The meeting was on the Eleventh Step, the one about seeking to know God's will through prayer and meditation, and most of the discussion was relentlessly spiritual. When I got out I decided to treat myself to a cab. Two sailed past me, and when a third one pulled up a woman in a tailored suit and flowing bow tie elbowed me out of the way and beat me to it. I hadn't done any praying or meditating, but I didn't have a whole lot of trouble figuring out God's will in the matter. He wanted me to go home by subway.

There were messages to call John Kelly, Drew Kaplan, and Kenan Khoury. That struck me as an awful lot of people with the same last initial, and I hadn't even heard from the Kongs yet. There was a fourth message from someone who hadn't left a name, just a number; perversely, that was the call I returned first.

I dialed the number, and instead of ringing it responded with a tone. I decided I'd been disconnected and hung up, and then I got it and dialed again, and when the tone sounded I punched in my phone number and hung up.

Within five minutes my phone rang. I picked it up and TJ said, "Hey, Matt, my man. What's happenin'?"

"You got a beeper."

"Surprised you, huh? Man, I had five hundred dollars all at once. What you 'spect me to do, buy a savings bond? They was havin' a special, you got the beeper and the first three months' service for a hundred an' ninety-nine dollars. You want one, I'll go to the store with you, make sure they treat you right."

"I'll wait awhile. What happens after three months? They take the beeper back?"

"No, I own it, man. I just got to pay so much a month to keep it on-line. I stop payin', I still own it, but you call it an' nothin' happens."

"Not much point in owning it then."

"Lotta dudes got 'em, though. Wear 'em all the time an' you never hear 'em beep because they ain't paid to stay on-line."

"What's the monthly charge?"

"They told me but I forget. Don't matter. Way I figure, by the time the three months is up you'll be pickin' up the monthly tab for me just to have me at your beck an' call."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I indispensable, man. I a key asset to your operation."

"Because you're resourceful."

"See? You're getting it."

I TRIED Drew but he wasn't at his office and I didn't want to bother him at home. I didn't call Kenan Khoury or John Kelly, figuring they could wait. I stopped around the corner for a slice of pizza and a Coke and went to St. Paul's for my third meeting of the day. I couldn't recall the last time I'd gone to that many, but it had certainly been a while.

It wasn't because I felt in danger of drinking. The thought of a drink had never been further from my mind. Nor did I feel beset by problems, or unable to reach a decision.

What I did feel, I realized, was a sense of depletion, of exhaustion. The all-nighter at the Frontenac had taken its toll, but its effects had been pretty much offset by a couple of good meals and nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. But I was still very much at the effect of the case itself. I had worked hard on it, letting it absorb me entirely, and now it was finished.

Except, of course, that it wasn't. The killers had not even been identified, let alone apprehended. I had done what I recognized as excellent detective work and it had produced significant results, but the case itself had not been brought to anything like a conclusion. So the exhaustion I felt wasn't part of a glorious feeling of completion. Tired or not, I had promises to keep. And miles to go.

So I was at another meeting, a safe and restful place. I talked with Jim Faber during the break, and walked out with him at the end of the meeting. He didn't have time to get a cup of coffee but I walked him most of the way to his apartment and we wound up standing on a street corner and talking for a few minutes. Then I went home and once again I didn't call Kenan Khoury, but I did call his brother. His name had come up in my conversation with Jim, and neither of us could remember having seen him in the past week. So I dialed Peter's number but there was no answer. I called Elaine and we talked for a few minutes. She mentioned that Pam Cassidy had called to say she wouldn't be calling- i.e., Drew had told her not to be in touch with me or Elaine for the time being, and she wanted to let Elaine know so she wouldn't worry.

I called Drew first thing the next morning and he said everything had gone well enough and he'd found Kelly hardnosed but not unreasonable. "If you want to wish for something," he suggested, "wish that the guy turns out to be rich."

"Kelly? You don't get rich in Homicide. There's no graft in it."

"Not Kelly, for God's sake. Ray."

"Who?"

"The killer," he said. "The one with the wire, for God's sake. Don't you listen to your own client?"

She wasn't my client, but he didn't know that. I asked him why on earth we would want Ray to turn out to be rich.

"So we can sue his ass off."

"I was hoping to see it locked up for the rest of his life."

"Yeah, I have the same hope," he said, "but we both know what can happen in criminal court. But one thing I damn well know is that if they so much as indict the son of a bitch I can get a civil judgment for every dime he's got. But that's only worth something if he's got a few bucks."

"You never know," I said. What I did know was that there weren't too many millionaires living in Sunset Park, but I didn't want to mention Sunset Park to Kaplan, and anyway I had no reason to assume that both of them, or all three of them if we were dealing with three, actually lived there. For all I knew, Ray had a suite at the Pierre.

