"Yes."
"Who? Can you take a look for me?"
Brown reached across the desk for the duty chart.
"Kling and Carella are riding together," he said. "Meyer and Genero are out solo."
"Any idea which sectors?"
"No."
"Okay, I'll try to raise them."
"Keep in touch."
"Will do."
Brown hung up.
"What?" Hawes asked.
"Homicide on Culver. There goes the neighborhood."
The telephone rang again.
"Take a look at this picture," Parker said, coming over to Brown's desk. "You ever see a body like this one?"
"Eighty-Seventh Squad, Hawes."
"Look at those tits," Parker said.
"Hello, who am I talking to, please?" a woman's voice asked.
"Detective Hawes."
"Legs that won't quit," Parker said.
"My husband's gone," the woman said.
"Yes, ma'am," Hawes said, "let me give you the number for hellip;"
"My name is hellip;"
"It'll be best if you call Missing Persons, ma'am," Hawes said. "They're specially equipped to deal with hellip;"
"He disappeared here inthis precinct," the woman said.
"Still hellip;"
"Does that look like a fifty-year-old broad?" Parker asked.
The telephone rang again. Brown picked up.
"Eighty-Seventh Squad, Brown," he said.
"Artie? This is Genero."
"Yeah?"
"Artie, you won't believe this."
"What won't I believe?" Brown asked. He looked up at Parker, covered the mouthpiece, and whispered, "Genero."
Parker rolled his eyes.
"It happened again," Genero said.
"My name is Marie Sebastiani," the woman on Hawes's phone said. "My husband is Sebastian the Great."
Hawes immediately thought he was talking to a bedbug.
"Ma'am," he said, "if your husband's really gone hellip;"
"I'm at this restaurant, you know?" Genero said. "On Culver and Sixth?"
"Yeah?" Brown said.
"Where they had the holdup last night? I stopped by to talk to the owners?"
"Yeah?"
"My husband is a magician," Marie said. "He calls himself Sebastian the Great. He's disappeared."
Good magician, Hawes thought.
"And I go out back to look in the garbage cans?" Genero said. "See maybe somebody dropped a gun in there or something?"
"Yeah?" Brown said.
"I mean he'sreally disappeared," Marie said. "Vanished. I went out back of the high school where he was loading the car, and the car was gone, and so was Frank. And all his tricks were dumped in the driveway like hellip;"
"Frank, ma'am?"
"My husband. Frank Sebastiani. Sebastian the Great."
"It happened again, Artie," Genero said. "I almost puked."
"What happened again?"
"Maybe he just went home, ma'am," Hawes said.
"No, we live in the next state, he wouldn't have left without me. And his stuff was all over the driveway. I mean, expensivetricks ."
"So what are you saying, ma'am?"
"I'm saying somebody must've stolen the car and God knows what he did to Frank."
"Artie?" Genero said. "Are you with me?"
"I'm with you," Brown said, and sighed.
"It was in one of the garbage cans, Artie."
"What was in one of the garbage cans?"
"Which high school is that, ma'am?" Hawes asked.
"Herman Raucher High. On North Eleventh."
"Are you there now?"
"Yes. I'm calling from a pay phone."
"You stay right there," Hawes said, "I'll get somebody to you."
"I'll be waiting out back," Marie said, and hung up.