I awakened with church bells pealing in the distance. My head was clear and I felt good. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and met the eyes of a long-haired cat curled up at the foot of the bed on the other side. He looked me over, then tucked his head in and resumed napping. Sleep with the lady of the house and the cats accept you.

I got dressed and found Jan in the kitchen. She was drinking a glass of pale orange juice. I figured there was something in it to take the edge off her hangover. She’d made coffee in a Chemex filter pot and poured me a cup. I stood by the window and drank it.

We didn’t talk. The church bells had taken a break and the Sunday morning silence stretched out. It was a bright day out, the sun burning away in a cloudless sky. I looked down and couldn’t see a single sign of life, not a person on the street, not a car moving.

I finished my coffee and added the cup to the dirty dishes in the stainless-steel sink. Jan used a key to bring the elevator to the floor. She asked if I was going out to Sheepshead Bay and I said I guessed I was. We held onto each other for a moment. I felt the warmth of her fine body through the robe she was wearing.

“I’ll call you,” I said, and rode the oversized elevator to the ground.

An Officer O’Byrne gave me directions over the phone. I followed them, riding the BMT Brighton Line to Gravesend Neck Road. The train came up above ground level at some point after it crossed into Brooklyn, and we rode through some neighborhoods of detached houses with yards that didn’t look like New York at all.

The station house for the Sixty-first Precinct was on Coney Island Avenue and I managed to find it without too much trouble. In the squad room I played do-you-know with a wiry, long-jawed detective named Antonelli. We knew enough of the same people for him to relax with me. I told him what I was working on and mentioned that Frank Fitzroy had steered it my way. He knew Frank, too, though I didn’t get the impression that they were crazy about each other.

“I’ll see what our file looks like,” he said. “But you probably saw copies of our reports in the file Fitzroy showed you.”

“What I mostly want is to talk with somebody who looked at the body.”

“Wouldn’t the names of officers on the scene be in the file you saw in Manhattan?”

I’d thought of that myself. Maybe I could have managed all this without coming out to the ass end of Brooklyn. But when you go out and look for something you occasionally find more than you knew you were looking for.

“Well, maybe I can find that file,” he said, and left me at an old wooden desk scarred with cigarette burns along its edges. Two desks over, a black detective with his sleeves rolled up was talking on the phone. It sounded as though he was talking to a woman, and it didn’t sound much like police business. At another desk along the far wall a pair of cops, one uniformed and one in a suit, were questioning a teenager with a mop of unruly yellow hair. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Antonelli came back with a slim file and dropped it on the desk in front of me. I went through it, pausing now and then to make a note in my notebook. The victim, I learned, was a Susan Potowski of 2705 Haring Street. She’d been a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two, separated from her husband, a construction laborer. She lived with her kids in the lower flat of a two-family semi-detached house, and she’d been killed around two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon.

Her kids found her. They came home from school together around three thirty, a boy of eight and a girl of ten, and they found their mother on the kitchen floor, her clothing partly removed, her body covered with stab wounds. They ran around the street screaming until the beat cop turned up.

“Finding anything?”

“Maybe,” I said. I copied down the name of the first cop on the scene, added those of two detectives from the Six-One who’d gone to the Haring Street house before switching the case to Midtown North. I showed the three names to Antonelli. “Any of these guys still work out of here?”

“Patrolman Burton Havermeyer, Detective Third-Grade Kenneth Allgood, Detective First-Grade Michael Quinn. Mick Quinn died two, maybe three years ago. Line of duty. He and a partner had a liquor store staked out on Avenue W and there were shots exchanged and he was killed. Terrible thing. Lost a wife to cancer two years before that, so he left four kids all alone in the world, the oldest just starting college. You must have read about it.”

“I think I did.”

“Guys who shot him pulled good long time. But they’re alive and he’s dead, so go figure. The other two, Allgood and Havermeyer, I don’t even know the names, so they’ve been off the Six-One since before my time, which is what? Five years? Something like that.”

“Can you find out where they went?”

