“Sara Bluestone a/k/a Sara Blue. A/k/a Cookie. Notice the hands and feet? They’re on the large side for a girl. That’s one way you can tell a transsexual. Of course it’s not foolproof, you get girls with big hands and boys with small ones. She’d fool you, wouldn’t she?”

I nodded.

“She would have had the rest of the surgery soon. Probably already had herself scheduled for the operation. Law says they have to live as a woman for a year before Medicaid’ll pick up the tab. Of course they all got Medicaid, they all got welfare. They’ll turn ten or twenty tricks a night, all quickie blow jobs in the johns’ cars for ten or twenty bucks a pop, they’ll bring in a couple of hundred dollars a night seven nights a week, all of it tax free, and they got Medicaid and welfare and the ones with kids get ADC and half the pimps are on SSI.”

He and Durkin batted that ball around a little. Meanwhile the technical people were busy around us, measuring things, taking photographs, dusting for prints. We got out of their way and stood together in the motel parking lot.

Durkin said, “You know what we got, don’t you? We got us Jack the fucking Ripper.”

“I know it,” Garfein said.

“You get anything with the other guests? She musta made some noise.”

“You kidding? Cheaters? ‘I didn’t see nothin’, I didn’t hear nothin’, I gotta go now.’ Even if she did some screaming, in a job like this everybody’d figure it was a new way to have fun. Assuming they weren’t too busy having their own fun to notice.”

“First he checks into a decent midtown hotel and phones up a fancy call girl. Then he picks up a TV streetwalker and drags her to a cheater’s motel. You figure the cock and balls came as a shock to him?”

Garfein shrugged. “Maybe. You know, half your street prostitutes are guys in drag. Some sections it’s more than half.”

“The West Side docks it’s a lot more than half.”

“I’ve heard that,” Garfein said. “You talk to the johns, some of ’em’ll admit they prefer if it’s a guy. They say a guy gives better head. Of course there’s nothing queer about them, see, because they’re just receiving it.”

“Well, go figure a john,” Durkin said.

“Whether he knew or not, I don’t think it put him off much. He went and did his number all the same.”

“Figure he had sex with her?”

“Hard to tell unless there’s traces on the sheets. He doesn’t figure as her first trick of the evening.”

“He took a shower?”