Nocturne

"For what it's worth, Kling thinks the burglar theory's the one to go with."

"That's why we're looking for whoever stole a gun," Hawes said.

"If somebody stole it," Carella said. "Otherwise, Pratt's our man." "Alibi a mile long." "Sure, his wife."

"Gee, detective work is so exciting," Willis said and put on his hat and walked out. "Chicken feathers," Carella said. "What did he say about the shit?" "Anybody's guess."

"We can dismiss illegal hunting..."

"Nobody hunts chickens."

"So that leaves theft from a chicken market." "Not too many chicken markets around these days." "Lots of them in Riverhead and Majesta. Some of the ethnics like their chickens fresh-killed. Hangover from the old country."

"Don't Orthodox Jews kill their chickens fresh?" "You think it was a dead chicken in the Caddy?" "Or chickens. Plural."

"Then how come no bloodstains?" "Good point. So it was a live chicken." "Or chickens."

"You know how to make Hungarian chicken soup?" "How?"

"First you steal a chicken."

"Okay, let's say somebody stole a chicken." "Took it for a ride in the backseat of Pratt's Caddy." "Would you make that movie?"

"I wouldn't even go see that movie."

"But, okay, just for the halibut, let's say somebody was hungry enough or desperate enough to steal a chicken from a chicken market..." "Do pet shops sell chickens?" "Chicks." "In January?" "Around Easter."

"Anyway, a chick ain't a chicken."

"No, this had to be a chicken market."

"How about a petting zoo? Where they have goats and cows and chickens and ducks ..." "Do people pet chickens?" "They cook chickens."

"So, okay, first you steal a chicken." "They also sacrifice chickens." "Voodoo." "Mm."

Both men fell silent. It was midnight. Blue Monday. And still snowing.

"Let's ask around," Hawes said.

The technician who had thought vile thoughts about Fat Ollie Weeks nonetheless got back to him just as he was leaving the squad room at a few minutes past midnight. Except for the names on desktop plaques and bulletin-board duty rosters, the squad room here at the Eight-Eight was an almost exact duplicate of the one at the Eight-Seven, or, for that matter, any other police station in the city. Even the newly constructed

buildings began to look shoddy and decrepit time, an apple-green pallor overtaking seemingly at once. Ollie looked at the speckled face the wall clock, remembering that he'd told the tech wanted the stuff by a quarter to, and thinking he'll be lucky Ollie was still here, otherwise it would have been his ass. He ripped open the manila envelope yanked out the report.

No latents at all on the champagne bottles and knife used to slit the estimable Jamal's throat. No latents on any of the bathroom fixtures or any of doorknobs in the apartment, either. Meaning that there hadn't been any other person or persons in the room, then he, she, or they had seen a lot of movies and knew enough to wipe up after themselves. So the only thing they could compare against the corpses fingerprints which the tech had dutifully lifted the two stiffs in the bathroom, copies of which included in the packet was the prints on the patent-leather clutch. The smaller prints on the bag matched the prints of the woman named Yolande Marie Marx, whose Ohio driver's license Ollie found in the red patent-leather clutch. Apparently, Yolande was now lying in the morgue at Hospital; the fingerprints the tech had lifted from the bag identified her as a white, nineteen-year-old shoplifter and prostitute with an arrest record that went back several years. The other prints on the bag matched the late Richie Cooper's. According to the report, Jamal Stone hadn't touched the bag.

Ollie kept reading.

Of hairs, there had been many, and only some of them matched those plucked from the heads of the poor unfortunate victims. Some of the hairs were blond, and they matched samples taken from the head of the dead girl. Fibers vacuumed in the apartment matched fibers from the short black skirt and red fake-fur jacket she'd been wearing at the time of her death.

There were other fibers and other hairs.

There were a significant number of dark blue wool fibers. They did not match any fibers from the clothing of the two victims.

There were red hairs. And black hairs. And blond hairs.

Some of them were head hairs.

Some of them were genital hairs.

All of them were hairs from white human beings. All of them were male hairs.

Three white males, two dead black dudes, and a dead white hooker, Ollie thought, and farted.

El Castillo de Palacios would have been ungrammatical in Spanish if the Palacios hadn't been a person's name, which in this case it happened to be. Palacio meant "palace" in Spanish, and palacios meant "palaces," and when you had a plural noun, the article and noun were supposed to correspond, unlike English where everything was so sloppily put together, thank God. El Castillo de los Palacios would have been the proper Spanish for "The Castle of the Palaces," but since Francisco Palacios was a person, El Castillo de Palacios was, in fact, correct even

though it translated as "Palacios's Castle," a play words however you sliced it, English or Spanish. And worth repeating, by the way, as were many things in this friendly universe the good Lord created.

Francisco Palacios was a good-looking man with clean-living habits, now that he'd served three years upstate on a burglary rap. He owned and operated a pleasant little store that sold medicinal herbs, books, religious statues, numbers books, tarot cards and the like. His silent partners were named Gaucho Palacios and Cowboy Palacios, and they ran a store behind the other store, and this one offered for sale such medically approved "marital aids" as dildos. French ticklers, open-crotch panties bra gas sin entrepierna), plastic vibrators (eight-inch and in the white, twelve-inch in the black), leather executioner's masks, chastity belts, whips with leather thongs, leather anklets studded with chrome, extenders, aphrodisiacs, inflatable life-sized dolls, condoms every color of the rainbow including vermilion, books on how to hypnotize and otherwise overcome reluctant women, ben-wa balls in plastic and gold plate, and a highly mechanical device guaranteed to bring satisfaction and imaginatively called Sue-u-lator, in case you missed all this while you were out in the fragrant cloisters reading your vespers.

Selling these things in this city was not illegal; the Gaucho and the Cowboy were breaking no laws. This was not why they ran their store behind the store owned and operated by Francisco. Rather, they did so out of a sense of responsibility to the Puerto Rican

community of which they were a part. They did not, for example, want a little old lady in a black shawl to wander into the back store shop and faint dead away at the sight of playing cards featuring men, women, police dogs and midgets in fifty-two marital-aid positions, fifty-four if you counted the jokers. Both the Gaucho and the Cowboy had community pride to match that of Francisco himself. Francisco, the Gaucho, and the Cowboy were, in fact, all one and the same person, and they were collectively a police informer, a stoolie, a snitch, or even in some quarters a rat.

El Castillo de Palacios was in a ratty quarter of the Eight-Seven known as El Infierno, which, until the recent influx of Jamaicans, Koreans, Haitians, Vietnamese and Martians had been almost exclusively Puerto Rican, or if you preferred "of Spanish origin," which was both clumsy and cumbersome but favored over the completely phony "Latino." On the politically correct highway, both of these categorizing expressions fell far behind the ever-popular (by fifty-eight percent) simple descriptive term "Hispanic." Ten percent of the Hispanics queried didn't care what they were called, so long as it wasn't "spic" or late for dinner.

El Infierno meant guess what? The Inferno. It was.

Palacios was just closing up when they got there at about twenty past midnight after a snowy fifteen-minute ride cross town which under ordinary circumstances would have taken five minutes. Palacios wore his black hair in a high pompadour, the

way kids used to wear it back in the fifties. Dark eyes. Matinee-idol teeth. It was rumored in the town that Palacios had three wives, which like the violation the police held dangling over his head against the law. All of which Hawes and Carella and every other cop in the precinct (and every other being in the world) already knew, but so what? Nobo was counting, and nobody was sending anyone to just yet--provided the information was good.

It was.

Symbiosis, Hawes thought.

A nice word and a cozy arrangement.

Hawes sometimes felt the entire world ran on arrangements.

"Ai, mari cones Palacios said, "quO pasa?" He knew the cops could send him up anytime they felt like it. Meanwhile, he could be friendly with them, no? Besides, mar icon meant "homosexual," mari cones was the plural of that, which he didn't think they knew. They did know, but they also knew it was a friendly form of greeting among Hispanic men, knew why, and God protect any non-Hispanic if they used it in greeting.

They got straight to the point.

"Voodoo."

"Mm, voodoo," Palacios said, nodding. "Anything go down this past Friday night?" "Like what?"

"Any Papa Legbas sitting on the gate?" "Any Maitresse Ezilis tossing their hips?" "Any Damballahs?" "Any Baron Samedis?"

"Any chickens getting their throats slit?" "You know some voodoo, huh?" "Un poquito," Hawes said.

"No, no, muchisimo," Palacios said, praising him as extravagantly as if he'd just translated Cervantes.

"So," Carella said, cutting through the bullshit, "anything at all this past Friday?"

"Talk to Clotilde Prouteau," Palacios said. "She's a mamaloi .. ."

"A what?"

"A priestess. Well, sometimes. She also conjures. I sell her War Water and Four Thieves Vinegar, Guinea Paradise and Guinea Pepper, Three Jacks and a King, Lucky Dog, jasmine and narcisse, white rose and essence of van van whatever she needs to conjure. Tell her Francois sent you. Le Cowboy Espagnol, tell her."

The three of them were sitting at a table somewhat removed from the piano and the bar, Priscilla trying to control her anger while simultaneously venting it, Georgie and Tony trying to catch her whispered words. This was Sunday night well, Monday morning already and Priscilla's night off, but the bar was open and the drinks were free and this was a good quiet place to talk on a Sunday, especially when it was snowing like mad outside and the place was almost empty.

Priscilla was steamed, no doubt about it.

She had been steamed since eight P.M. when the boys finally got back to the hotel with an envelope they'd retrieved from the pay locker at the Rendell

Road Terminal. The envelope had contained a letter that read:

My dearest Priscilla:

In the event of my death, you will have been this locker where you will find a great deal

I have been saving this money for you all these years never touching it, living only on my welfare eh, and whatever small amounts still come in on company royalties.

It is my wish that the cash will enable you to your career as a concert pianist.

I have always loved you

Your grandmother,

Svetlana

In the envelope, there was five thousand dollars hundred-dollar bills.

"Five thousand?." Priscilla had yelled. "This is great deal of cash?"

"It ain't peanuts," Georgie suggested.

"This is supposed to take care of me?"

"Five grand is actually a lot of money," Georgie said.

Which it was.

Though not as much as the ninety-five they'd stolen from the locker.

"Five thousand is supposed to buy a career as a fucking concert pianist?"

She still couldn't get over it.

Sitting here at ten minutes to one in the morning, drinking the twenty-year-old Scotch the bartender had brought to her table, courtesy of the house, Priscilla kept shaking her head over and over again. The boys sympathized with her. Priscilla looked at her watch. "You know what I think?" she asked.

Georgie was afraid to hear what she was thinking. He didn't want her to be thinking that they'd opened that envelope and stolen ninety-five thousand dollars from it. Priscilla didn't notice, but his knuckles went white around his whiskey glass.

He waited breathlessly.

"I think whoever delivered that key went to the locker first," she said.

"I'll bet," Georgie said at once.

"And cleaned it out," she said.

"Left just enough to make it look good," Tony said, nodding.

"Exactly," Georgie said.

"Made it look like the old lady was senile or something," Tony said. "Leaving you five grand as if it's a fortune."

"Just what she did," Priscilla said.

"Well, it is sort of a for{tfune," Georgie said. Priscilla was getting angrier by the minute. The very thought of some blond thief who couldn't even speak English cleaning out the locker before delivering the

key to her! Tony kept fueling the anger. Georgie listening to him in stunned amazement.

"Who knows how much cash could've been in the locker?" he said.

"Well, after all, five grand is quite a lot," Georgie said, and shot Tony a look.

"Could've been twenty thousand in that envelope Tony suggested.

"More," Priscilla said. "She told me I'd be taken care of when she died."

"Could've been even fifty thousand in that

Tony amended.

"There was five, don't forget," Georgie said. "Even a hundred, there could've been," Tony said which Georgie thought was getting a little too close for comfort.

Priscilla looked at her watch again.

"Let's go find the son of a bitch," she said, and graciously. Flashing a dazzling smile at the seven eight people sitting in the room, she strode ele into the lobby, the boys following her.

They found Clotilde Prouteau at one A.M. Monday, sitting at the bar of a little French smoking. Nobody understood the city's

Code prohibiting smoking in public places, but it generally agreed that you could smoke in a restaurant with fewer than thirty-five patrons. Le Canard met this criterion. Moreover, even in restaurants larger than this, smoking was permitted at any bar serviced by a bartender. There was no bartender on duty at the moment, but Clotilde was covered by the

size limitation, and so she was smoking her brains out. Besides, they weren't here to bust her for smoking in public. Nor for practicing voodoo, either.

A fifty-two-year-old Haitian woman with a marked French accent and a complexion the color of oak, she sat with a red cigarette holder in her right hand, courteously blowing smoke away from the detectives. Her eyes were a pale greenish-grey, accentuated with blue liner and thick mascara. Her truly voluptuous mouth was painted an outrageously bright red. She wore a patterned silk caftan that flowed liquidly over ample hips, buttocks and breasts. Enameled red earrings dangled from her ears. An enameled red pendant necklace hung at her throat. Outside a snowstorm was raging and the temperature was eight degrees Fahrenheit. But here in this small smoky bistro a CD player oozed plaintive Piaf, and Clotilde Prouteatt looked exotically tropical and flagrantly French.

"Voodoo is not illegal, you know that, eh?" she asked.

"We know it."

"It is a religion," she said.

"We know. ,

"And here in America, we can still practice whatever religion we choose, eh?"

The Four Freedoms speech, Carella thought, and wondered if she had a green card.

"Francisco Palacios tells us you sometimes do the ceremony."

"Pardon? Do the ceremony?"

"Conduct the ceremony. Whatever."

"What ceremony do you mean?"

"Come on, Miss Prouteau. We're talking here, and we're talking the lady who implores

Legba to open the gate, and who sacrifices..." "Sacrifices? Vraiment, messieurs..."

"We know you sacrifice chickens, goats..." "No, no, this is against the law." "But nobody cares," Carella said. She looked at them.

The specific law Clotilde had referred to was Article 26, Section 353 of the Agriculture and Markets which specifically prohibited overdriving, overloading torturing, cruelly beating, unjustifiably injuring maiming, mutilating, or killing any animal, wild or tame. The offence was punishable by imprisonment for not more than a or a fine of a thousand dollars, or both.

Like most laws in this city, this one was designed to protect a civilization evolved over centuries. rarely ever invoked the law to prevent animal in religious ceremonies, lest all the civil rights advocates demanded their shields and their Clotilde was now weighing up whether these two were about to get tough with her for doing something was done routinely all over the city, especially Haitian neighborhoods. Why bother with me? she was wondering. You have nothing better to do, messieurs' You have no trafiquants to arrest? No terroristes? how had they learned about Friday night, anyway?

"What is it you are looking for precisely?" she asked.

"We're trying to locate a person who may have driven a live chicken to a voodoo ceremony," Hawes said, and felt suddenly foolish.

"I am sorry, but I did not drive a chicken anywhere," Clotilde said. "Live or otherwise. A chicken, did you say?"

Hawes felt even more foolish.

"We're trying to find a person who may have stolen a gun from a borrowed Cadillac," Carella said.

This didn't sound any better.

"I did not steal a gun, either," Clotilde said.

"But did you conduct a voodoo ceremony this past Friday night?"

"Voodoo is not against the law."

"Then you have nothing to worry about. Do you?" "I did."

"Tell us about it." "What is there to tell?" "What time did it start?" "Nine o'clock?"

An indifferent shrug. Another drag on the cigarette in its red holder that matched the earrings, the necklace and the pouty painted lips. A cloud of smoke blown away from the two detectives.

"Who was there?"

"Worshipers. Supplicants. Believers. Call them whatever you choose. As I have told you, it is a religion."

"Yes, we've got that, thanks," Hawes said. "Pardon?"

"Can you tell us what happened?"

"Happened? Nothing unusual happened. What do you think happened?"

We think someone delivered a chicken for sacrifice and stole a gun from the car while he was at it. Is what we think happened, Hawes thought, but did not say. "Did anyone arrive with a chicken?" Carella asked. "For what?" "For sacrifice."

"We do not sacrifice."

"What do you do?" Hawes insisted.

Clotilde sighed heavily.

"We meet in an old stone building that was once a Catholic church," she said. "But, as you know, are many elements of Catholicism in voodoo, al though our divinities constitute a pantheon larger than holy trinity. It is my role as mamaloi to call upon Legba..."

"Guardian of the gates," Carella said.

"God of the crossroads," Hawes said.

"Yes," Clotilde whispered reverently. "As mentioned earlier, I implore him to open the gate..."

"Papa Legba, ouvrez vos barr ires pour Papa Legba, oh sont vos petits enfants?"

The gathered faithful in the old stone church their eyes and chant in response, "Papa Legba, violht. Papa Legba, ouvrez vos barribres pour laisser passer!"

"Papa Legba," Clotilde pleads, "open the gate,.." "Open the gate," the faithful intone. "Papa Legba, open the gate..." "So that we may pass through." Call and response.

Africa.

"When we will have passed..."

"We will thank Legba."

"Legba who sits on the gate ..."

"Give us the right to pass."

The strong African elements in the religion.

And now a girl of six or seven glides toward the altar. She is dressed entirely in white and she holds in either hand a lighted white candle. In a thin, high,

liltingly haunting voice, she begins to sing. "The wild goat has escaped. "And must find its way home. "I wonder what's the matter. "In Guinea, everyone is ill. "I am not ill. "But I will die.

"I wonder what's the matter."

Clotilde fell silent. The detectives waited. She drew on the cigarette again, exhaled. Piaf was still singing of unrequited love. "Guinea is Africa," Clotilde explained. She fell silent again, as if drifting back to

Haiti and beyond that to Africa itself, to the Guinea in the child's plaintive song, to the Grain Coast and the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast, to the empires of the Fula and the Mandingo and the Ashanti and Kangasi, the Hausa and the Congo. Still the detectives waited. Clotilde drew on the cigarette again, exhaled a billow of smoke, and began speaking in a low, hoarse voice. From the rising smoke of the cigarette and the hypnotic smoke-seared rasp of her voice, the old stone church seemed to materialize again, a young girl in white standing before Clotilde,

the priestess sprinkling her hair with wine and oil water, whitening her eye-lids with flour. Clotilde blows out the candles. The faithful are chanting again. "Mistress Ezili, come to guide us! "If you want a chicken, "We will give one to you! "If you want a goat, "It is here for you! "If you want a bull,

"We will give one to you! "But a goat without horns, "Oh, where will we find one.. "Where will we find one... "Where will we find one?" The bar went silent.

Clotilde exhaled another cloud of smoke, blowing over her shoulder, away from the detectives.

"That is essentially how the ceremony goes," she said "The faithful call to Ezili until she appears. Usually takes the form of a woman being mounted..." "Mounted?"

"Possessed, you would say. Ezili possesses her.

Goddess Ezili. I left out some things, but essentially..." "You left out the sacrifice," Carella said. "Well, yes, in Haiti a goat or a chicken or a bull be sacrificed. And perhaps, centuries ago in Africa, the': sacrifice may have been human, I truly don't know. I suppose that's what the goat without horns is all about. But here in America? No."

"Here in America, yes," Carella said.

Clotilde looked at him.

"No," she said.

Yes, Carella said. "After the oil and the water... "No."

"... and the wine and the flour, someone slits the throat of a chicken or a goat..."

"Not here in America."

"Please, Madame Proteau. This is where the priestess dips her finger into the blood and makes a cross on the girl's forehead. This is where the sacrifice is placed on the altar and the drumming begins. The sacrifice is what finally convinces Ezili to appear. The sacrifice..."

"I am telling you there are no blood sacrifices in our ceremonies."

"We're not looking for a cheap three-fifty-three bust," Hawes said.

"Good," Clotilde said, and nodded in dismissal.

"We're working a homicide," Carella said. "Any help you can give us..."

ats, quest-ce que je peux faire?" she said, and shrugged. "If there was no chicken, there was no chicken." She ejected the cigarette stub from the holder, and inserted a new one into its end. Piaf was singing "Je Ne Regrette Rien." Taking a lighter from her purse, Clotilde handed it to Hawes. He lighted the cigarette for her. She blew smoke away from him and said, "There are cockfights all over the city on Friday nights, did you know that?"

