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painter’s dropcloth. He unrolled it beside the dissection table, used a scalpel to cut it to the right length, then unfolded it. Unstrapped the body. Pulled the catheter from the wrist, pulled the temperature probe. The temperature was down to seventy-nine. Cooling quickly.
    Bodies are hard to manipulate, and Bekker, with much experience, didn’t even try. He simply walked to the far side of the table and pushed. The body rolled out of the tray and fell on the plastic sheet with a meaty thwack. He walked back around the table, wrapped it, folded the extra length, tied it with clothesline. He took two extra loops at the waist, to use as a handle. He hauled the body through the living quarters and up the steps to the building’s reinforced back door, struggling with it. Even when you didn’t care if they were damaged, bodies were difficult. And Cortese had been hefty. He should go after smaller people . . . .
     
    The back door of the Lacey building was hidden from the street by a lean-to structure, designed as a car shelter.He popped open the door, chain still on, and checked the lean-to. In the past, bums had sheltered there. Nothing but the Volkswagen, undisturbed. He dragged the body outside, and, with some difficulty, stuffed it into the passenger seat. When it was in, he stepped to the edge of the lean-to and peeked toward the street. Nobody. He went back inside, closed the door, and hurried down the stairs.
    Bekker showered, shaved carefully, dressed, and put on his makeup. The process was intricate: The heavy base makeup covered his ruined face, but had to be carefully shaded into the clear skin at his temples without obvious lines. He took half an hour, working at it. He’d just finished when Mrs. Lacey rang again.
    “What?” Old hag  . . .
    “My hands,” she whined.
    “I’m coming now,” he said. Maybe he should kill her, he thought. He allowed himself to feel the pleasure of the idea. But then he’d have to explain her absence to Bridget Land. Though he could eliminate Land . . . But that led into a maze of unresolvable questions and dangers: Did Land have other friends, and did they know she came to see Edith Lacey? If Land disappeared, would others come looking for her?
    Killing her would be dangerous . . . . No, he would kill neither of them. Not yet. Lacey was the perfect front and Land was, so far, only a modest inconvenience. Bekker, thinking about them, got a bottle of pills from his bureau, shook one into the palm of his hand, went to the bottom of the stairs, flicked a light switch, and went up.
    The stairs emerged into the back part of the first floor, then curled and went up to the second and third floors. The first floor had once been a plumbing-parts supply business, but had been vacant for years. During the day, a murky green light filtered through from the street. Atnight, the grille-covered windows were simply dark panels on either side of the street door.
    The old woman huddled on the second floor, where she’d lived with her two cats since her husband’s death. The second floor reeked of the three of them: cooked carrots, dope, and cat piss. Bekker hated the cats. They knew what he was and watched him from shelves, their eyes glittering in the gloom, as the old woman huddled in front of the television, wrapped in her tie-dyed shawl.
    The third floor had once been part of the living quarters, when Mrs. Lacey’s husband was living, but now, like the first, was vacant.
    Bekker climbed to the second floor, the smell of carrots and marijuana closing around him. “Mrs. Lacey?”
    “In here.” She was a small woman, with thick glasses that enlarged her rheumy blue eyes. Her hair, wiry and gray, clung close to her head. She had a small button nose and tiny round lips. She was wrapped in a housecoat. She had four of them, quilted, in different pastel colors. She was waiting in the big chair in the living room, facing the television. Bekker went to the kitchen, ran a glass of