See Them Die

1

July.

Heat.

In the city, they are synonymous, they are identical, they mean one and the same thing. In the 87th Precinct, they strut the streets with a vengeance, these twin bitches who wear their bleached blond hair and their bright-red lipstick slashes, who sway on glittering rhinestone slippers, who flaunt their saffron silk. Heat and July, they are identical twins who were born to make you suffer.

The air is tangible. You can reach out to touch it. It is sticky and clinging, you can wrap it around you like a viscous overcoat. The asphalt in the gutters has turned to gum, and your heels clutch at it when you try to navigate the streets. The pavements glow with a flat off-white brilliance, contrasting with the running black of the gutter, creating an alternating pattern of shade and light that is dizzying. The sun sits low on a still sky, a sky as pale as faded dungarees. There is only a hint of blue in this sky for it has been washed out by the intensity of the sun, and there is a shimmer over everything, the shimmer of heat ready to explode in rain.

The buildings bear the heat with the solemnity of Orthodox Jews in long, black frock coats. They have known this heat. Some of them have withstood it for close to a century, and so their suffering is a silent one; they face the heat with the intolerant blankness of stoics.

Scrawled onto the pavement in white chalk are the words: JES&S VIENE, PREPARENSE FOR NUESTRA REDENCION!

The buildings crowd the sidewalks and prepare neither for their redemption nor their perdition.

There is not much sky on this street.

There are places in the world where the sky is big, where it stretches from horizon to horizon like a gaudy blue tent, but such is not the case on this street. The sky here seems to have been wedged down over the uneven silhouette of the buildings, crammed into place because it would not fit properly, battered with a grimy fist until it tightly capped the street and contained the heat there.

The street is quiet.

It is only 8:40 in the morning, and it is Sunday.

There are unfluttering scraps of newspapers in the gutters; they share the gummy asphalt with empty tin cans and broken bottles and sticks ripped from orange crates. In the empty lot on one corner, there are the charred remains of bonfires, a torn and soiled crib mattress, the trailing white snakes of used condoms. The fire escapes are hung with the trivia of life: blankets, pillows, beer cases, potted plants, and here and there a guitar. A man sleeping on one of the fire escapes moves his arm, and it dangles down through the iron bars for a moment, swings idly, and then comes to a rest.

This is the only movement on the street.

The air is fetidly still. The heat is a self-contained, lifeless unit which does not stir and which discourages the motion of anything it embraces. It has baked itself into the brick fronts of the tenements, and the asphalt, and the pavements, and the sky. It has baked itself into these things and onto these things like orange enamel on copper.

Somewhere in the distance, the church bells toll, for this is Sunday morning, but even the bells ring qut on the air with a harsh flatness, a metallic unevenness that must force its way through layers and layers of heat. Beneath that, like a rushing counterpoint, the elevated train roars past two blocks south, and then the train sound dies, and the bell sound dissipates in the sticky silence of the air, and the street is still once more.

Two people will die on this street today.

The boy's name was Zip.

He was seventeen years old and he erupted from the mouth of the tenement like a hand-grenade explosion. He came onto the stoop lightly, and then almost danced down the steps. He looked up at the waking man on the fire escape, waved nonchalantly, and then glanced up the street. He was tall and thin, good-looking in a craggy way, with a light complexion and black hair which he wore in a high crown off his forehead. He was wearing tight black slacks and high-topped combat boots and a bright silk purple jacket with his name embroidered in yellow on the left breast.

He looked at his watch.

It was 8:45, and he noted the time and then nodded, as if he had correctly estimated the exact duration of each of his movements up to this moment, as if he and the universe were meshing gears correctly. He looked up the street again. There was an air of restless urgency about him, the air a business magnate wears when he is expecting to close a deal for the purchase of a new company. The attitude was curious on a seventeen-year-old. And yet, he looked at his watch again, a person captured by the intricacies of time, the mind of a fifty-year-old banker seemingly ensnared in the body of an adolescent.

He lighted a cigarette, took several puffs on it, and then stamped it out under one booted foot. He looked at his watch again, stepped into the center of the street, and then started for the luncheonette on the corner. A huge sign traveled the corner of the building over the luncheonette like the marching electric letters of the Times Building in New York. These letters, however, were painted in red on a white field and they did not announce world-shattering events. They simply stated: luis luncheonette. The luncheonette occupied a space in the corner of the building. When the doors were rolled back, the luncheonette became an extension of the sidewalk, open on both sides, the avenue and the street. The doors were closed now. The corrugated iron presented the impregnable look of a fortress. The boy went to the door on the street side, tried it, found it locked, and kicked it in anger.

"What are you doing there?" a voice said. "Get away from there!"

The man who came up the street had spoken with a slight Spanish accent, a gentle accent which seemed molded exactly to his appearance. He was a stoop-shouldered man wearing a small black mustache, a man who seemed older than his fifty-odd years, who moved with an economy that somehow seemed tortured.

"Don't tell me you're finally gonna open this dump!" Zip said.

Luis Amandez walked to the huge iron door and said, "What are you doing? Trying to break in here, hah? That what you were trying to do?"

He reached into his pocket for the key to the padlock, inserted it, took off the lock, and prepared to roll the door back into its overhead tracks.

"Don't flatter the dump," Zip said. "Come on, come on, get the lead out. Open the goddamn doors."

"This is my place, and I'll open them as slow or as fast as I want to. You snotnoses..."

Zip grinned suddenly. "Come on, man," he said, and there was infectious warmth in his voice now. "You got to move! You want to get any place, you got to move."

Luis rolled back the first of the doors. "I wish you would move," he said. "To California."

"Dig the old bird," Zip said. "He's got humor." And he walked into the luncheonette and directly to the wall phone near the jukebox. Luis went around to the avenue side and took the padlock off the door there, rolling the door back, allowing the sunshine to rip through the corner stone like crossfire. Zip had taken the phone from its hook, reached into his pocket for a coin, and discovered that the smallest change he had was a quarter. He slammed the receiver onto the hook and went to meet Luis as he entered the shop.

"Listen, break a quarter for me," he said.

"What for?" Luis asked. "For the jukebox?"

"What's all the time 'What for?' Don't I buy enough in this crumby joint? I ask you for change, don't give me a Dragnet routine."

"It's too early to play the juke," Luis said calmly, going behind the counter and taking a white apron from a hook. "There are still people sleeping."

"In the first place, I don't care who's sleeping. It's time they were hustling. In the second place, I ain't gonna play the juke, I'm gonna make a phone call. And in the third and last place, you don't change this two bits for me, and one day you're liable to come in and find all your coffeepots busted."

"You threaten me?" Luis said. "I am a friend of the police. I tell them..."

"Come on, come on," Zip said, and again the warm grin flashed on his face. "You can sue me later. Right now, give me the change, huh? Come on."

Luis shook his head, picked up the quarter, and reached into his pocket. He made the change, and Zip picked it up and started for the telephone. He began dialing. Luis, since money matters had been brought to mind, walked to the cash register, reached into his pocket, and put in his day's starting money, laying the bills into the register drawer. He was about to break open a roll of dimes when Zip yelled, "Hey! Hey, Cooch! Over here!"

Luis turned. The second boy was also from the neighborhood, also wearing one of the purple silk jackets, but he was younger than Zip. Luis studied him from the distance of age, and wondered if he too had sported such a ridiculously thin and boyish-looking mustache when he was sixteen. He decided that he had not. The boy was short and squat, with thick powerful hands. His complexion was dark. He spotted Zip from the middle of the street and shouted, "Hey, Zipboy!" and then broke into a trot for the luncheonette. Luis sighed and cracked the roll of dimes on the edge of the cash drawer.

"What the hell kept you?" Zip asked. "I was just calling your house."

"Oh, man, don't ask," Cooch said. He spoke, as did Zip, without a trace of an accent. Both were total products of the city and the neighborhood, as far removed from Puerto Rico as was Mongolia. Studying them, Luis felt suddenly old, suddenly foreign. He shrugged, went to his stove, and began putting up his pots of coffee.

"My people are the eeriest, you know that, man?" Cooch said. He had large brown eyes, and he used his face expressively when he spoke, like a television comic going through a famous routine. "I think my old man must be on the Chamber of Commerce, I swear to God."

"What's your old man got to do with your being late? I said a quarter to nine, so here it is..."

"He gets a letter from Puerto Rico," Cooch went on blithely, "and right away he flips. 'Come stay with us,' he writes. 'Come live with us. Bring all your kids, and your grandma, and your police dog. We'll take care of you.'" Cooch slapped his forehead dramatically. "So all our goddamn barefoot cousins come flop with us. And every time another one shows up at the airport, my old man throws a party."

"Listen, what's this got to..."

"He threw a party last night. Out came the goddamn guitars. We had enough strings there to start a symphony. You shoulda seen my old man. He has a couple of drinks, right away his hands head for my old lady. Like homing pigeons. Two drinks, and his hands were on her ass."

"Look, Cooch, who cares where your old man's..."

"Judging from last night," Cooch said reflectively, "I should have another brother soon."

"All right, now how come you're late?"

"I been trying to tell you. The jump didn't break up until four a.m. I could hardly crawl outa bed this morning. I still can't see too straight." He paused. "Where's Papa? Ain' he here yet?"

"That's what I'm wondering. You all think we're playing games here."

"Who, me?" Cooch said, offended. "Me? I think that?"

"Okay, maybe not you," Zip said, relenting. "The other guys."

"Me?" Cooch persisted, astonished and hurt. "Me? Who was it first showed you around the scene when you moved up here?"

"Okay, I said not you, didn't I?"

"Where'd you come from? Some crumby slum near the Calm's Point Bridge? What the hell did you know about this neighborhood? Who showed you around, huh?"

"You did, you did," Zip said patiently.

"Yeah. So right away you hop on me. A few minutes late, and you..." -"Ten minutes late," Zip corrected.