“I can probably find out something. What do you want to ask ’em, anyway?”

“If she was stabbed in both eyes.”

“Wasn’t there an M.E.’s report in the file whats-his-name showed you? Fitzroy?”

I nodded. “Both eyes.”

“So?”

“Remember that case some years ago? They pulled some woman out of the Hudson, called it death by drowning? Then some genius in the Medical Examiner’s office took the skull and started using it for a paperweight, and there was a scandal about that, and because of all the heat somebody finally took a good look at the skull for the first time and found a bullet hole in it.”

“I remember. She was some woman from New Jersey, married to a doctor, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right.”

“I got a rule-of-thumb. When a doctor’s wife gets killed, he did it. I don’t give a shit about the evidence. The doc always did it. I don’t remember whether this one got off or not.”

“Neither do I.”

“I take your point, though. The M.E.’s report isn’t something you want to run to the bank with. But how good is a witness to something that happened nine years ago?”

“Not too good. Still—”

“I’ll see what I can see.”

He was gone a little longer this time, and he had a funny expression on his face when he returned. “Bad luck case,” he said. “Allgood’s dead, too. And the patrolman, Havermeyer, he left the department.”

“How did Allgood die?”

“Heart attack, about a year ago. He got transferred out a couple of years back. He was working out of Centre Street headquarters. Collapsed at his desk one day and died. One of the guys in the file room knew him from when he worked here and happened to know how he died. Havermeyer could be dead, too, for all I know.”

“What happened to him?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? He put in his papers just a few months after the Icepick thing. Cited unspecified personal reasons for returning to civilian life. He’d only been in for two, three years. You know what the drop-out rate’s like for the new ones. Hell, you’re a drop-out yourself. Personal reasons, right?”

“Something like that.”

“I dug up an address and a number. He probably moved six times between then and now. If he didn’t leave a trail, you can always try downtown. He wasn’t here long enough to have any pension rights but they usually keep track of ex-cops.”

“Maybe he’s still in the same place.”

“Could be. My grandmother’s still living in three little rooms on Elizabeth Street, same apartment she’s been in since she got off the boat from Palermo. Some people stay put. Others change their houses like they change their socks. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Where’s Haring Street?”

“The murder scene?” He laughed. “Jesus, you’re a bloodhound,” he said. “Want to get the scent, huh?”

He told me how to walk there. He’d given me a fair amount of his time but he didn’t want any money for it. I sensed that he probably didn’t—some do and some don’t—but I made the offer. “You could probably use a new hat,” I said, and he came back with a tight grin and assured me that he had a whole closetful of hats. “And I hardly ever wear a hat these days,” he said. I’d been offering him twenty-five dollars, cheap enough for the effort he’d expended. “It’s a slow day at a quiet precinct,” he said, “and how much mileage can you get out of what I just gave you? You got anybody in mind for that Boerum Hill killing?”

“Not really.”

“Like hunting a black cat in a coal mine,” he said. “Do me one favor? Let me know how it comes out. If it comes out.”

I followed his directions to Haring Street. I don’t suppose the neighborhood had changed much in nine years. The houses were well kept up and there were kids all over the place. There were cars parked at the curb, cars in most of the driveways. It occurred to me that there were probably a dozen people on the block who remembered Susan Potowski, and for all I knew her estranged husband had moved back into the house after the murder and lived there now with his children. They’d be older now, seventeen and nineteen.

She must have been young when she had the first one. Nineteen herself. Early marriage and early childbirth wouldn’t have been uncommon in that neighborhood.

He probably moved away, I decided. Assuming he came back for the kids, he wouldn’t make them go on living in the house where they found their mother dead on the kitchen floor. Would he?

I didn’t ring that doorbell, or any other doorbells. I wasn’t investigating Susan Potowski’s murder and I didn’t have to sift her ashes. I took a last look at the house she’d died in, then turned and walked away.

THE address I had for Burton Havermeyer was 212 St. Marks Place. The East Village wasn’t that likely a place for a cop to live, and it didn’t seem terribly likely that he’d still be there nine years later, on or off the force. I called the number Antonelli had given me from a drugstore phone booth on Ocean Avenue.

