My cab driver was an Israeli immigrant and I don’t think he’d ever heard of Rikers Island. I told him to follow the signs for LaGuardia Airport. When we got close I gave him directions. I got out at a luncheonette at the foot of the bridge that spans Bowery Bay and the channel of the East River that separates the island from the rest of Queens.

Lunch hour had come and gone and the place was mostly empty. A few men in work clothes were seated at the counter. About halfway down a man sat in a booth with a cup of coffee and looked up expectantly at my approach. I introduced myself and he said he was Marvin Hiller.

“My car’s outside,” he said. “Or did you want to grab a cup of coffee? The only thing is I’m a little bit rushed. I had a long morning in Queens Criminal Court and I’m supposed to be at my dentist’s in forty-five minutes. If I’m late I’m late.”

I told him I didn’t care about coffee. He paid his tab and we went outside and rode his car over the bridge. He was a pleasant and rather earnest man a few years younger than I and he looked like what he was, a lawyer with an office on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst. One of his clients, one who’d be contributing very little toward the rent on that office, was Louis Pinell.

I’d gotten his name from Frank Fitzroy and managed to get his secretary to beep him and call me at the hotel. I’d expected a flat turndown on my request for clearance to see Pinell and got just the reverse. “Just so it’s kosher,” he had said, “why don’t you meet me out there and we’ll drive over together. You’ll probably get more out of him that way. He’s a little more comfortable about talking with his lawyer present.”

Now he said, “I don’t know what you’ll be able to get from him. I suppose you mostly want to satisfy yourself that he didn’t kill the Ettinger woman.”

“I suppose.”

“I would think he’s in the clear on that one. The evidence is pretty clear-cut. If it was just his word I’d say forget it, because who knows what they remember and what they make up when they’re as crazy as he is?”

“He’s really crazy?”

“Oh, he’s a bedbug,” Hiller said. “No question about it. You’ll see for yourself. I’m his attorney, but between ourselves I see my job as a matter of making sure he never gets out without a leash. It’s a good thing I drew this case.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because anybody crazy enough to want to could get him off without a whole lot of trouble. I’m going to plead him, but if I made a fight the State’s case wouldn’t stand up. All they’ve got is his confession and you could knock that out a dozen different ways, including that he was cuckoo at the time he confessed. They’ve got no evidence, not after nine years. There’s lawyers who think the advocate system means they should go to bat for a guy like Lou and put him back on the streets.”

“He’d do it again.”

“Of course he’d do it again. He had a fucking icepick in his pocket when they collared him. Again between ourselves, I think lawyers with that attitude ought to be in jail alongside their clients. But in the meantime here I am, playing God. What do you want to ask Lou?”

“There was another Brooklyn killing. I might ask him a few questions about that.”

“Sheepshead Bay. He copped to that one.”

“That’s right. I don’t know what else I’ll ask him. I’m probably wasting my time. And yours.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Thirty or forty minutes later we were driving back to the mainland and I was apologizing again for wasting his time.

“You did me a favor,” he said. “I’m going to have to make another dentist’s appointment. You ever have periodontal surgery?”

“No.”

“You’re a wise man. This guy’s my wife’s cousin and he’s pretty good, but what they do is they carve your gums. They do a section of your mouth at a time. Last time I went I wound up taking codeine every four hours for a week. I walked around in this perpetual fog. I suppose it’s worth it in the long run, but don’t feel you took me away from something enjoyable.”

“If you say so.”

I told him he could drop me anywhere but he insisted on giving me a lift to the subway stop at Northern Boulevard. On the way we talked a little about Pinell. “You can see why they picked him up on the street,” he said. “That craziness is right there in his eyes. One look and you see it.”

“There are a lot of street crazies.”

“But he’s dangerous-crazy and it shows. And yet I’m never nervous in his presence. Well, I’m not a woman and he hasn’t got an icepick. That might have something to do with it.”

At the subway entrance I got out of the car and hesitated for a moment, and he leaned toward me, one arm over the back of the seat. We both seemed reluctant to take leave of each other. I liked him and sensed that he held me in similar regard.