"All right, ten minutes, I didn't know you had a stop watch. Man, I don't understand you sometimes, Zip. Saying I think we're playing games here. Man, if ever a guy..."

"I said not you! For Pete's sake, I said not you! I'm talking about the other studs." He paused. "Did you stop by for Sixto?"

"Yeah. That's another reason I'm late. You give me all these stops to..."

"So where is he?"

"He had to help his old lady."

"Doing what?"

"With the baby. Listen, you think it's kicks having a baby in the house? I never seen a kid could wet her pants like Sixto's sister. Every time you turn around, that kid is pissing."

"He was changing her pants?" Zip asked, astonished.

"He was powdering her behind the last time I seen him."

"I'm gonna powder his behind when he gets here!" Zip said angrily. "See, that's just what I mean. He thinks we're fooling around here. Then you wonder why we ain't making a name for ourselves. It's because nobody on this club's for real, that's why. Everybody expects me to do everything."

"We got a name, Zip," Cooch said gently.

"We got balls! You guys still think this is a goddamn basket ball team at the Boys' Club. When you gonna grow up? You want to walk the streets in this neighborhood, or you want to hide every time there's a backfire?"

"I don't hide from nothing!"

"You think anybody on the Royal Guardians is scared of anything?" Zip asked.

"No, but the Royal Guardians got two hundred and fifty members."

"So how do you think they got them members? By being late when there's a wash job scheduled?"

"Hey!" Cooch said suddenly.

"What's the matter?"

"Shhhh."

A woman was coming up the street, her ample breasts bobbing with the haste of her steps. Her black hair was pulled into a bun at the back of her neck. She looked neither to the right nor to the left. She walked with a purposefulness, almost a blindness, passing the boys who stood in the open street side of the luncheonette, turning the corner, and moving out of sight.

"You see who that was?" Cooch whispered.

"That lady?"

"Yeah." Cooch nodded. "Alfie's mother."

"What?" He walked to the corner and stared up the avenue. But the woman was already gone.

"Alfredo Gomez's mother," Cooch said. "Man, was she in a hurry! Zip, you think he told her?"

"What do I care, he told her or not?"

"What I mean ... like this is his old lady ... like if he told her..."

"So he told her. How's that gonna help him?"

"You know how dames are. She might've got excited. She might've..."

"Stop crapping your pants, will you? You got nothing but small-time guts, you know that? You're just like my old man. He talks like a senator. A real wheel. Always telling me about Puerto Rico. Who cares about that damn island? I was born here, right in this city. I'm a real American. But he's always telling me what a big shot he was in San Juan. You know what it turns out he done there? I found out from one of my uncles. You know what he done?"

"What?"

"He fixed bicycles for a living. So that's the big wheel. Big talk that's all. But small-time guts."

"I got as much guts..."

"Sure, so you see Alfie's mother out for a stroll, and you start shaking. You know what you're gonna be when you grow up?"

"No. What?"

"A guy who fixes bicycles." , "Aw, come on. I..."

"Or a guy who shines shoes."

"I never shined a pair of shoes in my life!" Cooch said proudly. "I don't even shine my own shoes!"

"That's wflfy you look like a slob," Zip said, and then abruptly turned'his head. Someone was approaching.

2

The sailor had rounded the corner as Cooch spoke. He was a tall, blond man — well, not exactly a man, and yet not a boy. He was perhaps twenty-two years old, and he had reached that mysterious boundary line which divided a man from a boy, but he was still straddling the line so that it was impossible to think of him as a boy, and yet stretching a point to consider him a man. Man or boy, he was quite drunk at the moment He walked with the sailor's habitual roll, but the roll was somewhat frustrated by his erratic drunken weaving. His white hat was perched precariously on the back of his head, and his white uniform was spotlessly clean, reflecting the early-morning sunshine with a dazzling brilliance. He stopped on the corner, looked up at the sign over the luncheonette, mumbled something to himself, shook his head violently, and then continued up the street.

Zip stifled a laugh and nudged Cooch in the ribs.

"Ten bucks says I know what he's looking for," Cooch said, grinning.

"Never mind what he's looking for. Go get Sixto and Papa.

Tell them I'm waiting, and tell them I'm getting slightly p.o.'d. Now move."

"Don't get excited," Cooch said, but he moved up the street quickly, passing the drunken sailor who had headed back towards the luncheonette. The sailor was in that sort of haze where everything seems to involve a decision meriting vast concentration and deliberation. He stopped at each building, studied the numerals, shook his head solemnly, and finally wound up in front of the luncheonette again, still shaking his head. He studied the sign, considered the vast symbolism in the words luis luncheonette, pondered this symbolism for a while, shook his head again, and was beginning to retrace his steps down the street when Zip said, "Help you, sailor?"

"Huh?" the sailor asked.

"You look lost," Zip said. His manner was quite pleasant. He grinned warmly and the sailor responded to the grin immediately, the lost wanderer accepting the first friendly hand.

"Listen," he said drunkenly, "where's La ... La Galli... La ... Listen, I was talking to a guy inna bar downtown, you know? An' we began discussin'..." He stopped and studied Zip with drunkenly profound narrowness. "Listen, how old are you?"

"Seventeen," Zip said.

"Oh."

The sailor tabulated this silently, his mind whirring. He nodded. "Okay, then. I didn't wanna impair the morals of a ... so this guy an' me, we were discussin' ... well, I was sorta expressin' my desire for sorta climbin' into bed with a female, you know? A girl. You know?"

"So he sent you up here?"

"Yeah. No. Yeah, yeah, he did. He said there was a place up here called ... ah... La Gallina." He pronounced the word with a Western twang that brought a new smile to Zip's mouth.

"La Gallina, yes," Zip said, giving it the proper Spanish pronunciation.

"Yeah," the sailor said, nodding, "where he said I could get anything I want. Now how about that?"

"He was right," Zip answered.

"So here I am," the sailor said. He paused. "Where is it?"

"Right down the street there."

"Thank you," the sailor said, nodding. "Thank you ver' much." He started off down the street again.

"Don't mention it," Zip said, smiling. He stared after the sailor for a few moments, and then went into the luncheonette. "Give me a cup of coffee, Luis," he said.

The sailor went down the street, studying each doorway as he had before. He stopped suddenly, looked at the lettering on the plate-glass window of a bar, and muttered, "La Gallina, I'll be damned. Feller was right." He walked directly to the front door, not expecting it to be locked, trying to open it, and then discovering that it was locked, immensely annoyed that the knob had resisted his hand. He backed away from the door and yelled, "Hey! Hey, wake up! Wake up, goddamnit! I'm here!"

"What the hell is that?" Luis said.

"Sailor out there," Zip said, grinning.

Luis came from behind the counter. Up the street, the sailor-was still shouting at the top of his lungs.

"You!" Luis said. "Quiet, quiet."

The sailor turned. "You talking to me, mate?"

"Si, I'm talking to you, mate. Stop the racket. This is Sunday morning. People like to sleep, you know? You wake them up."

"Well, hell, thass what I'm trying to do, you know."

"Why you trying to wake them up for?"

'"Cause I wanna go to bed."

"That makes sense, all right," Luis said, nodding patiently. "Are you drunk?"

"Me?" the sailor said. "Me?"

"Yes."

"Hell, no."

"You look perhaps a little drunk."

The sailor walked to where Luis was standing, put his hands on his hips and said, "Well, maybe I am perhaps a li'l drunk. So ain't you never been perhaps a li'l drunk?"

"I have been a little drunk," Luis said, "and I have been a lot drunk. Come. I'll make you a cup of coffee."

"Whuffor?"

"What for?" Luis shrugged and walked into the luncheonette. The sailor followed him. "Because I like sailors," Luis said. "I used to be a sailor myself once."

"Did you find it, pal?" Zip interrupted.

"Yeah. It's closed."

"I coulda told you that."

"So why dinn you?"

"You didn't ask."

"Oh, you're one of those guys," the sailor said.

"Which guys?" Zip asked, and he stiffened suddenly on the counter stool, as if expecting an attack.

"The guys you got to ask."

"Yeah," Zip answered. "I'm one of those guys. So what?"

Rapidly, perhaps because he sensed Zip's sudden belligerence, perhaps because he simply wanted to switch the conversation back to himself, Luis said, "Yes, I was in the Navy from 1923 to 1927. Yes, sir."

"Was you on a ship?" the sailor asked. If he had detected any challenge in Zip's voice, he was studiously ignoring it. Either that, or he was too drunk to have noticed.

"A man who has not been on a ship is not a sailor." He looked over at the bubbling Silexes. "The coffee is almost ready."

"What kind of a ship?"

"A garbage scow," Zip said quickly, and he grinned.

"Never mind this smart one. I was on a mine sweep."

"What was your rate?" the sailor asked suspiciously.

"You never heard of Rear Admiral Luis Amandez?" Zip asked, mock surprise spreading over his uneven features.

"I was a steward's mate," Luis answered with dignity. "And you shut up, you little snotnose."

"Wha'd he say your name was? Louise?"

"Yeah, that's right," Zip answered, chuckling. "This here is Aunt Louise."

"Louise? Yeah?"

"No, Luis. Luis."

"No, Louise," Zip insisted.

"Are you a Mexican, Louise?" the sailor asked.

"No." Luis shook his head. "Puerto Rican."

"Well, that's the same thing, ain't it?"

"Well—" Luis thought for a moment, and then shrugged resignedly. "Si, the same thing."

"What part of Mehico you from?" the sailor asked obliviously.

"The part down in the Caribbean," Luis said dryly.

"The annex," Zip put in. "South. You know?"

"And whereabouts in Puerto Rico?"

"A town called Cabo Rojo, do you know it?"

"I only know Tia Juana," the sailor said, "and I ain't even been there. Closest I ever got was San Diego."

"Here," Luis said, pouring a cup of coffee. "Drink this."

"Where's mine?" Zip asked.

"I have only two hands." He finished pouring the sailor's coffee, and then poured a cup for Zip.

"What brung you all the way here from Puerto Rico?" the sailor asked.

