.

the owner. I made your offer. You have your counter offer.”

      Ed stared at her. Amy squirmed and sat back in her chair. They both looked scared.

      “You’re lucky if you want to be,” Myra said, and quoted him a price ten percent below asking.

      Amy wanted to speak but instead looked up at Ed, who was staring at the carpet.

      “I’ll go into the next room,” Myra said, “and let you two discuss this privately.”

      “There isn’t any need,” Ed said. Man of the house, already looking around in a proprietary way. “We’ll take it at that price.”

      Myra looked at Amy. “Are you sure?”

      Amy grinned and nodded yes. She began to cry. Ed leaned over and kissed her. Myra had had about enough of it. But the deal was good; she knew the owner, who was pressed by time before moving out of the country, would gladly accept the offer.

      “What happens next?” Amy asked.

      “One of the things that happens,” Ed spoke up, “is that the co-op board has to approve us.”

      “He’s right,” Myra said, “but believe me, you two won’t have any problems there. Unless Ed is secretly the city’s crime czar.”

      “Not yet,” Ed said with a grin.

      Myra laughed. “If you two have the time, we can go back to the office now and write up the contract.”

      Again Amy looked to Ed.

      “We’ll make the time,” he said.

      “This place,” Amy said when they were leaving, “This day! Everything’s absolutely perfect!”

      “Days like that are so rare,” Myra said, thinking hormones, young love, pregnancy. It was all so much more complicated than contracts, title searches, and closing statements. She decided she was glad to be where she was in life, and glad for Amy, where she was.

      Myra smiled most of the way down in the elevator. The world seemed to be in order. Young Ed Marks had his castle in the air. Mrs. Marks had her family and home. Myra had her tubal ligation and her deal. And would never change a diaper.

      SEVEN

      January 2002

      Eden Wilson was at Rollie’s Restaurant celebrating her sixth birthday. The clown who blew up balloons and twisted them and put them on everyone’s nose like funny red noses had just left. Eden’s school friends, Letty and Carmelle and Vincent, were at the table with her. Everyone had ice cream and cake and it was wonderful. Mommy and Daddy were at the next table, but they were leaving the kids alone unless someone acted bad. Colored hats, presents, things if you pulled on a string they went pop and shot little red pieces of paper…They scared you at first, but only at first. Eden’s favorite present was the doll with the blond hair that her mommy said looked so much like her.

      Nothing had ever been this much fun.

      At the next table, Eden’s parents forgot about their half-eaten pieces of chocolate cake and watched their daughter enjoy herself. Her golden laugh was marvelous. If only she could laugh like that from time to time all through her life.

      If only her future could be as wonderful as her sixth birthday party.

      Stack watched Rica perch on the edge of his desk, arching her back and trying to look seductive. Succeeding. He pretended not to notice. Mathers, walking past the desk, glanced over and smiled. Stack decided Rica was getting to be a real embarrassment.

      He mused again on the idea of transferring her out of Homicide, save himself the trouble that was sure to happen. On the other hand, she was undeniably sexy, and he was in the process of getting a divorce. What would it hurt if they had a bit of fun? Other than destroy their working relationship, threaten the terms of his divorce settlement, ruin both their careers, and take from him the thing he loved most in what he knew was a perverse way—the Job.

      “…no prints other than Danner’s on the safe,” she was saying.

      Stack hadn’t thought there would be. Whoever killed Danner probably didn’t know the wall safe was there. And nothing in the apartment seemed to have been stolen or even rearranged.

      “Any trace on the bills?” he asked.

      Rica shook her head no, causing the light to change in her dark eyes, to soften them. He knew she was only half Hispanic, on her father’s side. Her mother had been a Swede working as a maid on Park Avenue, and had died five years ago from ovarian cancer. Rica was short for Erica. He didn’t think she’d told anyone else at the Eight-oh about that; he seemed to be the only one who knew.

      “No record on the serial numbers,” she said. “The bills appear to be clean. Danner himself appears to be clean. Upstanding attorney, or seems to have been. Kept up on his child support payments to the ex-wife in Oregon, served on the board of his co-op, gave regularly to charity as well as political contributions.”

      “To which party?” Stack had been absently tapping a pencil point on the desk. Rica was almost imperceptibly pumping a shapely, crossed leg to the rhythm. He stopped with the pencil.

      “Both parties,” she said. “Danner was a man who hedged his bets. Everybody seemed to like him at least okay. And you saw how broken up his girlfriend was.”

      “Yeah. So he was a Mr. Nice Guy.”

      “Well, yes and no. A few people described him as distant, kind of arrogant and standoffish.”

      “A Jekyll and Hyde?”

      “Nothing like that. A Mr. Nice Enough Guy.”

      “And he had twenty thou in cash in a wall safe when he died.”

      Thou. Rica wondered if anyone other than Stack had said thou since Frank Sinatra died. “When you think about it, it isn’t that much money, Stack.”

      “I guess not, to a man like Danner. But nobody at his law firm or who knew him socially seems to know where he might have obtained it.”

      “Might have sold some stock.”

      “No record of it with his broker.”

      “Bet on a horse and won.”

      “Possible.”

      “Or collected a fee from a client without the knowledge of his law firm.”

      “More possible. The sort of thing I’d like to believe, since it’d provide a motive.”

      “Hm…the partners in an established law firm get together and decide to murder one of their own who screwed them out of twenty thousand dollars. Sounds real reasonable, Stack.”

      He wished she’d take her sarcasm and—

      Rica shifted position on the desk, flashing some thigh and jumbling his thoughts. “I don’t think whoever killed Danner did it for the money, Stack. If that had been the motive, the apartment would have been tossed, and there was no sign of a search.”

      “What had he been working on?” Stack asked. “As a lawyer.”

      “Most recent court case, he defended one Raymond Masters on a drug possession charge. Pro bono.”

      “Mr. Nice Enough Guy again,” Stack said.

      “Not necessarily. Danner’s field was corporate law. He had the Masters case because a certain amount of pro bono work is required at his law firm.”

      “That’s…” Stack glanced at his notes “…Frenzel, Waite and Conners. Anybody talk with them?”

      “Them?”

      “The three partners.”

      “The last one died in nineteen-forty. That’s the kind of law firm it is, very traditional. Everybody’s in a contest to see who has