I walked up to the front door of the building where there stood a tall policeman with a stomach like a sagging sack of grain, barring anyone from coming into the twelve- story brick structure.

"Move along," the hazel-eyed white man told me. He was maybe fifty, a few years my junior.

"What happened here?" I asked.

His reply was to raise his graying eyebrows a quarter inch. Men who lived their lives by intimidating others often developed such subtleties with age.

"Stackman or Bonilla?" I asked. "Or maybe it's Burnham this far north."

The question was designed to short-circuit a needless confrontation. I knew most of the homicide detectives in Manhattan.

"Who're you?" the six-foot cop asked.

I pay a lot of attention to how tall people are. That's because even though I'm a natural light heavyweight I don't quite make five-six.

"Leonid McGill."

"Oh." The cop's face was doughy and so his sneer seemed to catch in that position like a Claymation character.

"Who's the detective?"

"Lieutenant Bonilla."

"Lieutenant? Guess she got a promotion."

"This is a crime scene."

"Apartment 6H?"

The sneer wasn't going anywhere soon. He brought a phone to his jaw, pressed a button, and muttered a few words.

"Excuse me," a man said from behind me. "I have to get by."

I took half a step to the right and turned. There stood another fifty-year-old white man-maybe five-nine. This one was wearing a camel coat, pink shirt, and too-tight dark-brown leather pants. At his side stood a thin blond child. Possibly twenty, she could have been seventeen. All she had on was a red dress made from paper. The hem barely covered her groin and only her youth held up the neckline.

It was no more than forty-five that night.