Nocturne

10

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.

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.