The interesting thing about Jamal Stone's yellow sheet was that it listed the names of several hookers in his on-again off-again stables. Among these, and

apparently current until her recent demise, was Yolande Marie Marx, alias Marie St. Claire, who left behind in the apartment of the dead Cooper her handbag and samples of hair and fiber Ah, yes, Ollie thought, doing his world-famous W C Fields imitation even within the confines of his mind, a small world indeed, ah, yes. Another one Stone's current racehorses was a girl named Rowland, alias Carlyle Yancy, whose address listed as the very same domicile Stone had while among the living, ah, yes.

Ollie didn't expect to find a working girl home this hour of the night. But even the good Lord works on Sunday (although it was already Monday), so he drove downtown through the snow and into Precinct territory, getting to Stone's block at quarter past one, and stopping for a cup of coffee in open diner before going into Stone's building of piss in the hallway and then upstairs to the floor to knock on his door. Lo and behold, and wonders never, a girl's voice answered his knock. "Yes, who is it?"

"Police," Ollie said, "sorry to be bothering you late at night, would you mind opening the door please?" All in a rush in the hope that she'd just open the goddamn door before she began thinking about search warrant, and police brutality, and invasion of privacy, and civil rights, and all the bullshit people up here thought about day and night.

"Just a minute," she said.

Footsteps inside, approaching the door.

He waited.

The door opened a crack, pulled up short by a night chain. Part of a face appeared in the wedge. High-yeller girl looked about nineteen, twenty years old. Suspicious brown eye peering out at him. "What is it?" "Miss Rowland?" "Yes."

"Detective Weeks, Eighty-eighth Squad," he said, and held his shield up to the wedge. "Okay to come in a minute?"

"Why?" she asked.

He wondered if she knew her pimp was dead. News traveled fast in the black community, but maybe it hadn't reached her yet.

"I'm investigating the murder of Jamal Stone," he said, flat out. "I'd like to ask you a few questions."

She knew. He could see that on her face. Still, she hesitated. White cop banging on a black girl's door one o'clock in the morning. Did he think nobody watched television

"What do you say, miss? I'm trying to help here," he said.

He saw the faint nod. The night chain came off. The door opened wide. She was wearing a short silk robe with some kind of flower pattern on it, black with pink petals, sashed at the waist, black silk pajama bottoms under it, black bedroom slippers with pink pompoms. She looked very young and very fresh, but he knew in her line of work this wouldn't last long. Not that he gave a shit.

"Thanks," he said, and stepped into the apartment.

She closed the door behind him, locked it, put on the chain again. The apartment was cold.

"Police been here already?" he asked. "Not about Jamal." "Oh? Then who?" "Yolande."

"Oh? When was this?"

"Yesterday. Two detectives from the Eight-Seven." "Uh-huh. Well, this is about Jamal." "Do you think they're related?" "The murders, do you mean?" "Yes."

"Well, I don't know. You tell me."

"Richie was killed, too," she said. "Isn't that richard?" "He didn't like to be called Richie." "I didn't know that."

"Yeah. He liked to be called Richard."

The scumbag, he thought.

"Do you think somebody was after all three of them?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know. You tell me."

Ollie often found this effective. Get speculating, they told you all kinds of things. Sometimes, they speculated themselves right Murder One rap. Cause they all thought they were fuckin smart. Far as he knew, this sweet, looking doll here had torn open the other hooker drowned Richard the scumbag and then slashed her own pimp, who the hell knew? These people could tell? So they ask do you think they're and do you think somebody was after all three of them,

which could all be a pose, the one person you could never trust was anybody.

"All I know is the last time I saw Jamal, he was going out to look for her bag."

"Her bag, huh?"

"This red clutch bag she was wearing when she left here."

"Which was when?"

"Saturday night. Jamal drove her down the bridge." "Which bridge?" "The Majesta." "What time was this?"

"They left here around a quarter to ten."

"What time did Stone get back?"

"Around eleven. He came to pick me up, take me to this party he arranged with some businessmen from Texas."

"How many?"

"The Texans? Three of them."

"Remember their names?"

"Just their first names. Charlie, Joe, and Lou." "Where was this?"

"The Brill. They had a suite there." "On Fawcett?" "Yeah."

"What time did you get there?"

"Jamal dropped me at midnight. I took a cab home." "When?" "Three."

"What kind of car did he drive? Stone."

"A Lexus."

"Know where he kept it?"

"A garage around the corner. On Ainsley. Why?" "Might be something in it, who knows?"

He was thinking dope. There might be dope in the car. Jumbos on the bathroom floor and in the girl's handbag, this might've been a dope thing, who the knew, these people.

"You know the license plate number?" he asked. "No."

"Did they know him at the garage?"

"Oh, sure."

"On Ainsley, you said?"

"Yeah."

"You know the name?"

"No, but it's right around the corner from here."

"Okay. So you say you got back here around three

Was Yolande home yet?"

"No. Just Jamal."

"What time did Yolande get home?"

"She didn't. Next thing we know, two cops banging down the door."

"When was this?"

"Eight o'clock Sunday morning. Jamal though was this crazy Colombian crack dealer who said stole some bottles from him and he was gonna kill for it, which Jamal didn't, by the way."

"Didn't steal no crack from him, you mean." "Right. Still, Jamal popped four caps through door, thinking it was this crazy buck Diaz, but it was two cops instead." "Shot at two cops, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Not a good idea."

"Tell me about it."

"Who were they, do you remember?"

"Two guys from the Eight-Seven. One of them had red hair."

"Hawes, was that his name?"

"I don't know."

"What's Diaz's first name? The crack dealer."

"Manny. Manuel, actually. You think he killed them?"

"Well, I don't know. You tell me."

"I think he coulda killed Jamal, cause he's crazy, you know, and he thinks Jamal stole some shit from him, which he didn't. But I don't see how that ties in with Yolande or Richie."

"Richard. You know him?"

"Just to say hello."

"He deals, too, you know."

"Yeah"

"You think he might've known this Diaz guy?"

"I don't know."

"So Jamal pops four through the door..." "Yeah." so naturally they arrest him."

"Yeah."

"Then what?"

"Dragged him out of here."

"How come he was on the street again? How come they didn't lock him up?"

"I guess they figured they didn't have nothing on him."

"How about the gun? He shot at two fuckin cops, they didn't lock him up?"

"He thought it was Diaz."

"Did he have a license for the gun?"

"I think so."

"Guy with a record, they gave him a license?" "Then maybe not."

"So why'd they let him go?"

"I got no idea."

Ollie was thinking that sometimes a bull shit misdemeanor wasn't even worth taking downtown. included violations of 265.01, where a criminal with a firearm could get you a year in prison, which was insignificant even if you behaved yourself and got on the street in three and a third months.

But this Jamal jerk had popped four at a pair of cops which should have irked them considerably caused them to haul his ass downtown toot Unless they were thinking he'd be more valuable to them outside, lead them to whoever had torn out a dead hooker's insides, who the hell knew? Take a look at Ollie, first thing you'd be picking up all your and next thing you'd be downtown waiting arraignment with your shoes falling off and your falling down cause they took away your belt and shoelaces and your brand-new stolen Rolex.

Or and this was a possibility maybe they with a murder on their hands and the shift change they didn't want to bother with booking and mug shots and printing and court appearances on an Amis the guy might even walk if he pulled a bleedin black judge. Better to let the shithead walk especially since he'd been trying to chill shithead, which maybe next time he'd succeed,

more power to him. There are more things in police work, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your potato patch. Still, Ollie would ask.

Next time he was up the Eight-Seven, he would ask why they let a nigger in criminal possession of a weapon stroll right out of that li'l ole squad room ah, yes, m'dear boys, yes, indeed.

"So Yolande, and Jamal left here about a quarter to ten..."

"Yeah."

"And Jamal got back around eleven..."

"Yeah."

"And drove you to the Brill."

"That's right."

"And he was here when you got home around three..." "Three-thirty, it must've been." "He was home." "Yes."

"But Yolande never made it." "No. Which is funny." "Funny how?" Ollie asked.

"Cause she called to say she was on her way." "Oh? When was this?"

"Around five-thirty in the morning."

"Called here?"

"Yeah. Told Jamal she was just leaving the Stardust..."

"The Stardust? Down on Coombes?"

"Yeah."

"And said she was coming home?"

"Soon as she could catch a cab," Carlyle said. Bingo, Ollie thought.

The uniformed radio motor patrol cops who pulled the taxi to the curb didn't think it was a stolen vehicle oh anything because a 10-69 was specifically an incident. But then why had the dispatcher radioed cars and asked them to stop and detain the taxi this particular license plate? Stop, detain, and back. That was the message.

So they pulled the cab over and asked the driver his license and while one of the cops looked it over if he were intercepting a huge dope shipment Colombia, the other one radioed home to say the perp and what should they do now? They asked where they were and told them to sit tight Detective Oliver Weeks from the Eight-Eight on the scene. Meanwhile, Max Liebowitz was behind the wheel, wetting his pants.

This was a bleak area of Calm's Point.

had just dropped off two suspicious-looking guys who, it turned out, were stockbrokers home late from a party celebrating a dollar merger. He didn't like being in this part of the city at a quarter to two in the morning, and he didn like being pulled over by cops, either both of them black, by the way---especially when they wouldn't tell him what the violation was, and especially since he was losing money sitting here by the side of the curb." Eventually a battered Chevy sedan pulled up in

front of the cops' car, and a fat guy wearing a lightweight trench coat open over his beer barrel belly got out. Under the trench coat Liebowitz could see a plaid sports jacket, also unbuttoned, and a loud tie that looked like it had on it every meal the guy had eaten for the past week. He waddled over to where the two black cops were sitting in their car flashing lights like it was still Christmas, and rapped on the driver's side window, and held up a badge. Liebowitz caught a flash of gold. A detective. The guy behind the wheel rolled down the window but didn't get out of the car. The fat guy seemed impervious to the cold. Had to be three above zero out there, still snowing, and he was leaning on the window with his coat wide open like a flasher, chatting up the two black cops. Finally he said something like "I've got it," or I'll take it," and thanked the two of them, and waved them off into the night, their car trailing white exhaust fumes. Ollie walked over to the taxi. "Mr. Liebowitz?" he asked.

"Yeah, what's the trouble?" Liebowitz said.

"No trouble, Mr. Liebowitz. I'm Detective Weeks, there's a few questions I need to ask you."

"I'm losing money here," Liebowitz said.

"I'm sorry about that, but this is a homicide, you see."

Liebowitz went pale.

"Okay to come sit inside?" Ollie asked.

"Sure," Liebowitz said. "What do you mean, a homicide?"

"Three of them, actually," Ollie said cheerfully, and came around to the passenger side and opened the door

to the front seat. He climbed in and made comfortable behind the meter hanging above the Reading from the card, he said, "Max R. huh? What's the R for?"

"Reuven," Liebowitz said.

I'll bet that's Jewish, right?" Ollie said, grinned.

Something in the grin told Liebowitz had to know about Fat Ollie Weeks. Not for had he lost half his family to the ovens at

"That's right, Jewish," he said.

"Nice," Ollie said, still grinning. "So tell me, did you pick up a young lady outside the Stardust yesterday morning around five-thirty?"

"How should I remember who I picked up yesterday morning at five-thirty?"

"The Hack Bureau tells me your call sheet five-thirty pickup outside the club, is that right,

"I really can't remember."

He was thinking this was a vice cop.

He could already see the headlines.

"Could you turn down your heater a little?" Ollie said. "It's very hot in here. Don't you find it hot here?"

Max was freezing to death.

He turned down the heater.

"This would've been a blond girl," Ollie said. "nineteen years old, wearing a short black skirt fake-fur jacket, red. Carrying a shiny red handbag. clutch, they call it. Do you remember such a girl Max?"

"I think I do, yeah. Now that you mention it."

"She's dead, Max."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"So are two other people she may or may not have known. Dead, I mean. Not sorry like you. Well, maybe sorry, too, considering they're dead. Two black guys, Max. Were there any black guys with her when you picked her up?"

"No, she was alone."

"You remember now, huh?"

"Yeah."

"This was five-thirty?"

"Around then."

"Your call sheet said five-thirty."

"Then that's what it must've been. Cause we have to write it down, you know."

"I know. Max, did you drop her off on Ainsley and

North Eleventh, like your call sheet says?"

"Yes, I did."

"At what time, Max?"

"It must've been six o'clock."

"Took you half an hour to drive three miles from the

Stardust to Ainsley and North Eleventh?"

"Yeah."

"How come, Max? That time of day, it should've taken no more than ten, fifteen minutes."

"Must've been traffic," Liebowitz said, and shrugged. "Five-thirty on a Sunday morning?" "Well, sometimes there's traffic."

"So you're saying there was traffic, huh?"

He was leaning in close to Liebowitz now. The front seat of the cab seemed suddenly very crowded. The man had terrible body odor; -Liebowitz was thinking it

wouldn't hurt he should take a bath every now then. Some people, they claimed it wasn't the person it was the clothes that smelled, clothes that hadn't been dry-cleaned in a while. But how could clothes smell unless the person wearing them smell. Liebowitz was willing to bet this guy hadn't bathed since Rosh Hashanah, which last year had fallen September 24. Also, his breath stank of garlic onions. Besides, what the hell did he want here, the meter wasn't ticking?

"I don't remember whether there was traffic or not he said. "I know it took whatever time it took from wherever to wherever."

"Half an hour, you said."

"If that's what it took, that's what it took. Liebowitz said. "Now listen, Detective, I'm a man, I got a living to earn. You want to ask something about this girl, ask me. Otherwise, let me get back to work."

"Sure," Ollie said. "Did you know she was a prostitute?"

"No, I didn't know that," Liebowitz said, "She told me she was a topless singer and

"What I'm trying to find out, Max, is whether you might have dropped the girl off at St. Sab's First..."

"No, I .. ."

"... instead of Ainsley and Eleventh. You saw her going in an alley on St. Sab's and First, did

"No."

"Because that's where she was found dead, in the alley there, you see. We're wondering did these

black shits really rob her and kill her, or was it some other shits? This is a serious thing here, Max."

"I know it is."

"So if you dropped her some place different from

what it says on your call sheet..."

"No."

"Or if she stopped some place to score..."

"No, no."

"Cause she was in possession of ten jumbo bottles, you see."

"I don't know what that is, jumbo bottles." "Crack, Max. Big vials of crack. Red tops."

"I didn't take her any place but Ainsley and Eleventh."

"Not even for a minute."

"Not even for ten seconds."

"So what took you so long to go three miles uptown, Max?"

The taxi went silent.

"Max, are you lying to me?"

"Why would I lie to you?"

"Well, I don't know.. You tell me, Max."

Outside on the street, an ambulance siren wailed to the night. Liebowitz was silent. Ollie waited. The sound of the ambulance melted into the city's constant nighttime song, a murmur that rose and fell, rose and fell, the pulse beat of a giant metropolis. Still Ollie waited.

"Max," he said.

"Okay," Liebowitz said, "the young lady and I had relations, okay?"

"You and the young lady are related?." Ollie asked, being deliberately dense.

I I

Liebowitz cleared his throat.

"No, we had relations."

"Ah," Ollie said. "Your mutual relatives are de

"We had sex," Liebowitz whispered.

"Sex?"

"Yes."

"You mean you had intercourse with her, Max?"

"No, no."

"Then what do you mean, Max?"

"She performed.." uh... fellatio on me."

"That's why it took so long to get uptown."

"Ah."

"I'm not a young man anymore, you see."

"I see."

"It takes a while."

"I see. Max, you could've got arrested doing that, Max?"

"I know."

"You did a foolish thing, Max. You could AIDS, Max, do you know that?"

"Please. Don't even mention such a thing."

"Very dangerous, what you did, Max."

"I

know, I know."

"Anyway, that explains it."

"Yes."

"A half hour to drive only three miles uptown.""

"Yes."

"But you did drop her off at Ainsley and Eleventh, is that right?"

"Oh yes."

a "

,. "No stops along the way, "Well, yes. I pulled over to the curb while she.." uh did..."

"Where?"

"I don't remember. A dark street. I picked a spot that looked dark."

"And then went directly to Ainsley and Eleventh afterward, is that right?"

"Yes. Dropped her right at the curb."

"Where'd she go then, did you happen to notice?"

"Well, no. I guess she went off with these people who were waiting for her."

"What?" Ollie said.

"Some people were waiting for her."

"Who? What people?"

"Three white kids and a black guy," Liebowitz said. "Tell me what they looked like," Ollie said.

The night manager at the Hotel Powell had given Priscilla the addresses and phone numbers of both the manager and doorman who'd been on duty when the tall blond man delivered the envelope containing the key to the pay locker. The letter had been delivered at a little past eleven on Sunday morning and this was now a little before two on Monday morning, but Priscilla felt it wouldn't be tomorrow until she went to bed and woke up again.

This was not a view shared by James Logan, who was asleep at one-fifteen A.M. when Priscilla telephoned him to say she was coming over, and who was still asleep at one fifty-eight A.M. when she rang his doorbell. Swearing mildly, Logan got out of bed in his pajamas, pulled on a robe, and went mutteringly to the front door. He would have told anyone else where to go at this hour of the night, but Miss Stetson was a performer who brought mucho bucks into hotel's cafe. Putting on a false smile, he opened the door and welcomed her as if she were Princess whom she slightly resembled, to tell the truth. Logan was gay.

He would have combed his hair had he known she was bringing two men along, one of whom wasn't at all bad looking. As it was, he stood there the in doorway wearing his tatty robe, his wrinkled pajamas, his worn bedroom slippers, and unconvincing smile, and asked them all to please come in, wouldn't they? They all went in. Logan offered them a drink. The good-looking one Georgie, that his name? said he wouldn't mind a little if Logan had some, thanks a lot. Rough trade if Logan was any judge. He poured the Scotch. The other Tony, said he'd thought it over, and he would have a little Scotch, too, please. Logan poured another glass. With a splash of soda, please, Tony said. Logan went to fetch a bottle of club soda from the refrigerator. This was turning into a regular little party at two o'clock in the morning. With a black named Daryll in the bedroom.

"I want to know whatever you can tell me about the man who delivered that letter to me this morning,! Priscilla said.

"Yesterday morning," Logan corrected, since he himself had already gone to bed and awakened, had been awakened, more accurately.

"Did he give you his name?" Priscilla asked.

"You asked me that yesterday morning," Logan said. "No, he didn't give me his name."

"What did he say exactly?"

"He said to be sure to have the envelope was delivered to your suite."

"He said suite?"

"Yes."

"Not room?"

"He specifically said suite."

"So he knows I have a suite there," Priscilla said to Georgie. Georgie nodded wisely and sipped at his Scotch. His job here was to make sure she never found this tall blond guy, whoever he was, because then he would tell her the envelope was very fat when he'd left it in the locker. Then it would become a matter of believing some tall blond stranger or two Italian guys who looked like they just got off the boat from Napoli, albeit in Armani threads. In Georgie's experience, blond broads always trusted blond men over swarthy wops. So next thing you knew, she'd be asking them how come the envelope was now so skinny, and before you could say Giuseppe Umberto Mangiacavallo, she'd actually be accusing them of having stolen the fuckin ninety-five K all because they were Italian.. Boy. "Tell me what he looked like," Priscilla said. "Tall blond man." "How tall?" "Six-two."

"Would you say a blond blond or a dirty blond?" "More like a dirty blond." "Like Robert Redford?"

"Not as blond. Redford tints, I'll bet."

"But a dirty blond, right?"

"Muddy, I'd say. Actually, he looked like

"Robert Redford delivered the envelope?" I said, astonished.

"No, no. But he resembled Redford. Except for accent."

"What accent?"

"I told you. Some kind of heavy accent."

"Russian?"

"I really couldn't say. There are so many accents in this city."

"What was he wearing?"

"A dark blue overcoat."

"Hat?"

"No hat."

"A scarf?."

"Yes. A red muffler."

" "

Gloves?

"What color shoes?"

"I couldn't see them from behind the desk."

"Beard? Mustache?"

"Clean-shaven."