"I know I'd like to find somebody to sue," he said. "Maybe the bastards used a company truck. I'd like to find some collateral defendant somewhere down the line so that I can at least get her a decent settlement. She deserves it after what she went through."

"And that way your pro bono work would turn out to be cost-effective, wouldn't it?"

"So? There's nothing wrong with that, but I've got to tell you that my end of it isn't my chief concern. Seriously."

"Okay."

"She's a damn good kid," he said. "Tough and gutsy, but there's a core of innocence about her, do you know what I mean?"

"I know."

"And those bastards really put her through it. Did she show you what they did to her?"

"She told me."

"She told me, too, but she also showed me. You think the knowledge prepares you, but believe me, the visual impact is staggering."

"No kidding," I said. "Did she also show you what she's got left, so you could appreciate the extent of her loss?"

"You've got a dirty mind, you know that?"

"I know," I said. "At least that's what everybody tells me."

I CALLED John Kelly's office and was told he was in court. When I gave my name the cop I was talking to said, "Oh, he'll want to talk to you. Give me your number, I'll beep him for you." A little while later Kelly got back to me and we arranged to meet at a place called The Docket around the corner from Borough Hall. The place was new to me, but it felt just like places I knew in downtown Manhattan, bar-restaurants with a clientele that ran to cops and lawyers and a decor that featured a lot of brass and leather and dark wood.

Kelly and I had never met, a point we both overlooked when we set up the meeting, but as it turned out I had no trouble recognizing him. He looked just like his father.

"I been hearing that all my life," he said.

He picked up his beer from the bar and we took a table in back. Our waitress had a snub nose and infectious good humor, and she knew my companion. When he asked her about the pastrami she said, "It's not lean enough for you, Kelly. Take the roast beef." We had roast beef sandwiches on rye, the meat sliced thin and piled high, accompanied by crisp french fries and a horseradish sauce that would bring tears to the eyes of a statue.

"Good place," I said.

"Can't beat it. I eat here all the time."

He had a second bottle of Molson's with his sandwich. I ordered a cream soda, and when that got a headshake from the waitress I said I'd have a Coke. I saw this register with Kelly, although he didn't comment at the time. When she brought our drinks, though, he said, "You used to drink."

"Your father mentioned that? I wasn't hitting it all that heavy when I knew him."

"I didn't get it from him. I made a few calls, asked around. I hear you had your troubles with it and then you stopped."

"You could say that."

"AA, I heard. Great organization, everything I hear of it."

"It has its good points. But it's no place to be if you want a decent drink."

It took him a second to realize I was joking. He laughed, then said, "That where you know him from? The mysterious boyfriend?"

"I'm not going to answer that."

"You're not prepared to tell me anything about him."

"No."

"That's okay, I'm not about to give you a lot of grief on the subject. You got her to come in, I have to give you that. I don't exactly love it when a witness shows up holding hands with her lawyer, but under the circumstances I got to admit it's the right move for her. And Kaplan's not too much of a sleaze. He'll make you look like a monkey in court if he can, but what the hell, that's his job, and they're all like that. What are you going to do, hang the whole profession?"

"There are people who wouldn't think it was such a bad idea."

"You're talking about half the people in this room," he said, "and the other half are attorneys themselves. But what the hell. Kaplan and I agreed to keep this dark as far as the press is concerned. He said he was sure you'd go along."

"Of course."

"If we had a good sketch of the two perps it'd be different, but I put her together with an artist and the best we could come up with is they each got two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She's not too sure about ears, thinks they had two apiece but doesn't want to commit herself. Be like running a picture of a smile button on page five of the Daily News: 'Have You Seen This Man?' What we got is linkage of three cases which we're now officially treating as serial homicide, but do you see any advantage in making it public? Besides scaring the shit out of people, what do you accomplish?"

* * *

WE didn't linger over lunch. He had to be back by two to testify in the trial of a drug-related homicide, which was the sort of thing that kept him from ever getting his desk clear. "And it's hard to keep on giving a shit if they kill each other," he said, "or to break your back trying to nail them for it. I wish to hell they'd legalize all that shit, and I honest to Christ never thought I'd hear myself say that."

"I never thought I'd hear any cop say it."

"You hear it all the time now. Cops, DAs, everybody. There's still DEA guys playing the same old tune. 'We're winning the war on drugs. Give us the tools and we can do the job.' I don't know, maybe they believe it, but you're better off believing in the Tooth Fairy. Least that way you might wind up with a quarter under your pillow."

"How can you rationalize making crack legal?"

"I know, it's a pisser. My all-time favorite is angel dust. An ordinary peaceable guy'll go get himself dusted, and he goes straight into a blackout and acts out violently. Then he wakes up hours later and somebody's dead and he doesn't remember a thing, he can't even tell you if he enjoyed the high. Would I like to see them selling dust at the corner candy store? Jesus, I can't say I would, but would they move any more of it that way than they do right now, selling it on the street in front of the candy store?"