A woman answered. I asked if I could speak to Mr. Havermeyer. There was a pause. “Mr. Havermeyer doesn’t live here.”

I started to apologize for having the wrong number but she wasn’t through. “I don’t know where Mr. Havermeyer can be reached,” she said.

“Is this Mrs. Havermeyer?”

“Yes.”

I said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Havermeyer. A detective at the Sixty-first Precinct where your husband used to work supplied this number. I’m trying to—”

“My former husband.”

There was a toneless quality to her speech, as if she was deliberately detaching herself from the words she was speaking. I had noted a similar characteristic in the speech of recovered mental patients.

“I’m trying to reach him in connection with a police matter,” I said.

“He hasn’t been a policeman in years.”

“I realize that. Do you happen to know how I can get hold of him?”

“No.”

“I gather you don’t see him often, Mrs. Havermeyer, but would you have any idea—”

“I never see him.”

“I see.”

“Oh, do you? I never see my former husband. I get a check once a month. It’s sent directly to my bank and deposited to my account. I don’t see my husband and I don’t see the check. Do you see? Do you?”

The words might have been delivered with passion. But the voice remained flat and uninvolved.

I didn’t say anything.

“He’s in Manhattan,” she said. “Perhaps he has a phone, and perhaps it’s in the book. You could look it up. I know you’ll excuse me if I don’t offer to look it up for you.”

“Certainly.”

“I’m sure it’s important,” she said. “Police business always is, isn’t it?”

THERE was no Manhattan telephone book at the drugstore so I let the Information operator look for me. She found a Burton Havermeyer on West 103rd Street. I dialed the number and no one answered.

The drugstore had a lunch counter. I sat on a stool and ate a grilled cheese sandwich and a too-sweet piece of cherry pie and drank two cups of black coffee. The coffee wasn’t bad, but it couldn’t compare with the stuff Jan had brewed in her Chemex filter pot.

I thought about her. Then I went to the phone again and almost dialed her number, but tried Havermeyer again instead. This time he answered.

I said, “Burton Havermeyer? My name’s Matthew Scudder. I wondered if I could come around and see you this afternoon.”

“What about?”

“It’s a police matter. Some questions I’d like to ask you. I won’t take up much of your time.”

“You’re a police officer?”

Hell. “I used to be one.”

“So did I. Could you tell me what you want with me, Mr.—?”

“Scudder,” I supplied. “It’s ancient history, actually. I’m a detective now and I’m working on a case you were involved with when you were with the Six-One.”

“That was years ago.”

“I know.”

“Can’t we do this over the phone? I can’t imagine what information I could possibly have that would be useful to you. I was a beat patrolman, I didn’t work on cases. I—”

“I’d like to drop by if it’s all right.”

“Well, I—”

“I won’t take up much of your time.”

There was a pause. “It’s my day off,” he said, in what was not quite a whine. “I just figured to sit around, have a couple of beers, watch a ball game.”

“We can talk during the commercials.”

He laughed. “Okay, you win. You know the address? The name’s on the bell. When should I expect you?”

“An hour, hour and a half.”

“Good enough.”

* * *

THE Upper West Side is another neighborhood on the upswing, but the local renaissance hasn’t crossed Ninety-sixth Street yet. Havermeyer lived on 103rd between Columbus and Amsterdam in one of the rundown brownstones that lined both sides of the street. The neighborhood was mostly Spanish. There were a lot of people sitting on the stoops, listening to enormous portable radios and drinking Miller High Life out of brown paper bags. Every third woman was pregnant.

I found the right building and rang the right bell and climbed four flights of stairs. He was waiting for me in the doorway of one of the back apartments. He said, “Scudder?” and I nodded. “Burt Havermeyer,” he said. “Come on in.”

