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Ecstasy like they expected passing Euroweenies, but nothing's missing. Just the money."
    Mary Chen smiled. Henry didn't like the expression—and he suspected she didn't like him. The feeling was mutual, but she could do her job.
    "Couple of the bodies show heel marks, usually to the back of the head. Coup de grâce. And I saved the best for last." She turned her head to one of her own team: "Tag, bag and ship. Let's get the meat back to the shop and get some details."
    They walked over to a table. "Here it is," she said, and uncovered it with a gesture a little like a maître d'hotel whipping the cover off a dish.
    Henry stared, fumbling in his jacket for his cigarettes and then remembering he'd quit. It was an arm, detached at the shoulder. Naked, except for reddish . . . fur, fur with darker spots. Thick, dense fur running all the way down to the knuckles. The palm was black and heavily callused. The arm was about the same size as Henry Carmaggio's leg, and he was six feet and weighed two hundred pounds. The detective prodded cautiously at the limb with a gloved finger, then manipulated the joints. Unmistakably meat, the real thing. Fresh, too.
    "Chen," he said, after a minute's silence. "I'm going to assume you didn't go down to the zoo and kill a gorilla to play a practical joke on me."
    "It's not a gorilla," she said. "Look—the thumb structure's human. Fully opposable." She took the giant hand in both of her tiny ones and touched the thumb to each fingertip. He sensed tightly-controlled fear in the forensics expert. Just like him.
    "So it's a baboon. One of those sinsemilla growers out on the West Coast had a Bengal tiger as a watchdog. The Animal Rights woo-woos sued the DEA cowboys who shot it when they raided his place—read about it in the Post."
    "It's not a baboon either," Chen said. "Wrong shape, too big, and they don't have spots. Did a giant, spotted, one-armed baboon go running out of here between one and four this morning?"
    "Who'd notice, in this neighborhood?" Rodriguez said.
    Clinton's not actually that bad an area, Carmaggio thought. Even if it had been known as Hell's Kitchen once. Most of it positively yuppified, except for the odd pocket of squalor like the warehouse. A couple of years and this would probably be boutiques.
    "They took long enough to call us about this firefight," he replied. A glance down at his notepad:
    "Nothing, then a very loud noise—sounded like thunder, or an explosion—another loud noise like thunder but not as loud, a flash of light—hey, maybe a concussion grenade—then lots of gunfire."
    Henry Carmaggio had seen a great deal in his forty-five years. In a way, it was reassuring that things could still surprise him.
    "Chen," he said heavily, "I'm not going to go to the Captain with a report that Marley Man's posse was wasted by giant spotted baboons." He remembered the first body. "Giant spotted baboons with ray guns. And for Christ's sake, keep this goddamned arm under cover until we have something to say—you can imagine what the media would do with it, and not just the Enquirer. "
    "All right. I'll have to talk to your lab people: we'll need serious help, maybe consult someone at the university."
    "As long as it's quiet. I want to retire, but not next week to someplace with compulsory medication."
    "That," Chen said, "is your problem. You're the one who has to write up the site report." Then in a dead-flat tone: "I'm going to do my best on this, Henry. I really am."

    ***
    Gwen finished vomiting into the stained toilet and staggered erect, taking a deep breath. Control clamped down again. Letting fear-nausea overwhelm her had been stupid, a waste of calories she might not be able to replace at once. She flushed, after a moment's puzzling out the control, then climbed into the shower. Her blacks washed free easily, memory-molecule fabric snapping back to freshness. Then she stripped and began the more difficult task of getting skin and hair and nails free of the