I took one last look at the scowling countenance of the angel, devil, or whatever he 
was with his ferocious mane and beautiful lips and huge polished eyes. Then, hefting the 
three sacks like Santa Claus, I went out to get rid of Roger piece by piece.
  
  This was not much of a problem.
  
  It gave me merely an hour to think as I dragged myself along through the snowy, empty 
black streets, uptown, searching for bleak chaotic construction sights, and heaps of 
garbage, and places where rot and filth had accumulated and were not likely to be 
examined anytime soon, let alone cleared away.
  
  Beneath a freeway overpass, I left his hands buried in a huge pile of trash. The few 
mortals hovering there, with blankets and a little fire going in a tin can, took no 
notice of what I did at all. I shoved the plastic-wrapped hands so deep in the rubble no 
one could conceivably try to retrieve them. Then I went up to the mortals, who didn't so 
much as look up at me, and I dropped a few bills down by the fire.  The wind almost 
caught the money. Then a hand, a living hand, of course, the hand of one of these bums, 
flashed out in the firelight and caught the bills and drew them back into the breathing 
darkness.
  
  "Thanks, brother."
  
  I said, "Amen."
  
  The head I deposited in a similar manner much farther away. Back door dumpster. Wet 
garbage of a restaurant. Stench. I took no last look at the head. It embarrassed me. It 
was no trophy. I would never save a man's head as a trophy. The idea seemed deplorable. I 
didn't like the hard feel of it through the plastic. If the hungry found it, they'd never 
report it. Besides, the hungry had been here for their share of the tomatoes and lettuce 
and spaghetti and crusts of French bread. The restaurant had closed hours ago. The 
garbage was frozen; it rattled and clattered when I shoved his head deep into the mess.
  
  I went back downtown, still walking, still with this last sack over my shoulder, his 
miserable chest and arms and legs. I walked down Fifth, past the hotel of the sleeping 
Dora, past St. Patrick's, on and on, past the fancy stores. Mortals rushed through 
doorways beneath awnings; cabbies blew their horns in fury at hulking, slow limousines.
  
  On and on I walked. I kicked at the sludge and I hated myself. I could smell him and 
hated this too. But in a way, the feast had been so divine that it was just to require 
this aftermath, this cleaning up.
  
  The others-Armand, Marius, all my immortal cohorts, lovers, friends, enemies-always 
cursed me for not "disposing of the remains."
  
  All right, this time Lestat was being a good vampire. He was cleaning up after himself.
  
  I was almost to the Village when I found another perfect place, a huge warehouse, 
seemingly abandoned, its upper floors filled with the pretty sparkle of broken windows. 
And inside it, refuse of every description, in a massive heap. I could smell decayed 
flesh. Someone had died in there weeks ago. Only the cold kept the smell from reaching 
human nostrils. Or maybe no one cared.
  
  I went farther into the cavernous room-smell of gasoline, metal, red brick. One 
mountain of trash stood as big as a mortuary pyramid in the middle of the room. A truck 
was there, parked perilously close to it, the engine still warm. But no living beings 
were here.
  
  And there was decayed flesh aplenty in the largest pile. I reckoned by scent at least 
three dead bodies, scattered through the rubble. Per haps there were more. The smell was 
utterly loathsome to me, so I didn't spend a great deal of time anatomizing the situation.
  
  "Okay, my friend, I give you over to a graveyard," I said. I shoved the sack deep, deep 
among the broken bottles, smashed cans, bits of stinking fruit, heaps and stacks of 
cardboard and wood and trash. I almost caused an avalanche. Indeed there was a small 
trash quake or two and then the clumsy pyramid re-formed itself quietly. The only sounds 
were the sounds of rats. A single beer bottle rolled on the floor, a few feet free of the 
monument, gleaming, silent, alone.
  
  For a long moment, I studied the truck; battered, anonymous, warm engine, smell of 
recent human occupants. What did I care what they did here? The fact is they came and 
went through the big metal doors, ignoring or occasionally feeding this charnel heap. 
Most likely ignoring it. Who would park next to one's own murder victims?
  
  But in all these big dense modern cities, I mean the big-time cities, the world-class 
dens of evil-New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong you can find the strangest configurations of 
mortal activity.  Criminality had begun to fascinate me in its many facets. That's what 
had brought me to him.
  
  Roger. Good-bye, Roger.
  
  I went out again. The snow had stopped falling. It was desolate here, and sad. A bare 
mattress lay on the corner of the block, the snow covering it. The streetlamps were 
broken. I wasn't certain precisely where I was.
  
  I walked in the direction of the water, to the very end of the island, and then I saw 
one of those very ancient churches, churches that went back to the Dutch days of 
Manhattan, with a little fenced graveyard attached to it with stones that would read 
awesome statistics such as 1704, or even 1692.
  
  It was a Gothic treasure of a building, a tiny bit of the glory of St.Patrick's, and 
possibly even more intricate and mysterious, a welcome sight for all its detail and 
organization and conviction amid the big-city blandness and wastes.
  
  I sat on the church steps, rather liking the carved surfaces of the broken arches, 
rather liking to sink back in the darkness against sanctified stone.
  
  I realized very carefully that the Stalker was nowhere about, that tonight's deeds had 
brought me no visits from another realm, or horifying footsteps, that the great granite 
statue had been inanimate, and that I still had Roger's identification in my pocket, and