
1
New York was sweltering through the worst heat wave in years. The descending
sun reflected off a million windows in orange fire, turning the asphalt and
concrete oven hot. Heat shimmered over the streets like an enormous
translucent ocean-but felt more like a swamp.
As any cop will tell you, tempers fray when the temperature rises. The
normal aggravations of life in the Big Apple are all a little more aggravating
when it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit and ninety percent humidity, especially when
the air-conditioning quits, or was never there in the first place.
A disagreement that would end in a quick apology or a grumbled curse in
February isn't so easy to stop in August, when the thick hot air is holding
the traffic fumes and the stench of uncollected garbage close around your
face. Little things that wouldn't mean much on a calm spring day get in there
with the sweat that's sticking your shirt to your back, and itch and itch and
itch and they just won't go away until you find a way to scratch.
It was all just the little things that finally got to Al Napolitano, that
drove him over the edge. They were nothing, really-the last beer gone from the
fridge, the unwashed dinner dishes, the noise and stink of the city spilling
in through the wide-open windows, Rose sitting there in front of the TV with
the remote in one hand and that last can of beer in the other, and Christ, she
wasn't even finishing it, she was letting it get warm, what a goddamn waste
that was . . . they were nothing, really, just little meaningless annoyances,
Al could have handled it, he was pretty sure he could have handled it, they
were adding up all right, they were getting on his nerves, but they weren't
too much for him, even with the heat. He could have handled it-if it weren't
for what she was watching as she sat there letting the beer get warm.
If she'd been watching the Home Shopping Network, he could have taken it, no
problem. Her bowling shows, hell, those would've been just fine, he'd have
maybe even pulled up a chair himself.
But she was watching Green Acres, some goddamn idiot cable channel had
programmed reruns of Green Acres back to back, and she wouldn't switch
channels or even turn down the sound, she wanted to hear it over the traffic,
and it was when the second one came on, with that idiot theme song, that Al
Napolitano couldn't take it anymore, and scratched that awful itch with a
twelve-gauge shotgun at point-blank range.
Both barrels. One for Rose, one for the TV
Detective Rasche, there to collect Al and otherwise do his bit toward
keeping the peace, looked over the blood-spattered wreckage of the TV, and of
Rose, after Al had explained it all to him.
"Dumb son of a bitch," Rasche muttered to himself. "I like Green Acres."
Then the uniforms cuffed Al and led him down to the street, Rose's blood
still red on his sweat-soaked undershirt, and the ambulance crew collected
what was left of Rose on a stretcher and followed.
Rasche had given Al his Miranda rights, not that it made a whole hell of a
lot of difference in a case like this, so he walked alongside and listened to