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"I wouldn't say that On the surface, she grew up in Westchester and went to Wellesley and rew up in Queens and went to Hofstra But a lot of that is just a ht she was too good for hi anybody else?"

"You do ask direct questions, don't you? It's not hard to believe you were a policeman Whatan affair?"

"There's nothing tackier than dishing the dead, is there? I used to hear the sex omen he met on the job He was a welfare caseworker and that involved visiting unattached women in their apartments, and if one's in the market for casual sex the opportunity's certainly there I don't know that he was taking advantage of it, but he struck ht he was"

"And she was having an affair to get even?"

"Quick of you Yes, I think so, but don't ask me ho the day Not often, but now and then There were tiht pass her door and hear a man's voice You have to understand that I'm not a busybody, so I didn't try to catch a peek of the mystery man, whoever he was In fact I didn't pay the whole business a great deal of attention"

"She would entertain thisanybody Maybe it was the plumber come to repair a leaky faucet Please understand that I just had the feeling that shesomeone, and I knew she had accused her husband of infidelity, so I thought she oose"

"But it was during the day Didn't she work days?"

"Oh, at the day-care center I gather her schedule was quite flexible She took the job to have soy ave it up, and now she wasn't doing anything, so she started helping out at the day-care center I don't think they paid her very much and I don't suppose they objected if she took the odd afternoon off"

"Who were her friends?"

"God I met people at their apartment but I can't remember any of them I think most of their friends were his friends There was the woman from the day-care center, but I'm afraid I don't remember her na a muted bell She lived nearby Just across the street, if I'ht"

"You are Do you know if she's still there?"

"No idea I can't renize her anyway I think I met her once, but I may just recall her because Barbara talked about her You say the naone It closed years ago"

"I know"

THE conversation didn't go much further They had a dinner date and I'd run out of questions to ask And I was feeling the drinks I'd finished the second one without being aware of it and was surprised when I found the glass empty I didn't feel drunk but I didn't feel sober either, and my mind could have been clearer

The cold air helped There was a wind blowing I hunched ainst it and walked across the street and down the block to the address I had for Janice Corwin It turned out to be a four-story brick building, and a few years back soht it, turned out the tenants as soon as their leases expired, and converted it for single-fa to the owner, whose na, the conversion process was still going on "It's endless," he said "Everything's three ti, and costs five tiures Do you kno long it takes to strip old paint off doorjambs? Do you kno many doorways there are in a house like this?"

He didn't remember the names of the tenants he'd dispossessed The name Janice Coras not familiar to him He said he probably had a list of the tenants so for it Besides, it wouldn't have their forwarding addresses I told hi the antique shops with their Victorian oak furniture and the plant stores and the Middle Eastern restaurants I ed to find an ordinary coffee shop with a Formica counter and red leatherette stools I wanted a drink more than I wanted ato eat I had Salisbury steak andIt wasn't bad I drank two cups of so-so coffee and paused on my way out to look up Corwin in the phone book There were two dozen Corwins in Brooklyn, including a J Corith an address that looked to be in Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst I tried the number but nobody answered

No reason to think she'd be in Brooklyn No reason to think she'd be listed under her own na the post office They don't hold address changes longer than a year, and the building on Wyckoff Street had changed hands longer ago than that But there would be ways to trace the Corwins There generally are

I paid the check and left a tip According to the counterman, the nearest subas a couple blocks away on Fulton Street I was on the train heading for Manhattan before I realized that I hadn't even bothered to walk over to Bergen and Flatbush and take a look at the station house of the Seventy-eighth Precinct Soht of it

Chapter 5

I stopped at the desk when I got back to es Upstairs in my room I cracked the seal on a bottle of bourbon and poured a few fingers into a glass I sat there for a while skipping around in a paperback edition of The Lives of the Saints The martyrs held a curious fascination for

Couple of days earlier there'd been an itees squib about a suspect arrested for the year-old murder of tomen in their East Harlehter, had been found in their bedroom, each with a bullet behind the ear The report said the cops had stayed on the case because of the unusual brutality of thea fourteen-year-old boy into custody He'd have been thirteen when the women were killed