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A Jewish queen and a Dairy Queen, I thought, and thought of Donna

"Maybe they were sisters," I suggested

"Sisters?"

"Under the skin"

I wanted breakfast, but when I hit the street I bought a paper before I did anything else, and I could see right away that it wasn't going to s Hotel Ripper Claims Second Victi block caps, sex-change hooker butchered in queens

I folded it, tucked it underto do first, read the paper or eat, but my feet decided for me and picked neither of those choices I walked two blocks before I realized I was heading for the Y on West Sixty-third, and that I was going to get there just in tiht Their coffee was as good as anybody else's

I got out of there an hour later and had breakfast in a Greek joint around the corner on Broadway I read the paper while I ate It didn't seem to bother me now

There wasn't much in the story I didn't already know The victie; I'd somehow assumed she lived across the river in Queens Garfein had mentioned Floral Park, just across the line in Nassau County, and evidently that here she'd grown up Her parents, according to the Post, had both died several years earlier in an air crash Mark/Sara/Cookie's sole surviving relative was a brother, Adrian Blaustein, a wholesale jeweler residing in Forest Hills with offices on West Forty-seventh Street He was out of the country and had not yet been notified of his brother's death

His brother's death? Or his sister's? How did a relative relate to soard a brother-turned-sister who turned quick tricks in strangers' parked cars? What would Cookie Blue's death mean to Adrian Blaustein?

What did it mean to me?

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind Any man's death, any woman's death, any death in between But did it diminish er of the32 treer

I ordered another cup of coffee and turned to a story about a young soldier hoaun had apparently fallen out of so on i serviceh a second ti my head at it

One ht million of the I slipped into the baseot myself a cup of coffee, and while I looked for a seat I scanned the rooht-hand side I sat further back near the coffee

The speaker was a woman in her thirties who drank for ten years and spent the last three of theet money for wine "Even on the Bowery," she said, "there are some people who kno to take care of themselves Some of the ravitated straight to the other kind, the ones who don't shave and don't wash and don't change their clothes A little voice in ' "

During the break I ran into Jan on her way to the coffee urn She seehborhood," I explained, "and it got to be ht see you here"

"Oh, this is one of o for coffee after, okay?"

"Sure"

A dozen of us wound up around a couple of tables in a coffee shop on West Broadway I didn't take a very active part in the conversation, or pay too much attention to it Eventually the waiter distributed separate checks Jan paid hers and I paid mine and the two of us headed doard her place

I said, "I didn't just happen to be in the neighborhood"

"There's a big surprise"

"I wanted to talk to you I don't know if you read today's paper-"

"About the killing in Queens? Yes, I did"

"I was out there I'm all wound up and I feel the need to talk about it"

We went up to her loft and she made a pot of coffee I sat with a cup of coffee in front ofand took a sip it was cold I brought her up to date, told her about Kim's fur jacket, about the drunken kids and the broken wine bottle, about the trip to Queens and e'd found there And I told her, too, how I'd spent this afternoon, riding the subway across the river and walking around Long Island City, returning to knock on doors in Cookie Blue's East Village teneay bars on Christopher Street and up and down West Street

By then it had been late enough to get in touch with Joe Durkin and learn what the lab had come up with

"It was the same killer," I told Jan "And he used the saht handed, and pretty powerful, and he keeps a sharp edge on his machete, or whatever the hell he uses"

Phone checks with Arkansas yielded nothing The Fort Sh, and the auto license plate belonged to an orange Volkswagen owned by a nursery school teacher in Fayetteville

"And she only drove it on Sundays," Jan said

"So like that He made up the whole Arkansas business the same as he made up Fort Wayne, Indiana But the license plate was real, or alht to check the hot-car sheet, and there was a navy blue Ihts just a couple hours before Cookie was killed The plate nu in except for a pair of digits reversed, and of course it's a New York plate instead of Arkansas

"The car fits the motel clerk's description, such as it was It also fits what they got from some other hookers ere on the stroll when Cookie was picked up They say there was a car like that cruising around for a while before the dude in it made up his mind and picked up Cookie

"The car hasn't turned up yet, but that doesn'ttime before an abandoned stolen car turns up So zone and the police tow truck hauls them to the pound That's not supposed to happen, soainst the hot sheet, but it doesn't always go the way it's supposed to It doesn't matter It'll turn out the killer dumped the car twenty minutes after he finished with Cookie, and that he wiped it clean of prints"

"Matt, can't you let go of it?"

"Of the whole business?"

She nodded "It's police procedure fro down all the details"

"I suppose so"

"And it's not as though they're likely to put this on the shelf and forget about it, the way you thought they ht when it was just Kim as dead The papers wouldn't let them shelve it even if they wanted to"

"That's true"

"So is there a reason why you have to push yourself on this? You already gave your client his money's worth"

"Did I?"