"Work," Luis said. "A man has to work, you know."

"Where you from, sailor?" Zip asked.

"Fletcher," the sailor said. "That's in Colorado."

"I never heard of it."

"It's there, all right."

The three fell silent.

Zip and the sailor sipped at their coffee. Luis got to work behind the counter. There seemed to be nothing more to say to each other. The three, after all, had very little in common. One had inquired about the whereabouts of a bar-quasi-whorehouse. The other had told him where it was. The third had served them both coffee. One was in his early fifties, the other was perhaps twenty-two, and the third was seventeen. One was born in Puerto Rico, the other in Fletcher, Colorado, and the third was a native of the city. Thus divided by time and space and natural inclination, there was nothing each could say to the other at the moment, and so they fell silent.

And yet, within the silence, their thoughts ran in strangely similar patterns so that, if the thoughts had been voiced, each would have instantly understood — or thought he'd understood — the other.

Luis had begun thinking about why he'd come to the mainland, about why he'd left the place of his birth. He had told the sailor he had come here to work, and yet he knew it was something more than that. It was not to work, it was to begin. He had lived on the island with a wife and three children, and the island — despite his love for it — had meant primarily one thing, and that thing was hunger. Constant hunger. Hunger that lingered through the cane-cutting season because you could not spend all of your earnings while the season was in swing; you had to save some for the empty days ahead. There was not much to hold and not much to save. You fished in the off season, and sometimes your haul was good — but most of the time you were hungry. And being hungry, even knowing that everyone else around you was hungry, being hungry somehow reduced you to being nothing. There were things he would always love about the island, the innate pride and decency and hospitality of the people, the respect humans automatically showed to other humans, a respect bred of sunshine and lush tropical foliage where cruelty seemed blatantly out of place. The island seemed to draw people closer together, strengthening their bonds as humans. And yet, contradicting this was the dire economic need, so that on the one hand Luis had felt like a very important person with many friends and much love, and on the other he had felt like a hungry animal.

And so he'd left the island. He'd left the island in search of a beginning. He had worked hard for the luncheonette. It was still owned mostly by the bank, but he knew now that he would never go hungry again. And if he had lost something else, something quite dear to him, he had another sort of satisfaction, and this satisfaction was in his stomach and his bowels where perhaps a man feels it most.

The sailor sipped at his coffee and thought of Fletcher, Colorado.

He did not often think of Fletcher because he found he got sad whenever he did. He had been born in Fletcher, and he learned early the meaning of the words "small town". When a place is called a small town, it has nothing whatever to do with the size of the town. A giant metropolis can be a small town, and some very large cities are small towns in every sense of the word. Fletcher, Colorado, was just like every other small town in the United States of America. There was a schoolhouse, and a church, and a row of stores. There were DRIVE — CHILDREN — SLOW signs, and SPEED LIMIT STRICTLY enforced signs, and there were the teenage kids hanging out in the corner drugstore, and the Boy Scout cookouts, and the Little League, and the choir practice, and the Saturday Evening Post route, and in the spring the forsythias lined the highway with bright yellow and there was the bursting pink of cherry blossoms, and in the fall he would go hunting for deer with his father and his older brother, and the woods would shriek with color. In the winter, there was deep snow and skiing. The mountains surrounded the town. You could always see the mountains. Everybody in town knew everybody else in town. He met Corrine at a church picnic when he was six years old. By the time they were eleven, everybody in town had decided that one day they would get married. When he got a swimming medal in his freshman year at high school, he gave it to Corrine. He went everywhere with Corrine and did everything with Corrine, and it became plain to him after a while that Corrine was perfectly happy to have been born and raised in a town like Fletcher, and that she would be happy to get married there, and breed kids there, and eventually to die there. And suddenly, he wondered if this was what he himself wanted.

Oh, he loved Corrine, it wasn't that. He supposed he loved her. She had very straight red hair that she wore loose around her shoulders, and she had very bright blue eyes and a nose that tilted slightly at the tip, she looked exactly like those pictures of small-town American girls he had seen on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post when he used to deliver the magazine. And he liked to neck with her. He liked to touch her, too, whenever she let him, which wasn't often, and he never could figure out when she wanted him to and when she didn't want him to; he supposed he loved her because he respected her wishes in the matter.

And then, one day, all of a sudden, he decided he was going to join the Navy. When his parents asked him why, when Gorrine asked him why, when his friends asked him why, he told them he would be drafted soon anyway, and he might just as well go into the Navy where a fellow didn't have to go on hikes or sleep in the mud. That was what he told all these people. But he knew why he was really joining the Navy. He was joining the Navy to get out of Fletcher. He was joining the Navy because Fletcher was slowly and surely suffocating him, and he could feel those mountains moving in closer and closer every day, and he knew that one day he would no longer be able to breathe, that one day he would be crushed by everything in this small town. When he left, he told himself he would never return. And so it made him sad to think about Fletcher.

Zip, drinking his coffee, studying his reflection in the mirror behind the counter, did not feel sad at all. Zip felt pretty damn good. Zip felt, at last, that things were beginning to click. They had never clicked for him in that ratty neighborhood downtown. There'd been nothing there for him but getting kicked by the older kids. Fat Ass Charlie, they used to call him. Fat Ass Charlie, and bam! a well-placed kick right in the middle of that fat ass. The nickname had persisted even when he began thinning into adolescence. And then they'd moved.

And suddenly, he wasn't fat-assed any more, and he wasn't even Charlie any more. He began calling himself Zip, and he began feeling that there was opportunity in this new neighborhood, the opportunity to be the person he wanted to be, and not the person everybody else thought he should be. He'd met Cooch, and Cooch had shown him the ropes and suggested that they join the biggest club in the neighborhood, the Royal Guardians.

But Zip had ideas of his own. Why become a schnook running around the fringes of the higher-ups when you could have a club of your own? And so he suggested the Latin Purples, and he planned to start it small, six, seven guys to begin with — so far there were only four. And Cooch's sister-in-law had sewn the purple jackets for them, and he wore his jacket with a great deal of pride now because the jacket meant something to him, the jacket meant that he was on his way.

If you'd asked him where he was going, he couldn't have told you.

But he knew he was on his way, and he knew that today would be the clincher, today would be the day he realized himself fully as a person.

And so the three of them sat with their separate thoughts, thoughts which were strangely similar, and when the sailor finally spoke, both Luis and Zip knew instantly what he meant.

The sailor said, "You can lose yourself in Fletcher. You can get just plumb lost." He shook his head. "That's why I left. I wanted to know who I was."

"And have you found out?" Luis asked.

"Give him time," Zip said. "You think a guy can make a rep in one day?"

"I'll find out, Louise," the sailor said.

"How? With the girls from La Gallina?"

"Huh?"

"Sailor, take my advice," Luis said. "Go back to your ship. This neighborhood is not always a nice place."

"Leave him alone," Zip said. "He wants a girl, I'll help him find one." He winked at the sailor, and then he grinned broadly.

"Don't let Sunday morning fool you," Luis said. "Last night, there was drinking and guitars. And this morning, everyone sleeps. But sometimes ... sailor, take my advice. Go back to your ship..."

"I think I'll hang around for a while."

"Then be careful, eh? You are a stranger here. Choose your company." He looked at Zip meaningfully. "There are good and bad, entiende? You understand? Take care."

The sailor swung around on his stool. He leaned his elbows on the counter top and drunkenly looked out over the sun-washed street.

"It looks nice and peaceful to me," he murmured.

"Can you see through the walls, sailor?" Luis asked. "Do you know what goes on under the skin of the buildings?"

3

The skin of the building which housed the uniformed cops and detectives of the 87th Precinct was not lovely, nor engaged, nor had it been washed in more than half a century. It presented a characterless gray to the park across the street, a gray which seemed contradictory to the bright sunshine that filled the air. The gray stones were rough and uneven, covered with the soot and grime of the city, relieved only by the hanging green globes which announced in white numerals to the world at large that this was Precinct 87.

The low, flat steps of the front stoop led to a pair of glass-fronted doors which were open now to permit the entrance of whatever scant breeze rustled across Grover Park. The breeze, unfortunately, did not get very much further than the entrance doors. It certainly did not pass into the muster room where Sergeant Dave Murchison sat behind his high desk pulling at his undershorts and cursing the heat. A rotating electric fan sat on top of the switchboard to the left of the desk. The switchboard, at the moment, wasn't blinking with calls from the violated citizenry, thank God. Murchison wiped sweat from his brow, tugged at his undershorts, and wondered if it was any cooler upstairs.

A long wooden plaque, painted white and then overlaid with the black letters detective division, pointed to a flight of narrow iron-runged steps which led upstairs to the bull pen. The flight of steps, gathering heat only from a small window where the steps turned back upon themselves before continuing to the second floor, was perhaps the coolest spot in the station house. Beyond the steps, a long corridor led to the detective squadroom where a battery of electric fans fought valiantly to produce some semblance of a breeze. The grilled windows at the far end of the squadroom admitted bright, golden sunlight which spread across the wooden floor like licking flames. The men in the squadroom sat in shirt sleeves at sun-drenched desks.

If there was one nice thing about being a detective, it was the fact that a gray flannel suit, a button-down shirt, and a neat black tie were not requisites of the job. Detective Steve Carella was perhaps the only detective in the squadroom on that Sunday morning in July who looked as if he might be an advertising executive. But then, Carella always looked as if he were dressed for the pages of Esquire. Even wearing a leather jacket and dungarees, he managed to exude the scent of careful grooming. He was a tall man whose sinewy body gave only the slightest hint of the power he possessed. Unpadded, slender with a rawboned simplicity, he seemed built to flatter whatever clothes were heaped onto his frame. This morning he was wearing a blue seersucker suit, the jacket of which was draped over the back of his chair. He had worn a bow tie to work, but had untied it the moment he entered the squadroom so that it hung loosely about his neck now, his shirt unbuttoned, his head bent over the report he was studying.