Priscilla didn't know that the cops had virtually these same questions on the night of grandmother's murder. Nor did she realize, of that the man who lived down the hall from her given them this exact description.

"Anything else you remember about him?"

Sounding more and more like a cop.

Maybe she'd missed her calling.

"Well .. this will sound funny, I know," Logan said.

"Yes?"

"He smelled of fish."

"What do you mean?"

"When he handed the envelope across the desk,

there was a faint whiff of fish rising from his hands." "Fish?" "Mm."

"James?" a voice from the bedroom called.

"Yes, Daryll?"

"Man, you goan be out there all night?"

"I think we're about finished," Logan called. In explanation, he added, "My cousin. From Seattle."

Georgie raised his eyebrows.

They called on Danny Gimp because they couldn't find The Cowboy again, and they didn't particularly like to deal with Fats Donner, the third man in their triumvirate of reliable informers. Danny, unlike most good informers, was not indebted to the police. They had nothing on him that could send him away. Or, if they did, they'd forgotten what the hell it was. Danny was a businessman, plain and simple, a superior purveyor of information who enjoyed the trust of the criminal community because they knew he was an ex-con, which was true. What was not true was that he'd been wounded during a big gang shoot-out, hence the limp. Danny limped because he'd had polio as a child, something nobody had to worry about anymore. But pretending he'd once been shot gave him a certain cachet he considered essential to the business of

informing. Even Carella, who'd been shot once or twice himself, thanks, had forgotten that story about getting shot was a lie.

"You ever notice that most of the cases we work together, it's wintertime?" Danny asked.

"Seems that way."

"I wonder why," Danny said. "Maybe it's cause you hate winter. Don't you hate winter?"

"It's not my favorite season," Carella said. He was behind the wheel of the police car driving Danny and Hawes to an all-night deli on Stem. The snow had stopped and they were in a hurry to get going on this damn thing, but Danny something of a prima donna who didn't like to be treated like some cheap snitch who transfered information in back alleys or police cars. Hawes sitting in the back. Danny didn't ask Hawes what his favorite season was because he didn't particularly like the man. He didn't know why. Maybe it was the streak in his hair. Made him look like the fuckin of Frankenstein. Or maybe it was the faint trace of Boston dialect that made him sound like one ofthe fuckin Kennedys. Whatever, he directed most of his conversation to Carella.

There were maybe three, four other people in the diner when they walked in, but Danny looked the place over like a spy about to trade atomic Satisfied he would not be seen talking to cops, chose a booth at the back, and sat facing the door. and grizzled, and looking stouter than he actually was because of the layers of clothing he was wearing Danny picked up his coffee cup in both hands

sipped at it as if a Saint Bernard had carried it through a blizzard. His leg hurt. He told Carella it hurt whenever it snowed. Or rained. Or even when the sun was shining, for that matter. Fuckin leg hurts all the time.

Carella told him what they were looking for.

"Well, there ain't no cockfights on Sunday nights," Danny said.

He hadn't been to bed yet, either; to him, it was still Sunday night.

"You get them on Saturday nights, different parts of the city," he said, "mostly your Spanish neighborhoods, but you don't get them on Sunday nights." "How about Friday nights?"

"Sometimes, when there's heat on, you know, they change the night and the location. But usually, it's Saturday night."

"We're looking at Friday." "This past Friday?" "Yes."

"There might've been one, I'll have to make some calls."

"Good, make them."

"You mean now? It's two in the morning!" "We're working a homicide," Carella said.

"What are those, the magic words?" Danny said. "Let me finish my coffee. I hate to wake people up in the middle of the night."

Carella shrugged as if to say you want to do business or you want to lead a life of indulgence and indolence?

Danny took his time finishing the coffee. Then he slid out of the booth and limped over to the pay phone

on the wall near the men's room. They watched' he dialed.

"He doesn't like me," Hawes said.

"Naw, he likes you," Carella said.

"I'm telling you he doesn't."

"He came to the hospital when I got shot," Carella

said.

"Maybe I ought to get shot, huh?"

"Bite your tongue."

They sipped at their coffees. Two Sanil

Department men came in and took stools

Outside the deli, their orange snowplows sat at the curb. The night was starless. Everything was black outside, except for the orange plows. Danny reached his party. He was leaning in close to the mouthpiece, talking, nodding, even gesticulating.

' limped back to the table some five minutes later.

"It'll cost you," he said.

"How much?" Hawes asked.

"Two bills for me, three for the guy you'll be talking to."

"Who's that?"

"Guy who had a bird fighting in Riverhead

Friday night. There was also supposed to be a fight

Bethtown, but it got canceled. Big Asian there, this ain't only a Spanish thing, you know."

"Where in Riverhead?" Hawes asked."

"The bread, please," Danny said, and rolled thumb against his forefinger.

Hawes looked at Carella. Carella nodded.

took out his wallet and pulled two hundred-dollar bill out from it. Danny accepted the money.

"Gracias," he said. I'll take you up there, introduce you to Luis. Actually, I'm surprised you don't know about this already."

"How come?" Carella asked.

"The place got busted Friday night. That's the only reason he's willing to talk to you."

Ramon Moreno was the doorman who'd been on duty outside the hotel on Sunday morning, when the tall blond man delivered the envelope. They had telephoned him at the Club Durango, down in the Quarter, and he was just packing up to go home when they got there at a quarter past two. Ramon was a musician. He worked days at the hotel to pay the bills, but his love was the B-flat tenor saxophone, and he played whatever gig came his way whenever. He told Priscilla who he knew way a fellow musician that he'd played the Durango three nights running so far, and he was hoping it would turn into a steady gig. The club was Mexican, and they played all the old standby stuff like "El Jarabe de la Botella" and "La Chachalaca" and the ever-popular and corny "Cielito Lindo," but occasionally they got a hip crowd in and could cut loose on some real jazz with a Hispanic tint. When he wasn't playing the Durango, he did weddings and anniversary parties and birthday parties... "A girl's fifteenth birthday is a big thing in the Spanish culture..." and whatever else might come along. He even played a barmitzvah a couple of weeks ago.

All of which is very fucking interesting, Georgie thought.

The way he got to be a tenor player was strange, Ramon said. He used to play the alto, instrument better suited to his size in that he was five feet six inches tall. At the time, he was playing in a band with a four-piece sax section, and one of the playing tenor was this big tall guy, six-three, which was appropriate because the tenor is a large instrument, not as big as your baritone sax, but good-sized horn, you understand? Then one time during rehearsal, they switched instruments just for fun, and discovered they were better suited to horns they'd borrowed, the short guy, Ramon himself, blowing this tenor sax almost bigger than he is, and the tall guy, Julius, playing the smaller alto, which looked almost like a toy saxophone in his hands.

All of which is even more interesting, thought.

"About yesterday morning," Priscilla said,

to the chase.

"Yeah," Ramon said, sounding a bit

"What did you want to know?"

"Tall blond man wearing a dark blue coat and a scarf. Walked in around eleven, walked out a couple of minutes later. Did you see him?"

"Not when he walked in," Ramon said. He still sounded miffed, Georgie thought. wondering why his dumb story about a tall guy playing a small sax and a short guy playing a big one wasn't quite wowing the crowds here in the big city. Hell with you, Georgie thought. Just don't tell anything'll lead her to the blond guy.

"But you did see him," Priscilla said.

"Yeah, when he came out. Cause he asked me to get him a cab."

"What'd he sound like?" "Sound like?" "His accent."

"Oh. Yeah. That's right." "Was it a Spanish accent?" "No. Definitely not."

"He didn't speak Spanish to you, did he?"

"No. It was English. But with an accent. Like you say."

"Russian?"

"Italian, maybe. I'm not sure." "Did you get him a cab?" "Yeah."

"Do you know where he was going?" "As it happens, yes," Ramon said. They waited breathlessly.

Master of suspense, Georgie thought.

"The doormen at the Powell are trained to ask our guests their destinations, and to relay this information to the cabdriver," Ramon said, as if reciting from the hotel's brochure. "Many of our guests are foreigners," he said. "They will have an address scribbled on a piece of paper, and will have no idea where that address might be. Japanese people, for example. Arabs. Germans. We try to help them out. As a Courtesy," he said. "These people who can barely speak English."

But the blond guy did speak English, Georgie said.

"So where was he going?" Priscilla said impatiently.

Georgie hoped he wouldn't remember.

"I remember because I played there once," he said.

"Where?" Priscilla insisted.

"A place called The Juice Bar," Ramon said. an after-hours club on Harris Avenue. In Near the Alhambra Theater."

At two-thirty that morning, Luis Villada was outside the Alhambra Theater when Danny arrived with the two detectives. Danny with them all around, told them he was sure they had no further use for his services, hailed a cab and downtown without so much as a backward glance. Hawes was ever more certain that the man didn't like him.

Luis looked the two detectives over.

He was not afraid of telling them anything they wanted to know about Friday night because in the city already knew what had gone down. least every cop in Emergency Service and every cop in the Four-Eight Precinct and every cop on Riverhead Task Force, not to mention twenty from the ASPCA, which not very many German, or Arabian tourists knew stood for American Society for the Prevention of cruelty to Animals. As if cock fighting was being animals. Besides, they couldn't charge him anything more than they already had. As a he'd been arrested for one misdemeanor count

to animals and another misdemeanor count for )ating in animal fights.

"They kept us in the theater overnight," he said,

tickets."

Not a trace of an accent. Carella figured him for third-generation Puerto Rican.

"They let us go after they gave us dates for court appearances," he said. "I have to go downtown on

february twenty-eighth."

He looked the cops dead in the eye.

"Danny says you have something for me," he said.

Hawes handed him an envelope.

Luis didn't bother to open it or to count what was inside it. Hey, if you couldn't trust cops, who could you trust? Ho ho ho. He pocketed the envelope and an walking them down along dark alley smelling of piss, toward the back wall of the theater, where he there was a door the police had broken down night and couldn't padlock afterward. The door in splinters, small wonder. Nailed to the lintel was printed CRIME SCENE notice, which should have

:l anyone from seeking entry, door or no door.

Luis believed that printed notices from the police were to be ignored, and so he stepped over the ng bottom panel of the door and into a ss deeper than the one outside. The detectives d him in. Hawes turned on a penlight. vejor, Luis said. Hawes flashed the light around. They moved deeper into the theater. Luis began talking.

He seemed to think he'd been given a miilion-dollar publishing advance to cover a sporting event, rather than a mere three hundred for information about whatever he'd seen and this past Friday night. Like an eyewitness ab to describe a major disaster like an earthquake, avalanche, or a plane crash, he began setting the scene by describing the excitement of the night, the sheer excitement of being there on this special occasion. penlight Carella offered him, he led them through abandoned movie theater that had served as the Where once there had been upholstered seats, were now bleachers surrounding a carpeted Dried blood stained the carpet.

"The walls are on rollers," Luis explained. "If police come, the promoters slide them back to look like a prizefight is going on. They have two in boxing trunks and gloves in the back office. lookout sounds the alarm, the walls move. out, boxers are in the ring hitting each other, nice and legal. Cockfighting shouldn't be against the law, anyway. It's legal in some states, like Louisiana, Oklahoma, I forget the other two. It's legal in four states altogether. So why should it be against the law here? Farmers in the South get to cockfights, but here in a sophisticated city like this one, it's against the law. Shit, man! I go to a cockfight to enjoy myself, and all of a sudden I'm charged two misdemeanors, I can go to jail for a year on What for? What crime did I commit? This was a social gathering here."

The social gathering, as he tells it to them, began at nine o'clock on Friday night, when the spectators,

some two hundred and fifty of them, began gathering at this theater on Harris Avenue in the Harrisville section of Riverhead, both avenue and neighborhood named for along-ago councilman named Albert J. Harris. The fight was supposed to take place on Saturday night, at another Venue, but someone leaked it to the police and so the date and the place were changed although, as it turned out, someone leaked this to the police as well.

This is an important event tonight because it's the first big fight of the season, which begins in January and runs through to July. Roosters don't molt during these months. When they're molting, blood flows into their quills, causing them to become vulnerable and incapable of fighting... "Did you see that movie The Birds?" Luis asked. "There was a line in it where the girl says that birds get a hangdog expression when they're molting. That was a very funny line Hitchcock wrote. Because how can birds get hangdog expressions?"

Carella shook his head in wonder.

"Anyway, there was only one other event after the holidays, and then came this one on Friday night, which was supposed to be the next night, but the promoters sold a lot of tickets in advance, and it was just a matter of letting people know the date had been changed and instead of the athletic club on Dover

Plains, it was now the Alhambra here on Harris. The tickets cost..."

... twenty dollars each, which is practically giving the seats away. The promoters don't expect a lot of money on the gate. What's twenty two-fifty? Five K? So what's that? Where the real money is selling food and alcohol. And, of course, the betting. Thousands of dollars are wagered on each of the fights. During a typical night, there can be anywhere from twenty to thirty matches, depending on the ferocity and duration of each contest. The average match will run minutes, but some will end in five and more popular ones with the crowd can last as long as half an hour or even forty minutes, the birds tearing themselves apart in frenzy.

There is a huge indoor parking garage across the street from the Alhambra, and it is here that the customers park their cars, hidden from the eyes of prying police officers though on this Friday informers have already been paid, and a massive is in preparation even before the first of them arrives. Inside, there is joviality and conviviality, atmosphere reminiscent of the old days on the where cock fighting is still a gentleman's sport. can remember attending his first fight when he was seven years old. His father was a breeder of fighting birds, and he recalls feeding them special diets of meat and eggs supplemented with vitamins for their stamina and strength. Now, here in this city, owners of fighting birds sometimes pay three, hundred dollars a month to hide their roosters clandestine farms in neighboring states. These

areexpensive birds. Some of them are worth five, ten thousand dollars.

"It's a gentleman's sport," he says again.

Drinking rum at the bar, eating cuchifritos, speaking their native tongue, the customers mostly men, but here and there one will see a pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman dressed elegantly for the occasion relax in an ambiance of total acceptance and fond recall. There could easily be tropical breezes blowing through this converted theater, the swish of palm fronds outside, the rush of the sea against a white sand beach. For a moment, there is respite for these transplanted people who more often than not are made to feel foreign in this city.

The fights are furious and deadly.

This is a blood sport in every sense.

The roosters are crossbred with pheasants to fortify their most aggressive traits. Nurtured on steroids that increase muscle tissue, dosed with angel dust to numb pain, they are equipped with fighting spurs and then are moved into the carpeted cockpit to kill or be killed. In India, where the sport enjoys wide popularity, the birds fight "bare-heeled," using only their own claws to shred and destroy. In Puerto Rico, the trainers attach to the birds' heels along plastic apparatus that resembles a darning needle. Here in this city, the chosen device is called a slasher. It is a piece of steel honed to razor-sharp precision. These spurs are fastened to both claws. They are twin weapons of mutilation and destruction.

Luis himself can't bear to watch the final moments of a fight, when the roosters, doped up with PCP, rip

and tear at each other with their metal talons, and feathers flying, the crowd screaming for a More often than not, both birds are killed.

"It's a sad thing," Luis says. "No one likes to animals hurt. This is a gentleman's sport."

The police who raided the theater at eleven-twenty-seven P.M. last Friday apparently with his premise. Captain Arthur Forsythe, Jr., led the team of E.S. officers who spearheaded operation, later told the press that the forced these birds was nothing less than barbaric, a criminal act that had to be abolished if this city were ever to call itself civilized. His men had taken out the lookouts posted at the entrance, handcuffing them putting them down on the sidewalk before they sound an alarm. They then went in wearing vests and carrying machine guns, followed by the Four-Eight, the Task Force, and the

"There's cameras and guard dogs," Luis don't know how they got in so quick and easy."

Even so, by the time the raiders broke into the ring area upstairs, some of the false walls had been moved back and the event's organizers fleeing over rooftops and through tunnels, one out to Harris Avenue, another running under a beauty parlor adjacent to the parking garage. police caught only one of the promoters, a man Anibal Fuentes, who was charged with two counts.

"This shouldn't be allowed to happen," Luis shaking his head. "Kings and emperors used to cockfights, did you know that? Even Am

presidents! Thomas Jefferson! George Washington! The father of the nation, am I right? He liked to watch cockfights. This is a sin, what they're doing. Persecuting people who enjoy an honest-to-God sport!"

In his report to the Police Commissioner, Captain Forsythe noted that on the street behind the theater his men had found twenty-five bloodied roosters, all fitted with metal talons, twenty of them dead, the rest still alive and twitching in agony. In rooms behind the false walls, officers from the Four-Eight found another forty birds in cages, pillowcases over their heads to keep them calm in the dark before they were tossed into the ring.

"They came from all over," Luis said. "Florida and Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. Some trainers brought their birds all the way from San Juan and Ponce! This was a big event, man! There were birds coming to the ring from all over! Like toreadors arriving!"

"You didn't happen to notice a black limo, did you?" Carella asked.

What the hell, he thought, toreadors arriving!

"Oh sure," Luis said.

"What kind of limo?" Carella asked at once. "A Caddy." "Where'd you see it?"

"Back of the theater. When I was walking over from the garage. The door we came in before. Where the trainers take the birds in, you know? The stage door, I guess they call it. The one that's busted now."

"You saw a trainer taking a chicken out of a Black Caddy limousine, is that right?"

"Not a chicken. A rooster. A fighting cock!" "Trainer drove him up in a Caddy, is that right?" "That's right. Took him out of the backseat." "In a cage, or what?"

"No cage. Just a pillowcase over his head. Just legs showing."

"You wouldn't know this trainer, would you?" "Not personally." "Then how?"

"I looked up his name." "I'm sorry, you did what?" "On the card." "The card."

"Yeah, the owners' names are on the card recognized him when he was carrying the bird in the ring. Remembered him driving up in the Caddy. Figured he was a big shot, you know? Caddy I mean, a movie star bird in a limo, am I right? So I looked up his name on the card."

"And what was his name?" Carella asked, and held his breath.

"Jose Santiago," Luis said.

Priscilla and the boys could not find the club.

Their taxi drove up and down Harris Avenue forever, passing the darkened marquee of the Alhambra theater more times than they cared to count. On their last swing past it, two men in heavy overcoats, both of them bareheaded, one of them a red-head, were climbing into an automobile. Priscilla thought they looked familiar, but as she craned her neck for a better look through the fogged rear window, the car doors slammed shut behind them. A third man, smaller, slighter, and wearing a short green barn coat that looked as if it had come from L. L. Bean or Lands' End, stood on the sidewalk, watching the car as it pulled away.

"Back up," Priscilla told the cabdriver.

"I'm not gonna spend all night here looking for this club," the cabbie said.

"Just back up, would you please?" she said. "Before he disappears, too."

The cabbie threw the car into reverse and started backing slowly toward where Luis Villada, his hands in his coat pockets, was walking away from the Alhambra. At this hour of the morning, in this neighborhood, Luis would have run like hell if this was anything but a taxi. Even so, he was wary until he saw the blond woman sitting on the backseat, lowering the window on the curbside.

"Excuse me," she called.

He stood where he was on the curb, not moving closer to the taxi because now he saw that the blond was with two men, both of them wearing hats.

didn't trust men who wore hats.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Are you familiar with a club called The Juice B "Yeah?" he said.

"Do you know where it is?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you help us find it, please?"

"There's no sign," he said.

"We can't even find the address," she said. "Half the addresses up here, the numbers are gone "It's supposed to be 1712 Harris."

"Yeah, that's up the block," he said, taking his hand from his pocket and pointing. "Between the cleaners and the carniceria. They probably don't numbers, either."

"Thank you very much."

"It's a blue door," Luis said. "You have to ring." "Thank you."

"De nada," he said, and put his hand back in his pocket, and began walking home.

He was mugged on the next corner.

His hatless assailant stole his watch, his wallet, the envelope containing the three hundred dollars the detectives had paid him for his time and his information

In this city, you could legally serve alcoholic be vera till four in the morning, but the underground operated till a bit before sunrise, when all

to be back in their coffins. The Juice Bar offered booze, beer, wine and the occasional fruit drink right up to the legal closing limit, and then to the accompaniment of a three-piece jazz band began serving anything that turned you on. At six, the club offered breakfast while alone piano player filled the air with dawn like medleys.

