“Nothing on this level.”

“There’s the SUV.”

“Where is he?”

“Somebody over there, our nine o’clock?”

“Negative. That’s a friendly.”

“More lights! We need more lights!”

Moment of silence passed. Hours, it felt.

What was going on?

Goddamn it, somebody let me know!

But there was no response to this tacit demand. He went back to Pulaski’s frequency.

“Ron?”

All he heard was a series of clicks, as if somebody whose throat had been cut was trying to communicate, though he no longer had a voice.

Chapter 18

“Hey, Amie. Gotta talk.”

“Sure.”

Sachs was driving to Hell’s Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan, on her quest for the Frank Sarkowski homicide file. But she wasn’t thinking about that. She was thinking of the clocks at the crime scenes. Thinking of time moving forward and time standing still. Thinking of the periods when we want time to race ahead and save us from the pain we’re experiencing. But it never does. It’s at these moments that time slows interminably, sometimes even stops like the heart of a death-row prisoner at the moment of execution.

“Gotta talk.”

Amelia Sachs was recalling a conversation from years earlier.

Nick says, “It’s pretty serious.” The two lovers are in Sachs’s Brooklyn apartment. She’s a rookie, in her uniform, her shoes polished to black mirrors. (Her father’s advice: “Shined shoes get you more respect than an ironed uniform, honey. Remember that.” And she had.)

Dark-haired, handsome, bulging-muscle Nick (he too could’ve been a model) is also a cop. More senior. Even more of a cowboy than Sachs is now. She sits on the coffee table, a nice one, teak, bought a year ago with the last of the fashion modeling money.

Nick was on an undercover assignment tonight. He’s in a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans and wearing his little gun—a revolver—on his hip. He needs a shave, though Sachs likes him scruffy. The plans for this evening were: He’d come home and they’d have a late supper. She’s got wine, candles, salad and salmon, all laid out, all homey.

On the other hand, Nick hasn’t been home nights for a while. So maybe they’ll eat dinner later.

Maybe they won’t eat at all.

But now something’s wrong. Something pretty serious.

Well, he’s standing in front of her, he’s not dead or wounded, shot down on an undercover set—the most dangerous assignment in copdom. He was going after crews jacking trucks. A lot of money was involved and that meant a lot of guns. Three of Nick’s close buddies have been with him tonight. She wonders, her heart sinking, if one of them was killed. She knows them all.

Or is it something else?

Is he breaking up with me?

Lousy, lousy . . . but at least it’s better than somebody getting capped in a shootout with a crew from East New York.

“Go on,” she says.

“Look, Amie.” It’s her father’s nickname for her. They are the only two men in the world she lets call her by the name. “The thing is—”