The other cops presented a slightly less sartorial appearance. Andy Parker, a cop who would have looked like a bum even when dressed for his own funeral, was wearing a pair of tan nylon slacks and a sports shirt which had surely been designed in honor of Hawaii's having achieved statehood. Hula girls swayed their hips all over Parker's shirt. Surfboarders flitted over his huge barrel chest. The colors on the shirt exploded like Roman candles. Parker, who looked unshaven even though he had shaved closely before reporting to the squadroom, pounded at a typewriter with both huge hands, using his fingers like fists. The typewriter seemed to resist each successive assault wave, a machine refusing to succumb to brute force. Parker continued to smash into it as if he were engaged in mortal combat, cursing each time the keys locked, slamming the carriage over whenever he reached the end of a line of the D.D. report, the bell clanging savagely in protest.

"No arrest," he muttered savagely, "but I got to type up a damn report, anyway."

"Be glad you're alive," Carella said, not looking up from the sheet in his hands.

"It'll take more than a punk like Pepe Miranda to put the blocks to me, pal," Parker said. He continued smashing at the typewriter.

"You're lucky," Carella said. "He was feeling charitable. He had your gun, and he had everybody else's gun, and you're just damn lucky he didn't decide to kill you all."

"He was chicken," Parker said, looking up. "If that was me in his place, I'd have blasted every cop in sight, and then shot a few passers-by just for the hell of it. But Miranda was chicken. He knows the jig's up, so he figured he wouldn't add anything else to what we already got on him."

"Maybe he liked your face," Carella said. "Maybe he figured you were too sweet to shoot."

"Yeah," Parker said, and he ripped the D.D. report from the machine. He did not like Carella. He could still remember the time in March when he and Carella had mixed it up a little in the squadroom. The fight had ended abruptly because Frankie Hernandez had reminded them both that the lieutenant was in the building. But Parker didn't like unfinished business. And maybe Carella had forgotten all about the incident — though he doubted it — but Parker had not, and would not until the thing was resolved finally, one way or another. Thinking back to that March day, he thought it odd that the same men had been present in the squadroom, the three of them, and that Carella had taken offense at a chance remark made to Hernandez. Why the hell were people always so touchy? He dropped the report on his desk and walked to the water cooler.

Frankie Hernandez, the third man who'd been there on that March day, the third man in the squadroom on this day in July, was standing at one of the filing cabinets, the drawer open. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and dark-blue trousers. A .38 police special protruded from the holster strapped to his chest. He was a wide-shouldered man with a tan complexion and straight, black hair. His eyes were brown, the eyes of man who expected to be offended and who, as a result, was constantly prepared for the eventuality. It was not easy to be a Puerto Rican cop in a neighborhood with such a large Puerto Rican population — especially if you happened to have been born and raised in the streets of the precinct. Whatever battles Hernandez fought with his neighbors, the police, and himself were reflected in his eyes. He was not a happy man. No man dedicated to a single cause ever is.

"What do you think of your pal there?" Parker asked from the cooler.

"What pal?" Hernandez asked "Miranda."

"He's no pal of mine," Hernandez answered.

"I thought we had him cold yesterday," Parker said, filling a paper cup and drinking from it. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "Five of us walked into that apartment, and the son of a bitch pulls a gun from someplace up his sleeve and cold-cocks us. The rotten punk. He made us look like amateurs. You see the paper today? 'Miranda Foils Cops.' A punk getting headlines."

"He's still no pal of mine," Hernandez said.

"Yeah," Parker answered. He seemed ready to say more, but he let the matter drop. "Who was that woman up here?" he asked.

"Her name's Gomez," Hernandez answered.

"What'd she want?"

"Her son's in some kind of trouble. She wants me to talk to him."

"What the hell does she think you are? A priest?"

Hernandez shrugged.

"You gonna go?" Parker asked.

"As soon as I finish what I'm working on."

"Maybe you are a priest."

"Maybe," Hernandez replied.

Parker walked to the coat rack in one corner of the room and took a dark-blue Panama from one of the pegs. "I'm going outside," he said, "see if I can't hear something."

"About what?" Carella asked.

"About that punk Miranda. He didn't vanish into thin air, that's for sure. So where would you go if you was him?"

"To Russia," Carella replied.

"Yeah. Well, I think he came back here. Right here someplace. He sure as hell wouldn't try to find another pad in Riverhead, not after we almost collared him there. So where? Home. Home to the 87th. And if he's somewhere around here, you can bet your ass everybody in the streets knows just where. So Andy Parker goes on the earie." He stopped at his desk, opened the top drawer, took out his service revolver and holster, and clipped the holster into his right hip pocket. "Don't work too hard," he said, as he went through the gate in the railing. "Not that I think you need the advice."

His footsteps echoed down the long corridor. Hernandez watched him as he turned to go down the flight of iron-runged steps. When he looked back into the squadroom, he saw that Carella had been watching the other man, too.

A glance passed between them. Neither said a word. Silently, they got back to work.

Azucena — Gomez had been one of those fortunate people who are born beautiful and who remain beautiful no matter what tricks life decides to play on them. Her name, translated from the Spanish, meant White Lily, and she seemed to have been appropriately named because her skin was white and smooth, and her face, her body, seemed to combine all the delicate beauty and regality of that flower. The oval of her face was dominated by brown eyes which slanted to lend an exotic flair to otherwise serene features. Her nose was straight and slender, her mouth was a mouth which looked as if it could cry. She had managed, without the benefit of dieting, to maintain a body which had evoked many a street-corner whistle in her native Puerto Rico. She was forty-two years old, and she had known what it was to be a woman, still knew, and she knew the happiness and sorrow of motherhood. She was not a tall woman, perhaps the one flaw which robbed her of true beauty, but she seemed exceptionally tall as she stood by the bed and looked down at her son.

"Alfredo?" she said.

He did not answer her. He lay on the bed full length, his face buried in the pillow.

"Alfredo?"

He did not look up. He did not turn his head from the pillow. "Mama, lee me alone," he mumbled. "Please."

"You have to listen to me," she said. "It is important that you listen to me."

"It don' make no difference wha' you say, Mama. I already know what I got to do."

"You must go to the church, is that what you must do?"

"Si."

"And they will harm you."

He sat up suddenly. He was a sixteen-year-old boy with his mother's fair complexion and wide, brown eyes. The slight fuzz of adolescence clung to his cheeks. His mouth, like his mother's seemed ready to twist into sorrow.

"I go to church every Sunday," he said simply. "I go today too. They cannot stop me."

"They cannot stop you, but they will harm you. Is this what they said?"

"Si"

"Who told you this?"

"The boys."

"Which boys?"

"Mama, this is not for you," Alfredo said plaintively. "This is somethin'..."

"Why? Why will they hurt you?"

Alfredo would not answer. He stared at his mother, but he remained silent.

"Why, Alfredo?"

The tears came suddenly. He felt them welling into his eyes, and he turned from her quickly so that she would not see him crying. He threw himself onto the bed again, his face buried in the pillow, his shoulders heaving as he sobbed. His mother touched his shoulder.

"Cry," she said.

"Mama, I am asha—"

"It is good to cry. Your father used to cry sometimes. It is not a sin for a man to cry."

"Mama, Mama, please, you don't understan'..."

"I understand that you are my son," Mrs. Gomez said with simple logic. "I understand that you are good, and that those who wish to harm you are bad. It is not for the bad ones to rule the streets, Alfredo. You say you must go to eleven o'clock mass, the way you always do. You say you must go, even though they will hurt you. This I do not understand."

He sat up again, and the words sprang from his lips like a scream.

"I cann turkey out!"

"You can't ... turkey out?" she asked, puzzled.

"I cann be afray, Mama. I cann be turkey. You don' understan'. This is not somethin' you understan'. Please. Let me do what I got to do."

His mother stood by the bed, staring at him,'staring at her son as if somehow she did not know him any longer, as if somehow the infant she had held to her breast, the infant who had sucked of her milk was no longer someone she knew. His face, his language, even his eyes seemed distant and strange. She studied him as if trying to force the reconstruction of an earlier bond through the power of her eyes alone.

At last she said, "I have gone to the police."

"What!" he shouted.

"Si."

"Why did you do that? You think the police will care abou' me? About Alfredo Gomez? The police are no good. Don' you know the police here in this neighborhood?"

"There are good police and bad police. I have gone to Frankie Hernandez."

"He iss the same as dee ress. Mama, why did you do this? Why cann you stay out of this?"

"Frankie will help you. He is from the barrio"

"But he's a cop now, a detective. He..."

"He grew up here in these streets. He is Spanish, and he helps his people. He will help you."

"You shoul not have gone," Alfredo said, shaking his head.

"I have never been inside a police station in my life," Mrs. Gomez said. "Today is the first time. My son is in danger, and I went for help." She paused. "He said he would come.

I gave him the address. He said he would come to talk to you."

"I will tell him nothing," Alfredo said softly.

"You will tell him all that is necessary to tell him."

"Wha" time is it?" he asked suddenly.

"You have time yet."

"I got to dress for church."

"Not until you talk to Frankie Hernandez. He will know what to do."

"He will know what to do," Alfredo said. "Sure, he will know what to do," and the mockery in his voice was tinged with bitterness and inescapable sorrow.

"He will know what to do," Mrs. Gomez said confidently.

4

The sailor's name was Jeff Talbot, and the rosy glow of the alcohol was beginning to wear off, and as he surveyed the street outside the luncheonette, he wondered how he could ever have said it looked like a nice neighborhood. Somehow, even the sunlight did not help the look of the street outside. It helped only in the way a powerful spotlight helps to illuminate a garbage dump. He blinked at the sunshine, and he blinked at the street outside, and he suddenly said, "I'm sober," and just as suddenly realized that he was. "Good," Luis said. "How does the world look?" "Miserable." He swung his stool back toward the counter. "I'm getting a headache. This is a pretty rotten neighborhood, ain't it?"