It was close to three o'clock when Priscilla rang the bell button set in the jamb to the right of the blue door.

"The fuck is this?" Georgie wanted to know. "Joe sent us?"

They waited.

A flap in the door opened.

Fuckin speakeasy here, Georgie thought. Priscilla held up her card. "I'm here to listen to the band," she said.

"Okay," the man behind the flap said at once, and opened the door. Fact of it was he hadn't even glanced at her card. Until four A.M. the club would be operating legally and he'd have admitted even a trio of Barbary pirates carrying swords and wearing black eye patches.

The club was constructed like a crescent moon, with the bandstand at the apogee of its arc, farthest from the entrance door. The entrance and the cloakroom were side by side on the curving flank of the arc's left horn. The bar was on the right horn, a dozen stools ranked in front of it. Priscilla and the boys left their coats with a hat check girl who flashed a welcoming smile as she handed Georgie the three claim checks. She was Wearing a black mini and a white scoop-necked blouse, and Georgie looked her up and down as if

auditioning her for a part in a movie. The a maitre d' that is to say, he was wearing a jacket offered to seat them at a table, but Priscilla said she preferred sitting at the bar, closer to the In any club, it was always the bartender who came in when and did what where. It was the bartender who had information.

The band was playing "Midnight Sun."

The tune almost brought tears to Priscilla's eyes, possibly because she realized she could never hope to play it as well as the piano player here in a Riverhead dive, possibly because her pathetic note had expressed a hope abandoned ago. Priscilla knew she would never become a pianist. The thought that Svetlana had still this a viable ambition was heartbreaking, when one considered the meager sum of money left for the achievement of such an impossible goal, had there been more in the envelope? Which, after all was why she was here looking for the tall blond man who'd delivered it. But even so, even if there'd been a million dollars in that shabby yellow packet, knew she didn't have, would never have the How could she even begin to approach a beast like presto agitato movement of the Moonlight when she hadn't yet truly mastered the chart "Midnight Sun"? She dabbed at her eyes and

Grand Marnier on the rocks. The boys ordered again.

The bartender looked like an actor.

Every would-be actor in this city was a bartender or a waiter.

Long black hair pulled into a ponytail. Soulful brown eyes. Delicate, long-fingered hands. Great profile.

His name was Marvin.

Change it, Priscilla thought.

I'll tell you why we're here, Marvin," she said. Marvin. Jesus.

He was looking at her card, impressed. He figured the two goons were bodyguards, Lady played piano at the Powell, she needed bodyguards. He hoped that one day, when he was a matinee idol, or a movie star, or both, he would have bodyguards of his own. Meanwhile he was honored that she was here in their midst. Shitty little dump like this, hey.

"The man we're looking for, Marvin..."

Jesus.

"... is someone who would've been here yesterday morning around eleven-thirty, maybe a bit later."

She was figuring half an hour or so to get uptown by cab, on a Sunday morning, when the traffic would've been light The blond man had left the hotel at a little past eleven. Placing him on Harris Avenue at eleven thirty was reasonable.

"Yeah, it's possible," Marvin said. "We start serving breakfast at six."

"Are you still serving at eleven-thirty?"

"On Sundays, yeah. We-get a big brunch crowd, serve till two-thirty, three o'clock, then open again at nine. We're open all weekend, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, dead nights here in the city."

"Were you working this past Saturday night?"

"I come on at four every night. That's when underground and the shift changes. Well, Tuesdays or Wednesdays."

"Did you come on at four this past Saturday nil "Yeah. Well, Sunday morning it was, actually." "Four A.M." right?" "Yeah."

"Were you here at eleven-thirty, twelve o'clock "Yeah, I work through till we close. Sunday's a day I put in almost twelve hours. Rest of the close at nine in the morning. It's like a breakfast we serve. For the all-night crowd."

Georgie was wondering how come, if Marvin on at four every morning but Tuesday and how come he was here, now, at three- whatever the hell it was on a Monday morning? looked at his watch. Twenty after. So how Marvin?

Marvin was a mind reader.

"Jerry called me to come in early," he

Who's Jerry? Georgie wondered. "Cause Frank started throwing up." Who's Frank? Georgie wondered.

"Must've been one of those flu bugs," explained.

"So today you came in early, is that what saying?" Tony asked.

"Yeah, I got here about an hour ago." "How about yesterday?" Priscilla asked. "I got here the usual time." "Four A.M." "Right."

"The man we're looking for would've been blond," Priscilla said.

"You're a cop, right?" Marvin said.

"No, I'm an entertainer. You saw my card."

"How about your two friends here? Are they cops?" "Do they look like cops?" Priscilla asked. They didn't look like cops to Marvin.

"Tall blond man wearing a blue coat and a red scarf," Priscilla said.

Marvin was already shaking his head.

"See anyone like that?" Georgie asked.

He was pleased that Marvin was shaking his head. What he wanted to do now was get out of here fast, before Marvin the mind reader changed his mind.

"I don't remember anyone who looked like that," Marvin said.

Good, Tony thought. Let's get the hell out of here.

"But why don't you ask Anna?" Marvin said. "She's the one who would've taken his coat."

They finally found Jose Santiago at 3:25 A.M. that Monday. They figured that a man who kept pigeons, and also drove a fighting rooster around in the backseat of a borrowed limo, had to be a bird fancier of sorts. So they checked out the roof of his building again, and sure enough, there he was, sitting with his back against the side wall of his pigeon coop. Last time they were here, dawn was fast approaching on a cold Sunday morning. Now, on an even colder Monday morning, sunrise was still approximately four hours away, and they were no closer to learning who killed Svetlana Dyalovich on Saturday night. Nor

did it appear that Santiago was going to offer assistance in that direction. Santiago was also very, very drunk.

"Jose Santiago?" Hawes asked.

"That is me," Santiago said.

"Detective Cotton Hawes, Eighty-seventh Sc "Mi gusto," Santiago said.

"My partner, Detective Carella." "lgualmente," Santiago said, and tilted a Don Quixote rum to his lips and took along

It was perhaps two degrees below zero out here, Santiago was wearing only blue jeans, a white shirt, and a V-necked cotton sweater. He was a slender man early thirties, Carella guessed, with curly black hair anda pale complexion, and delicate features. His brown eyes seemed out of focus, moist at the moment because he was still weeping. Immediately after the detectives introduced themselves, he seemed to be unaware of their presence. As if alone here on the roof, he kept shaking his head over and over again, weeping bitterly, clutching the rum to his narrow chest, knuckles white around the neck of the bottle. In the bitter cold, his breath plumed onto the night. "What's the matter, Jose?" Hawes asked.

"I killed him," Santiago said. "Here in the dead of night, the pigeons still silent behind Santiago, both detectives felt themselves stiffen. But the man who'd just confessed to a killing seemed completely harmless, sitting there clutching the bottle to his chest, hot tears rolling down his face and freezing at once.

"Who'd you kill?" Hawes asked.

Voice still gentle. The night was black around them. Carella standing beside him, looking down at the sobbing man in the pink cotton sweater, ridiculous for this time of year, sitting with his knees bent, his back to the dark silent pigeon coop.

"Tell us who you killed, Jose." "Diablo." "Who's Diablo?"

"Mi herma no de sangue."

"My blood brother."

"Is that his street name? Diablo?" Santiago shook his head. "It's his real name?" Santiago nodded. "Diablo what?"

Santiago tilted the bottle again, swallowed more rum, began coughing and sobbing and choking. The detectives waited.

"What's his last name, Jose?"

Hawes again. Carella stayed out of it. Just stood there with his right hand resting inside the overlapping flap of his coat, where three buttons were unbuttoned at the waist. He may have looked a bit like Napoleon with his hand inside his coat that way, but his holster and the butt of a .38 Detective Special were only inches away from his fingertips. Santiago said nothing. Hawes tried another tack.

"When did you kill this person, Jose?"

Still no answer.

"Jose? Can you tell us when this happened?"

Santiago nodded.

"Then when?"

"Friday night."

"This past Friday night?"

Santiago nodded again.

"Where? Can you tell us where, Jose? Can you tell us what happened?"

And now, in the piercing cold of the night, began a rambling recitation in English and in telling them it was all his fault here it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't allowed it, he had killed D as certainly as if he'd slit his throat with a Swilling rum, spitting, slobbering down the absurd cotton sweater, his hands shaking, then he'd always taken care of him like a brother, they were partners, he'd never done anything to harm him never. But on Friday night he'd killed him as sure he'd, oh dear God, he'd killed him, oh sweet he'd allowed the thing he loved most in the world to be slashed and torn... Carella was beginning to get it. to shreds, he should have stopped it then he realized... So did Hawes. how it would end, the moment he saw that other bird was stronger, he should have stopped the fight, climbed into the ring, snatched his prize rooster away from the ripping steel talons of the bigger, stronger bird. But no, instead he'd watched horror, covering his face at last, screaming aloud woman when poor Diablo was slain

"I killed him," he said again.

And now he confessed that he'd suspected from the start that the other bird was on steroids, the sheer

size of him, a vulture against a chick, poor brave Diablo strutting into the ring like the proud champion he was, battling in vain against overwhelming odds, giving his life... "I was greedy," Santiago said, "I had ten thousand dollars bet on him, I thought he could still win, the blood, so much blood, all over his feathers, madre de Dios! I should have tried to stop the slaughter. There are owners who jump into the ring during a fight, without the permission of the fence judge, there are strict rules, you know, but they break the rules, they save their beloved birds. I was greedy and I was afraid of breaking the rules, and so I let him die. I could have saved his life, I should have saved his life, forgive me,

Mary, mother of God, I took an innocent life." "What else did you take?" Carella asked.

Because all at once this was still the tale of a gun and a dead old woman, and not a sad soap opera about a dead chicken. People ate chicken every Sunday.

"Take?" Santiago asked drunkenly. "What do you mean?"

"You drove Diablo uptown in a limo, didn't you?" "He was a champion!"

"You stole a black Caddy..."

"I borrowed it!"

"... from Bridge Texaco. A limo that..."

"I returned it!"

"... was in for a new engine."

"He was a champion!"

"He was a bird who needed a ride uptown."

"A hero!"

"Who made a mess all over the backseat."

"A mess? A champion's feathers! Dialo Diablo's shit, too, Hawes thought.

"How could I bear touching them?" Santiago began weeping again. He tilted the rum to his lips, but it was empty. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of the pink sweater.

"Did you find a gun in the glove compartment of that car?" Carella asked.

"No. Hey, no. No."

"Did you know there was a gun in the compartment?"

"No. What gun? A gun? No." "A .38 Smith & Wesson." "No, I didn't know that." "Didn't see the gun, huh?" "No."

"Didn't know it was in the glove compartment."

"That's good, Jose. Because the gun was used to murder..."

"A murder? No."

"A murder, yes."

"And if we can trace that gun to you..." "If your fingerprints are on that gun, for "I didn't shoot anybody with that gun." "Oh? You know the gun we mean, huh?" "I know the gun, yes. But..."

"Did you steal it from that glove compartment?" "I borrowed it."

"Same way you borrowed the limo, huh?;'

"I did borrow the limo. And I borrowed the

"Why?"

"To shoot the bird who killed Diablo."

"So this was after the match, huh?"

"You took the gun from the car after the match." "Si. To shoot the bird." "Did you shoot the bird?"

"No. The cops came. I was going back in the theater when I saw all these cops. So I ran back to the garage." "With the gun." "With the gun, si."

"What did you do with the gun then?"

"I sold it."

The detectives looked at each other. "That's right," Jose said. "I sold it." Carella sighed. So did Hawes. "Who'd you sell it to?"

"A man I met at a club up the street." "What club?" "The Juice Bar." "What man?"

"I don't know his name."

"You sold a stolen gun to a man you didn't even know?"

"We were talking, he said he needed a gun. So I

happened to have a gun. So I sold it to him."

"You sold him a gun you'd just stolen."

"I had just lost my best friend in the whole world."

"What's that got to do with stealing a gun and selling it?"

"I also lost ten thousand dollars."

"Ah. So how much did you get for the gun?" "Two hundred and fifty dollars."

"That's cutting your losses, all right," Hawes said. "My greatest loss was Diablo."

"What'd he look like?" Carella asked.

"He was a white bird, large in the chest, with. "The man who bought the gun."

"Oh. He was a tall blond guy."

"Blond guy with a blue coat and a red scarf, Anna said. "Tall blond guy. Sure. Matter of fact was in here twice."

This was beginning to get interesting. Georgie hoped it wouldn't get too interesting. "The first time was Friday night around midnight Anna said. "He was meeting a guy named Bernie comes in here all the time. Scar on his right think he's a bookie."

"The blond guy?" Tony asked.

"No, Bernie."

"Did you happen to get his name?" asked Priscilla "I just told you. Bernie." "I mean the blond guy."

"No, I didn't. Matter of fact, the first time I laid eyes on him was Friday night."

"When was the next time he came in?" "Yesterday," Anna said. "Around twelve noon. with Bernie again. They sat right over there," she pointed to a table. "Money changed hands. least yesterday, it did. On Friday, they were talking. He seemed very angry."

"The blond guy?" Priscilla asked.

"No, Bernie."

"He was angry yesterday?"

"No, he was angry Friday. Yesterday, he was all smiles."

"So as I understand this," Georgie said, interpreting for Priscilla, "on Friday night the blond guy and Bernie the bookie just sat over there and talked, and Bernie was pissed off about something, is that correct?"

"Yes," Anna said.

"But money changed hands yesterday and Bernie the bookie was all smiles, Is that also correct?" "Matter of fact, yes," Anna said.

"You know what this indicates to me?" Georgie said.

"What?" Priscilla asked.

"A man paying off a marker."

"That's what it looks like to me, too," Tony said, nodding sagely.

Priscilla nodded, too, and then turned back to Anna. "But you never got the blond guy's name," she said. "Matter of fact, I didn't" Anna said.

"And you don't know Bernie's last name."

"Just his first name."

In which case, let us be on our way, Georgie thought. "But maybe Marvin knows," Anna said. Matter of fact, he did.

Three black guys who looked like they were homeless bums were warming themselves up around a fire in an oil drum on the corner of Ainsley and Eleventh. Ollie felt like arresting them. He was cold and he was tired

after a full eight-hour shift, not to mention here and there around the city afterward trying to get a line on who iced the hooker and her two black Three-thirty in the fuckin morning, he really felt like arresting them.

"You guys," he said, approaching the blazing dram. "You know arson's against the law?"

"Nobody committin no arson here, suh," one of the men said. He was a grizzled old bum looked like a black guy in the prison picture, whatever it was The Scrimshaw Reduction, about this black guy used to drive around this old Jewish southern before he got sent up. The old bum standing with hands stretched out to the fire looked just like that in the picture. The other two looked like black bums you'd see standing around any three-thirty in the morning. Nobody looked They all just kept staring into the flames, reaching toward them.

"So is this your usual corner here?" Ollie asked. "This lovely garden spot here?"

He was being sarcastic. This was an unusual stretch of Ainsley Avenue. Because of the storm and because this was Diamondback, nobody gave a damn about refuse collection anyway overflowing garbage cans stood against tenement walls and marauding rats the size c were boldly shredding stacks of black plastic bags noise of the rats was frightening in itself. crackle of the fire in the oil drum, Ollie could hear their incessant squealing and squeaking scratching. He felt like shooting them.

"Everybody hard of hearing here?" he asked. "This's our regular corner here, yessuh," the one from the Scrimshaw picture said. Ollie didn't know who he hated most, the ones who bowed and scraped or the ones with attitude. There wasn't much attitude around this fire tonight. Just three cold homeless bums afraid to go crawl into their cardboard boxes lest one of their brothers did them in the night.

"You happen to be here Saturday night around this time?" he asked. "Little later, actually?"

None of the men said anything.

"Hey!" Ollie shouted. "Anybody listening to me here?"

"What time would that've been, suh?" the older bum said. Doing his Uncle Tom bit for the benefit of the dumb honkie cop.

"This would've been six o'clock in the morning, suh," Ollie said, mimicking him. "This would've been a taxicab letting out a white blonde in a short skirt and a red fur jacket who was being met by three white guys in blue parkas and a black guy in a black leather jacket. So were you here at that hour, suh, and did you happen to see them?"

"We was here," he said, "and we happen to see em."

Carella and Hawes got to The Juice Bar about five minutes after Priscilla and the boys left. Marvin the bartender and Anna the hat check girl both felt it was deja vu all over again. Just a few minutes ago, three people who might, have been under-covers had been here asking about a tall blond man, and now here were two more very definite detectives flashing badges and

asking about the same tall blond man. Then Carella and Hawes asked exactly what they had told Priscilla and the boys.

So now five people were looking for a guy named Bernie Himmel.

The cops had an edge.

At this hour, The Silver Chief Diner was populated with predators. The morning shifts not begin till eight, and any honest person with a job office cleaners and hospital personnel, employees and cops, night watchmen, bakery cabdrivers, short-order cooks, hotel workers, takers was still busy earning a living. Here in the diner, there were mainly prostitutes and burglars and muggers, dealers and users, occasional noncriminal sprinkling of drunk insomniacs, or writers with blocks. Ollie sorted the wheat from the chaff at once. The minute he got in, every thief in the joint recognized him for what he was, too. None of them even glanced in his

direction He went straight to the counter, took a stool, ordered a cup of coffee from a redheaded girl in a green uniform. Her name tag read SALLY. "You serve Indian food here?" he asked. "No, sir, we sure don't," Sally said. "Native American food?" he asked. "Nor that neither," she said.

"Then how come you call yourself the Silver Chief?."

"It's spose to be like a train," she said.

"Oh yeah?"

"That's what it's spose to be, yes, sir." "What part of the South you from, Sally?" "Tennessee," she said.

"You serve grits here, Sally?" / "No, sir."

"You serve hominy?"

"No, sir."

"How about a nice hot cup of coffee then? And one of those donuts there."

"Yes, sir," she said.

Ollie looked the place over again. Each time his gaze fell upon someone who'd been out victimizing tonight, eyes turned away. Good, he thought Shit your pants. Sally came back with his coffee and donut.

"I'm a police officer," he said, and showed her his shield. "Were you working here on Saturday night around this time, a little bit later?"

"I was," she said.

"I'm looking for a blond girl who was wearing a black mini and a red fur jacket."

He didn't mention that she was dead.

"Fake fur," he said. "Fake blonde, too."

"We get lots of those in here," Sally said, and with a faint tilt of her head indicated that lots of those were in here right this very minute, sitting at tables hither and yon behind Ollie.

"How about Saturday night? Remember a blonde in a red fur jacket?"

"I sure don't," Sally said.

"How about three white guys in blue hooded parkas?"

"Nope."

"Or a black guy in a black leather jacket."

"We get thousands of black guys in black jackets."

"These three white guys would've been in the gutter."

"Where?"

"Outside there," Ollie said, jerking his head and shoulder toward the front windows of the diner. "This weather?" Sally said, and laughed. Ollie laughed, too.

"Need Willie warmers, this weather," Sally said Black guy would've run out the diner, told them to stop peeing."

"Can't blame him," Sally said, and began laughing again.

Ollie laughed, too.

"How do you know all this fascinating stuff?." Sally asked.

Ollie figured she was flirting with him. women preferred men with a little girth, as he had.

"Three black guys outside told me," he said. "Oh, those three." .... "You know them?"

"They're out there every night."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, they're crazy."

"Yeah? Crazy?"

"Yeah, they just got out of Buenavista a few ago."

"Buenavista, huh?"

"Yeah. What they do, these mental hospitals, medicate all these psychos till they're stabilized.

they let them loose on the streets with prescriptions they don't bother filling. Before you know it, they're acting nutty all over again. I saw a man talking to a mailbox the other day, would you believe it? Holding along conversation with a mailbox. Those three guys out there stand around that fire all night like it's some kind of shrine. The one who looks like Morgan Fairchild..."

"That's his name!" Ollie said and snapped his fingers.

"He's the nuttiest of them all. Anything he told you, I'd take with a grain of salt."

"He told me these three white guys were peeing in the gutter when this black man in a black leather jacket came running out of here to stop them."

