Dark Maze

have sounded a little overwhelmed by my thoughts. Ruby looked at me and asked, “Are you all right?“
    “Sure I am. Just, thanks for the coffee, and for last night And for all your help on the case.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    “And thanks for the robe. It must have cost a fortune.“
    “It did.”
    “So it’s pricey gifts now. We’re getting in deep, Ruby.“
    “You bet your life.”
    I sipped my coffee and looked at the bridge and asked, “If we could do exactly as we pleased, how should we spend this gorgeous spring day?”
    Ruby did not now sound at all like some innocent schoolgirl. “We’d stay in.”
    “What’s this, a randy streak?”
    “A criminal streak, that’s more like it. I think you and me
    together in the sack is still against the law in four or five southern states.”
    “Is it now? And here I’m always saying how civil disobedience has its honored place.”
    “And time, which is what you haven’t got this afternoon, Detective Hockaday.” She held out the Daily News and the Post. “I hate to remind you, but there’s still a killer out there.”
    I took the papers and scanned the contrasting methods employed in the exercise of that hallowed tabloid principle of presumed guilt. And I could easily see how these tabloids would not bring cheer today to the mayor or the commissioner or Inspector Neglio, and certainly not to the poor hounded Picasso.
    The Daily News now had its own artist’s sketch of Picasso, thus playing catch-up with the Post on graphics. Over Picasso’s likeness was the streamer, “Dragnet For a Loser.” The story accompanying this was an imagination of Picasso’s down-and-out life in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, almost entirely based on quotations from Luis Riestra. It read to me like Luis had goofed on the press after a night full of funny cigarettes.
    But the Post once again had the journalistic leg up with its streamer, “Secret Plan To Nab Psycho Killer Revealed To Post Reporter, See Page 3.” Slattery was at it again.
    I sighed and turned to page 3.
    There was my photograph, and the Post drawing of Picasso from the other day. And Slattery unthrottled:

    EXCLUSIVE!

    Solo Detective Stalks Mad-Dog Slayer
    “Terror Is a One-Man Job”

    By William T. Slattery

    The hope of a city seized by the bloody nightmare of serial murder rides on the shoulders of a single, highly unorthodox cop—Detective Neil Hockaday of the Street Crimes Unit, Manhattan, popularly known in police and criminal circles as the SCUM patrol.
    Detective Hockaday is virtually alone in stalking a homeless artist called Picasso, wanted for questioning in connection with three stunningly brutal murders in recent days.
    “We got a suspect, but routine investigation has come up with just about zip on him, so it all comes down to one guy—Hockaday,” said Hockaday’s superior officer, Inspector Tomassino Neglio, in an exclusive interview with this reporter. “That’s some hell of a secret plan if you want to know the truth, but there you go.”
    With unusual candor for a top-echelon police commander, Neglio added, “You ask how we’re going to find some mad dog who’s out terrorizing this town. I’m squaring with you. Not with some huge gang of cops. Terror is a one-man job, and Hock drew it.”
    “Hock,” as the SCUM-patrol detective is widely known, has investigated many of New York’s most baffling homicides. Only recently, he was credited with solving the murder of flamboyant radio preacher “Father Love,” the long-time pastor of Harlem’s Healing Stream Deliverance Temple.
    In referring to that case, Inspector Neglio said, “In the whole department, Hock’s the only cop who could have dug up the crazy bedbug who did that preacher. He’s not the easiest cop I ever knew, and he’s got his own quirky ways of working, but Hock brings them in, boy! I don’t know what it is about the guy, but when a bedbug starts scratching Hock starts itching.”
    Neglio added, “Right now, we’ve got a bedbug someplace out there with a head full of hate. So we put Hock on the trail. God bless us all.”
    Detective Hockaday himself was unavailable for comment.

    I skimmed the rest of the story, which mostly only recapped the murders of Celia Furman, Dr. Reiser and Benito Molevo Reyes. Even the great Slattery had not made the Celia-Picasso marriage connection, nor Picasso’s connection with Coney Island.
    I examined my photograph. It did not reveal much, which pleased me. A