I followed him into a fair-sized studio with a Pullman kitchen. The overhead light fixture was a bare bulb in one of those Japanese paper shades. The walls were due for paint. I took a seat on the couch and accepted the can of beer he handed me. He popped one for himself, then moved to turn off the television set, a black and white portable perched on top of an orange crate that held paperback books on its lower two shelves.

He pulled up a chair for himself, crossed his legs. He looked to be in his early thirties, five-eight or -nine, pale complected, with narrow shoulders and a beer gut. He wore brown gabardine slacks and a brown and beige patterned sportshirt. He had deep-set brown eyes, heavy jowls and slicked-down dark brown hair, and he hadn’t shaved that morning. Neither, come to think of it, had I.

“About nine years ago,” I said. “A woman named Susan Potowski.”

“I knew it.”

“Oh?”

“I hung up and I thought, why’s anybody want to talk with me about some case nine or ten years old? Then I figured it had to be the icepick thing. I read the papers. They got the guy, right? They made a lap and he fell in it.”

“That’s about it.” I explained how Louis Pinell had denied a role in the death of Barbara Ettinger and how the facts appeared to bear him out.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “That still leaves something like eight killings, doesn’t it? Isn’t that enough to put him away?”

“It’s not enough for the Ettinger woman’s father. He wants to know who killed his daughter.”

“And that’s your job.” He whistled softly. “Lucky you.”

“That’s about it.” I drank a little beer from the can. “I don’t suppose there’s any connection between the Potowski killing and the one I’m investigating, but they’re both in Brooklyn and maybe Pinell didn’t do either of them. You were the first police officer on the scene. You remember that day pretty well?”

“Jesus,” he said. “I ought to.”

“Oh?”

“I left the force because of it. But I suppose they told you that out in Sheepshead Bay.”

“All they said was unspecified personal reasons.”

“That right?” He held his beer can in both hands and sat with his head bowed, looking down at it. “I remember how her kids screamed,” he said. “I remember knowing I was going to walk in on something really bad, and then the next memory I have is I’m in her kitchen looking down at the body. One of the kids is hanging onto my pants leg the way kids do, you know how they do, and I’m looking down at her and I close my eyes and open ’em again and the picture doesn’t change. She was in a whatchacallit, a housecoat. It had like Japanese writing on it and a picture of a bird, Japanese-style art. A kimono? I guess you call it a kimono. I remember the color. Orange, with black trim.

He looked up at me, then dropped his eyes again. “The housecoat was open. The kimono. Partially open. There were these dots all over her body, like punctuation marks. Where he got her with the icepick. Mostly the torso. She had very nice breasts. That’s a terrible thing to remember but how do you quit remembering? Standing there noticing all the wounds in her breasts, and she’s dead, and still noticing that she’s got a first-rate pair of tits. And hating yourself for thinking it.”

“It happens.”

“I know, I know, but it sticks in your mind like a bone caught in your throat. And the kids wailing, and noises outside. At first I don’t hear any of the noise because the sight of her just blocks everything else. Like it deafens you, knocks out the other senses. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Then the sound comes up, and the kid’s still hanging on my pants leg, and if he lives to be a hundred that’s how he’s gonna remember his mother. Myself, I never saw her before in my life, and I couldn’t get that picture out of my head. It repeated on me night and day. When I slept it got in my nightmares and during the day it would come into my mind at odd moments. I didn’t want to go in anyplace. I didn’t want to risk coming up on another dead body. And it dawned on me finally that I didn’t want to stay in a line of work where when people get killed it’s up to you to deal with it. ‘Unspecified personal reasons.’ Well, I just specified. I gave it a little time and it didn’t wear off and I quit.”

“What do you do now?”

“Security guard.” He named a midtown store. “I tried a couple of other things but I’ve had this job for seven years now. I wear a uniform and I even have a gun on my hip. Job I had before this, you wore a gun but it wasn’t loaded. That drove me nuts. I said I’d carry a gun or not carry a gun, it didn’t matter to me, but don’t give me an unloaded gun because then the bad guys think you’re armed but you can’t defend yourself. Now I got a loaded gun and it hasn’t been out of the holster in seven years and that’s the way I like it. I’m a deterrent to robbery and shoplifting. Not as much of a deterrent to shoplifting as we’d like. Boosters can be pretty slick.”