"Naw," Sally said. "Don't believe it."

"Were you working here alone on Saturday night?" Ollie asked slyly.

He spent the next fifteen minutes talking to another waitress, the short-order cook, and the cashier, who was also the night manager. None of them had seen three white guys in hooded parkas peeing in the gutter. And whereas all of them had seen half a dozen black guys in black leather jackets, none of them had seen one running out into the street to prevent mass urination.

Five minutes after Ollie left, Curly Joe Simms walked in.

There was no one named Bernie Himmel or Bernard Himmel listed in any of the phone directories for the city's five separate sectors. On the off chance that Marvin the bartender had got Bernie the bookie's

family name wrong, they even checked all the listings under HIMMER and HAMMIL but found matching first name. There were two listings for HEMMER, but these turned out to be women, surprise, who did not appreciate being awakened at a quarter to four in the morning.

"So that's it," Georgie said. "Let's forget it for tn.

Go home, get some sleep."

"No," Priscilla said.

She had just had an idea.

The computer listed a Bernard Himmel, alias B Himmel, alias Benny Himmel, alias Bernie Banker" Himmel, a thirty-six-year-old white who had taken two prior falls for violation of 225.10 of the state's Penal Law, titled Gambling in the First Degree, which read:

A person is guilty of promoting gambling in the degree when he knowingly advances or profits unlawful gambling activity by Engaging bookmaking to the extent that he receives or accepts in any one day more than five bets totaling more five thousand dollars or Receiving, in with a lottery or policy scheme... And so on, which the second provision did not apply either of Bernie's arrests and subsequent

Violation of 225.10 was a class-E felony,

by a term of imprisonment not to exceed four The first time around, Bernie was sentenced to one three and was back on the street again, and at the old stand again, after serving the requisite year. next time, he drew two to four as a so-called

felon and was paroled after serving the minimum. The address he'd registered with his parole officer was 1110 Garner Avenue, not a mile away from The Juice

Bar, where apparently he'd set up business again. Carella and Hawes got to Garner at four A.M.

If Himmel was in fact taking bets again, then he was breaking parole at best and would be returned to prison to serve the two years he still owed the state. If, in addition, he was once again arrested and charged and convicted, then he would technically become a so-called persistent felony offender, and could be sentenced for an A-1 felony, which could mean fifteen to twenty-five years behind bars. Neither Carella nor Hawes had ever heard of anyone in this city or this state taking such a fall on a gambling violation. But Bernie the Banker Himmel was still looking at the two years owed on the parole violation, plus another two to four as a predicate felon with a new gambling violation. Such visions of the future could make any man desperate. Moreover, only two mornings ago, Carella and Hawes had knocked on a door and been greeted with four bullets plowing through the wood. They did not want to provoke yet another fusillade.

Without a no-knock arrest warrant, they were compelled to announce themselves. Gun-shy, they flanked the door. Service revolvers drawn, they pressed themselves against the wall on either side of it. Carella reached in to knock. No answer. He knocked again. He was about to knock a third time when a man's voice said, "Who is it?" "Mr. Himmel?". "Yes?"

"Police," Carella said. "Could you come to the door please?"

Still standing to the side of it. Hawes on the side of the jamb, facing him. Cold in the hallway

Not a sound from inside the apartment. Not

anywhere in the building. They waited.

"Mr. Himmel?"

No answer.

"Mr. Himmel? Please come to the door, sir."

they waited. "Or we'll have to go downtown for a

Still no answer. "Mr. Himmel?"

They heard footsteps approaching the door.

They braced themselves

Lock clicking open.

The door opened a crack. A night chain

The same voice said, "Yes?"

"Mr. Himmel?"

"Yes?"

"May we come in, sir?"

"Why?"

"We'd like to ask you some questions, sir."

"What about?"

"Well, if you'd let us in, sir..."

"No, I don't think so," Himmel said, and the door was shut in their faces. The lock snapped shut.

They waited. In a moment, they heard the sound of a window going up.

Carella took a calculated risk.

He kicked in the door.

He would worry later about convincing a reliable witness who had seen a paroled offender accepting money from a suspected

in an underground club that served booze illegally after hours. He would worry later about convincing a judge that slamming a door shut on two police officers merely here to ask questions, and then locking that door, and then opening a window were acts that constituted flight, than which there was no better index of guilt, tell that to O.J.

Meanwhile, the wood splintered, and the lock sprang, and the chain snapped, and they were inside a studio apartment, looking at a wide-eyed girl in bed clutching a blanket to her, the window open on the wall beyond, the curtains billowing on a harsh cold wind. They rushed across the room. Carella poked his head into the night.

"Stop! Police!" he yelled down the fire escape. Nobody was stopping.

He could hear footfalls clanging on the iron rungs of the ladder below.

"I didn't do anything," the girl said.

They were already out the door again.

In the movies, one cop goes out the window and the fire escape and comes thundering down after the fleeing perp, passing windows where ladies in nightgowns are all aghast, while the other cop down the steps inside the building, and dashes into the backyard so they have the perp sandwiched between them, All right, Louie, drop da gat!

In real life, cops know it's faster and especially if the perp is armed, to come down inside steps while he's outside descending to level on narrow, often slippery metal ladders especially when the temperature outside is three zero. Carella and Hawes were a beat behind Bernie Banker Himmel. They rounded the rear corner ofthe building just as he was climbing a small wooden fence separating the backyards.

This was a beautiful night for a little jog through the city. The clouds had passed, the sky above was a canopy studded with stars and hung with an almost moon that washed the terrain with an eerie glow. All was silent except for the sound of their crunching on crusted snow, their labored puffing from chapped lips. They followed over the fence, right hands cold against the stocks of their pistols, left hands gloved, flapping loose, mufflers flying behind them as if they were World War I fighter pilots.

Himmel was fast, and both Carella and Hawes were large and out of shape, and they were having a tough time keeping up with him.

In the movies, detectives are always lifting weights down at the old headquarters gym, or shooting at targets on the old firing range. In real life, detectives aren't often in on the big action scenes. They hardly ever chase thieves. They rarely, if ever, fire weapons at fleeing suspects. In real life, detectives usually come in after the fact. The burglary, the armed robbery, the arson, the murder has already been committed. It is their job to piece together past events and apprehend the person or persons who committed a crime or crimes. Sometimes, yes, a suspect will attempt flight, but even then there are strict guidelines limiting the use of force, deadly or otherwise. The LAPD has these guidelines, too; tell it to Rodney King.

Here in this city, tonight or any other night, gunplay was the very last thing Carella or Hawes wanted. The second least desirable thing was brute force. Besides, the way this little chase was developing, Bernie the Banker would be out of gun range at any moment. All three of them had now emerged from the barren backyards onto deserted well, almost deserted city streets, Himmel running ahead through narrow paths shoveled on icy sidewalks, banks of snow on either side of him, fast out-distancing Carella and Hawes who followed him and each other through the same narrow sidewalk burrows, knowing for damn sure they were going to lose him.

And then, three things happened in rapid succession.

Himmel rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

A dog began barking.

And a snowplow went barreling up the street.

"This is what I'd like to know,"." Priscilla said. Georgie yawned.

Tony yawned, too. "If this tall blond guy delivered the key to the locker..."

"Well, he did," Georgie said. "We know he "Then he had to know my grandmother, right?" "Well... sure."

"I mean, she had to have given him the key in it, am I right?" "That's right."

"So why are we wasting time looking for this bookie, is what I'd like to know? When all we do is go to my grandmother's building and see if anyone there knows the blond guy."

"Good idea," Georgie said. "Let's do it in the morning when everybody's awake."

"It is morning," Priscilla said.

"Priss, please. We go knocking on doors at this hour..."

"You're right," she said.

Which astonished him.

Bernie Himmel was astonished to see a large dog standing there like some fuckin apparition on a narrow path cleared through the snow. He stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him was the dog snarling and barking and baring his teeth and blocking Himmel's escape route through the snow. Behind him, somewhere up the street, he could hear the roaring clang of a snowplow rushing through the night. He did what any sensible man would have done in the face of threatening fangs dripping saliva and slime. He leaped over the snowbank on his left, into the street, just as the plow came thundering by.

Where earlier there had been an evil growling monster guarding the icy gates of hell, now there was an avalanche of snow and ice and salt and sand pouring down onto Himmel's shoulders and head, knocking him off his feet and throwing him back against old snow already heaped at the curb, virtually burying him. He flailed with his arms, kicked with his legs, came spluttering up out of a filthy grey mountain of shmutz, and found himself blinking up into a pair of revolvers.

Fuckin Cujo, he thought.

The questioning took place in the second-floor interrogation room at five-thirty that Monday morning. They explained to Himmel that they weren't charging him with anything, that in fact they weren't interested in him at all.

"Then why am I here?" he asked reasonably.

He had been this route before, though not in this particular venue, which looked like any other shitty police precinct in this city, or even some he had known in Chicago, Illinois, or Houston, Texas.

"Just some questions we want to ask you," Hawes said.

"Then read me my rights and get me an

"Why?" Carella asked. "Did you do something?" "You had my address, chances are you already know from the computer. So you know my record. So you have to ask me some questions. So I'll be back tomorrow morning for breaking parole. I want a lawyer."

"This has nothing to do with breaking parole." "Then why are you even mentioning it?" "You're the one who mentioned it." "Cause I'm six steps ahead of you."

"This has to do with a person you were talking to

in The Juice Bar on Friday night..."

"I want a lawyer."

"... and again on Sunday morning."

"I still want a lawyer."

"Give us a break here, Bernie."

"Why? You gonna give me a break?"

"We told you. We're not interested in you."

"I'll say it again. If you're not interested in me, why am I here?"

"This tall blond man you were talking to'" Carella said.

"What about him? You were talking to him." Progress, Carella thought.

"We traced a murder weapon to him," he said.

"Oh, I see. Now it's a murder. You'd better get me a lawyer right this minute."

"All we want is his name."

"I don't know his name."

"What do you know about him?"

"Nothing. We met in a club, exchanged a few words . . ."

"Exchanged some cash, too, didn't you?" The room went silent. So did Himmel.

"But we're willing to forget that," Carella said. "Then whatever I say is hypothetical," Himmel said. "Let's hear it first."

"First let's understand it's hypothetical."

"Okay, it's hypothetical," Carella said.

"Then let's say the man is a big gambler. Bets on any event happening."

"Like?"

"Boxing, baseball, football, hockey, basketball, a man for all seasons. My guess is he bets on the nags, too,

but at one of the off-track parlors."

"Okay, he's a gambler."

"No, you weren't listening. He's a big gambler. And he's usually in over his head. Wins occasionally, but most of the time he doesn't know what he's doing. Fuckin grease ball can't tell the difference between baseball and football, how would he know how to bet?

I give him the odds, he picks whatever sounds..." "What do you mean, grease ball Hawes asked. "He's Italian."

"From Italy, you mean?" Carella said.

"Of course from Italy. Where would Italians come from, Russia?"

"You mean he's really Italian," Carella said.

"Yeah, really really Italian," Himmel said. "What,s with you?"

"Never mind."

"You're surprised he's Italian, is that it? Cause he's blond?"

"No, I'm not surprised."

"He also has blue eyes, does that surprise you, "Nothing ever surprises me," Carella said weari]. "You expect a wop to have black curly hair and eyes, you expect him to be a short fat guy. This one's six-two, he weighs at least about one-ninety. Handsome can be. Dumb Buck doesn't even know what the

Bowl is, he bets a fortune on Pittsburgh, loses his "When was this?"

"Two Sundays ago. Hypothetically."

"So, hypothetically, what was he doing in The Bar this past Friday night?"

"Hypothetically, he was telling his bookie, in broken English, that he didn't have the twenty large to pay him."

"Is that what he bet on the Steelers?"

"Twenty big ones. Gave him a a-half-point spread. Cowboys took it by sixteen." "So what happened last Friday night?"

"The bookie told him to come up with the bread Sunday morning or he was going to be swimmin with the goddamn fishes."

"How'd he react to that?"

"Said he had to make a phone call."

"Did he?"

"Yeah, from the phone right there on the wall." "What time was this?"

"Around one-fifteen in the morning. A few minutes after the cops raided the Alhambra' the club up the street. Where they hold the cockfights."

"How'd you know that?"

"One of the owners came in. His bird had just got chewed up, he was practically weeping at the table. He told me he had a gun, he was thinking of shooting himself."

"His name wouldn't be Jose Santiago, would it?" This city was full of mind readers.

"Yeah" Himmel said. "How'd you know that?"

"Lucky guess," Hawes said. "What time did he come in?"

"Santiago? Eleven-thirty, twelve o'clock. Right after the bust went down. I was sitting there waiting for Larry."

"Who's that?"

"The guy owed the twenty."

"I thought you didn't know his name."

"That was before everything got hypothetical." "Larry what?"

"It's Lorenzo, but everybody calls him Larry.," "Lorenzo what?"

"I can't even pronounce it."

"I'm telling you I can't. I wrote it down first time he placed a bet, it's one of those fuckin wop tongue twisters."

Carella sighed.

"Where'd you write it down?" "On the slip." "The betting slip?"

"No, a lady's pink slip, lace-trimmed."

The detectives looked at him. He knew he was a smart-ass. He grinned. Nobody grinned back. shrugged.

"Yes, the betting slip," he said. "Long since "Never wrote the name down again?"

"Never. Couldn't have if I wanted to. It was along. Besides, I had his phone number. A man don't his marker, I give him a call, I say, Joey, you owe a little something, am I right? It usually scares them."

"Did it scare Lorenzo?"

"He came up here to see me one o'clock in the morning, didn't he?"

"And made his phone call fifteen minutes later that right?"

"Yeah. We didn't have much to talk about' mentioned him swimming with his little fishies."

"You didn't happen to overhear his end of the conversation, did you?"

"Yeah, but it was all in Italian."

"You think he called an Italian-speaking person, that it?"

"I don't know who he called. I know he was Italian."

"What happened next?"

"He came back to the table, said he'd have money by Sunday. Then he asked did I perhaps know where he could buy a gun."

"So you recommended Santiago," Carella said. "Yeah, that's right," Himmel said, looking

"You didn't witness the gun changing hands, did you?" Hawes asked.

"No. But hypothetically, Larry bought it."

"What time did he leave here?" "One-thirty or so."

"One more thing," Carella said.

"His phone number, right?" Himmel said. Still six steps ahead of them.

At six-oh-four that Monday morning, the desk sergeant at the Eight-Eight called Ollie Weeks at home to tell him something had come up that might relate to the triple homicide he was investigating. He didn't know whether he should be waking Ollie up or not... "Yeah, well you did," Ollie said.

" but some guy named Curly Joe Simms had called to say he was having a cup of coffee in the Silver Chief Diner on Ainsley, and a waitress named Sally told him a detective named Oliver Weeks was in there asking about three kids pissing in the gutter, and Curly Joe had seen these three kids with a person named Richie Cooper, who was a good friend now deceased. So if this detective wanted to talk to him..."

"What's his number?" Ollie asked.

The phone company told Hawes that the call from the wall phone of The Juice Bar at 1:17 A.M. on January nineteenth had been made to a telephone listed to a subscriber named Svetlana Helder at 1217 Lincoln Street in Isola.

This was puzzling.

Why had Larry Whoever called a woman who was murdered the very next night with a gun he'd purchased not five minutes after he'd got off the phone with her?

Meanwhile, Carella was dialing the number the Banker had given them. This was now a quarter past six in the morning. A woman's sleepy voice "Pronto."

"Signora?" he said.

"St'?"

"Voglio parl are con Lorenzo, per piacere."

" "

"Non c e.

In the next five minutes, in tattered Italian shattered English, the woman whose name was Carmela Buongiorno and who said she was landlady of a rooming house on Trent Street, blocks from where Svetlana had been Carella that Lorenzo Schiavinato had been living there since October the twenty-fourth, but had moved out last Sunday. She did not know where he was now.

seemed to be a nice man, was something the "Che succese?" she asked. "What happened?"

"Niente, signora, niente," Carella said.

Nothing, signora, nothing. But something indeed happened.

Murder had happened.

And Lorenzo Schiavinato had purchased the weapon the night before someone used it on Dyalovich.

They now had his full name. They ran it through the computer. There was niente, signora. Niente.

Ollie figured Curly Joe Simms would turn out to be a bald guy and he wasn't disappointed. He made a note to mention to Meyer Meyer, up at the Eight-Seven, that he would start calling himself Curly Meyer. Curly Joe was wearing yellow earmuffs and a brown woolen coat buttoned over a green muffler. His eyes kept watering and he kept blowing his nose as he explained to Ollie that he was a night person, which meant that he only slept during the daytime. He was beginning to get a little drowsy right now, in fact, but he. felt it was important to do his civic duty, wasn't it? Ollie was a little drowsy, too, but only because he'd just got up half an hour ago. At six forty-two in the morning, there weren't too many places open near the 88th Precinct station house. They met in the coffee shop of the Harley Hotel on Ninety-second and Jackson. The Harley was a hotbed dive catering to hookers and their clientele. A steady stream of girls walked in and out of the coffee shop while Ollie and Curly Joe talked.

Curly Joe was bothered that someone had drowned poor Richie Cooper.

"Richie was a close friend of mine," he said.

So close you didn't know he hated being called Richie, Ollie thought, but did not say. The man had come all the way over from Ainsley and Eleventh, six in the morning, he deserved a hearing, even if he was bald. Ollie ate another donut and listened.

Curly Joe sipped at his coffee and told him how on Saturday night he was sitting with Richie in one of the window booths at the Silver Chief Diner, both of them having coffee, when all at once Richie jumps up and yells, "Look at that, willya?"

"Look at what?" Curly Joe said. "Out there. Those three guys." Curly Joe looked.

Three big guys in hooded parkas were at the curb, pissing in the gutter. This was not an unusual sight up here, so Curly Joe couldn't understand why Richie was so upset by it. But he certainly was annoyed, jumping up out of the bar and putting on his black leather jacket... "He was dressed all in black,"." Curly Joe "Black jeans, black shirt, black boots, the jacket..."

"Yeah, go on," Ollie said. putting on the jacket, and tossing a couple of bucks on the table as his share of the bill, and storming out of the diner and walking over to the three guys who were still standing there, shaking their dicks. From where Curly Joe watched from the diner window, he saw, but could not hear, conversation taking place between the four of them. Richie dressed all in black and appearing before them like an avenging angel of death. They almost all of them peed on his boots, he was standing that close

-Now what do you call this?

--We call it pissing in the gutter.

-I call it disrespect for the neighborhood.

what the letter P stand for? Pissing? -Join us, why don't you? My name is Richard.

Big white guy zipping up and extending his hand to Richie.

So is mine.

Second white guy holding out his hand, too. --Me, too.

Third guy holding out his hand.

--As it happens, my name is Richard, too.

Richie holding out his hand, shaking hands with the three white guys, one after the other. And now there's a serious conversation at the curb, Richie probably explaining that what he did up here in Diamondback was sell crack cocaine to nice little boys like the three preppies here in their hooded parkas. In a minute or so, he begins leading them up the street, past the diner where Curly Joe is still sitting in the window booth, probably taking them to a place called the Trash Cat, which is an underground bar where there are plenty of girls all hours of the night, just like the Harley here.

They stop again not far from the diner, like at an angle to it, for another serious conversation Curly Joe can see but not hear.

You dudes interested in some nice jumbo vials I happen to have in my pocket here? You care for a taste at fifteen a pop?

And now Curly Joe sees crack and money changing hands, black to white and white to black, and all at once a taxi pulls up to the curb, and a long-legged white girl in a fake-fur jacket and red leather boots steps out. She looks familiar but Curly Joe doesn't recognize her at first. The driver's window rolls down, he's got like a dazed expression on his face, as if he just got hit by a bus.

Thanks, Max.

