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Gene pointed to her left breast and said, "That one. It's slightly bigger."

Megan smiled sweetly and brought her left hand from behind her back. In her hand was a Beretta .32 automatic, the type with the long, unshrouded barrel. Gene gaped.

She showed her right hand. It held a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. "Don't worry," she said, "they're clean. Now watch this."

She bounced away into the kitchenette and returned with a large Idaho potato. She stabbed the barrel of the Beretta into the potato, then turned and pointed the gun at the closet door. There was a funny PHUT! noise, not very loud, and the potato flew to pieces. There was a little hole in the closet door.

"Omigod." Gene didn't feel very well. This woman meant business, all right, and he was in it. He was scared. What scared him most was she wasn't scared at all.

It wasn't easy for a guy like Mulheisen to just walk up to a great-looking woman and start chatting. The street people called him "Sergeant Fang," but that was because he had longish teeth. He wasn't the aggressive kind of cop. He wasn't a direct man, most of the time. He knew how and when to be direct. His preferred mode was oblique. He would rather blind-side a suspect than confront him. And he worked the same way in his dealings with other people. Which is how he came to be running the Ninth Precinct. There was a precinct commander out there, of course, who thought he ran the Ninth. But everyone else knew who really ran it. Which is why it was possible for Mulheisen to spend so many afternoons at Tiger Stadium without anyone asking what he was doing.

It took courage for Mul to say hello to Megan.

They were at the hot dog stand behind home plate. Mul had followed her there, leaving the murderer sitting behind third base to watch the Indians get the tar walloped out of them by Mickey Tettleton and Travis Fryman. Mul wondered why she had come all the way down here to buy a hot dog and a beer. Maybe she was restless.

He bought himself a beer and said, "Looks like we got them on the run."

She looked at him without surprise. "The Indians don't have shit," she said. "Well, they have Baerga. But then, the Tigers don't have that much either."

"You're not a Tiger fan?" he asked.

She took an enormous bite of the hot dog and chewed with her mouth barely able to close. "I like good baseball," she mumbled.

There was a sharp crack from the ball field, followed by a loud roar. A man ran over to the nearest ramp and then turned to report that Trammell had doubled.

Mulheisen tried to think of something to say. How about: I see you here a lot? No. It would sound like he was spying on her. He wanted to know her name and ask her if she'd like a drink after the game. But he didn't know how to do that. Hell, he thought, I'm thirty-eight years old. I'm not married. I've been around. But he couldn't think how to do it. Finally, just as she was walking away, he blurted out, "You're not from around here, are you?"

Megan didn't know why she talked to the guy. He was in his late thirties, he had these long teeth and his hair was getting thin. Also, if she needed more, his pale blue eyes were slightly bugged. He was homely. But cute, kind of. And he was a good-sized man who looked like he could take care of himself. Gene wasn't exactly lighting her fire anymore.

"What are you?" she said, "another goddamned salesman, fucking off for an afternoon?" But she smiled as she said it.

Mul disliked her swearing. "I'm a businessman," he said.

"Oh, wow! A businessman! What's your business?" She stood there in cowboy boots and jeans, restlessly shifting her weight from foot to foot, but she didn't seem in a hurry.

"A manufacturer," Mulheisen said.

"Oh yeah? What do you manufacture?"

"Parts."

"Parts?" she said. "What's `parts'?"

"Auto parts. All kinds. Rocker arms, valve head covers, headliners, sun visors. Whatever they need. What do you do, besides come to ballgames?"

She had a smear of mustard just to the left of her lower lip. Mulheisen's heart kicked. He was surprised to discover a sudden tenderness in himself. It was amazing. Of course, he had been watching her for the better part of a month. He had never dreamed that she would be this easy to talk to.

"I'm a cowhand," she said.

"I thought so," Mul said.

She nodded, chewing on the hot dog. "Not much call for a top hand around Motown, though. I reckon I'll mosey on home, before long."

"Where's that?"

"You ever hear of a town called Denio?"

"Never in my life time."

"It's on the other side of the Divide."

Mulheisen laughed. "You get to be a baseball fan out in Denio, on the other side of the Divide?"

"You bet," she said, "but it isn't that. Here," she gestured toward the gleam of green through the opening of the ramp, "you got a little outdoors, you know? A little bit of pasture land, right in the middle of the city."

Mulheisen could see it. He had often felt the same. "What do you do when the game is over?" he asked.

Megan looked at him, cocking her head, her eyes wide apart. "I got a boyfriend," she said. She looked away, then back at Mulheisen. "What did you have in mind?"

"I usually go over to Lindell's AC," he said.

"That a bar?"

Mulheisen said it was, on Trumbull.

"I don't know," she said. "I got this boyfriend ... oh, what the fuck. Yeah, I'll prob'ly be in there."