"It depends how you look at it," Zip said. "I happen to like it."

"You do?"

"It's where I live. When I'm here, that sidewalk sings." "What does it sing?" Jeff asked. His head was beginning to pound. He wondered why he was talking with a stranger, wondered why he'd drunk so much the night before.

"With him," Luis said, "it sings Rock and Roll."

"The old man is very hip, sailor. He knows all the proper..."

Zip stopped talking. He tensed suddenly on the stool, his eyes fastened to the street outside.

"What's the matter?" Jeff asked.

"The Law," Zip said quietly.

The Law to which he had referred was the law as personified by Detective Andy Parker who walked up the street with a sort of slumped, indifferent swagger, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, looking for all the world like a penniless bum who had just come from sleeping one off in a doorway. His bright Hawaiian shirt was rumpled and soiled with coffee stains. He scratched his chest indolently, his eyes flicking the street as he walked.

"The only law I got to worry about is the Shore Patrol," Jeff said, dismissing him. He shoved his empty cup across the counter. "Can I get another cup of joe?" He grinned and then winced in pain. "Oh, man, but that head hurts when I smile."

Outside the luncheonette, Andy Parker waved at Luis and said, "Que pasa, maricon?"

"Hello, Andy," Luis said, smiling. "Some coffee?"

"I can use a cup," Parker answered. "Hot." He walked into the luncheonette and took the stool next to Jeffs. He studied Zip for a moment and then asked, "When did you start catering to the punk trade, Luis?"

"I'm having a cup of coffee," Zip answered. "Anything wrong with that, Lieutenant?"

"I ain't a lieutenant, and don't get smart."

"I thought you'd at least be a captain by now. After all the drunks you pulled in from Grover Park."

"Look, kid..."

"This is Detective Andy Parker, sailor," Zip said. "He's what is known as a tough cop. Fearless. For two cents, he'd arrest his own grandmother." He grinned almost immediately, and Jeff recognized the pattern suddenly. It was as if someone had advised the boy that a grin would take him a long way, especially a grin composed of such sparkling white teeth, a grin that never failed to generate a warm response in its recipient. Even Parker, faced with the sudden dazzling brilliance of the grin, smiled.

"For two cents," he answered, "I'd kick your ass all over the sidewalk." But there was no menace in his words. The threat, disarmed by the grin, was a hollow one.

"See?" Zip said, still grinning. "I'll bet he can lick any sixteen-year-old kid on the block."

"Go ahead," Parker said, "push me another inch, kid." But again the threat was not real, the smile had stolen all its power. He turned his attention to the sailor, studied him for a moment and then said, "What are you doing around here, sailor?"

"Same thing as the kid here," Jeff answered. "Having a cup of coffee."

"Let's try it again," Parker said tiredly. "What are you doing around here?"

"I heard you the first time," Jeff said.

"Then give me a straight answer."

"Is this neighborhood off limits?"

"No, it ain't off limits, but it sure as hell..."

"Then leave me alone."

Parker studied him silently for a moment. Then he said, "Pretty salty, huh?"

"Yeah, pretty salty," Jeff said.

"Andy, he's a little drunk," Luis put in, spreading his hands. "You know, go easy on..."

"Keep out of this, Luis," Parker snapped.

"I'm sober now, Louise. Thanks."

"I asked a question."

"Oh, for God's sake," Jeff said, "I came to sit up with a sick grandmother."

Zip burst out laughing and then immediately squelched the laughter when Parker turned a frigid glare on him. Zip shrugged. Parker turned back to the sailor.

"What's your grandmother's name?" he asked icily.

"Now you got me, officer. I always just called her plain Grandma."

"What ship you off?"

"Why?"

"I'm asking!"

"How do I know you ain't a Russian spy?"

"You guys think you're pretty wise, don't you? Coming up here and fouling up my precinct?"

"Who's fouling up your lousy precinct? I'm drinking a cup of coffee, that's all."

"Here, Andy, here," Luis said, anxious to make peace. "Here's your coffee. Drink it while it's still hot."

Parker took the cup. "You know how many sailors get rolled up here?" he persisted.

"How many?" Jeff asked.

"This sailor don't get rolled, Lieutenant," Zip said. "He's under my protection."

"You couldn't protect a wooden nickel from a blind man. What'd you come looking for, sailor?"

"I told you," Jeff said, annoyed now. "Grandma."

"Tail?"

"Why? You peddling it on the side?"

"Sailor, don't get..."

"You mean to tell me I could actually find some in this nice, sweet, clean precinct you're so afraid I'm going to foul up?"

"Sailor, I'm talking to you like a friend. Get the hell out of here. Luis, am I giving him bum advice?"

Luis shrugged. "I told him the same thing, Andy!"

"Sure," Parker said, nodding. "Look, Luis lives here. He knows this place like the back of his hand. Did you tell him about this neighborhood, Luis?"

"I told him, I told him."

"About what you run into around here? The guys like Pepe Miranda?"

"Si, ah, there's a one," Luis said.

"What's the matter with Pepe?" Zip asked. "He made you guys look like a bunch of monkeys yesterday." He grinned suddenly. "How many cops did he ambush? Four? Five? Man, he made you look sick." He turned to Jeff. "They walked into the apartment, and in ten seconds he had their guns and was on his his merry way. They're lucky he didn't shoot them, just for kicks."

"Big hero, huh?" Parker said. "He eludes the law, so you make him..."

"I ain't making him nothing. It only seems to me that you big detective masterminds should have got him by now, that's all. Don't you think so?"

"We'll get him," Parker said. "Especially if he came back to this neighborhood."

"Did he come back?" Zip asked, leaning forward.

"Maybe," Parker said.

"No kidding?"

Parker shrugged.

"Here? No kidding?"

"You wouldn't happen to know where, would you?"

"Me? Why, Lieutenant, I would tell you instantly if I knew. But, unfortunately, I do not follow the movements of the underworld."

"Luis?" Parker asked, turning to the counter suddenly, as if hoping to catch Luis off guard.

"This is the first I'm hearing, Andy. Why did he come back here? He didn't cause enough trouble here?"

"Who's Pepe Miranda?" Jeff asked.

"Pepe Miranda is a thirty-five-year-old punk. Am I right, Luis?"

"He's only a punk 'cause you can't nab him," Zip said.

"No, no, Andy is right," Luis said. "Miranda's no good. Pghhh, he's rotten."

"Luis and I get along fine," Parker said. "We understand each other. He's been around here as long as I have, and he never so much as spit on the sidewalk." Parker grinned. "He knows I'd drag him down the station house if he did, huh, Luis?"

"Oh, sure, sure," Luis said, riding with the gag.

"Why don't you drag Miranda down the station house, Lieutenant?" Zip asked sweetly.

"Don't think we won't! And cut the lieutenant crap! He's been riding for a fall for a long time now. When a kid has a j.d. card before he's fourteen ..."

"A what?" Jeff asked.

"A juvenile delinquency record. At fourteen. So what can you expect? He's no different now than when he started that street gang years ago. The Golden Spaniards. Remember them, Luis? This was even before street gangs were normal around here."

"He was ahead of his time," Zip said, grinning.

"Ahead of his time, my ass."

"No good," Luis said, pulling a face. "I remember. Snotnoses. Like today. No different."

"Except today is the atomic age," Parker said, "so they carry guns instead of knives. Miranda killed a kid in 1942, sailor, when he was seventeen. Slit the kid from ear to ear."

"The kid probably deserved it," Zip said.

"His lawyer got him off with manslaughter," Parker said.

"He should have got the chair," Luis put in. "They should have burned him."

"They sent him upstate, to Castleview, and he spent just enough time there to get out of fighting in World War II. When he was paroled, he came back here. Heroin was the big thing then. Miranda started pushing it."

"Poisoning children! Argh, what makes men do this!"

"Nobody starts on horse unless he wants to, dad," Zip said. "Don't go blaming Miranda."

"Okay by you if we blame him for all the people he's killed in this goddamn city?"

"You can't prove he killed anybody."

"That's what you think. There's a lady dying in General Hospital right now, and she identified a photo of Miranda as the guy who beat her up and took her purse."

"Miranda mugging? Don't snow me, cop."

"Miranda mugging, yes! Not such a goddamn big shot any more, is he? No more high-pay torpedo jobs now that the heat's on. Only little ladies to beat up. Believe me, when we get that bastard we're gonna throw away the key on him."

"Sure, when you get him."

"We'll get him. He's here someplace, that's for sure. Once we find out where, goodbye Miranda. One less hero in the neighborhood." He took a long draw at his coffee, finishing it. Putting down the cup, he said, "That was good coffee, Luis. Luis makes the best damn cup of coffee in the city."

"Sure, sure."

"He thinks I'm kidding him. Even if I didn't like you, Luis, I'd still come here to drink your coffee, you know that?"

"It's good having a cop for a steady customer. It keeps trouble away."

"And there's plenty of that around here," Parker said.

"Well, you don't die from being bored around here," Luis said, grinning.

"It's a hell of a lot different from the island, ain't it?"

"Oh, yes, yes."

"I was down there for a week once, had to bring back this punk who skipped the city after holding up a jewelry store on South Fourth. That's the life, all right. Lay in the sun all day long, suck sugar cane, go fishing. And at night..." He winked at Luis. "There's no holding down the Puerto Rican men at night, eh, Luis?"

"Andy, for a man who's a man ... the nights are the same any place, no?"

"Oh, brother, watch out for this guy!" Parker said, laughing. "He's got three kids already, and I think he's gunning for number four."

"At my age?" Luis said, laughing with him. "No, no, it would take a miracle."

"Or a boarder," Parker said. "Keep your eye on the boarder, Luis." He put his hand on Jeffs shoulder. "There are more boarders in this neighborhood than you can shake a stick at. We got areas called 'hot bed' areas, where guys rent out apartments on an eight-hour basis, three sleeping shifts, would you believe it?"

"We don't have any boarders," Luis said, still laughing. "Teresa is safe."

