He flipped the phone closed, took a ten-dollar bill and two singles from his wallet, placed them next to the check Connie had left, and got up from his seat.

"Bad?" she asked.

"Bad," Mac confirmed.

Danny Messer pushed his glasses back up his nose and listened to NPR as he drove. Traffic was heavy. It was always heavy in Manhattan, but he knew ways to get around it. It was his city.

Danny had managed four hours of troubled sleep. He hadn't dreamed about the dead little girl or what he had done to the two men on the subway.

Instead he dreamed about an incident that had occurred more than a month earlier when he had worked a rape-murder case. The victim, fifteen, had been torn up badly during the rape, her eyes gouged out. Then the killer had left the body in an alley, where the rats had gotten to it.

The killer had left his semen, and identifying him had been routine. The murderer's name was Lenny Zooker and he had already done five years for rape. He had been in his one-bedroom ratty apartment on 98th Street watching a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show when Danny and Don Flack came to pick him up. He was gaunt, cadaverous, his hair thin and brushed back. Teeth uneven. Eyes a moist brown.

Zooker had smiled as he let them in. In the middle of the room was the body of a ten-year-old girl and a thick pool of nearly black, fly-covered blood.

Zooker looked at the blood. Splatters of it covered the floor and shabby furniture.

"Haven't had time to clean up," Zooker said apologetically. "Should have. Was expecting you."

Danny had let out a grunt of pain and punched the grinning killer in the face. Zooker fell back, tripping, slipping in the dead girl's blood.

Now, in the car heading for Queens, he looked at his right hand. There was a definite tremor. It had begun when he woke up this morning. It had begun after dreaming about Lenny Zooker and those two dead girls.