“You’d make a great criminal, not remembering this and may have that. What was the slut’s name? This was in the country where you whiled away the summers of your youth.”

“Having fun?” He was dressing.

“Pamela,” she said. “My God, why would I remember a name I never expected to hear again in my life? On second thought, keep your dream to yourself, thank you very much. And don’t go contemplatin’ Pamela and her massive mammaries.”

“I never said anything about the size of Pamela’s mammaries …”

“You didn’t have to. It’s a phase.”

“It wasn’t a phase for me.”

“Really?” She smiled. “It was for me. Size, size, size. I couldn’t look at a stallion without getting all slippery. Now go. Have a nice day.” She feigned a yawn. “Think of me now and then. Go, I said. And leave the money on the dresser.”

“Don’t I always?”

“Only because lifelong habits are hard to break.”

With a smile, he kissed her again, and she rolled over to go back to sleep.

At his own apartment, he could hear his telephone ringing even before the elevator door opened. The answering machine would field the call, but someone calling at his hour had something important in mind. It wouldn’t be Eileen: she knew how long it took to get from her apartment to this. Besides, only a death in the family could rouse her before seven on a workday.

Four rings. That kicked in the answering machine. He grabbed the kitchen extension. “Hold on, I’m here,” he said over his own voice on the announcement tape.

“Devlin, this is Lieutenant Nelson in Levine’s office. Octavio Lopez is scheduled to arrive at the Tombs at six-thirty, and the chief wants you there.”

“Well, he said to consider myself on call.”

“Six-thirty, the Tombs.”

“I heard—”

Nelson was gone. Devlin hung up and went on to the bedroom. The answer machine was recycling. It had recorded Nelson’s call. The machine blinked three times quickly between pauses. Two people had called him in the middle of the night, when he had been downtown with Levine, or later, at Eileen’s. Normally nobody called him after ten o’clock. Now he probably had to rewind, fast forward, then stop and listen through the whole damned tape, from yesterday evening and all those calls from Mariano, in order to be sure he had heard everything. The new technology. Devlin told people he had given up trying to understand advances in electronics somewhere between the introduction of stereo sound and the passing away of black-and-white TV. He punched the Rewind button.