“You’re not licensed,” he said. “Isn’t that what you said?”

“That’s right.”

“Couldn’t you get a license?”

“I don’t want one.”

“Well, maybe I could throw some work your way all the same, if the right sort of thing came along.”

“Why would you want to?”

“I don’t know. I liked your manner with Lou. And I get the feeling with you that you think the truth is important.” He chuckled. “Besides, I owe you. You spared me a half-hour in the dentist’s chair.”

“Well, if I ever need a lawyer—”

“Right. You know who to call.”

* * *

I just missed a Manhattan-bound train. While I waited for the next one on the elevated platform I managed to find a phone in working order and tried Lynn London’s number. I’d checked the hotel desk before I called Hiller, and there’d been a message from her the night before, probably wondering why I hadn’t shown up. I wondered if she’d been the one who called during my shower. Whoever it was hadn’t elected to leave a message. The desk man said the caller had been a woman, but I’d learned not to count too heavily on his powers of recollection.

Lynn’s number didn’t answer. No surprise. She was probably still in school, or on her way home. Had she mentioned any afternoon plans? I couldn’t remember.

I retrieved my dime, started to put it and my notebook away. Was there anyone else I should call? I flipped pages in my notebook, struck by how many names and numbers and addresses I’d written down, considering how little I’d managed to accomplish.

Karen Ettinger? I could ask her what she was afraid of. Hiller had just told me he sensed that I thought the truth was important. Evidently she thought it was worth hiding.

It’d be a toll call, though. And I didn’t have much change.

Charles London? Frank Fitzroy? An ex-cop on the Upper West Side? His ex-wife on the Lower East Side?

Mitzi Pomerance? Jan Keane?

Probably still had the phone off the hook.

I put the notebook away, and the dime. I could have used a drink. I’d had nothing since that one eye-opener at McGovern’s. I’d eaten a late breakfast since then, had drunk several cups of coffee, but that was it.

I looked over the low wall at the rear of the platform. My eye fastened on red neon in a tavern window. I’d just missed a train. I could have a quick one and be back in plenty of time for the next one.

I sat down on a bench and waited for my train.

I changed trains twice and wound up at Columbus Circle. The sky was darkening by the time I hit the street, turning that particular cobalt blue that it gets over New York. There were no messages waiting for me at my hotel. I called Lynn London from the lobby.

This time I reached her. “The elusive Mr. Scudder,” she said. “You stood me up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I waited for you yesterday afternoon. Not for long, because I didn’t have too much time available. I suppose something came up, but you didn’t call, either.”

I remembered how I had considered keeping the appointment and how I’d decided against it. Alcohol had made the decision for me. I’d been in a warm bar and it was cold outside.

“I’d just spoken to your father,” I said. “He asked me to drop the case. I figured he’d have been in touch with you to tell you not to cooperate with me.”

“So you just decided to write off the Londons, is that it?” There was a trace of amusement in her voice. “I was here waiting, as I said. Then I went out and kept my date for the evening, and when I got home my father called. To tell me he’d ordered you off the case but that you intended to persist with it all the same.”

So I could have seen her. Alcohol had made the decision, and had made it badly.

“He told me not to offer you any encouragement. He said he’d made a mistake raking up the past to begin with.”

“But you called me. Or was that before you spoke to him?”

“Once before and once after. The first call was because I was angry with you for standing me up. The second call was because I was angry with my father.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like being told what to do. I’m funny that way. He says you wanted a picture of Barbara. I gather he refused to give it to you. Do you still want one?”

Did I? I couldn’t recall now what I’d planned to do with it. Maybe I’d make the rounds of hardware stores, showing it to everyone who sold icepicks.

“Yes,” I said. “I still want one.”

“Well, I can supply that much. I don’t know what else I can give you. But one thing I can’t give you at the moment is time. I was on my way out the door when the phone rang. I’ve got my coat on. I’m meeting a friend for dinner, and then I’m going to be busy this evening.”

“With group therapy.”

“How did you know that? Did I mention it the last time we talked? You have a good memory.”

“Sometimes.”