The girl blows him a kiss and swivels onto the sidewalk, a red handbag under her arm... Hey, Yolande, you jess the girl we lookin and Curly Joe recognizes her all at once hooker Jamal Stone fixed him up with one time Jamal laid two bills on a pony and was a little cash. Her name was Marie St. Claire, she'd given Curly Joe the best blow job he'd ever had in his lifetime, did in his llie ever hear of a Moroccan now there's another big conference at the curb, Joe watching but not hearing, Richie's hands Six hundred for the three preppies here, shy? Two hundred apiece for the next few hours, bobbing, you take me on, I'll throw five jumbos pot, whutchoo say, girlfriend? big summit here on Ainsley Avenue We all go up my place some crack, get down to realities, sistuh, you whut I'm sayin?

--Well, I've been out since eleven last night, been along one, bro. So maybe we ought to just unless we can sweeten the pot a little, mm?

--Whutchoo mean sweeten it? How sweet do' wish to sweeten it?

If you 'll be joining the party I'll need ten No problem.

And a grand from the college boys here.

you're all so cute, I might do it for nine.

Make it eight.

I can't do it for less than nine. Hey, you "re cute, but... How about eight-fifty?

-It has to be nine or I'm out of here.

--Will you accept travelers checks?

-Done deal.

" and they all start laughing. They musta concluded their negotiation, don't you think?" Curly Joe said. "Cause next thing you know, she's looping her hands through two of the guys' arms, and they' all marchin off toward Richie's buildin, her in the red jacket, and Richie in his black leather, and the three kids with these hooded blue parkas got big white Ps and footballs on the back of them."

Daybreak is aptly named.

Unlike sunset, where colors linger in the sky long after the sun has dropped below the horizon, sunrise is heralded by a similar flush, but the display is brief, and suddenly it is morning. Suddenly the sky is bright. Day literally breaks, surprising the pinkish night, setting it to rout.

From the windows of the squad room on the second floor of the old precinct building, they watched the day break over the city. It, was going to be cold and clear again. The clock on the squad room wall read seven-fifteen.

At a little past seven-thirty, the detectives began drifting in for the shift change. Officially this was called the eight-to-four, but it started at seven forty-five, because many uniformed cops were relieved on post, and detectives all of whom had once pounded beats honored the timeworn tradition. They hung their hats and coats on the rack in the corner, and exchanged morning greetings. Complaining about the vile coffee from the pot brewing in the clerical office down the hall, they sat nonetheless on the edges of their desks and sipped it "

from soggy cardboard containers. Outside the wind raged at the windows.

They double-teamed this one because it was more than thirty-one hours since they'd Dyalovich squeal and they were not very much to finding the person or persons who'd killed It was also two full days since they'd discovered the body of Yolande Marie Marx in the alleyway Sab's and First. But whereas the Marx murder was officially theirs under the First Man Up rule, they had been informed that Fat Ollie Weeks of the Eight-eight had caught a related double murder, and they were more than content to leave the three-way investigation to him. A hooker, a pimp, and a smalltime dealer? Let Ollie's mother worry.

So here they all were, those legendary stalwarts the Eight-Seven, gathered in Lieutenant Byrnes sunny corner office at ten minutes to eight Monday morning, Carella and Hawes telling others what they had so far, and hoping that in this brilliant think tank would offer a clue or that would help them crack the case wide open.

"What it sounds like to me," Andy Parker said, you have nothing."

Parker was a good friend of Ollie Weeks. because they were both bigots. But whereas Ollie also a good detective, Parker only rarely rose heights of deductive dazzle. He was almost as big a slob, as Ollie, however, favoring unpressed soiled suits, unpolished shoes, and an unshaven face he believed made him resemble a good television cop. Parker figured there were only two kinds

of cop shows. The lousy ones, which he called The Cops of Madison County, and the good ones, which he called Real Meat Funk.

As a detective, albeit not a very good one, Parker knew that the word "funk" descended from the word "funky," which in turn evolved from a style of jazz piano-playing called "funky butt," which translated as "smelly asshole." He was amused the other day when a radio restaurant critic mentioned that the food in a downtown bistro was "funky."

Not many things amused Parker.

Especially so early in the morning.

"Well, we do have the guy's name," Hawes said. "What guy?"

"The guy who bought the murder weapon." "Who you can't find."

"Well, he moved out yesterday," Carella said.

"So he's in flight, is that what you figure?" Willis asked.

He was poised on the edge of the lieutenant's desk like a gargoyle on Notre Dame cathedral, listening carefully, brown eyes intent. Byrnes liked him a lot. He liked small people, figured small people had to try harder. Willis had barely cleared the minimum-height requirement for policemen in this city, but he was an expert at judo and could knock any cheap thief flat on his ass in less than ten seconds. His girlfriend had been shot and killed only recently, by a pair of Colombian goons who'd broken into her apartment. Willis never much talked about her, but he hadn't been the same since. Byrnes worried. He worried about all of his people.

after the murder, he

"Day powders,"

Kling

"it's got to be flight."

Worried a lot about Kling, too. Never had any trouble with women, it seemed. Byrnes understood he'd split up with a black woman, a deputy chief in department, no less, as if the black-white thing wasn't difficult enough. Byrnes wished him the best, but remained to be seen. Next chapter, he thought. Life always full of next chapters, some of them written.

"Maybe he's already back in Italy," Brown said. Scowling. Always scowling. Made it look as if he was angry all the time, like a lot of black people in the city were, with damn good cause. But in all the time he'd known Brown, he'd never seen him lose his temper. Giant of a man, could have been for a professional football team, reminded him a lot of Rosie Grier, in fact, though Grier was now, what, minister? He tried to imagine Brown as a minister.

imagination would not take him quite that far. "Maybe," Carella said.

"Where in Italy?" Meyer asked.

"Don't know."

"What'd you find when you tossed her

Byrnes asked.

"Me?"

"You."

"Dead cat lying alongside her," Carella said. "Skip the cat."

"Fish bones all over the kitchen floor."

"I said skip the cat."

"Savings account passbook in a dresser drawer, hundred-and twenty-five thou withdrawn the morning before she got killed."

"What time?"

"Ten twenty-seven A.M." "Cash or bank check?" "Don't know.

"What do you know?" Parker asked.

Carella merely looked at him.

"We know the guy's name," Hawes said.

"If he killed her," Parker said.

"Whether he killed her or not, we know his name." "But not where he is."

"Check the airlines," Brown suggested. "Maybe he did go back to Italy."

"And we've got a clear chain of custody on the murder weapon," Carella said.

"Running from where to where?"

"Registered to a private bodyguard named Rodney Pratt, stolen from his limo on the night before the murder..."

"Who boosted it?" Kling asked.

"Guy named Jose Santiago."

"The famous bullfighter?" Parker asked.

This was a line he'd used before. The expression was his way of putting down anyone of Hispanic descent. Byrnes had heard rumors which he tended to disbelieve that Parker was now living with a Puerto

Rican girl. Parker? Sleeping with a famous bullfighter? "The famous cock fighter Hawes corrected. "He fights with his cock?" Parker asked.

No one laughed.

Parker shrugged.

"So what do you figure?" Byrnes asked. " interrupted burglary?"

"If the him-twenty-five was in the apartment, yes, "What,d you find when you tossed it?" "Us?" Meyer asked. "You."

"Dead fish stinking up the joint." "Piss, too," Kling said. "Cat piss."

"Are we back to the cat again?" Byrnes asked. He was not noted as an animal lover. When he was ten, a pet turtle named Petie had suddenly died. Canary named Alice when he was twelve. And he was thirteen, his mother gave away his pet named Ruffles. For peeing all over their area Which apparently Svetlana Dyalovich's cat had been fond of doing, too. He did not want to hear a word about the dead woman's dead cat.

"Be nice if cats could bark, huh?" Parker sad.

Be nice if we could get off the goddamn

cat. Byrnes said. "What else did you find?" "Us?" Kling asked. "You." "Nothing."

"No money, huh?" "Nothing." "So maybe it was a burglar."

"The cat could explain those stains on the Carella said.

"What stains?" Brown asked.

"The fish stains. They could've got on the coat that way."

"There were fish stains on the coat?" Brown asked. Byrnes was watching him. Eyes narrowing, scowl deepening. He was looking for something. Didn't know what yet, but looking.

"If she fed the cat raw fish, I mean," Carella said.

"How do you know there were fish stains on the coat?" Byrnes asked.

"Grossman," Willis said. "I took the call."

"She was wearing a mink while she fed the goddamn cat?" Parker said.

"Are you saying the cat might've rubbed up against her?" Brown asked.

"No, these were near the collar," Carella said. "Near the collar?"

"I took the call," Willis said again.

"Well, what'd Grossman say, actually?" Byrnes asked.

"He said there were fish stains on the coat." "Near the collar?" Brown asked again.

"High up on the coat," Willis said, and opened his note-book. "These are his words," he said, and began reading. " "Stains inside and outside, near the collar. From the location, it would appear someone held the coat in both hands, one at either side of the collar, thumbs outside, fingers inside'. Quote, unquote."

"I can't visualize it," Brown said, shaking his head. "Okay to use this?" Willis asked. "Sure," Byrnes said.

Willis picked up a magazine from Byrnes's desk, handed it to Brown.

"Hold it with your fingers on the front cow thumbs on the back cover."

Brown tried it.

"That's how Grossman figures the coat was held, "You mean there were fingerprints?"

"No. But he thinks somebody with fish oil on his her hands held the coat the way you're holding the magazine."

Brown looked at his hands on the magazine Everyone in the office was looking at his hands on the magazine.

"Didn't you say she was wearing a wool coat Kling asked.

"Yeah. When she went down to buy the booze." "When was that?" Byrnes asked. "Eleven o'clock that morning." "The day she was killed?"

"Yes. Half an hour after she made the withdrawal."

"Something's fishy here," Byrnes said,

he was making a pun, and not realizing how close it was, either.

When Priscilla and the boys drove up in a taxi at eight that morning, the superintendent of the building was out front with the garbage wondering if the Sanitation Department would start pickups again. Priscilla told him she was Svetlana's granddaughter, and he expressed his sympathy, clucking his tongue and shaking his head over the mysteries and misfortunes of life. chit chatted back and forth for maybe three or four minutes before he finally mentioned that Mrs. Helder's closest friend in the building was a woman named Karen Todd, who lived just down the hall from her.

"Probably there right this minute," he said. "Doesn't leave for work till about eight-thirty."

Georgie fell in love at once with the slender young woman who opened the door to apartment 3C. He guessed she was in her mid-twenties, a very exotic-looking person who reminded him of his cousin Tessie who once he tried to feel up on the roof when they were both sixteen. Tessie later married a dentist. But here was the same long black hair and dark brown eyes, the same bee-stung lips and high cheekbones, the same impressive bust, as Georgie's mother used to call it.

Karen was just finishing breakfast, but she cordially invited them into the apartment batting her lashes at Georgie, Priscilla noticed and told them she had to leave soon, but she'd be happy to answer questions until then. Although, really, she'd already told the police everything she knew.

Priscilla suggested that perhaps the police hadn't asked her the same questions they were about to ask. Karen looked puzzled.

"For example," Priscilla said, "did you ever happen to notice a tall blond man visiting my grandmother's apartment?"

"No," Karen said. "In fact, I did not."

"How well did you know the old lady?" Georgie asked kindly.

Karen looked at the clock.

Then she gave them much the same she'd given the police, telling all about her sitting with Svetlana sipping tea together in the late afternoon listening to her old 78s... "It reminded me of T. S. Eliot somehow," she said and smiled at Georgie, who didn't know who T. S. Eliot was.

She told them, too, about accompanying Svetlana to her internist's office one day... "She had terrible arthritis, you know..." and another time to an ear doctor who told her she ought to see a neurologist. Because of the ringing in her ears, you know.

"When was this?" Priscilla asked.

"Oh, before Thanksgiving. It was awful. She was crying so hard in the taxi, I thought her heart would break."

"And you're sure you never saw her with a blond man?"

"Positive."

"Never, huh?"

"Never. Well, not with her."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think he went inside."

"Inside?"

"Her apartment. But one morning, when she was sick..."

"Yes?" Priscilla said.

"He brought fish for the cat." "Who did?" Tony asked. "A tall blond person."

"His name wouldn't have been Eliot, would it?" Georgie asked shrewdly.

"I have no idea what his name was."

"But he brought fish to her apartment?" Tony said. "Fish. Yes."

"But didn't go in?"

"Well, actually, I don't really know. I was leaving for work when he knocked on her door. Svetlana answered, and he said.." mm, yeah, that's right, wait a minute. He did give her his name, but I don't remember it. It was something very foreign. He had a foreign accent."

"Russian?" Priscilla asked.

"I really don't know. He said he was here with the fish for Irina."

"For Irina. So he knew the cat's name. Which means he knew my grandmother, too. But he didn't go in? When she opened the door?"

"Well, in fact I really can't say. I was already starting down the stairs."

"What kind of fish?" Georgie asked. "I have no idea." "Where'd he get this fish?"

"Well, I would guess at the fish market, wouldn't you?"

"What fish market?" Priscilla asked.

"Where Svetlana went for the cat every morning."

"And where's that?" Priscilla asked, and held her breath.

"Let's try a timetable on this thing, okay?" Byrnes said. He was getting exasperated. He didn't like little

old ladies in faded mink coats smelling of fish shot with a gun stolen from a limo that had transfered: a fighting rooster uptown. He didn't like period. Turtles, canaries, dogs, cats, fish, cockroaches, whatever.

"Where do you want us to start, Pete?" Carella asked.

"The gun."

"Belongs to a man named Rodney Pratt. He Keeps it in the glove compartment of his limo. breaks down Thursday night, he takes it to the garage off the Majesta Bridge. Place called

Texaco. Forgets the gun in the glove box." "Okay, next."

"How do you know he's not the murderer?" Byrnes asked.

"We know," Hawes said, dismissing the very

"Gee, excuse me for fucking breathing!" Parker said.

"Next," Carella said, "they work on the car all Friday. One of the mechanics, guy named Santiago, borrows the car, quote unquote, to drive prize rooster uptown that night to a cockfight at Riverhead."

"Excuse me while I puke," Parker said. "Puke," Kling suggested.

"A fuckin bird in the backseat of a limo?" "So puke," Kling suggested again. "Santiago's bird loses. He finds the gun in the box, decides to shoot the winning bird, changes mind when the Four-Eight raids the place. He goes nearby after-hours joint called The Juice Bar..."

"I know that place," Brown said."... where this tall blond son of a bitch we're trying to find is meeting with a bookie named Bernie Himmel who tells him he's gonna be swimming with the fishes unless he pays him by Sunday morning the twenty grand he lost on the Cowboys-Steelers game."

"Swimming with the fishes," Hawes corrected. "What?"

"He stressed the word 'swimming." "

"I don't know what you mean."

"He told Schiavinato he'd be swimming with the fishes."

"As opposed to what?" Meyer said. "Dancing with them?"

"I'm only telling you what I heard."

"Let me hear the rest of the timetable," Byrnes said. "Okay. Saturday night, a quarter to twelve, we get a DOA at 1217 Lincoln Street, old lady named Svetlana Helder, turns out to be Svetlana Dyalovich, the famous concert pianist."

"I never heard of her," Parker said. "Two to the heart," Hawes said. "I saw that picture," Kling said. "Was that the name?" "I'm pretty sure."

"Next morning, around seven, we get a dead hooker in an alley on St. Sab's." "Any connection?" "None."

"Then why bring her up?"

"A policeman,s lot," Carella said, and shrugged.

"He also called them the blond guy's fish," said.

"I'm lost," Parker said.

"So am I," Byrnes said.

"Himmel. The bookie. Bernie the Banker. He then didn't have much to talk about after he mentioned

Schiavinato swimming with his little fishies."

"I'm still lost," Parker said.

"Yes, can you please tell us what the hell you are driving at?" Byrnes asked.

"His little fishies. Not the little fishies, but his fishies. Schiavinato's little fishies."

Everybody was looking at him.

Only Carella knew what he was saying.

"The cat," Carella said.

"Not the goddamn cat again," Byrnes said.

"She went out every morning to buy fresh fish for the cat."

"Where'd you say her apartment was?"

asked, suddenly catching on.

"1217 Lincoln."

"Simple," Parker said. "The Lincoln Street Market."

"Selling fish," Meyer said, nodding. "As opl swimming with them."

At eight-fifteen that morning, the Lincoln Street Fish Market was not quite as bustling as it had been between four and six A.M. when fish retailers from all over the city arrived in droves. As Priscilla and the boys pulled up in a taxi, only housewives and restaurant owners were examining the various catches of the day, all displayed enticingly on ice well, enticingly if you liked fish.

The market was a sprawling complex of indoor and outdoor stalls. On the sidewalk outside the high-windowed arching edifice fishmongers, wearing woolen gloves with the fingers cut off, woolen caps pulled down over their ears, and bloodstained white smocks over layers of sweaters, stood hawking their merchandise while potential customers picked over the fish as if they were inspecting diamonds for flaws.

It was a clear, cold, windy, sunny Monday morning. "Where do we start?" Georgie asked.

He was hoping to discourage her. He did not want her to meet the man who'd dropped off' that key to the bus terminal locker. He did not want her to learn that nobody had been in that locker except him and Tony here, who was backing away from the fish stalls as if his grandmother had cooked fish for him whenever he visited her on a Friday, which she had, and which he'd hated. He learned after her death that she'd hated fish, too. His mother, on the other hand, never had to cook

fish in her entire lifetime because the church changed its rules. His mother was a staunch Catholic practiced birth control and didn't believe in confession. Priscilla looked bewildered.

She had never been to this part of the city certainly never to a fish market here, had never seen much damn fish ever and could not imagine how could even hope to find a tall blond man among these men wearing hats and smocks and gloves. The bitter cold did not help.

Priscilla was wearing a mink, dark and soft supple in contrast to the ratty orange-brown coat her grandmother had been wearing when someone shot her. The fur afforded scant protection against the harsh wind blowing in over the river. Georgie and Tony wearing belted cloth coats and woolen mufflers, fedoras pulled down low on their foreheads, in their pockets, just like movie gangsters. wailing around them, the three walked the dockside blocks, studying the men behind each outdoor stalls and ice bins, searching for telltale sideburns at the rolled edges of ubiquitous woolen

At the end of twenty minutes of close scrutiny, were happy to be entering the long enclosed After the howling wind outside, even the indoor seemed welcoming, fishmongers touting and squid, sea bass and flounder, mackerel shrimp, sole and snapper. They were coming down center aisle, tall windows streaming wintry sunlight stalls of iced fish on either side of them, Georgie blowing on his hands, Tony wearing a pained look in memory of his grandmother, Priscilla holding

the collar of the mink closed with one hand because to tell the truth it was almost as cold inside here as it was outside, when all at once... Behind the stall on the right... Just ahead... They saw a hatless man with muddy blond hair... Standing some six feet two inches tall... Wearing a white smock over a blue coat and a red muffler... Bearing a marked resemblance to Robert Redford, and lifting a nice fat halibut off the ice to show to a female customer.

Hawes and Carella were just pulling up outside.

"Blond hair and blue eyes," Hawes said. "Must be from Milan," Carella said. "Or Rome. Rome has blonds, too." Redheads," Carella said.

A gust of wind almost knocked Hawes off his feet.

"Which first?" Carella asked. "Inside or out?" Ask astupid question.

Hawes reached for the doorknob.

At the downtown end of the enclosed market, four city blocks from where the detectives went in, Priscilla was just asking Lorenzo Schiavinato if he knew her grandmother Svetlana.

"Non par lo ingle se Lorenzo said.

Thank God, Georgie thought.

"He doesn't speak English," he translated for Priscilla.

"Ask him if he knew my grandmother."

"I don't speak Italian," Georgie said.

"I do," Tony said, and Georgie wanted to kill him Ask him if he knew my grandmother." Tony's grandmother was from Siciliy, where you did not exactly speak Dante's Italian. The dialect now used was the one he'd heard at Filomena's while she was cooking her abominable fish. First asked Lorenzo his name.

"Mi chiamo Lorenzo Schiavinato," Lorenzo said.

"His name's Lorenzo," Tony translated. "I could make out the last name."

Small wonder, Georgie thought.

"Ask him if he knew my grandmother." "Where are you from?" Tony asked. "Milano," Lorenzo said.

