Nocturne

11

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 amp; 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.