Feeling as if she were living a scene in a hundred movies as she clutched the phone and begged the police to believe her.

Believe me. Please believe me.

She told the oh-so- politic female police officer that her husband didn’t go to bars or wander off. He wasn’t having a little memory problem or a little affair. He always came right back like a Boy Scout, and if he’d gotten “adventurous” and “ornery,” he would have called Shrew.

And simply told me to fuck off, that he’d be home when he got around to it, just like he’d done last time he’d gotten goddamn adventurous and ornery, Shrew had said to the politic police officer, who’d sounded like she was chewing gum.

Nobody was in a panic except Shrew.

Nobody cared.

The detective, yet someone else in the landmass of the NYPD, who finally called with the news was regretful.

Ma’am, I’m very sorry to inform you … At around four p.m. I responded to a scene… .

The policeman was polite but quite busy and said he was sorry several times, but didn’t offer to escort her to the morgue the way a well-behaved nephew might escort his stricken aunt to a wake or a church.

The morgue? Where?

Near Bellevue.

Which Bellevue?

Ma’am, there’s only one Bellevue.

There most certainly isn’t. There’s the old one. And then there’s the new one. What Bellevue is the morgue near?

She could go there at eight a.m. and identify the body, and she was given the address, lest she confuse the location of one Bellevue with the other, and she was given the name of the medical examiner:

Dr. Lenora Lester, LL.B., M.D.

Such an unfriendly, unpleasant woman for all her education, and how unfeeling she was when she hurried Shrew into that little room and drew back the drape.

His eyes were closed, and he was covered up to his chin with a papery blue sheet.

No sign of any injury, not a scratch, not a bruise, and for an instant Shrew hadn’t believed anything had happened.

There’s nothing broken. What happened? What really happened? He can’t be dead. There’s nothing wrong with him. He looks fine. Just pale. He’s so pale, and I’ll be the first to agree he doesn’t look well. But he can’t be dead.

Dr. Lester was a stuffed dove under glass and her mouth didn’t move as she explained, very briefly, that he was a textbook pedestrian fatality.

Hit from behind while upright.

Thrown over the hood of the taxi.

Struck the back of his head on the windshield.

He had massive fractures of the cervical vertebrae, the doctor’s stiff white face had said.

The severity of the impact had fractured both of his lower extremities, the stiff white face had said.

Extremities.