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heels. She could recall her father’s cautioning voice from her youth: Don’t stick your neck out. Don’t make it easier for the bastards.
    Never had she believed more in her father’s simple wisdom.
    She let herself sink back into fatherly philosophy and the welcoming embrace of the sofa cushions.

7
    â€œL ennon was shot there,” Sal Vitali said to Harold Mishkin, as they walked along Central Park West toward where they’d parked the unmarked car.
    Before them loomed the ornate stone building that occupied an entire block.
    â€œThe Russian or the singer?” Harold asked.
    Not sure whether Harold was playing dumb, Sal growled simply, “The singer.”
    Harold’s expression of detached mildness didn’t change as he made a slight sound that might have meant anything.
    They’d finished interviewing Lois Graham’s pertinent neighbors, catching some of them after work hours but before dinner. People didn’t like to have their meals delayed or interrupted.
    The two detectives thought it might be worth talking to the victim’s upstairs neighbor again, a guy named Masterson, who had seemed more than a little nervous the first time. But maybe that was because his apartment smelled strongly of weed. He and a busty twenty-three-year-old girl named Mitzy, who’d spent the night with him, swore they’d been in bed all evening the night of the murder. They’d been listening to CDs of Harry Connick Jr. songs. Harold thought that was unlikely, though he himself liked Connick Jr.
    Tonight when Masterson (“call me Bat—everyone does”) opened his door to them, Mitzy was nowhere to be found.
    Bat motioned for Sal and Harold to sit on the sofa, and sat down across from them in a ratty old recliner that creaked beneath his weight. Harold noted that Masterson was a larger man than he’d first thought. Broad and muscular.
    â€œWhere’s Mitzy this evening?” Sal asked.
    Masterson shrugged. Not easy to do in a recliner, but he managed. “At her quilting bee. She belongs to this gang of women who sit around and gossip and make quilts. Give them to people they like or love. I’ve got so many I don’t know what to do with the damned things.” He shrugged again, exactly like the first time. “I’d be happy to see a Christmas tie this year.”
    â€œYou mean between two of the women in the quilting bee?” Harold said.
    Masterson looked at Harold the way Sal had. Harold seemed not to notice.
    Sal thought Masterson was going to shrug a third time, but he just sat there, as if the brief conversation and two sitting shrugs had been enough to exhaust him. Harold could do that to people.
    â€œWould you like to amend your account of last night in any way?” Harold asked.
    Masterson raised his eyebrows in a practiced way, as if he’d had enough of shrugs. “You mean have I thought of anything else?”
    Sal and Harold sat still, waiting.
    â€œI remember riding down in the elevator with Lois Graham. She had a bag of popcorn with her. She is—was—an attractive lady. The sort anybody would remember.”
    â€œShe and you were alone in the elevator?” Sal asked.
    â€œYes, just the two of us. We both got out at lobby level. I went to pick up my mail at the boxes. She started walking off as soon as she stepped on the sidewalk.”
    â€œDid she know Mitzy?” Sal asked, not knowing quite why.
    Masterson wasn’t thrown by the question. “The two never met that I can remember. I mean, Lois Graham and I didn’t really know each other. We were what you’d call nodding acquaintances.”
    â€œThen the two of you never dated?”
    â€œNever anything like that. I mean, you saw Mitzy.”
    â€œShe has a certain glint in her eye,” Harold said.
    â€œWell,” Sal said, closing his notepad, “we won’t arrest her just now as a suspect, but she should see a doctor