“Just let me think. Tomorrow night’s also impossible. I’d say come over tonight after therapy but by then I generally feel as though I’ve been through the wringer. After school tomorrow there’s a faculty meeting, and by the time that’s over— Look, could you come to the school?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ve got a free period from one to two. Do you know where I teach?”

“A private school in the Village, but I don’t know which one.”

“It’s the Devonhurst School. Sounds very preppy, doesn’t it? Actually it’s anything but. And it’s in the East Village. Second Avenue between Tenth and Eleventh. The east side of the street closer to Eleventh than Tenth.”

“I’ll find it.”

“I’ll be in Room Forty-one. And Mr. Scudder? I wouldn’t want to be stood up a second time.”

I went around the corner to Armstrong’s. I had a hamburger and a small salad, then some bourbon in coffee. They switch bartenders at eight, and when Billie came in a half-hour before his shift started I went over to him.

“I guess I was pretty bad last night,” I said.

“Oh, you were okay,” he said.

“It was a long day and night.”

“You were talking a little loud,” he said. “Aside from that you were your usual self. And you knew to leave here and make it an early night.”

Except I hadn’t made it an early night.

I went back to my table and had another bourbon and coffee. By the time I was finished with it, the last of my hangover was gone. I’d shaken off the headache fairly early on, but the feeling of being a step or two off the pace had persisted throughout the day.

Great system: The poison and the antidote come in the same bottle.

I went to the phone, dropped a dime. I almost dialed Anita’s number and sat there wondering why. I didn’t want to talk about a dead dog, and that was as close as we’d come to a meaningful conversation in years.

I dialed Jan’s number. My notebook was in my pocket but I didn’t have to get it out. The number was just right there at hand.

“It’s Matthew,” I said. “I wondered if you felt like company.”

“Oh.”

“Unless you’re busy.”

“No, I’m not. As a matter of fact, I’m a little under the weather. I was just settling in for a quiet evening in front of the television set.”

“Well, if you’d rather be alone—”

“I didn’t say that.” There was a pause. “I wouldn’t want to make it a late evening.”

“Neither would I.”

“You remember how to get here?”

“I remember.”

* * *

On the way there I felt like a kid on a date. I rang her bell according to the code and stood at the curb. She tossed me the key. I went inside and rode up in the big elevator.

She was wearing a skirt and sweater and had doeskin slippers on her feet. We stood looking at each other for a moment and then I handed her the paper bag I was carrying. She took out the two bottles, one of Teacher’s Scotch, the other of the brand of Russian vodka she favored.

“The perfect hostess gift,” she said. “I thought you were a bourbon drinker.”

“Well, it’s a funny thing. I had a clear head the other morning, and it occurred to me that Scotch might be less likely to give me a hangover.”

She put the bottles down. “I wasn’t going to drink tonight,” she said.

“Well, it’ll keep. Vodka doesn’t go bad.”

“Not if you don’t drink it. Let me fix you something. Straight, right?”

“Right.”

It was stilted at first. We’d been close to one another, we’d spent a night in bed together, but we were nevertheless stiff and awkward with each other. I started talking about the case, partly because I wanted to talk to someone about it, partly because it was what we had in common. I told her how my client had tried to take me off the case and how I was staying with it anyway. She didn’t seem to find this unusual.

Then I talked about Pinell.

“He definitely didn’t kill Barbara Ettinger,” I said, “and he definitely did commit the icepick murder in Sheepshead Bay. I didn’t really have much doubt about either of those points but I wanted to have my own impressions to work with. And I just plain wanted to see him. I wanted some sense of the man.”

“What was he like?”

“Ordinary. They’re always ordinary, aren’t they? Except I don’t know that that’s the right word for it. The thing about Pinell is that he looked insignificant.”

“I think I saw a picture of him in the paper.”

“You don’t get the full effect from a photograph. Pinell’s the kind of person you don’t notice. You see guys like him delivering lunches, taking tickets in a movie theater. Slight build, furtive manner, and a face that just won’t stay in your memory.”

“ ‘The Banality of Evil.’ ”

“What’s that?”

