She didn't know whether she was more surprised by his presence here or by the gun in his hand. Too many thoughts clicked through her mind in the next three seconds. She thought He's going to blow it, the guy hasn't made his move yet. She thought Does Eileen know he's here? She thought—
But Eileen and her man were already around the corner and out of sight.
"Bert!" she shouted.
And in that instant Shanahan came thundering up yelling, "Stop! Police!"
Kling turned to see a man pointing an arm in a plaster cast at him.
He turned the other way and saw Annie running across the street.
"Mike!" Annie shouted.
Shanahan stopped dead in his tracks. Annie was waving her arms at him like a traffic cop.
"He's on the job!" she shouted.
Shanahan had earlier told Eileen that he and Lou Alvarez were just full of tricks. He hadn't realized, however, that Alvarez had sent another man to the Zone without telling him about it. That tricky, he didn't think Alvarez was. Shanahan's own little trick was a .32 revolver in his right hand, his finger inside the trigger guard, the gun and the hand encased in the plaster cast. He felt like an asshole now, the plaster cast still pointed at a guy Annie had just identified as a cop.
The realization came to all three of them in the same instant.
The traffic light on the corner turned red again as though signaling the coming of their mutual dawn.
Without a word, they looked up the street.
It was empty.
Eileen and her man were gone.
A minute ago, she'd had three backups.
Now she didn't have any.
Dolores Eisenberg was Frank Sebastiani's older sister.
Five-feet ten-inches tall, black hair and blue eyes, thirty-eight, thirty-nine years old. Hugging Marie to her when Brown and Hawes came over from the garage. Tears in the eyes of both women.
Marie introduced her to the cops.
Dolores seemed surprised to see them there.
"How do you do?" she said, and glanced at Marie.
"We're sorry for your trouble," Brown said.
An old Irish expression. Hawes wondered where he'd picked it up.
Dolores said, "Thank you," and then turned to Marie again.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to get here," she said. "Max is in Cincinnati, and I had to find a sitter. God, wait'll he hears this. He's crazy about Frank."
"I know," Marie said.
"I'll have to call him again," Dolores said. "When Mom told me what happened, I tried to reach him at the hotel, but he was out. What time was that, when you called Mom?"
"It must've been around eleven-thirty," Marie said.
"Yeah, she called me right afterward. I felt like I'd been hit by a locomotive. I tried to get Max, I left a message for him to call me, but then I left the house around midnight, as soon as the sitter got there. I'll have to call him again."
She was still wearing her overcoat. She took it off now, revealing a trim black skirt and a crisp white blouse, and carried it familiarly to the coatrack. They were still standing in the entrance hall. The house seemed exceptionally still at this hour of the morning. The heater came on with a sudden whooosh.
"Would anyone like some coffee?" Dolores asked.
A take-charge lady, Hawes thought. Tragedy in the family, here she is at one in the morning, ready to make coffee.
"There's some on the stove," Marie said.
"Officers?" Dolores said.
"Thank you, no," Brown said.
"No, thanks," Hawes said.
"Marie? Honey, can I get a cup for you?"
"I'm all right, Dolores, thank you."
"Poor baby," Dolores said, and hugged her sister-in-law close again. Her arm still around her, she looked at Brown and said, "My mother told me you think Jimmy did it, is that right?"
"That's a strong possibility," Brown said, and looked at Marie.
"You haven't found him, though?"
"No, not yet."
"It's hard to believe," Dolores said, and shook her head. "My mother said you have to do an autopsy. I wish you wouldn't, really. That's really upsetting to her."
It occurred to Brown that she did not yet know her brother's body had been dismembered. Hadn't Marie told the family? He debated breaking the news, opted against it.
"Well, ma'am," he said, "an autopsy's mandatory in any trauma death."
"Still," Dolores said.
Brown was still looking at Marie. It had further occurred to him that on the phone with Dolores not an hour ago, she herself advised her sister-in-law about the autopsy. Yet now Dolores sounded as if the information had come from her mother. He tried to remember the exact content of the phone conversation. Marie's end of it, anyway.
Which meant her sister-in-law had asked her if she was in bed, or getting ready for bed, or whatever, and she'd told her No, I'm down here with two detectives. Which meant that Dolores