The next day Toronto came to town. They led the league and The Free Press referred to them as "the new Murder's Row." It brought out the fans. Megan figured the crowd was close to thirty thousand for the afternoon game. She figured the gate had to be a minimum of $200,000, and more likely it was twice that.

It was too bad, she thought. She wasn't going to get to know Mul. A hell of a nice guy, too. They'd had a ball the night before. She'd sent Gene home, then went to meet Mul. They drank, went to dinner, drank some more. They drove across to Canada, to Windsor, where a damn stupid comedian in a nightclub was boring, but even he couldn't dampen their spirits. They laughed and drank and held hands and she even kissed him twice. She had "accidentally" brushed him with her breasts a couple of times, but he had prudently refrained from grabbing her. And when he drove her home he didn't even ask to come upstairs. She was surprised, but she'd been grateful. She'd been tired. Also, she didn't go to Mister Luckey's the next day. She was probably fired.

But who needed a job? She had a job. Today.

Mulheisen's murderer was in his usual place and roaring with approval when Wells struck out Olerud with a man on. Mul sat up in the stands with one eye on the murderer and one on Megan. She looked fabulous. She had on a nylon windbreaker, which was unusual. Her hair was as wild as ever and she smiled all the time. Mulheisen was thinking of the way her resilient breasts had massaged his chest the night before. She sat with her boyfriend, a fair-haired guy who sneezed into a handkerchief when the dust blew around. He wore a windbreaker too, just like Megan's. And he wore a hat, today. A straw hat.

At the beginning of the fourth inning, Megan got up and left. Mulheisen figured she was going for a hot dog. He decided that his murderer was too engrossed to kill anybody today, so he trailed after her.

He didn't notice that her boyfriend got up too, and came out behind them.

Megan was walking fast down the corridor, her hair snapping and her fists jammed in her pockets. Mulheisen went after her a few steps, then paused, puzzled. He stopped and let her go. If she was in that much of a hurry, she must be going to the bathroom.

He stood there, in the wide, windy, concrete concourse behind the stands. The wind blew dust about and there was a popping noise of kids stomping on paper cups. He noticed Megan's boyfriend, at the hot dog stand. Mulheisen drifted over to the ramp and watched the Blue Jays come to bat. Wells snuck a low slider past Molitor for a strike. Mul exchanged a smug smile with an usher.

And then, for no reason, Mul turned and saw Megan's boyfriend running past the ramp, down the concourse. Running, he thought. Now, why would he be running? He did a quick check on his murderer, still screaming by the rail as Wells moved the count to one and one on Molitor.

Then Mulheisen went after the boyfriend.

"It's simple," Megan explained to the guards. "If you don't, I'll just shoot you.'

The guard without the money looked at her and grinned. Then she pulled out a potato and stuck it onto the barrel of the Beretta. The three of them stood in a little alcove off the concourse. There was no one around.

Wells came in with the fast ball. Molitor swung. He pulled it right down the foul line and then it began to hook. Foul ball.

The guard went for his gun.

PHUT!

The man was dead. Right in the face. The other guard, who hadn't grinned at all, sagged and almost vomited. Megan braced him up. "Let's get it on," she said.

The guard walked down the concourse a few feet in front of the lady with her hands in her windbreaker pockets. He carried bags of money in both hands. The woman had unzipped her windbreaker and unbuttoned a few more buttons on her cowboy shirt. The cops glanced up but they didn't see the guard with the money. They saw the woman with wild hair and sunglasses and her tits practically shifting out of the wide-open shirt. She smiled broadly at them, her dark glasses gleaming in the sun.

They were well out of the gate and walking down sunny Michigan Avenue when they heard several shots on the other side of the park. Cops ran by them and vanished into the park.

Megan directed the man into the alley.

"Don't kill me, don't shoot," he pleaded.

"Just keep walking," she said, "right down here."

"I've got kids," he said.

She hit him on the side of the head with the barrel of the Beretta and he went down in a heap against the brick wall of a bar. Megan carried the canvas bags down the alley and put them in the trunk of the car. She got in and drove away.

Mulheisen squatted over Gene Megan. The straw hat had rolled away and a uniformed cop stooped to pick it up. Gene lay on the cold concrete and blood leaked out all around him.

"She's gone," Mulheisen said. "You know she's gone. She was never going to pick you up. You were just a decoy."

Gene's eyes flickered and he swallowed. It hurt to swallow.

"Where is she going?" Mulheisen asked.

Gene Megan turned his head and looked out through the girders and the openwork of the stands. He hurt badly. He could see a green field and a patch of the sky. He thought: She'll go out West. She'll lie down in the sun, naked and alone. Up there by the trout stream. Just a few jack rabbits and an eagle to see her nakedness. The green and the blue melted together with his tears.

What the hell, he thought. Let her go.

"Denio?" Mulheisen said. But the eyes were glazed.

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