She repeated the phrase. “It’s the title of an essay about Adolf Eichmann.”

“I don’t know that Pinell’s evil. He’s crazy. Maybe evil’s a form of insanity. Anyway, you don’t need a psychiatrist’s report to know he’s crazy. It’s right there in his eyes. Speaking of eyes, that’s another thing I wanted to ask him.”

“What?”

“If he stabbed them all in both eyes. He said he did. He did that right away, before he went to work turning their bodies into pincushions.”

She shuddered. “Why?”

“That was the other thing I wanted to ask him. Why the eyes? It turned out he had a perfectly logical reason. He did it to avoid detection.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“He thought a dead person’s eyes would retain the last image they perceived before death. If that were the case you could obtain a picture of the murderer by scanning the victim’s retina. He was just guarding against this possibility by destroying their eyes.”

“Jesus.”

“The funny thing is that he’s not the first person to have that theory. During the last century some criminologists believed the same thing Pinell hit on. They just figured it was a matter of time before the necessary technology existed for recovering the image from the retina. And who knows that it won’t be possible someday? A doctor could give you all sorts of reasons why it’ll never be physiologically possible, but look at all the things that would have seemed at least as farfetched a hundred years ago. Or even twenty years ago.”

“So Pinell’s just a little ahead of his time, is that it?” She got up, carried my empty glass to the bar. She filled it and poured a glass of vodka for herself. “I do believe that calls for a drink. ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’ That’s as close as I can come to an imitation of Humphrey Bogart. I do better with clay.”

She sat down and said, “I wasn’t going to drink anything today. Well, what the hell.”

“I want to go fairly light myself.”

She nodded, her eyes aimed at the glass in her hand. “I was glad when you called, Matthew. I didn’t think you were going to.”

“I tried to get you last night. I kept getting a busy signal.”

“I had the phone off the hook.”

“I know.”

“You had them check it? I just wanted to keep the world away last night. When I’m in here with the door locked and the phone off the hook and the shades down, that’s when I’m really safe. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“See, I didn’t wake up with a clear head Sunday morning. I got drunk Sunday night. And then I got drunk again last night.”

“Oh.”

“And then I got up this morning and took a pill to stop the shakes and decided I’d stay away from it for a day or two. Just to get off the roller-coaster, you know?”

“Sure.”

“And here I am with a glass in my hand. Isn’t that a surprise?”

“You should have said something, Jan. I wouldn’t have brought the vodka.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“I wouldn’t have brought the Scotch, either. I had too much to drink last night myself. We could be together tonight without drinking.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course.”

Her large gray eyes looked quite bottomless. She stared sadly at me for a long moment, then brightened. “Well, it’s too late to test that hypothesis right now, isn’t it? Why don’t we just make the best of what we have?”

We didn’t do all that much drinking. She had enough vodka to catch up with me and then we both coasted. She played some records and we sat together on the couch and listened to them, not talking much. We started making love on the couch and then went into the bedroom to finish the job.

We were good together, better than we’d been Saturday night. Novelty is a spice, but when the chemistry is good between lovers, familiarity enhances their lovemaking. I got out of myself some, and felt a little of what she felt.

Afterward we went back to the couch and I started talking about the murder of Barbara Ettinger. “She’s buried so goddamn deep,” I said. “It’s not just the amount of time that’s gone by. Nine years is a long time, but there are people who died nine years ago and you could walk through their lives and find everything pretty much as they left it. The same people in the houses next door and everybody leading the same kind of life.

“With Barbara, everybody’s gone through a seachange. You closed the day-care center and left your husband and moved here. Your husband took the kids and beat it to California. I was one of the first cops on the scene, and God knows my life turned upside down since then. There were three cops who investigated the case in Sheepshead Bay, or started to. Two of them are dead and one left the force and his wife and lives in a furnished room and stands guard in a department store.”

“And Doug Ettinger’s remarried and selling sporting goods.”

