Dark Rivers of the Heart

been a waste of time.
        Instead, the bunker's autonomous computer, which controlled all the recording machines, was programmed to monitor the Davidowitz wiretap continuously and to activate the laser disc only upon the recognition of a key word that was related to the fugitive. That recognition had occurred moments ago. Now the key word appeared on a small display screen on the recorder: HANNAH.
        Eve pressed a button marked MONITOR and heard Theda Davidowitz talking to someone in her living room on the other side of the city.
        In the handset of each telephone in the widow's apartment, the standard microphone had been replaced with one that could pick up not only what was said in a phone conversation but what was said in any of her rooms, even when none of the phones was in use, and pass it down the line to a monitoring station on a continuous basis. This was a variation on a device known in the intelligence trade as an infinity transmitter.
        The agency used infinity transmitters that were considerably improved over the models available on the open market. This one could operate twenty-four hours a day without compromising the function of the telephone in which it was concealed; therefore, Mrs. Davidowitz always heard a dial tone when she picked up a receiver, and callers trying to reach her were never frustrated by a busy signal related to the infinity transmitter's operation.
        Eve jammer listened patiently as the old woman rambled on about Hannah Rainey. Davidowitz was obviously talking about rather than to her friend the fugitive.
        When the widow paused, a young-sounding man in the room with her asked a question about Hannah. Before Davidowitz answered, she called her visitor "my pretty-eyed snooki e-wookums" and asked him to "give me a kissie, come on, give me a little lick, show Theda you love her, you little sweetuins, sweet little sweetums, yeah, that's right, shake that tail and give Theda a little lick, a little kissie."
        "Good God," Eve said, grimacing with disgust. Davidowitz was going on eighty. From the sound of him, the man with her was forty or fifty years her junior. Sick. Sick and perverted. What was the world coming to?
        "A cockroach," Theda said as she gently rubbed Rocky's tummy.
        "Big.
        About four or five feet long, not counting the antennae."
        After the Drug Enforcement Agency raided Hannah Rainey's place with a force of eight agents and discovered that she'd already fled, they grilled Theda and other neighbors for hours asking the dumbest questions, all those grown men insisting Hannah was a dangerous criminal, when anyone who had ever met the precious girl for five minutes knew she was incapable of dealing drugs and murdering police officers. What absolute, total, stupid, silly nonsense. Then, unable to learn anything from neighbors, the agents had spent still more hours in Hannah's apartment, searching for God-knew-what.
        Later that same evening, long after the Keystone Kops had departedsuch a loud, rude group of nitwits-Theda went to 2-D with the spare key that Hannah had given her. Instead of breaking down the door to get into the apartment, the D.E.A had smashed the big window in the dining area that overlooked the balcony and courtyard. The landlord already had boarded over the window with sheets of plywood, until the glazier could fix it.
        But the front door was intact, and the lock hadn't been changed, so Theda let herself in. The apartment-unlike Theda's own-was rented furnished. Hannah had always kept it spotless, treated the furniture as though it were her own, a fastidious and thoughtful girl, so Theda wanted to see what damage the nitwits had done and be sure that the landlord didn't try to blame it on Hannah.
        In case Hannah turned up, Theda would 'fy about her immaculate housekeeping and her respect for the landtesti lord's property. By God, she wouldn't let them make the dear girl pay for the damage plus stand trial for murdering police officers whom she obviously never murdered.
        And, of course, the apartment was a mess, the agents were pigs: They had ground out cigarettes on the kitchen floor, spilled cups of take-out coffee from the diner down the block, and even left the toilet unflushed, if you could believe such a thing, since they were grown men and must have had mothers who taught them something. But the strangest thing was the cockroach, which they'd