Where they spoke Florentine Italian, and where Sicilian dialect was scarcely understood. Lorenzo in fact, squinting his very blue eyes in an effort to understand Tony's Italian, which itself was bastardization of the dialect his sainted grandmother had spoken.

It occurred to Georgie that the so-called conversation between them was taking place in a market reputedly run by the mob, whose Italian limited to a few basic words like "Boffon gool," itself was a bastardization of the time-honored "Va in culo," better left uninterpreted in the presence of a fine lady like Priscilla Stetson.

Who now said, rather impatiently this time, ask him if he knew my goddamn grandmother."

In Sicilian Italian, Tony asked if Lorenzo had known Priscilla's grandmother.

In Florentine Italian, Lorenzo asked who perchance her grandmother might have been.

"Svetlana Dyalovich," Tony said.

And Lorenzo began running.

From where the detectives were coming down the center aisle of the indoor market, checking out the men selling fish from stalls and barrels and bins and ice chests on either side of them, they saw a tall blond man running toward them, chased by Svetlana's grand daughter and the two goons who'd braced them at the club on Saturday night.

If the tall runner was, in fact, Lorenzo Schiavinato, then he was the one who'd bought the gun that killed Priscilla's grandmother. Despite what was known in the trade as "background" the number of innocent bystanders at any given scene the fact that Lorenzo had purchased the murder weapon was justification within the guidelines for Carella and Hawes to draw their own guns. Besides, the man was running. In this city, unless you were running to catch a bus, the very act was suspicious.

The guns came out.

"Stop!" Hawes shouted. "Police!" "Police!" Carella shouted. "Stop!" Lorenzo wasn't stopping.

A hundred and eighty pounds of muscle and bone plowed right through them, knocking Hawes off his feet, tossing Carella back onto a stall of very nice iced salmon, and causing a mustached man in a brown derby to throw his hands over his head in fright. Both

detectives recovered at once, Carella first, Hawes an instant later.

"Stop!" they shouted simultaneously.

Hawes was in a crouch, pistol levered, holding gun steady in both hands.

Carella was standing beside him, gun extended both hands, ready to fire. "Stop!" he shouted. Lorenzo kept running.

Hawes fired first. Carella fired an instant later Carella missed. Hawes did, too. He fired again. This time, his shot took Lorenzo in the left leg, sending him tumbling. Everywhere around them, the back was screaming. The mustached man in the derby was running in the opposite direction, from the shooting, waving his hands hysterically in the air. He tripped over Georgie, who had thrown himself flat on the floor the moment he'd heard shots, the way his uncle Dominick had taught him to do. Lorenzo trying to crawl away, dragging his wounded leg behind him. Hawes kicked him and then stepped on his back, holding him down while Carella cuffed him.

"Ask him if he knew my grandmother," Priscilla said. "Few things we'd like to ask you, too," Carella said. Everyone was breathing very hard.

Fat Ollie Weeks was asking the computer for tri-state area high school, prep school, parochial: school, Christian academy or so-called alternative school whose name began with the letter P. There were fifteen such private schools in the metropolitan area alone.

Thirty-eight in the entire state.

Of the public schools, there were a hundred and forty-six, thirty of them beginning with the word "Port." Port This, Port That, more damn coastal towns than Ollie knew existed.

In the two neighboring states combined, there were thirty-nine private schools and a hundred and ninety eight public schools that began with the letter P. All of the public schools in this city were designated with the letters P.S. before the name, and so the computer belched out what looked to Ollie like more high schools than he could possibly cover in ten years of investigation. He limited the search to proper names alone and came up with sixty-three schools that had the letter P in their names.

Some of these schools were named for areas of the city, like Parkhurst or Pineview or Paley Hills. Others had been named after people. The computer did not differentiate between given names and surnames. The letter P appeared in Peter Lowell High, but it also appeared in Luis Perez High. But Ollie had been born and raised in this fair city, and he knew that kids never said they went to Harry High or Abraham High, but instead said they went to Truman High or Lincoln High. So he figured if the letter on those parkas stood for a person after whom a school had been named, then it sure as hell was the surname. Running down the printed list by hand, he limited the city's sixty-three public schools to a mere seventeen. He was making progress.

By the time he was ready to begin making his calls, his trimmed-down list seemed like a one... Sort of.

The way the joke goes, a woman is telling a woman about her son in medical school, and she's referring to him as a doctor. The other woman says "By you, your son is a doctor. And by your son, son is a doctor. But by a doctor, is your son a

By Byrnes, Carella was Italian. And by Carella was Italian. But by an Italian, was Italian?

Lorenzo Schiavinato asked for an interpreter. The interpreter's name was John McNalley.

He had studied Italian in high school one because he'd wanted to become an opera singer. never did get to sing at La Scala or the Met because he had a lousy voice, but he did have a certain with language, and so in addition to interpreting for the police and the courts, he also worked for publishers, translating for worthy books from the Italian and Spanish.

He still wanted to sing opera.

McNalley informed Lorenzo that he was charged with murder in the second degree. In this state, you could be charged with Murder One only you killed someone during the commission of felony, or if you'd been earlier convicted of murder, if the currently charged murder was particularly wanton, or if it was a contract killing, or if the victim was a police officer, or a prison guard, or

prisoner in a state pen, or a witness to a prior crime, or a judge all of whom, according to one's personal opinion, might deserve killing.

Murder Two was killing almost anybody else.

Like murder in the first, murder in the second was also an A-1 felony. In accordance with the new law, Lorenzo was looking at the death penalty at worst, or fifteen to life at best, none of which added up to a tea party on the lawn.

Naturally, he asked for a lawyer.

He was an illegal alien in the United States of America, but, hey, he knew his rights.

Lorenzo's lawyer was a man named Alan Moscowitz. He was a tall angular man wearing a brown suit and Vest, looking very lawyerly in gold-rimmed spectacles and shiny brown shoes. Carella disliked most defense attorneys, but hope springs eternal so maybe one day he'd meet one who wouldn't rub him up the wrong way. Moscowitz didn't understand Italian at all. The melting pot realized.

They read Lorenzo his rights in Italian, and he said he understood them, and Moscowitz ascertained, through back-and-forth interpretation, that his client understood Miranda and was willing to answer whatever questions the detectives posed. The questions they posed had to do with shooting an eighty-three-year-old woman at close range in cold blood. Lorenzo didn't much look like a man who'd committed murder, but then again not many murderers did. What he looked like was a slightly bewildered Robert Redford who spoke only basic English like Me Tarzan, You Jane.

The back-and-forth, in English and Italian and

English again, went this way.

"Mr. Schiavinato..."

Very difficult name to pronounce. Skeeahve nah-toe..

"Mr. Schiavinato, do you know, or did you know, a woman named Svetlana Dyalovich?"

"No."

"How about Svetlana Helder?"

"Her granddaughter told us... did you know she had a granddaughter?"

"We've been talking to her. She told us things we'd like to ask you about."

"Umo"

"Mr. Schiavinato, did you deliver to Miss Stetson at the Hotel Powell the key to a pay locker at the Rendell Road Bus Terminal?"

"No."

"Delivered it on the morning of January

twenty-first, didn't you?"

"No."

"Miss Stetson says you did."

"I don't know who Miss Stetson is."

"She's Svetlana Dyalovich's granddaughter."

"I don't know either of them."

"Locker number one thirty-six. Do you remember that?"

"No, I don't."

"Where'd you get that key?"

"I don't know what key you're talking about."

"Did Svetlana Dyalovich give you that key?" "Nobody gave me a key."

"Did Svedana Dyalovich ever come to your stall at the Lincoln Street Fish Market to purchase fish for her cat?"

"No."

"Early in the morning, this would have been."

"No."

"Every morning."

"No. I don't know this woman."

"Ever go to her apartment?"

"How would I? I don't know her. I don't know where she lives."

"Her neighbor down the hall told the granddaughter you went there to deliver fish one morning."

"I don't know her or her neighbor. Or the granddaughter, either."

"Then you never went to 1217 Lincoln Street,

apartment 3A, is that right?"

"Never."

"Mr. Schiavinato, I show you this weapon tagged as evidence and ask if you've ever seen it before." "Never."

"Didn't you buy this pistol from a man named Jose Santiago..."

"No."

"On the night before..."

"No."

"... Svetlana Dyalovich was murdered?" "No."

"Didn't you telephone her a few minutes before you bought the gun?"

"Mr. Schiavinato, we have here a tele company record showing that a call was made from a wall phone at a club called The Juice Bar at one- A.M. this past Friday night to a telephone listed to Svetlana Helder at 1217 Lincoln Street..." "Cosa?"

The precinct's civilian stenographer read back the question. McNalley the interpreter translated it Lorenzo and his lawyer. Moscowitz nodded that it was okay to answer it.

"I don't know who called this woman,"

he said, "but it wasn't me."

"Weren't you in The Juice Bar that night at

A.M.?"

"No. I don't know this place."

"Uptown in Riverhead?"

"No."

"Harris Avenue? Uptown?"

"No."

"Mr. Schiavinato..."

Such a damn difficult name to pronounce.

"Mr. Schiavinato, do you know a man named Bernard Himmel?"

"No."

"Bernie Himmel?"

"No."

"Benny Himmel?"

"No."

'Bernie the Banker Himmel?"

"I don't know any of these people."

"Never placed a bet with him, huh?"

"Never. Any of them."

A good imitation of a Robert Redford smile. Hawes wanted to smack him.

"Ever place a bet with him on the Super Bowl?" "What is this Super Bowl?"

Smack the fucking smile off his face.

"Steelers against the Cowboys?"

"I don't know what any of this means." "Twenty grand on the Steelers?" "What is twenty grand?"

"You lost the bet. Because of the point spread." "What is a point spread?" "Twenty grand gone in a wink." "What is a wink?"

"He sounds like Jeopardy t. ," Carella said.

"Please, Detective," Moscowitz warned, raising an eyebrow.

"Sorry, Counselor," Carella said, and raised his own eyebrow. "Mr. Schiavinato, didn't you lose twenty thousand dollars on the Steelers-Cowboys game?"

"I never had twenty thousand dollars in my entire life."

"You had it when you paid your marker, didn't you?"

"I don't know what a marker is."

"A promise to pay money you owed."

"I don't owe anybody money. I have an honest job. I do honest work."

"You owed Bernie Himmel the twenty thousand dollars you lost on the Super Bowl, didn't you?"

"No."

"You went to see him on Friday night..."

"... and he told you he'd kill you if you didn't the money by Sunday morning."

"I don't know who you're talking about."

"Bernie Himmel. Your bookie. Bernie the B You're a gambler, aren't you, Lorenzo?"

"Sometimes I bet on horse races. At the OTB. B don't know this man you're talking about."

"Then you don't remember him telling you to get money or you'd be swimming with your little fishie

"I don't know him. How could he tell me this?"

"After which you went directly to the wall

telephone..."

"No."

"... and called Svetlana Dyalovich. Why,

Did you want to make sure she'd be out of her apartment when you went there to burglarize it?" "Cosa?" he said again.

The stenographer repeated the question. M translated it. Moscowitz cleared his throat.

"Detective," he said, "my client has told you repeatedly that he did not know Svetlana D) did not know her granddaughter, and never went to her apartment on Lincoln Street. Nor does he know a bookmaker named Bernie Himmel or a guy named Jose Santiago. Now, if..."

"He's not a gun dealer."

"Excuse me, I thought he's supposed to have my client a gun."

"He did sell him a gun. But he's not a dealer. He pumps gas at a Texaco station."

"Whatever he does, my client doesn't know him."

Carella figured he kept calling him "my client" only because he couldn't pronounce his last name.

"So unless you have something new to..." "How about a clear chain on the gun, Counselor?" "You!" Moscowitz shouted, and pointed his finger at the stenographer. "Hold it right there." He turned to

Carella. "Is this off the record?" he asked.

"Sure."

The stenographer waited. Carella nodded.

"Then let me hear it," Moscowitz said.

"We've traced the gun from its registered owner..." "Named" "Rodney Pratt."

"TOT"

"Jose Santiago, who stole it from the glove compartment of Pratt's car..." "He's admitted this" "He has."

"And from there... ?"

"To Mr. Schiavinato here, who bought it from him for two hundred and fifty dollars."

"Well, this is where it begins to get speculative, Detective. But let's assume for the moment, arguendo, that my client did buy a gun from this man. How does that make it the murder weaponT"

"The bullets that killed Mrs. Helder and her cat were fired from it. We found them embedded in the door behind her body and the baseboard behind the cat. We recovered the gun itself in a sewer outside her building. The only thing we don't have is Mr. Schiavinato's fingerprints on the gun, and frankly..."

"Well, that's a very big negative, Detective.

could have fired the gun."

"Perhaps your client..." Byrnes said.

He couldn't pronounce the name, either.

"can explain why he telephoned the minutes before he bought the gun that killed her." "Why exactly did he call her, Lieutenant?" The weak spot.

Byrnes knew it, Carella knew it, Hawes knew it now Moscowitz had zeroed in on it: Why had he called Svetlana before buying the gun he later used to kill her?

"We think he was planning to burglarize her apartment," Carella said. "He called to find out would she be safe. When she'd be home."

It still sounded weak.

"Are you saying he called to ask her when she'd be home? So he could run right over to burglarize..." "Well, no, he didn't ask her flat out." "Then how did he ask her?"

"I don't know the actual conversation that took

"But you think he was trying to determine she'd be out of the apartment..."

"Yes."

"So he'd know when it would be safe to go into burglarize it." "Exactly." "In Italian" "What"

"This conversation. Was it in Italian" "Yes, it was. According to a witness." "Because he doesn't speak English, you see."

"I suspect he speaks some English."

"Oh. And why is that?"

"He sells fish to English-speaking people, I'm sure he must speak at least a little English."

"We'll have to ask him, won't we?" Moscowitz said, and smiled sweetly. "In Italian."

Hawes wanted to smack him, too.

"How long was this phone conversation, do you know?"

"No, I don't."

"The phone company would know, I suppose." "Yes, but..."

"Should we contact them?"

"Why?"

"Find out how long it took my Italian-speaking client to learn when his prospective victim would be out of the apartment so he could burglarize it."

He's trying his case right here in the interrogation room, Carella thought. And winning it.

"By the way, were there any signs of burglary at the scene?" Moscowitz asked.

"The window was open."

"Oh? This means a burglary was committed?"

"No, but Mr. Schievinato must have know there was money in the apartment..."

"Oh? How would he have known that?"

"He knew the woman. Talked to her every morning at the market. Even made a delivery to the apartment when she was sick one morning. She was a lonely old lady. She confided in him. And he took advantage of her trust."

"I see. By shooting her and killing her, is that it?"

"Yes"

"He was surprised during the commission of..."

"But I thought he called her to find out when she'd be out."

"Yes, but..."

"If he knew when she'd be out, how come he was surprised?"

"People come home unexpectedly all the time." "So he shot her. Was that after he found out that he supposedly knew that she was in the apartment?"

"It had to've been. He paid off his bookie the next day."

"Gave him twenty thousand dollars the next day that right?"

"Yes. Himmel told us..."

"A bookie," Moscowitz said, dismissing him with an airy wave of his hand.

"He had no reason to lie."

"Oh? When did bookmaking become legal?" "We offered no deals."

"How about offering me one?"

"Like what?"

"We all go home. My client included."

"Your client is a murderer."

"Who stole twenty thousand dollars from an old lady, right?"

"Maybe more."

"Oh? How much more?"

"She withdrew a hundred and twenty-five from her bank the morning before she was killed."

Moscowitz looked at him.

"Let me get this straight," he said. "Are you now saying he stole a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars from her?"

"I'm saying the money is gone. I'm saying twenty thousand of it was turned over to a bookie the following morning. I'm saying it's highly likely, yes." "Stole all that money and then shot her, is that it?" "Yes, that's it. That's what it looks like to us." "Detective, I'll tell you what. This is so preposterous that I'm going to ask that you stop the questioning of my client right this..."

"It's Schiavinato," Carella said. "Skeeah.veenah-toe." "Thank you. All we're doing here is going over the same tired ground over and over again. You're wasting everyone's time here, and I think you know a grand jury will kick this right out the window in ten seconds flat."

"I think not."

"We think not," Byrnes amended.

"Either way, let's quit. Right now."

"Sure," Carella said. "In fact, I have a suggestion." "And what's that, Detective?" "Let's hold a little lineup." Moscowitz looked at him.

"Let's drag Himmel and Santiago out of bed, and let's go wake up the man who saw your client kneeling over the sewer where we recovered the gun."

Moscowitz was silent for what seemed a very long time. Then he said, "What man? You don't have such a witness."

"Wanna bet, Counselor?"

"What I don't understand," Priscilla said, "is what happened to the other hundred and twenty."

"Me, too," Georgie said.

They were sitting in Lieutenant Byrnes's office Priscilla in the comfortable black leather winged chair behind the lieutenant's desk, the men in straight-backed wooden chairs across the room, near the bookcases. Outside the lieutenant's office was the squad room proper. They could hear a telephone ringing out there. Outside the grilled corner window" there was the steady sound of traffic on Grover Avenue and the intersecting side street. Beyond slatted wooden railing that divided the square from the corridor outside, in a little room with words INTERROGATION lettered on its frosted glass upper panel, Lorenzo Schiavinato was still being questioned. The little digital clock on the lieutenant's desk, alongside a picture of a woman Pr presumed to be his wife, read 10:32 A.M. The day beginning to cloud over. It looked as if it might snow again.

"He said she'd withdrawn a hundred and five from the bank, didn't he?"

"The cop, yeah," Tony said

"Told us a hundred and twenty-five, didn't he?" "Carella, yeah."

"So how come there was only five in the envelope Priscilla asked.

'"Which isn't exactly horseradish," Georgie reminded her yet another time.

He desperately wanted her to believe that th was what the old lady had in mind when she said her

granddaughter would be taken care of. He wanted her to get off that missing hundred and twenty. He knew where ninety-five of that was. It was in an envelope inside a shoebox on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, tucked into one of a pair of black patent-leather slippers he wore with his tuxedo on special occasions like New Year's Eve.

"What happened to the other hundred and twenty?" Priscilla asked again.

Georgie was still doing arithmetic.

Old lady took a hundred and twenty-five from the bank. But there was only a hundred in the locker. So where'd the other twenty-five go?

Lorenzo was weeping into his hands.

This was because he was Italian. It was also because his lawyer had advised him to tell him everything he knew about this old lady's death before the cops called in a lot of people who'd begin pointing fingers at him. Moscowitz listened without benefit of an interpreter as

Lorenzo broke his tale in broken English.

It was a sad story.

After he heard it, Moscowitz told the detectives he had no doubt the crime had been committed, but there were unique and sympathetic circumstances surrounding it. In view of these unusual conditions, he had advised his client to tell his story in the presence of a district attorney, and was therefore requesting one now.

Which meant he was ready to cop a plea.

It was snowing outside by the time Assistant District Attorney Nellie Brand got to the Eighty-sevel Precinct: She felt cold and bedraggled even though she looked toasty warm and well-tailored in brown leather boots, a beige blouse, and a headband that complemented, and complimented, blue eyes and sand-colored hair.

She'd had an argument with her husband leaving for work this morning, and her manner with detectives she knew as well as those from Eight-Seven was unusually brusque. She knew Moscowitz, too, had in fact lost a court case to him six months ago. Altogether, her mood did not go well for Lorenzo Schiavinato, who looked handsome by half and who had, by his own admission to his attorney, pumped two slugs into a little old lady. Nellie had already been briefed. And in translating, she began the Q and A with the name/address/occupation bullshit, and then eased into a routine she'd followed a hundred times before. Thousand times. It was exactly 11:04 A.M.

Q:

So tell me, sir, how long did you know the murdered woman?

Carella noticed that Nellie, too, had avoided using Schiavinato's name. He figured if the man ever got out of jail, he should change it to Skeever or something. But it also occurred to him that Nellie had called Svetlana Dyalovich "the murdered woman," and wondered if she was having difficulty pronouncing her name, too. Maybe everyone in the world should change his name, he thought, and missed part of Lorenzo's reply.

A:... at the fish market.

Q: Would this be the Lincoln Street Fish Market? A: Yes. Where I work.

Q: And that's where you first met her?

