The Gypsy

"Thought you said it wasn't smart to get mixed up in a homicide investigation?" Durand asked coyly.

Stepovich flicked his eyes at his partner, and away. Like Joey Petma

Stepovich turned and looked out the window and said, "Well, those lab guys are taught to be pretty tight-lipped. Probably wouldn't part with anything important anyway. Not to some patrol cop in a bar,anyway. Hey!" Stepovich interrupted as Durand's mouth opened in an "oh, yeah!" face. "Hey! How in hell did Willy get back on the street so soon? I thought Rich and Trope busted him hard for beating one of his girls."

"Where?" Durand demanded, and nearly sideswiped a parked car craning his neck to look back.

"You missed him. Or maybe it wasn't him." Durand hated Willy. The wiry little pimp was meaner than hell, and completely unafraid of cops. No one liked to bust him because Willy had ways of making it unpleasant for the arresting officers. Cut up the upholstery in one squad car. Smeared the chili burger he was eating down another cop's uniform. Rumor had it he'd taken a dump in the back seat of Kelly's patrol car. And the first time Durand had collared him, Willy stuck his finger down his throat and threw up all down the front of him. The guy was crazy.

"Where was he?" Durand demanded again- His bottom teeth clamped against his upper lip. Looked like a bulldog. Tenacious as one, too-

"Hell, he's gone now. You want to take a coffee break pretty soon?" Stepovich smiled at him.

"I guess." Durand kept glancing in the rearview mirror, and then over at Stepovich, as if unable to decide which to pursue. "There was one other weird thing about the dead gypsy woman," he offered.

"Yeah? Well, turn left at the next light and go about six blocks, get us out of this hole. I don't wanta get served by some waitress that probably gives hand jobs on the side. Let's go to Norm's, okay? It's clean and cheap."

"I mean, the knife was weird enough, you know,but it gets weirder," Durand offered desperately -

Hey, Joey, we don't wanta see your stupid Polaroid. We got a whole Playboy at our fort, and it's fulla pictures of real girls, not somebody's sister. Stepovich flicked a glance at Durand. "Yeah?" he offered, then,"Or we could go to that new place, the one the Korean guy opened on Fifteenth. I hear it's clean. You been there yet?"

"No- Uh, Norm's let's go to Norm's. But there was something weird about that killing. I mean, besides the knife with the little studs. Four separate stab wounds, I tell you that? Every one right to the hilt. Lab guy says the first one was the fatal one. She musta known she was already dead, but she kept on fighting. Can you beat that?"

"Mean old ladies are like that. Harder to kill than cats." Stepovich knew he just had to wait now and he'd get all that Durand had.

"Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But stuff had been done to the body."

Stepovich was silent, a little sick. What could she have done to make someone want to kill her? And what kind of a person could push a knife into another human being, not just once, to kill her, but over andover as she was struggling and dying? He thought of the Gypsy with his black unreadable eyes and empty face. Could you do it, he asked the image in his mind,and the Gypsy in his mind shrugged his wide shoulders and told him nothing.

"Not rape. It wasn't anything like that. Someone had cut a lock of hair from the back of her head, down underneath at the nape of her neck."

"Souvenir?"

"Maybe. Or maybe proof that a job had been done."

Stepovich shook his head wearily. "Lock of grey hair is too generic. They'd have taken something more personal, a piece of jewelry, something like that.Sounds like a souvenir to me."

Or a cult killing of some kind, some kind of crazy with a special knife who kills her and takes a lock of her hair, some kind of a wacko. Or a very personal revenge of some kind. Or a total crazy, with no reasons at all, only impulses. The Gypsy in his mind was smiling secretively now. That day they busted him,he hadn't even seemed sure of his name. Chuck maybe, but he wasn't sure, so they'd made him John Doe. Man like that, couldn't remember his own name,maybe he wouldn't remember what he'd done the day before. Maybe he'd look in Stepovich's face and seem baffled and i

"Here's Norm's."

And he'd sent Ed after him, to look at things a little. Great, Stepovich. Don't just fuck your career up by withholding evidence, and then turning over what might be a murder weapon to some whacked-out gypsy by a cemetery. Go ahead and drag Ed into it,send him out to look for someone who was probably psycho, who'd probably cut up your old buddy and take a hair sample when he was through. Great. Some cop you are.

"We going in, or what?"

"What?"

"You want to get a cup of coffee here?"

They were parked outside Norm's, Stepovich noticed belatedly. He wondered if Tiffany Marie was working, hoped she wasn't. She always looked so damn glad to see him. He didn't want to deal with any kid gri

Ed's phone rang. Four. Five. Six. "Hello." Pissed voice.

"Ed, it's me. Listen. About that little thing I asked you to look into. Don't bother. It's fizzled out into nothing, no big deal. No sense you messing with it."

"For this I come in all the way from the garage? To hear you tell me to forget it, it's nothing. Shit. Just when I thought I had a hot tip for you, too. Hey. Guess what? This is go

Weird? Weird is cutting a lock of hair off the nape of a dead gra

"Hell, nothing probably. Guy I got it from's been doing coke so long that he's only got three brain cells left and none of them co

"Yeah. I guess so. Hey, thanks, Ed. Sorry this came to nothing like this."