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identify him. All I'm asking you to do is keep your head. I want your word you will keep your head."
    Carr, sober, looked him in the eye. "You have my word."
    "Ling, two more for the road," Delgado said.
    "I'll also give you my word on something else," said Carr. "I'm going to find the one who did it and put him in a box."
    Delgado acted as if he hadn't heard the remark.
    Carr pushed the buzzer under the name Sally Malone and waited. He was prepared for her not to let him in.
    Seconds later, the door buzzed open. He walked upstairs to her apartment. The door was ajar and he walked in almost cautiously. The living room was neat-as-a-pin Mediterranean, with lots of carved wood and modern-art prints. The place was as immaculate as her desk in judge Malcolm's courtroom.
    Sally was standing at the stove stirring mushrooms with a wooden spoon, her back to him. She wore a robe that barely touched her knees.
    "Look who's here," she said without turning around. Her voice was soft, almost inaudible, as always.
    Carr sat down at the kitchen table and drummed his fingers. Sally stopped stirring, poured a Scotch-and-water and plunked it down in front of him.
    "You know this is the first time I have seen you in three weeks," she said after returning to the stove. Admiring her gray-streaked hair and tanned athletic features, Carr thought she looked much more like a dance instructor than a stenographer. They had met because she had asked him to lunch, during a counterfeiting trial. He remembered waiting for her to call him the next week, as sort of a people experiment. He finally had to call her. Later, she said she would never have called him for the second date. He always wondered...
    "You know how busy..." he said.
    She turned and faced him. "How busy can someone be!" she interrupted in an angry whisper. "Can you really be so busy that we only see each other once a month? ... Twelve times a year? The same thing is happening to us again, and I, for one, should know better. Sometimes I can't believe I have known you for eight years."
    "It's not like I intentionally didn't call you," Carr said. "You know that." He realized it was a dumb thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth.
    "I know exactly why you didn't call! You and that crude Jack Kelly are like children who forget what time it is when they're playing. You get a charge out of arresting people and all the crap that goes with it. You are a forty-five-year-old Boy Scout! You like the danger or something. I don't understand you... Did you know that we both live in apartments in Santa Monica and see each other once a month? Oh, hell, what's the use!"
    She turned back toward the stove, picked up the frying pan, and dumped the mushrooms into the sink. She washed the pan furiously. Nothing was said for a few minutes.
    "Did you know the young undercover man who was killed? I heard the judge talking about it." Her tone was sour.
    "Yes," murmured Carr. He sipped his drink.
    Sally finished up at the stove and placed the utensils in the sink. She grabbed the edge of the kitchen counter with tier hands and stood with her head down.
    Carr looked at his watch. "I thought we could go to a movie tonight," he said politely.
    "Jesus," she said, shaking her head. "No communication whatsoever. Why can't you talk to me? I heard you were there when it happened. Can't you at least share that with me? Sometimes when I am around you I feel absolutely alone, as if I'm talking to..."
    Carr stood up and walked toward the door.
    "Please don't leave right now," Sally said.
    Quietly, Carr followed her into the bedroom.
    It was the usual sex scene: the almost perfunctory kisses, clothes in neat separate piles, thrusting tongues, moans of love, her fingernails in the usual place on his shoulders, Carr delaying his orgasm until the proper time...Then the whispers.
    "I have two tickets to a charity brunch at Marina Del Rey tomorrow morning," she said. "The judge gave them to me. It should be a real nice affair."