Parker sighed and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his face with it and then said, "Well, back to crime prevention, huh? Sailor, I'd forget that sick grandmother if I was you. Get out of here. This neighborhood ain't for clean-cut kids."

"Who's clean-cut?"

"You're liable to be, if you don't take my advice. From ear to ear, you're liable to be."

"I'll chance it."

"Sure, chance it. Famous last words. I hope you're wearing your dog tags. We'll want to know where to send the body."

"Send it to his grandma," Zip said, grinning. "She's expecting him."

"Kid, you're lucky I'm in a good mood today," Parker said.

He turned back to Luis. "Hey, pinga?", "Si, cabron," Luis answered, and both men grinned as if pleased by their intimate use of profanity in addressing each other.

"If you hear anything about Miranda, don't forget me, huh?"

"I won't," Luis answered.

"Good. Adids."

He walked away from the luncheonette, blinking his eyes against the sunshine. He wondered why it was that he could have such a good relationship with Luis Amandez and such a bad one with Frankie Hernandez. Weren't both men Puerto Ricans? Of course they were. But Luis was different. Luis was willing to accept certain things about his own people, whereas Frankie was a son of a bitch who was just deaf and dumb on the subject. How could you hope to discuss anything intelligently with a guy who had a chip on his shoulder? Where was the give and take in a relationship like that? There just wasn't any. Now with Luis, Parker enjoyed a give and take. That's why it was so good. Why couldn't Hernandez be that way, too?

Parker sighed heavily.

It takes all kinds, he told himself. It takes all kinds.

5

Zip continued grinning until Parker had turned the corner and walked off up the avenue. Then the grin dropped from his mouth.

"You'd stool on Pepe for that rotten cop?" he asked Luis.

"Pepe Miranda is no brother of mine," Luis answered.

"A stoolie is a stoolie," Zip said. He swung around and walked to the jukebox. He studied the selections for a moment, inserted his coin, chose one, and then stepped behind the box and turned up the volume so that a mambo fairly blasted into the luncheonette.

"Lower that, lower that," Luis said.

"Shhh, man," Zip said, grinning. "I can't hear the music."

"I said lower that," Luis shouted, and he came around the counter, walked to the juke, and was reaching around to the back when Zip stepped into his way, laughing. The music screeched into the shop, trumpets bellowing, bongo drums pounding their steady beat. At the counter, Jeffs headache responded to the assault wave of sound. He turned toward the juke. The old man was still trying to reach the volume control. Zip, laughing, danced before him, blocking his path, stepping out of it, teasing the old man closer, blocking him again. The grin did not leave his face, but there seemed to be no humor in his laughing defense of the volume control. The old man lunged, and Zip stepped aside finally and danced into the street like a boxer moving away from the ropes. Luis located the volume control and turned it all the way down.

From the street, Zip said, "Not too low, you old bastard. That's still my loot in there."

Luis stamped angrily to the cash register He rang up no sale, took a dime from the cash drawer and threw it on the counter. "Here!" he shouted. "Take your money and go!"

Zip threw back his head and laughed, a loud mocking laugh which — like his earlier smile — was totally devoid of humor. "Keep it, dad," he said. "It probably took you all week to make."

"Puncture my eardrums!" Luis muttered. "On a Sunday morning! No decency, no decency!"

But the music, despite Luis' preference fcr comparative silence, seemed to have awakened the neighborhood all at once. The street had been as still and empty as a country road before the record started, and now it suddenly teemed with humanity. In the distance, the church bells had begun tolling again and, in response to the bells, the people of the neighborhood were coming out of the tenements, drifting down the steps leisurely because this was first call, and there was still time before the Mass would begin. The record spun to an end, but the church bells persisted, and the street was alive with color now, color which seemed appropriate to the heat of July, color so vivid, so tropical, that it assailed the eyeballs. Two young girls in the brightest pink came out of a tenement and walked arm in arm down the street toward the church. An old man in a brown silk suit, wearing a bright green tie, came from another tenement and began in the same direction. A woman carrying a red parasol to shield her from the sun walked with the dignity of a queen, trailing a boy in a short-trousered suit by her side. The people nodded at each other, and smiled, and exchanged a few words. This was Sunday morning. This was the day of rest.

From the other end of the street, rushing against the tide of humanity that swelled with a single mind toward the church at the far end of the block, Cooch appeared with two other boys. Zip saw them instantly, and went to join them.

"What the hell kept you so long?" he asked.

"We had to wait for Sixto," Cooch said.

"What the hell are you, Sixto? A man or a baby sitter?"

Sixto looked as if he were about to blush. He was a thin boy of sixteen with eyes that seemed ready to flinch at so much as an unkind word. He spoke English with a Spanish accent which was sometimes marked and sometimes mild. His voice was very soft, and he used it reticently, as if he were not ever certain that anyone wanted to hear what he had to say.

"I ha' to help my mother," he told Zip.

The other boy with Cooch was a six-footer with a face so dark that all personality somehow became lost in the overall impression of blackness. His features were a mixture of Negroid and Caucasian, a mixture so loosely concocted that even here there was an impression of vagueness, of vacuity. The boy was sixteen years old. He moved slowly, and he thought slowly. His mind a blank, his face a blank, he presented a somewhat creaking portrait to his contemporaries, and so they had named him Papa, as befitted a sixteen-year-old who seemed to be seventy.

"When my fodder go on a trip," he said, "I hep my mudder. He tell me to hep her." He spoke with a Spanish accent so marked that sometimes his words were unintelligible. At these moments, he would revert back to his native tongue, and this too added to the concept of a young boy who was old, a young boy who clung to the old language and the old slow-moving ways of a land he had deeply loved.

"That's different," Zip said. "When he's away, you're the man of the house. I'm not talking about a man's work."

Proudly, Papa said, "My fodder's a merchan' marine."

"Who the hell are you snowing?" Zip asked. "He's a waiter."

"On a boat! Tha' makes him a merchan' marine."

"That makes him a waiter! Listen, we've wasted enough time already. Let's lay this out. We're gonna have to move if we want to catch that eleven o'clock Mass." He turned suddenly to Sixto who had been staring blankly at the street. "You with us, Sixto?"

"Wah? Oh, yes. I'm ... I'm with you, Zip."

"You looked like you was on the moon."

"I wass thinkin' ... well, you know. This Alfredo kid, he not sush a bad guy."

"He's getting washed and that's it," Zip said. "I don't even want to hear talk about it." He paused. "What the hell are you looking at, would you please mind telling me?"

"The organ-grinder," Sixto said.

The organ-grinder had rounded the corner and stopped just outside the luncheonette. His parrot had bright-green feathers. The parrot perched on the instrument, accepted coins in his beak, gave them to his master, and then reached down to select a fortune slip from the rack of slips on top of the hand organ. A crowd immediately gathered around the organ-grinder and his trained bird. The crowd was a Sunday churchgoing crowd, bedecked in bright summer colors. The girls shrieked each time they read a fortune. The old men and the old ladies grinned knowingly. Jeff walked out of the luncheonette and handed the parrot a nickel. The parrot reached into the rack, peck, a narrow white slip appeared in his beak. Jeff took the slip and began reading it. The girls squealed in delight. There was an innocence surrounding the organ-grinder; the mechanical music he produced was countered by the skill of the bird and the faith of the crowd. For this was Sunday morning, and this was a time to believe in fortunes, a time to believe that the future would be good. And so they crowded the man and his bird, crowded around the sailor who read his fortune from the card and grinned, laughed again in delight as the parrot dipped his beak for another fortune. There was innocence here, and it shimmered on the summer air like truth.

Not ten feet from the organ-grinder, not ten feet from the crowd in their gay Sunday clothes, Zip stood in a whispering circle with three other boys who wore purple silk jackets. The backs of the jackets were lettered with the words the latin purples. The words were cut from yellow felt and stitched to the purple silk. The Latin Purples, The Latin Purples, The Latin Purples, The Latin Purples, four jacket backs and four young men who huddled close together and spoke in low whispers while the organ-grinder filled the air with the music of innocence and truth.

"I ... I wass thinkin'," Sixto said, "maybe we shoul' jus', you know, maybe warn him."

"For messing with one of the debs?" Cooch whispered, astonished.

"So, he dinn really do nothin', Cooch. He jus' ony say hello to her. Thass not so bad."

"He made a grab," Cooch said with finality.

"Thass not what she say. I ask her. She say he ony jus' say hello to her."

"What right did you have to go asking her questions?" Zip wanted to know. "Whose girl is she? Yours or mine?" Sixto remained silent. "Well?"

"Well, Zip," Sixto said, after long deliberation, "I tink ... well, I don' tink she knows. I mean, I don' tink she got no understanding with you."

"I don't need no understanding with a chick. I'm telling you she's my girl, and that's good enough."

"But she don' tink so!"

"I don't care what she thinks."

"Anyway," Sixto said, "no matter whose girl she is, if Alfie don' do nothin' to her, why we got to shoot him?"

The boys were silent for a moment, as if mention of the word, as if translation of their plan into sound, into a word which immediately delivered the image of a pistol, had shocked them into silence.

In a very low voice, Zip asked, "You going turkey?" Sixto did not answer. "I thought you was a down cat, Sixto. I thought you had heart."

"I do got heart."

"He gah heart, Zeep," Papa said, defending Sixto.

"Then why's he backing out? How'd you like it if this was your girl, Sixto? How'd you like it if Alfie went messing around with your girl?"

"But he dinn mess with her. He ony say hello. So wha's so bad about dat?"

"You in this club?" Zip asked.

"Sure."

"Why?"

"I... I don' know. You got to belong to..." Sixto shrugged. "I don' know."

"If you're in this club, if you wear that purple jacket, you do what I say. Okay. I say the Latin Purples are washing Alfredo Gomez right after eleven o'clock Mass. You want to turkey out, go ahead." He paused meaningfully. "All I know is that Alfie give China a rough time. China's my girl whether she knows it or not, you dig? China's my girl, and that means Alfie got himself trouble."

