She cried out and slumped forward.

Russo patted her. 'Hey, she's not bad looking. Maybe I could do myself a little good here.'

He turned, reaching for his zipper, and Falcone gave him a shove. 'You stupid bastard, that'll blow the whole thing. Come on, give me a hand.'

Grumbling, Russo picked up her feet while Falcone took her arms, and they carried her to the edge of the pier. 'Easy now,' and she was in the water.

'Come on, let's go get a drink.' They walked back to the Lincoln, and a minute later they drove away.

Neither of them noticed Katherine Johnson's purse, where it had fallen out of the car, in the shadows beside a packing case.

The following morning at six o'clock, rain drove in across the East River, rattling the windows of the old precinct house.HarryParker, brought out of bed only an hour before, drank coffee from a machine and made a face as a woman detective sergeant named Helen Abruzzi came in.

'This is disgusting,' Parker told her. 'Reminds me of why I switched to tea. Okay, what have we got?'

'This kid is called Charlene Wilson. She was working a strip bar not far from here.'

And doing business on the side?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'What happened?'

A man called Paul Moody took her home. When we found her, she'd been raped orally, half-strangled, her wrists tied.'

Parker frowned. 'That sounds like those two murders in Battery Park.'

'That's what I thought, Captain, and that's why I phoned you to come here. Charlene got away because he got drunk and fell asleep and she managed to loosen her hands.'

Parker nodded. 'Okay, let me know when the line-up's ready.'

She went out and Parker went to the window, the rain driving against it, and found a Marlboro, having long since stopped pretending to have quit. He lit it and looked out at the river morosely, a huge black man who had started life in Harlem, earned a law degree at Columbia, and then decided to join the police rather than a law firm. He'd never minded seventy-hour weeks, although his wife had, and had divorced him for it.