‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Now tell me what you’ve got, Captain. You didn’t drag me down about some unknown kid. What don’t I know? I know about Patrolman Stettin. Is there more?’

Gazzo smiled. ‘I thought you gave up on the world, Dan.’

‘I try, but it hangs around,’ I said. ‘What’s up, Captain?’

Gazzo pressed a button. A policewoman came in. Gazzo seemed surprised to see her. I know that she has been in Gazzo’s office for years. He still looks at her face to see if she needs a shave. He stares at her blue skirt as if sure that something is wrong. Change comes slow in the dim world of Homicide.

‘Jones file, er, Sergeant,’ the captain said.

Gazzo is resigned to knowing and meeting every perversion and horror man can do to man, but he can’t get used to a female sergeant. When she returned he took the file without a smile.

‘Tani Jones, not her right name,’ Gazzo read from the file. ‘Real name: Grace Ann Mertz. Born: Green River, Wyoming. Parents still there. Caucasian; twenty-two years old; blonde; five-foot-eight; 132 pounds. Model and chorus girl. Worked at The Blue Cellar. A tourist club on Third Street.’

Gazzo looked up at me. ‘Your sparrow works in one of the tourist clubs, right?’

‘Monte’s Kat Klub.’

‘She know a Tani Jones?’

‘Not that I know. When Marty puts her clothes back on she forgets the clubs. When we talk shop, it’s acting. Real acting.’

‘Maybe this time?’ Gazzo said. ‘There must have been talk.’

‘She doesn’t socialize with the club girls, Captain. She spends her time, all she can, with the off-Broadway people,’ I explained. ‘What is it? Dead? Killed? Some time last Thursday or Friday?’

It was a simple guess. Gazzo is Homicide. He was interested in a boy who was on Water Street on Thursday and gone on Friday.

‘Thursday afternoon,’ Gazzo said. He went on reading his file. ‘Lived alone in a four-room luxury apartment in a non-doorman building on Doyle Street.