“Cheer up, maybe the show will close after the first performance.”

“I wouldn’t wish that on her. How much have you seen of Marla?”

“Only the once. Fortunately, unlike Rita, she’ll be available in the evenings once the show has opened.”

“Good for you. If I can’t see Rita, then I’m going to start thinking about Shelley again.”

“Have you heard from her since you booted her out of your bed?”

“I had a postcard with a picture of the Port Authority bus terminal on it. No signature.”

“What did she have to say?”

“‘See you around.’”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I hope you burned the postcard. You don’t want that lying around the house.”

“I’ve been a cop all these years, and you think I don’t know how to destroy incriminating evidence?”

Stone laughed. “I was getting worried about you.”

“I was getting worried about me, too. You know, there’s this female detective in my squad named Vivian DeCarlo, nice Ital-ian girl.”

“Dino, the next worse thing to fucking Shelley Bach is fucking somebody in your squad.”

“Unless we can get away with it,” Dino replied.

“Oh, shit,” Stone said. “You’re determined to destroy your career, one way or the other.”

“So what if I do? I’ve got the money from my divorce settlement, and a pension waiting for me.”

“Retirement would be an unnatural act for you. What would you do with yourself?”

“I don’t know. What do other retirees do?”

“Play shuffleboard and wait to die.”

“I could travel.”

“You hate travel, unless I’m there to fly you.”

“I could buy a place in Italy and go live there.”

“You’re a New Yorker, not an Italian.”

“With a name like Bacchetti, I’m not Italian?”

“You live and breathe New York. What would you do in Italy? You speak about as much Italian as I do.”

“I used to speak Italian, with my grandmother, when I was a kid. It would come back to me.”

“You’d end up sitting in some bar in Rome, trying to pick up American tourists, so you could talk to somebody.”

“That’s pretty much what I do here, except they’re not tourists.”

“What you do here is be a cop. I hope you’re not stupid enough to give that up before they boot you out.”

Dino sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to quit.”

“If you start seeing this DeCarlo girl, you’ll end up getting one or both of you transferred, probably to the Bronx or the outer reaches of Brooklyn.”

Stone looked toward the door and saw Herbie Fisher standing there.

“There’s Herbie,” Dino said. “At last, a familiar face.”

Stone waved him over. “He wants to be called Herb now—he’s growing up.”

Herbie sat down and ordered a drink. “What a day!” he said. “What a week!”

“Is that good?” Dino asked.

“You bet your ass it is,” Herbie said. “I got promoted to senior associate and pulled in two pieces of new business, maybe three.”

“What’s the third?” Stone asked.