Cooch nodded. "Big trouble."

"And that don't mean a burn. I don't want him burned. I want him washed! You can turkey out, Sixto, go ahead. Only you better watch your step around here afterwards, that's all I'm telling you."

"I jus' thought ... oh, I jus' thought ... well, Zip, cann we talk to him?"

"Oh, come on, for Christ's sake!" Zip said angrily.

"Cann we jus' tell him to stop ... to stop talking to her no more? Cann we do dat? Why we have to ... to kill him?"

There was another long silence, for another word had been spoken, and this word was stronger than the first. And this word meant exactly what it said, this word meant kill, to take someone's life, kill, to murder. This was not a euphemism, a handy substitute like "wash." This was kill. And the word hung between them, the sentence hung between them on the still July air: "Why we have to ... to kill him?"

"Because I say so," Zip said softly.

"It be diff ren if he really was..."

"What else you going to do, huh? Get pushed around?" Zip asked. "Man, ain't you sick of all the time getting pushed around?"

"I dinn say that. I said..."

"Everybody in the neighborhood knows he made a pass at China!" Zip said plaintively. "Am I supposed to...?"

"He dinn make no pass! He ony say hello!"

"Am I supposed to go over and have a chat with him? How are you, Alfie old boy, how you been? I understand you was feeling up China the other day, was it good? Am I supposed to hold his goddamn hand, Sixto?"

"No, but..."

"Don't you want these other clubs to notice us? Don't you want them to know we got self-respect?"

"Sure, but..."

"So we going to let a creep like Alfie go around screwing our debs?"

Sixto shook his head. "Zip, Zip, he dinn even..."

"Okay, listen to me," Zip said. "After we pull this today, we're in. You understand that? We wash this creep, and there ain't nobody in this neighborhood who don't know the Latin Purples from then on in. They'll know we don't get pushed around by anybody! Every damn kid on this block'll want to be in the club after today. We're gonna be ... something! Something!" He paused to catch his breath. His eyes were glowing. "Am I right, Cooch?"

"Sure," Cooch answered.

"Okay, Alfie's going to eleven o'clock Mass, like he always does. Mass'11 break around eleven-forty, a quarter to twelve. I want to get him on the steps as he's coming out."

"On dee—!"

"On the steps! All four of us blast together, and nobody stops until Alfie's down. You better shoot straight 'cause there'll be a lot of innocent people around."

"Zip, on dee church steps?" Sixto said. His face was twisted in pain. "Ave Maria, cann we...?"

"On the steps, I said! Where everybody'll see him die. We've got fou'r pieces. I'm using the .45 because I want to blow that creep's head off."

The organ-grinder stopped his music. The street seemed suddenly silent.

"There's two .38s and the Luger," Zip whispered. "Take whatever you want."

"The Luger," Cooch said.

"You got it. Sixto, you and Papa'11 use the .38s. The pieces are up at my pad. We get them first, and then round up a couple of gun bearers." He paused for a moment. "Second thought, you better stay here, Sixto. Keep an eye on Alfie's house. Right around the corner. The first building."

"Okay," Sixto said blankly.

"Make sure he don't leave. If he does, follow him. If you ain't here when we get back, we'll start looking for you."

"Okay."

"What?"

"I said okay."

"Okay," Zip repeated. "Come on." He put his arm around Cooch as they began walking toward his building, Papa shuffling along beside them. "You excited, Cooch?" he asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess. A little."

"Man, I'm excited. This day is beginning to tick, you know what I mean? Things are moving!"

"Yeah, that's true," Cooch said.

"Some Sundays, you can sit on that front stoop and go nuts. Especially like now in the summer. But today is different. Today, there's like a million things to do, ain't there? What I'm trying to say, Cooch, this makes me feel good. This action, you know? Man, it makes me feel real good!"

Cooch grinned as the three boys entered the tenement. "It ain't gonna make Alfie feel so good," he said.

Sixto stood on the corner outside the luncheonette, watching Alfredo's building, nervously biting his lower lip.

Inside the luncheonette, Jeff handed his fortune slip to Luis and said, "How do you like that?"

"Be patient and of firm resolve," Luis read, "and you will achieve all your ends."

"Yeah," Jeff said. "What time does La Gallina open?"

"I had hoped you would forget La Gallina."

"Well, since I'm already up here..." Jeff shrugged and let the sentence trail. "What time does it open?"

"This is Sunday," Luis said, "and La Gallina is a bar — among other things. It does not open until noon."

"Then I've got plenty of time yet."

"If you'd take my advice..."

"Hey! Hey your the voice bellowed, and they both turned simultaneously to face the street. Andy Parker seemed to have materialized from nowhere. He approached Sixto, who stood on the corner, and shouted, "You! You there!"

Sixto, frightened, began to inch away from him "Me?" he asked. "Me?"

"What are you doing?" Parker asked, coming up close to him.

"Nothin'. I wass ony jus' standin'..."

"Against the wall!"

"Huh?"

Parker seized his jacket front and slammed him up against the supporting post at the corner of the luncheonette. "I said against the wall!"

"I ... I dinn do nothin'," Sixto said. "I wass only jus'..."

"Bend over!"

Sixto stared at him blankly, uncomprehendingly.

"Bend over, goddamnit!" Parker shouted.

Sixto still did not understand. Furiously, because he felt his command was being openly flouted, Parker chopped a fast right to Sixto's gut, doubling him over. He spun him around then so that he faced the corner post, his hands clutching his stomach, his head bent.

"Put your hands against the wall, palms flat, goddamnit, do what I tell you!" Parker shouted.

Sixto, doubled over with pain, made an abortive attempt to stretch out his arms, clutched his stomach again, and then shoved his arms out convulsively when Parker hit him in the ribs. He extended his hands and placed them, trembling, against the corner post. Quickly, Parker frisked him. He did an intent and thorough job, so thorough that he did not notice Frankie Hernandez who walked up the street and stopped just short of the luncheonette.

"Turn around!" Parker shouted. "Now empty your pockets! Everything on the sidewalk! Hurry up!"

Hernandez walked to where they were standing. "Leave him alone, Andy," he said. He turned to Sixto. "Take off, kid."

Sixto hesitated, frightened, looking first to one detective and then the other.

"Get out of here, go ahead! Beat it!"

Sixto hesitated a moment longer, and then broke into a sprint around the corner, racing up the avenue.

"Thanks, Frankie," Parker said sarcastically.

"There's nothing in the penal code that makes it a crime for a kid to be minding his own business, Andy."

"Who's saying anything?" Parker said. He paused. "But suppose that nice innocent kid was holding a deck of heroin?"

"He wasn't holding anything. He's no junkie, and you know it. He comes from a good family."

"Oh, is that right? Junkies don't come from good families, huh? Suppose he was holding, Frankie? Just suppose?"

"The only thing he's holding right now is contempt for the cop who shook him down."

"Seems to me you should be interested in looking up the people who are doing something wrong," Jeff said from the luncheonette.

"We do, sailor," Parker answered. "Day and night. That kid belongs to a street gang, don't he? You saw his club jacket, didn't you? Do you expect me to take crap from every hoodlum on the street?"

"That kid probably has little enough self-respect as it is," Hernandez said. "So you come along and..."

"All right, all right, cut it out with the kid, will you? Boy, you'd think I worked him over with a rubber hose." He paused. "Where you headed?"

"To see the Gomez woman," Hernandez said.

"She was quite a little trick, that Gomez woman. Pushing fifty, maybe, but still got it all in the right places. You sure this is a business call, Frankie?"

"I'm sure," Hernandez said.

"Well, just so long as you're sure. Was there any word on Miranda back at the squad?"

"Not when I left, no."

"You know," Luis said thoughtfully, "I think maybe Frankie's right. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, Andy. Don't think that. But this boy could be hurt by such treatment. What I mean ... well ... on the island, it was not this way."

"Juvenile gangs ain't a problem in Puerto Rico," Parker said flatly.

"No, of course not, but that's not what I meant. There just seemed to be ... I don't know ... more respect there."

"For what? For siestas?" Parker asked, and he burst out laughing.

"Well, now you're making it a joke," Luis said, embarrassed.

"Me? Why should I joke about your homeland?"

"It was just... you know... we were poor and hungry, true. But there was always the plaza in the center of town, and the pink church, and the poinsettias, and the mango trees. And you could go to the plaza and talk to your friends. And you were a person, and people knew your name. It was important, Andy. You knew who you were."

"Who- were you, Luis?" Parker said, chuckling. "The governor?"

"Ah, he makes it a joke," Luis said good-naturedly. "You know what I mean, don't you, Frankie?"

"Yes. I know what you mean."

"Sometimes here, you feel lost. And without identity, there can be no dignity, no respect."

"I know just what you mean, Louise," Jeff said. "It's like what I was telling you about Fletcher. How you can just get swallowed up in a pile of people and forget who and what you are."

"Si, st. The island had respect for people, and for life ... and respect for death, too. Life is cheap here, and death is cheaper. On the island..." He paused, as if giving himself time for the memory to grow, to blossom in his mind. "On the island," he said, "in the towns, when there is a funeral, the casket bearers walk in the center of the main street, and the mourners follow behind the casket."

"I know this," Hernandez said softly. "My father used to talk about this."

"About the little girls dressed in white, carrying their flowers in the sunshine?" Luis said. "The town all dusty and quiet and still."

"Yes," Hernandez said. "About that."

"And the shopkeepers stand in their doorways, and when the casket goes by, they close the doors. They are showing respect for the dead man. They are saying, 'I will not conduct business while you pass by, my friend.'"

"Argh, bullshit," Parker said. "That ain't respect. They're just scared of death. I'll tell you something, Luis. I don't know what it's like on that island of yours, but here — right here — the only ones who get respect are the live ones — the hoodlums like Pepe Miranda."

Luis shook his head quickly and emphatically. "No," he said.

"No, huh? Take my word for it."

