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Bette Davis.”
    “Where’s that playing?”
    “I rented it from the video shop. When I got home there was a message on my answering machine. My boss wanted me to show six to some buyers today.”
    “You were in and out all afternoon?”
    “New York’s a great city for wandering when the weather’s nice.”
    “Where did you wander?”
    She walked to the window. She tossed a nod. “Way over there by the river. I love the boats, and the boys diving into the East River, and I love the seagulls, even though they’re scavengers, and those islands, even though they have prisons on them.”
    “Are you on call every weekend for your boss?”
    “I get a commission above my salary, Lieutenant. I don’t feel my employer imposes on me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    She came back to the sofa with a swaying walk, hands held behind her, out of sight.
    “It wasn’t exactly what I was asking. By the way, what did I say just now that upset you?”
    Her gaze came round to his. “It wasn’t anything you said. I know this sounds naive, but I’ve never seen a dead body before.”
    “That’s not naive, that’s lucky.”
    “I think it’s beginning to hit me. Do you ever get used to it?”
    “No, I’m not used to it.” He finished his drink.
    She took the glasses back to the kitchen.
    “Which leg?” he asked.
    She turned and gave him a blank look.
    “Which leg did Zero lose?”
    “The rear right.”
    “Same as the man downstairs.”
    “I was trying not to think that.”
    “It’s okay to think things.”
    She rinsed the glasses and put them into the dishwasher. “We gave him chemotherapy, we gave him radiation. Nothing could save the leg.” She closed the dishwasher. “Silly to think of a cat when a man’s dead.”
    “Zero’s okay now?”
    “He’s fine. Hops around, doesn’t even know the leg’s gone.”
    “That’s great. A survivor. We should all be survivors.”
    They stood saying good-bye in the lobby, and Cardozo asked for her phone numbers at work and at home.
    Melissa Hatfield took out her business card, added her home address and phone, handed it to him.
    He watched her leave the building. The young woman who had come close to tears over her three-legged cat strode like a lioness past the afternoon doorman, recognizing him with the barest of nods, hair streaming behind her in a long chestnut mane. Her hand went up, swift and sure of its power. Magically, a taxi materialized at the curb to whisk her away.
    In his work Cardozo had seen hundreds of New York women neurotically attached to their pets—fat women, middle-aged women, rich women who turned to their Pekinese or Persian for the warmth and meaning that no lover or job would ever give their lives.
    But Melissa Hatfield didn’t fit the profile. She was intelligent, attractive; she didn’t need to spend an entire Saturday alone. What’s more, Cardozo didn’t believe she had. She didn’t give off the scent of the manless New York woman; nor did she give off that sadder scent of the friendless New Yorker. He didn’t think she was gay and he didn’t believe her story about wandering around all day and renting an old Bette Davis movie for her evening entertainment.
    He’d been a cop long enough to know that ninety-five percent of humanity lied. Even nuns gave the truth a little twist now and then. Lying didn’t make a person a killer.
    Still, he felt Melissa Hatfield had tried to con him and he was curious why she’d tried. He jotted a memo in his pocket notebook: HATFIELD—ALONE SATURDAY ?

4
    T HEY DIDN’T SEE BABE watching.
    She stood outside the open door, in darkness, staring in.
    They moved in slow motion through a soft sea of candlelight, holding champagne glasses. They wore tuxedos and gowns and rubber headpieces like children’s Halloween masks. Babe recognized Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Richard Nixon, the Mad Hatter.
    A butler in a John Wayne mask glided through the crowd, refilling glasses from a green jeroboam with