A: Yes.

Q: When was this?

A: The middle of September. Q: This past September. A: Yes.

Q:

So you've know her approximately four months. A bit more than four months.

A:

Yes.

Q:

Were you ever in her apartment on Lincoln Street?

A:

Yes.

Q:

1217 Lincoln Street?

A: Yes.

Q: Apartment 3A?

A: Yes.

Q: When were you there? A: Twice. Q: When?

A: The first time to deliver fish for her cat. Svetlana was sick, she called the market... Q: You called her Svetlana, did you?

A: Yes. That was her name.

Q: And that's what you called her.

A: We were friends.

Q:

Did you visit your friend in her apartment on the night of January 20, two days ago?

A:

I did.

Q:

To deliver fish again?

A: No.

Q: Why were you there, sir?

A: To kill her.

Q: Did you, in fact, kill her? A: Yes. Q: Why?

A: To save her.

The way Lorenzo tells it, Svetlana is a nice old lady who comes to the market every morning to buy fish for her cat, telling him every day in almost perfect Italian... Mica, lei par la Italiano bene. Solo un pocotino. No, no, molto bene.

Congratulating her on the way she speaks his tongue, she shyly denying her facility with language, telling him she needs... Mi bisogna un po di pesce fresco per il mio gatto .. . fresh fish for her cat every day, two fish a day, in the morning, one at night. She feeds him only a day, but the fish must be absolutely fresh my Irina is very fussy," she says in Italian, with girlish wink that tells him she must once have been very beautiful woman. Even at her age, there is still something elegant about the way she walks, a long graceful stride, as if she is crossing a stage; he wonders, sometimes if perhaps she was once an actress.

He first realizes she is in constant pain when, one early morning at the fish market, she can scarcely hold her handbag to pay for her purchase. This is September, and the weather is mild and sunny, but she is struggling nonetheless with the catch on the bag,

and he notices for the first time the gnarled hands and twisted fingers.

She is having such difficulty with the catch on her bag that the pain contorts her face and she turns away from him in embarrassment, continuing her struggle in silence, her back turned to him. When at last she frees the stubborn interlocking metal pieces, she turns to him and he sees that tears are running down her face as she hands him the several dollars for the two fish. "Are you all right?" he asks.

"Puoi alzare la voce?" she asks. "Sono unpo sordo."

Asking him to speak a little louder as she is a little deaf. :

He repeats the question, and she answers, in Italian, "Yes, fine, I'm fine."

He learns one day, early in October, that she is originally from Russia and at once a stronger bond is forged, these two immigrants in a city of immigrants, he an Italian seller of fish, thirty-four years old and adrift in a foreign land, she a Russian expatriate in her eighties, a former actress, perhaps, or dancer perhaps, or perhaps even a princess, who knows, seeking fresh seafood for "mio piccolo tesoro Irina."

My little treasure Irina.

She. reminds him somehow of his gentle and cultivated Aunt Lucia who married a greengrocer from Napoli when Lorenzo was only twelve, breaking his heart when she moved to that beautiful but barbaric city so very far to the south.

Their daily exchanges are no longer than ten or fifteen minutes, each, but during this time they each learn much about the other, and he finds that he looks

forward to her early morning visits to the market, pretty silk scarf on her head now that winter is" approaching, woolen gloves on her twisted hands; a worn blue woolen coat, he senses she was once a woman of elegance and taste who has now fallen on hard times here in this harsh city.

One day he tells her why he left Milano.

"I am a gambler," he says. "I owed money."

"Ah," she says, and nods wisely.

"A lot of money. They threatened to kill me. In Italy, this is not an idle threat. I left."

"Do you still gamble?" she asks.

"Ehh," he says, and shrugs, and smiles saying with the slight lifting of his shoulders and faint grin, Yes, signora, every now and then, che fare? "And you?" he asks. "Do you have any habits?"

"I listen to old records," she says.

A week or so later, he learns that she once played piano on the concert stage, often performing at

La Scala in Milan, which is where she learned Italian... "But no! La Scala? Veramente?" "Yes, yes!" Excitedly.

"Not only in Milan," she says, "but also in New

York and London and Paris..."

"Brava," he says.

" Budapest' Vienna Anvers, Prague, Liege,

Brussels, everywhere. Everywhere." Her voice falling. "Bravissima," he says. "Yes," she says softly.

They are silent for a moment. He is wrapping the fish he recommended to her. "And now?" he says. "Do you still play?"

"Now," she says, "I listen to the past."

Just before Thanksgiving, she comes to the market one morning and tells Lorenzo she had been to see her ear doctor yesterday and he made some tests... "Audiometric tests," she says. "Non so il parole Italiano .. ." she doesn't know the Italian word for the tests, they reproduce various sounds in each ear. The results weren't good, she tells him, and now she is fearful there may be something else wrong. She has lately begun to hear ringing in her ears, she is afraid... Lorenzo tells her that tests aren't always accurate, and doctors often make mistakes, they think they're God, they think they can play with a person's emotions, but she keeps shaking her head and saying she knows the tests were correct, her hearing is getting worse and worse every day of the week. What if there comes a time when she can no longer listen to her own recordings? Then even the past will be gone. And then she might just as well be dead.

It is not until he delivers the fish to her, on the morning she got sick..,

Q: What do you mean, sick?

A: Nothing serious. A cold. Although, for an old woman... Q: When was this?

A: The beginning of the month. Q: This month? January? A: Yes... Q: How'd you know she was sick?

A: She telephoned me.

Lorenzo, non mi sen to tanto bene oggi. Me lo puoi port are i pesci?

Q: Phoned you at the market?

A: Yes. And asked me if I could please pick out two nice fresh fish for Irina, same as always, and deliver them to the apartment. I told her I would. She was a friend. I got there... At eight-thirty that January morning, there is no one in the hallway when Lorenzo knocks on the door to apartment 3A. But just as Svetlana calls, "Yes, who is it?" the door to apartment 3C opens, and an' exotic-looking woman with long black hair and brown eyes, and a mouth like Sophia Loren's,

high cheekbones and wonderful... Q: What about her?

A: She was coming out of the apartment. Q: 3C, did you say? A: Down the hall.

Q: So what about her?

A: Nothing. I'm giving you all the details.

He tells Svetlana through the closed door that it's him, Lorenzo, and he's here with the fish for Irina. She calls to him to come in, the door is open. The girl from 3C has already gone down the stairs. Lorenzo goes into the apartment. It is a small apartment and frightfully cold on this day when winter has scarcely begun in earnest. Svetlana is sitting up in a double bed in the tiny bedroom, wearing a faded pink silk robe, covered with a blanket and a quilt that looks almost Italian. There is a dresser that is almost certainly

Italian, or so he believes, like one you might find on Sicilia or Sardegna, with ornate drawer pulls and paintings on the sides and top.

"C'ho un mal raffredore," she says, telling him she has a bad cold, and then gently warning him not to come near her, "Non ti avvicinare."

Irina the cat is lying at the foot of the bed. She is a fat grey and black and white animal. She blinks up at Lorenzo as he comes into the room, and then catches the scent of the fresh fish wrapped in white paper, and is suddenly all uptight ears and flashing green eyes and twitching nose. Like a jungle beast, Lorenzo thinks.

Svetlana asks if he would mind feeding Irina one of the fish. He needn't do anything but put it in Irina's bowl under the sink; Irina eats everything but the spine and the hard part of the jaw. Lorenzo goes out to the kitchen, unwraps the fish while the cat rubs against his leg. There is something about cats that makes him enormously uncomfortable. He never knows what a cat is thinking. He never knows whether a cat is going to lick his hand or spring for his throat. He puts the raw fish in the cat's bowl and backs away at once.

When he comes back into the bedroom, Svetlana asks him to sit for a moment, please, there is something she would like to discuss with him. He takes a chair near the dresser. Across the room, he can see into an open closet where old but stylish clothes, tattered and frayed, are hanging on silk-covered hangers the color of Svetlana's robe. She coughs, takes a Kleenex from a box beside the bed, blows her nose, and then says, "Lorenzo, voglio che to mi ammazi."

"Lorenzo, I want you to kill me."

He does not at first know how to react to this. Is this some sort of Russian joke? If so, Slavs have a very peculiar sense of humor. But is he supposed to laugh? No, she seems quite serious. She wants him to kill her She would do it herself, she says, but she doesn't have the nerve. Besides, how does a person kill herself if she doesn't own a gun? Does she jump off the roof?. Or turn on the gas? Or slit her wrists with `:-3,' a razor or a knife? Or hang herself from the closet pole? No, all these seem too horrible even to contemplate. A gun swift and sure, but where would she get a gun? Does Lorenzo know where to get a gun? And if he can get one, would he be so kind as to shoot her? She is not smiling. This is no joke.

In the kitchen, he can hear the cat demolishing fish Lorenzo put in her bowl. The sounds are obscene. Cats are too much like wild animals. One step backward and they would be in the jungle again, hunting.

Svetlana goes on to explain that she has been to see a neurologist who diagnosed a benign tumor on the nerve in her left auditory canal. Unless this is removed surgically, she will go completely deaf in that ear. But the chances of... "Well, then of course you must..."

"No," she says, "you don't understand. Even if I elect surgery.." this is what they say, Lorenzo, as if I would be electing a president, elect surgery, can you imagine? Even if I were to choose surgery, agree to surgery, even then..."

She shakes her head.

"I've waited too long, Lorenzo. The tumor is very large, they may not be able to save my hearing. The larger the tumor, the smaller the chance, is what he told me. The doctor. And with . ." with anything larger than three centimeters in diameter . ." with any tumor larger than that..."

And here she begins weeping.

"They might not.." be... be able to save my facial nerves, either. Is what he told me. The doctor." Lorenzo stands helplessly beside the bed.

"So what's the use? My hands are already dead, I can't play anymore. Should I now choose to live without being able to hear? Without being able to express feeling on my face? Whenever I played, my hands and my face said all there was to say. Do you know what they called me? A tornado. A tornado from the Steppes. A wild tornado. My face and my hands. A tornado."

Sobbing bitterly, the words coming out brokenly... "What's left for me, Lorenzo? What? Why should I choose to live? Please help me."

Her hands covering her face, crying into them. "Please," she begs. "Kill me. Please." He tells her this is absurd.

He tells her that in' any case, however slender the chances of success, she must undertake surgery, of course she must. Besides, a person shouldn't make

decisions when she isn't feeling right, she's sick just now .. .

"See how pale you look!" she'll feel different about all this when her cold is gone. But she keeps shaking her head as he talks, no, no, no, insisting that she's given this a great deal of thought, truly, and he would really be doing her an enormous service if he would only get a gun and kill her. "You're serious," he says. "I'm serious." "Svetlana," he says, "no." "Why not?"

"Because we're friends. You're my friend, Svetlana."

"Then kill me," she says.

"No."

"Please, Lorenzo. Kill me. Take me out of my misery. Help me. Please!"

"NO"

"Please."

"NO"

I'll pay you."

"No."

"I'll pay you ten thousand dollars."

"NO."

"Twenty thousand."

"No."

"Lorenzo, please. Please."

"No Svetlana. I'm sorry no."

"Twenty-five. To kill me and to take care of Irina afterward. Take her home with you, feed her, care for her."

"I can't. I won't."

"I would pay you more, but..."

"No, Svetlana. Please. Never. Not even for a million. Never. Please."

But that is before he loses the money to Bernie the Banker.

What Bernie is telling him, if he correctly under stands his very rapid English, is that he is going to kill Lorenzo unless he comes up with the money he owes by Sunday morning. Bernie is a Jew, he supposes, but he is beginning to sound very Italian with all this talk about swimming with the little fishes, very Italian indeed. Lorenzo has dealt with enough bookmakers, both Italian and American, to know that very often they won't necessarily kill you because then they will never get the money you owe them. On the other hand, having your legs broken or an eye put out is not a very cheerful prospect, either. He listens quite solemnly to what the little bookie is telling him, never doubting for a moment that Bernie himself or someone Bernie knows will hurt him very badly if he doesn't come up with the twenty thousand dollars he bet on those fucking Steelers, what are Steelers anyway, people who steal? The English language is sometimes mystifying to him, but he sure as hell understands what Bernie is telling him now. Bernie is saying "Pay me by Sunday morning, my friend, or you may have cause to be very sorry."

Is what B.ernie is saying.

Which is when he calls Svetlana to say that if she still wants him to do what she proposed earlier this month... "Yes," she says at once.

"Then I'm ready to do it," he whispers into the phone.

"When?" she whispers.

Both of them whispering in Italian like the conspirators they are.

"Now," he says. "Tonight."

"No. I have some things to do first." "Then when?" "Tomorrow night?"

"Yes, all right," he says. "Tomorrow night." All of this in Italian. Domani sera?

Si, va bene. Domani sera.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he says.

"Good. Call me. But not in the morning. I'll be out in the morning. I have some business to take care of." "Then when?" "Early afternoon." I'll call you." "Ciao," she says. "Ciao."

Two old pals signing off. No mention at all of murder.

It is a little before eleven when he arrives at her apartment that Saturday night. She is wearing a flowered cotton housedress and scuffed French-heeled shoes. She tells him she went to the bank this morning to withdraw the money she promised him... "I hate to take money for this," he says. "I would not expect..."

"I'm in serious debt," he says. "Otherwise I wouldn't accept this."

"Take it," she says, and hands him an envelope. "Count it," she says.

"I don't have to count it."

"Count it. It's twenty-five thousand dollars."

He shakes his head, puts the envelope into the pocket of his coat. It is eleven o'clock sharp now. "I had my hair done this morning," she says.

"It's very pretty," he says, admiring the finger wave. "You look beautiful."

"I would have put on along black concert gown," she tells him, "but I want it to look as if an intruder surprised me. So there'll be no suspicion cast on you. We'll open the window. It will seem that someone came in."

"Yes," he says.

He is wondering what kind of man he is, to be willing to do this to a poor old deaf woman. What kind of man? But he keeps remembering Bernie's threat. And he rationalizes what he is about to do, telling himself that with the twenty-five thousand he can pay off the twenty he owes Bernie and with the remaining five can perhaps pick a good horse or two in next week's races, parlay the money into God knows how much, a fortune perhaps. Besides, he tells himself he is not really taking a life. He is only doing what Svetlana herself wishes him to do. He is helping her to die with dignity and honor. He is helping her to leave this world with her memories intact. For this, God will forgive him. This is what he tells himself.

They open the bedroom window.

Cold air rushes into the apartment.

She goes to the bedroom closet and takes from it an old mink coat.

"I want it to look as if I just got back from the store," she says. "So no one will suspect you."

His hand is beginning to shake on the butt of the gun in the pocket of his coat. He is not sure he will be able to do this now that the time is so close. He is not sure at all.

"Would you help me, please?" she asks.

He holds the coat for her as she shrugs into it. He can smell fish on his hands. There is always the stench of fish on his hands.

He is beginning to shake all over now.

From the table just inside the front door, she take her handbag, begins searching in it, and at last finds what she's looking for, a white envelope with someone's name written on the front of it.

"Take this to the front desk at the Hotel Powell," she says. "My granddaughter's name is written on it. Ask the clerk to send it up to her suite. Make sure you say suite. She has a suite there, you know." He nods, accepts the envelope. "Promise me," she says. "I promise," he says.

He slides the envelope into the left-hand pocket of his coat, the one containing the envelope with the twenty-five thousand dollars in it. The blood money. His right hand is in the pocket where the gun is. He is sweating nw. His hand in the pocket is slippery on the handle of the gun.

It is now ten minutes past eleven.

The cat is in the hallway with them now. Looking up at them. First at Svetlana's face, then his. As if expecting to be fed.

"Her carrying case is in the kitchen," Svetlana says. "On the table. She's used to it, she'll think you're taking her to the vet."

He looks at her, nods. Looks down at the cat. The cat is rubbing herself against his leg. It gives him the chills. He is sweating and shivering at one and the same time.

"Swear to me you'll take good care of her." He says nothing for a moment. "Swear," she says. "I swear."

"Swear to me you'll feed her fresh fish every day." "I promise." "Swear." "I swear."

"On your mother's eyes."

"On my mother's eyes, I swear."

The apartment goes very still.

In the kitchen, he can hear a clock ticking.

He looks at his own watch.

It is almost twenty minutes past the hour.

From the same hall table, Svetlana picks up a brown paper bag with a bottle of whiskey in it. "I drink," she says in explanation. "Son" un " umbriaga," she says.

"I'm a drunk." "Everyone knows that."

As a matter of fact, he doesn't know this.

As a matter of fact, he doesn't know this woman at all.

But he is about to kill her. "Are you ready?" she asks. "Yes," he says.

She is standing just inside the door. The bag with the whiskey is cradled in her right arm. He removes the gun from his coat pocket. The cat keeps rubbing against his leg, purring. Sweat is beading his face, sweat is rolling down under the collar of his shirt, sweat dampens his armpits and the matted blond hair on his chest. His hand is shaking violently. "Thank you for doing this," she says. He steadies the gun in both hands.

"Take good care of Irina," she says, and closes her eyes.

The interrogation room went silent. Q: Did you shoot her at that time? A: Yes.

Q: How many times did you shoot her?

A: Twice.

Q: Did the shots kill her?

A: Yes.

Q: What did you do then? A: I shot the cat. Nellie looked at him.

"Why'd you do that?" she asked.

"I didn't want to take care of her. I know I promised

Svetlana. But cats are not to be trusted." Men, either, Nellie thought. "So you took her money..."

"Yes, but only because I was afraid Bernie would do something bad to me."

"Did you pay him the twenty you owed him? Or did you stiff him, too?"

"I don't know what stiff means."

"Tell him what it means to stiff somebody," Nellie said to the interpreter.

"Ever leave a restaurant without tipping the waiter?" McNalley asked.

"I always tip waiters," Lorenzo said. "What does that have to do with Bernie?"

"She's asking did you go back on your word with him, too?" Moscowitz said. "Isn't that right, Counselor?"

"It's close enough," Nellie said. "Ask him" she told McNalley, who immediately translated the question.

"I didn't go back on my word with him or anyone else," Lorenzo answered. "I didn't stiff anybody, however you say it. I paid Bernie his money, and I did everything Svetlana paid me to do. Except for the cat."

"Except for the cat, right," Nellie said. "The cat, you shot in the head."

"Well."

"Well, didn't you?"

"Yes. I don't like cats."

"Gee, I love them" Nellie said.

And I'm the D.A." she thought.

"What'd you do with the other five thousand?"

"I bet it on the horses."

win?

"Did you " "

"I lost."

"All around," Nellie said.

All during lunch, Priscilla kept complaining about her cheap grandmother leaving her a mere five thousand clams. Georgie kept thinking about the ninety-five thou hidden in one of the black patent-leather dancing slippers in a shoebox in his closet.

First thing he did when he got back to the apartment was check the stash. There it was, in a spanking-clean envelope with a rubber band around it, as beautiful as when he'd put it there yesterday, bulging with money. He counted the money. He wanted to throw it up in the air and let it come down on his head. Instead, he put it back in the envelope and put the rubber band around it again, and put the envelope in one of the shoes, and then put the lid back on the box and put the box back on the top shelf. He closed the closet door. The phone on the kitchen wall was ringing. He went out to it.

It was Tony.

"When do we split the cash?" he wanted to know.

I'll come by your place before we go to the club tonight," Georgie said.

"What's half of ninety-five?" Tony wanted to know. "Forty-seven and change." "How much change?" "Five bills."

"Bring the change, too," Tony said, and hung up.

"What we've got here," Moscowitz said, "is a mercy killing, pure and simple."

"What we've got here, pure and simple," Nellie said, "is Murder Two. In fact, what we may have here, Alan, is murder for hire, which just may qualify for the death penalty."

"Oh, come on, Nellie, really."

"Man takes money to kill someone, that sounds to me like a contract killing."

"Woman gives a man money to assist her in committing suicide, that sounds to me like a mitzvah." "What's a mitzvah?"

"You don't know what a mitzvah is?"

"No, what's a mitzvah?"

"How long have you been practicing law in "this city?"

"Are you going to tell me what a mitzvah is?" "It's a good deed."