guy said, “Wednesday night you wouldn’t have guessed she had a sad thought in her mind.”
    “Nothing but sad thoughts,” the policeman said, opening his pad holder. He laid the paper inside it and closed the holder with a width of yellow sticking out.
    “Did you know her?” Mr. Micklas asked Rosemary.
    “Only slightly,” she said.
    “Oh, of course,” Mr. Micklas said; “you’re on seven too.”
    Guy said to Rosemary, “Come on, honey, let’s go upstairs.”
    The policeman said, “Do you have any idea where we can find these people Castevet?”
    “No, none at all,” Guy said. “We’ve never even met them.”
    “They’re usually at home now,” Rosemary said. “We hear them through the wall. Our bedroom is next to theirs.”
    Guy put his hand on Rosemary’s back. “Come on, hon,” he said. They nodded to the policeman and Mr. Micklas, and started toward the house.
    “Here they come now,” Mr. Micklas said. Rosemary and Guy stopped and turned. Coming from downtown, as they themselves had come, were a tall, broad, white-haired woman and a tall, thin, shuffling man. “The Castevets?” Rosemary asked. Mr. Micklas nodded.
    Mrs. Castevet was wrapped in