I moved on to a less amusing section of the fax: his autopsy photos and report. No wallet or other ID had been found on the body, but the bracelet was discovered in the wet sand beneath him when the cops rolled him over. Good thing the fax had included a photo of Malik from one of his myriad arrests, because homicide had taken a toll on his boyish good looks. The two hollow-point loads put into the back of his head had removed large swaths of his face on the way out. And what the bullets had started, sand crabs and insects had finished. The autopsy photos were hard to look at, even for me. I decided to have a seat and to keep my lunch where it belonged. I’d gotten the gist of the report. I took down Malik’s address, phone numbers, etc., and placed the fax in a folder.

“You all right?” a customer asked me as I stepped out of the office. “You’re pale as can be.”

Nauseous. “Fine,” I answered.

“Good, then can you please explain to me exactly why you charge a full three dollars more for Moet White Star than Crates and Carafes in Roslyn?”

“I would be happy to.”

And for the first time in years, I was.

2951 West Eighth Street, that’s the address of the 60th Precinct. It’s one of those hideous prefab buildings that lacks looks, character, and just about every other aesthetic quality you might think of. Its only saving grace is that it is located directly across West Eighth Street from Luna Park, one of the ugliest housing projects known to human-kind. The precinct house is also right next door to a firehouse. Now there’s some sharp thinking, huh? It’s like putting the hyenas and the lions next door to each other at the fucking Bronx Zoo. There were times during my service I thought lions and hyenas were more congenial.

A civilian employee-a heavyset black woman with lacquered hair-greeted me as I entered. She was so impressed by having an ex-member of the Six-O show up at her desk that she nearly fell asleep mid-sentence. Not that I blamed her, mind you.

“Can I help you?”

“This used to be my precinct,” I said, feeling immediately like an idiot.

“Y’all want it back?”

Then I compounded my stupidity by showing her my badge. Oh, man, that really impressed her.

“You wanna see mine?” she said, showing me the laminated credentials she had clipped to the overburdened waistband of her slacks. “Not as pretty, I know, but it don’t set off metal detectors or nothing. Now is there something I can help you with?”

I thought about it. My showing up here wasn’t exactly part of some master plan. It’s not the way I worked. Like I had any idea about that. Unconventional was a polite term for how I went about my business.

Didn’t matter. Whenever they came to me, it was always with the Gotham Magazine article in hand or in mind. After my future brother-in-law went missing in 1977, some hotshot investigative reporter did a cover piece on the mystery surrounding Patrick’s disappearance. It was a natural. Francis Maloney Sr. was a big macha, a mover and shaker in the state Democratic party and one of its biggest fund-raisers. His eldest son had been shot down over Hanoi and his youngest son had vanished off the face of the earth. But what it always came down to was Marina Conseco. Within the body of the article about Patrick’s mysterious disappearance was an inset with my picture, Marina Conseco’s, and a brief description of how I’d saved her life back in ’72.

“Hey, mister!” She snapped her fingers. “Y’all want me to call the control tower for landing instructions or what?”

“Sorry.”

“No offense, but I am kinda busy here,” she explained.

Well, that was bullshit, but I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get rid of me. I had come here only because I knew I would eventually have to.

“So is there somebody you wanna see?”

“Yeah, is Rodriguez around?” I asked.

“Retired last year,” she said. I knew that.

“Lieutenant Crane?”

“Captain Crane now. He’s at One Police Plaza.”

“Stroby?”

“Never heard a him. Listen, Dancer and Blitzen, Doc and Dopey, they ain’t here neither. So-”

Just when she was getting going, the door opened at my back and the room filled with noise. I turned to look over my left shoulder. There, cursing up a storm in both English and Spanish, was a stunning woman in her mid-twenties with coffee-and-cream skin. She had thick pouty lips, straight jet-black hair, and brown eyes that were at once both fiery and cold. She was busy waving a rolled up New York Post at

“Jesus, enough already,” he said out of desperation. “Whaddaya want from me, I didn’t kill the schmuck.”

Another familiar voice, definitely Bronx Irish.

“Fucking Melvin! My big case down the crapper and this is how I find out, through the fucking Post!”

Fishbein’s help hadn’t gotten me much of a head start. Though I had more details than the papers about the life and demise of the late Mr. Jabbar, a.k.a. Broadbent, the daily rags had the essentials. I knew because I read about it myself this morning over coffee. The news of his identification and the scant details of his very small life weren’t exactly the stuff of banner headlines. The networks weren’t going to preempt their afternoon soaps and the world would continue turning on its axis. But some people would notice. Some already had. His was the kind of death that would cause a ripple on the surface of a silent sea. The ripple might quickly weaken and fade, forgotten like a fallen leaf. Or the ripple might plow the water into a wave, a wave to crash onto our heads, to sweep its victims into the sea without regard to their relative guilt or innocence.

“Yo! You got a problem?”

It took me a few seconds to get that the Latina detective was talking to me. I also realized I had been staring at her. Well, I’m not sure staring is the right word, precisely. I was more than staring. It was like the rest of my visual field went blurry at the edges while her image was hyper-sharp, almost painfully so. And my hearing took on that muted, head-under-water quality. Yes, she was very pretty but something else about her commanded my attention. Even after she barked at me, I could not turn away.

“Do I know you?” she asked impatiently.

“I’m sorry, no, I don’t think so,” I heard myself say, and finally looked away.

She and her partner walked by, the partner shaking his head but relieved for a few seconds of distraction. Then, before they got all the way down the hall, she started up again.

“I got enough shit on my plate without some middle-aged shithead stalking my ass.”

That hurt. No one enjoys being called middle-aged. It’s like when you turn forty you begin the long process of being dismissed. You’re no longer your own person, but just another ant in the colony. Fergie May used to say that a man knew he was middle-aged when he became invisible to hippie chicks. Well, hippie chicks might have gone the way of the Edsel and moon landings, but there was no arguing the essential truth of his philosophy. I was invisible, and if I hadn’t exactly been dismissed, I was being handed my coat and gloves.

“Who was that?” I asked the woman at the desk.