I nodded. “And Lynn London’s been married and divorced, and half the neighbors on Wyckoff Street have moved somewhere or other. It’s as though every wind on earth’s been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. I know Americans lead mobile lives. I read somewhere that every year twenty percent of the country changes its place of residence. Even so, it’s as though every wind on earth’s been busy blowing sand on top of her grave. It’s like digging for Troy.”

“ ‘Deep with the first dead.’ ”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know if I remember it right. Just a second.” She crossed the room, searched the bookshelves, removed a slim volume and paged through it. “It’s Dylan Thomas,” she said, “and it’s in here somewhere. Where the hell is it? I’m sure it’s in here. Here it is.”

She read:

“Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other.”

“London’s daughter,” I said.

“As in the city of London. But that must be what made me think of it. Deep with the first dead lies Charles London’s daughter.”

“Read it again.”

She did.

“Except there’s a door there somewhere if I could just find the handle to it. It wasn’t some nut that killed her. It was someone with a reason, someone she knew. Someone who purposely made it look like Pinell’s handiwork. And the killer’s still around. He didn’t die or drop out of sight. He’s still around. I don’t have any grounds to believe that but it’s a feeling I can’t shake.”

“You think it’s Doug?”

“If I don’t, I’m the only one who doesn’t. Even his wife thinks he did it. She may not know that’s what she thinks, but why else is she scared of what I’ll find?”

“But you think it’s somebody else?”

“I think an awful lot of lives changed radically after her death. Maybe her dying had something to do with those changes. With some of them, anyway.”

“Doug’s obviously. Whether he killed her or not.”

“Maybe it affected other lives, too.”

“Like a stone in a pond? The ripple effect?”

“Maybe. I don’t know just what happened or how. I told you, it’s a matter of a hunch, a feeling. Nothing concrete that I can point at.”

“Your cop instincts, is that it?”

I laughed. She asked what was funny. I said, “It’s not so funny. I’ve had all day to wonder about the validity of my cop instincts.”

“How do you mean?”

And so I wound up telling her more than I’d planned. About everything from Anita’s phone call to a kid with a gravity knife. Two nights ago I’d found out what a good listener she was, and she was no worse at it this time around.

When I was done she said, “I don’t know why you’re down on yourself. You could have been killed.”

“If it was really a mugging attempt.”

“What were you supposed to do, wait until he stuck a knife into you? And why was he carrying a knife in the first place? I don’t know what a gravity knife is, but it doesn’t sound like something you carry around in case you need to cut a piece of string.”

“He could have been carrying it for protection.”

“And the roll of money? It sounds to me as though he’s one of those closet cases who pick up gay men and rob them, and sometimes beat them up or kill them while they’re at it to prove how straight they are. And you’re worrying because you gave a kid like that a bloody lip?”

I shook my head. “I’m worrying because my judgment wasn’t sound.”

“Because you were drunk.”

“And didn’t even know it.”

“Was your judgment off the night you shot the two holdup men? The night that Puerto Rican girl got killed?”

“You’re a pretty sharp lady, aren’t you?”

“A fucking genius.”

“That’s the question, I guess. And the answer is no, it wasn’t. I hadn’t had much to drink and I wasn’t feeling it. But—”

“But you got echoes just the same.”

“Right.”

“And didn’t want to look straight at them, any more than Karen Ettinger wants to look straight at the fact that she thinks her husband might have murdered his first wife.”

“A very sharp lady.”

“They don’t come any sharper. Feel better now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Talking helps. But you kept it so far inside you didn’t even know it was there.” She yawned. “Being a sharp lady is tiring work.”

“I can believe it.”

“Want to go to bed?”

“Sure.”

BUT I didn’t stay the night. I thought I might, but I was still awake when her breathing changed to indicate that she was sleeping. I lay first on one side and then on the other, and it was clear I wasn’t ready to sleep. I got out of bed and padded quietly into the other room.

I dressed, then stood at the window and looked out at Lispenard Street. There was plenty of Scotch left but I didn’t want to drink any of it.

I let myself out. A block away on Canal Street I managed to flag a cab. I got uptown in time to catch the last half-hour or so at Armstrong’s, but I said the hell with it and went straight to my room.

I got to sleep eventually.