“I can imagine.”

“It’s dull work. I like that. I like knowing I don’t have to walk into somebody’s kitchen and there’s death on the floor. I joke with other people on the job, I hook a shoplifter now and then, and the whole thing’s nice and steady. I got a simple life, you know what I mean? I like it that way.”

“A question about the murder scene.”

“Sure.”

“The woman’s eyes.”

“Oh, Christ,” he said. “You had to remind me.”

“Tell me.”

“Her eyes were open. He stabbed all the victims in the eyes. I didn’t know that. It was kept out of the papers, the way they’ll hold something back, you know? But when the detectives got there they saw it right away and that cinched it, you know, that it wasn’t our case and we could buck it on up to some other precinct. I forget which one.”

“Midtown South.”

“If you say so.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Did I say her eyes were open? Staring up at the ceiling. But they were like ovals of blood.”

“Both eyes?”

“Pardon?”

“Were both of her eyes the same?”

He nodded. “Why?”

“Barbara Ettinger was only stabbed in one eye.”

“It make a difference?”

“I don’t know.”

“If somebody was going to copy the killer, they’d copy him completely, wouldn’t they?”

“You’d think so.”

“Unless it was him and he was rushed for a change. Who knows with a crazy person, anyway? Maybe this time God told him only stab one eye. Who knows?”

He went for another beer and offered me one but I passed. I didn’t want to hang around long enough to drink it. I had really only had one question to ask him and his answer had done nothing but confirm the medical report. I suppose I could have asked it over the phone, but then I wouldn’t have had the same chance to probe his memory and get a real sense of what he’d found in that kitchen. No question now that he’d gone back in time and seen Susan Potowski’s body all over again. He wasn’t guessing that she’d been stabbed in both eyes. He had closed his own eyes and seen the wounds.

He said, “Sometimes I wonder. Well, when I read about them arresting this Pinell, and now with you coming over here. Suppose I wasn’t the one walked in on the Potowski woman? Or suppose it happened three years later when I had that much more experience? I can see how my whole life might have been different.”

“You might have stayed on the force.”

“It’s possible, right? I don’t know if I really liked being a cop or if I was any good at it. I liked the classes at the Academy. I liked wearing the uniform. I liked walking the beat and saying hello to people and having them say hello back. Actual police work, I don’t know how much I liked it. Maybe if I was really cut out for it I wouldn’t have been thrown for a loop by what I saw in that kitchen. Or I would have toughed it out and gotten over it eventually. You were a cop yourself and you quit, right?”

“For unspecified personal reasons.”

“Yeah, I guess there’s a lot of that going around.”

“There was a death involved,” I said. “A child. What happened, I lost my taste for the work.”

“Exactly what happened with me, Matt. I lost my taste for it. You know what I think? If it wasn’t that one particular thing it would have been something else.”

Could I say the same thing? It was not a thought that had occurred to me previously. If Estrellita Rivera had been home in bed where she belonged, would I still be living in Syosset and carrying a badge? Or would some other incident have given me an inevitable nudge in a direction I had to walk?”

I said, “You and your wife separated.”

“That’s right.”

“Same time you put in your papers?”

“Not too long after that.”

“You move here right away?”

“I was in an S.R.O. hotel a couple blocks down on Broadway. I stayed there for maybe ten weeks until I found this place. Been here ever since.”

“Your wife’s still in the East Village.”

“Huh?”

“St. Marks Place. She’s still living there.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Any kids?”

“No.”

“Makes it easier.”

“I guess so.”

“My wife and sons are out on Long Island. I’m in a hotel on Fifty-seventh Street.”

He nodded, understanding. People move and their lives change. He’d wound up guarding cashmere sweaters. I’d wound up doing whatever it is I do. Looking in a coal mine for a black cat, according to Antonelli. Looking for a cat that wasn’t even there.