"I'm going," Hernandez said. "You argue it out between you."

"Who's arguing?" Parker said. "We're having a discussion."

"Okay, so discuss it," Hernandez said, and he walked out of the luncheonette and around the corner.

Jeff swung around on his stool and stared up the street. Behind him, he could hear the detective and Luis arguing — well, discussing — but he was not interested in what they were saying. He kept staring at the closed door of La Gallina, wondering when the bar would open. He really didn't know whether he actually felt like spending the day in bed with a woman or not, but he couldn't think of much else to do with his time. And he had come all the way uptown, and he hated to think of the trip as a total loss. So he kept staring at the closed door, almost willing it to open and — quite miraculously — it opened.

6

The girl who stepped out of the bar was no more than nineteen years old, a slender girl with the curved body of a woman thrusting against the sweater and skirt she wore. Her hair was black, and her eyes were dark. She took a key from her purse and was leaning over to lock the door when Jeff got off his stool and ran up the street.

"Hi," he said.

The girl whirled, surprised. Her eyes opened wide, the brownest eyes Jeff had ever seen in his entire life.

"Oh!" she said, and her lips rounded over the single word, and slowly the shock gave way to puzzlement, and she stared at him curiously, waiting for him to speak.

"I've been waiting for you all morning," Jeff said. "Were you in there all along?"

"Yes?" she said, delivering the word as a question, as if she expected further explanation from him and was waiting for it. He continued to watch her. A slow realization was coming to him. He was beginning to recognize the fact that this was possibly the most beautiful girl he'd ever met, and her beauty left him somewhat tongue-tied. The girl waited. Jeff remained speechless. Finally, she tucked the key into her purse, gave a small feminine shrug, and began walking away. Jeff stepped around her quickly, directly into her path.

"Hey, where you going?" he said.

"Home."

"Why? I only just found you."

"I have to get dressed," the girl said.

"You look dressed fine to me," he said, and his eyes traveled the length of her body, pausing on the soft swell of her breasts beneath the light-blue sweater, the abrupt curve of her hips against the black skirt.

"I have to get dressed," the girl repeated blankly, seemingly embarrassed by his scrutiny.

"Well, that can wait, can't it?" he asked.

The girl seemed very puzzled. "What do you want?" she said.

"Well ... uh ... don't you know?"

"No?" the girl said, and again she raised her voice at the end of the word so that it sounded like a question.

"Well ... I was talking to a fellow last night. It was really very early this morning. Downtown. In a bar."

"Yes?"'

"And he said I should come up here."

"What for?"

"He said I'd find you here," Jeff said.

He looked at her, and he thought, Well, he didn't exactly say I would find you here, because no one ever expects to find something like you, no one ever really expects to come across something like you ever in his life.

"He didn't say that," the girl said.

"Yes. Yes, he did."

"What was his name? The man who told you about me?"

"I don't remember," Jeff paused. "I was drunk."

"Are you drunk now?"

He smiled tentatively. "Sober as a judge."

"And this fellow told you about me? He said you would find me?'

"Well ... not exactly. I mean, I didn't expect anyone as ... as pretty as you. But he said—"

"What did he say, exactly?"

"He said I should go uptown..."

"Yes?"

"And I should look for a place called La Gallina."

"La Ga— oh." She paused and looked at him more closely. "I see. Yes. Now I understand."

"Good. I got to admit, you're really something. I mean a guy just doesn't expect ... I mean, I'm not trying to say anything against what you do, or anything like that ... but ... well, you know, it's just unusual, that's all. To find one as pretty as you."

"Thank you," the girl said. She smiled. "I think you've made a mistake."

"This is La Gallina, isn't it?" Jeff asked, looking at the gilt lettering on the plate-glass windows again.

"Oh, yes. This is La Gallina."

"And you did come out of there, didn't you?"

"Yes, I certainly did."

There was a strange twinkle in her brown eyes. He looked at her suspiciously and realized she was trying to suppress a laugh.

"You do work in there?" he asked. "Don't you?"

"I do."

"Well, what's so funny?" he said, beginning to get slightly annoyed.

The girl would not allow the laugh to escape her mouth. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing." — "Well, then, all right," he said.

"All right," she answered.

They stood staring at each other, Jeff trying to figure out what was so goddamned funny, and the girl trying her best not to laugh.

"Well?" he said at last.

"Well what?"

"Well, let's go to bed."

"You and me?"

"Well, sure, you and me. Who did you think I meant?"

The girl shook her head. "No. I don't think so."

She started to move away from him, and he caught her arm, stopping her.

"Why not?"

"Well..." Again, she held back a laugh. She thought for a moment, and then said, "I guess I don't like sailors."

"That's no attitude," Jeff said, grinning. "Some of my best friends are sailors."

"No," the girl said, shaking her head. "No. Sorry. No sailors." She saw the disappointment on his face and quickly added, "Besides, I'm too high."

"High?"

"Yes, my price. My ... uh ... my fee?" She made it sound as if she were asking him what the correct word should be.

"Well, how high is high?" Jeff asked, beginning to bargain.'

"A lot." The girl considered the question gravely. "More than you earn in a week."

"How much is that?"

"Very, very high," she said.

"Well, how much? Can't you tell me? Boy, you sure act strange for a..."

"I told you," the girl said. "Very very very high." She seemed at a loss for words. She struggled with her thoughts and then desperately said, "What's the highest you ever paid?"

"Twenty. But that was on the Coast. On the Coast..."

"I'm much higher than that," she said quickly, seemingly relieved.

"Forty?"

"Higher."

"A hundred?" he asked, appalled.

"Goodness," the girl said, her eyes twinkling again. "Do I look like a common streetwalker?"

"Well, no, no," he said hastily, "you don't. But a hundred dollars, God, I..."

"I didn't say a hundred. I said higher."

"I haven't even got twenty," he said despondently. "You see, I was in a poker game and..."

"Well, there are other girls," she said curtly. "Goodbye."

She turned on her heel and began walking up the street. Jeff watched her and then, galvanized into sudden action, he yelled, "Hey! Wait!" and ran after her.

"What is it?" she said.

"Listen, can't we talk this over?"

"Why?"

"Well, I ... I think you're pretty."

"Thank you."

"I mean it. I'm not just saying it so you'll..." He paused. "I mean it."

"Why don't you go home, sailor?" she said kindly, her face suddenly turning so tender that he wanted to kiss her right then and there in the street, even though you weren't supposed to kiss girls like this, still he wanted—

"Home?" he said. "Hell, I live in Colorado. Listen, can't we talk this over?"

"Sailor—"

"Jeff."

"Jeff, all right, Jeff, I'm not what you think. I'm not what the fellow sent you uptown for."

"Huh?"

"I cook for La Gallina and some of the other bars. They have steam tables. I prepare the food for them."

"You pre— oh." He paused. "So you were in there..."

"Getting things ready for when they open," the girl said, nodding.

"Oh." He paused again. "And all that business about price..."

"I was fooling you."

"Oh. Well, I'm sorry."

"That's all right. I'm sorry I fooled you."

"Oh, that's all right." He studied her soberly. "You're still very pretty."

"Thank you."

"Do you ... do you have to run off?"

"I have to get dressed. I'm going to church."

"I'll go with you," he said quickly.

"Are you Catholic?"

"Presbyterian. I'll go with you anyway. I've gone to all kinds of religious services in the Navy. I'm something of an expert. You see, I do it to get out of work parties. Whenever I'm on a work party and they announce like, 'All people of the Jewish faith, prepare to leave the ship for religious services,' I all of a sudden become a person of the Jewish faith. I'm just sorry there aren't less work parties and more religions."

The girl shook her head. "I would feel funny."

"Are you religious? Is that it?"

"I suppose so. Yes."

"Well, I mean, the church won't fall down or anything if I walk into it. Believe me. I've been inside Catholic churches before. It's a nice service." He nodded, thinking over the various services he had been to.

"I would still feel funny," the girl said. She looked at him in indecision, and then made a slight movement of departure.

"Look," he said. "Look ... don't run off."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

"You'll be busy," she said. "La Gallina opens at noon."

"Well, that ... you know, it's not that important."

"Isn't it?"

"No, it isn't," he said firmly. "Look, won't you ... won't you stay with me?"

The girl looked at her watch. "I have to go," she said. "I want to catch the eleven o'clock Mass."

"Will you meet me after church?"

"Why should I?"

"I want you to. Don't you want to?"

The girl hesitated. Then she said, "Yes, I do."

"Then why don't you?"

"Are you on a ship?"

"Yes. Look, will you..."

"What kind?"

"A destroyer."

"Is it big?"

"Pretty big. Will you meet me?"

"Why do you want to meet me? Haven't you got a girl back home?"

"I used to, but not any more. Have ... have you got a ... a boy?"

"No."

"Good. That's good." He smiled.

"Yes," she said, and she returned the smile.

"Will you ... will you meet me?"

"If I do ... would we go someplace outside the neighborhood?"

"If you like."

"Where will we go?"

"I don't know. I don't know this city too well."

"But we will leave the neighborhood?"

"Yes. You see, if we were back in Colorado, I'd take you up in the mountains. We'd pack a picnic basket and go up in the mountains. I'd drive you in my car. I've got a '37 Ford."

"What color is it?"

"Yellow. I painted it myself."

"I knew it was yellow," she said.

"Did you? How'd you know?"

"Yellow or red. Those are the two colors I thought."

"Hey, you know I was going to paint it red but Jenken's — that's the hardware store back home — was all out. So I took yellow."

"Do you live in a very small town?"

"Fletcher? Well, it's not so small, you understand."

"Do you have apartment buildings?"

"Oh, no."

"Why did you leave home?"

"I wanted to see the world," he said glibly, and then he knew immediately that glibness was not for this girl. With this girl you played it straight or you didn't play it at all. "I was going to get drafted," he said, "so I figured I'd rather be in the Navy. So I enlisted." He shrugged.

"And the world? Have you seen it?"

"A little of it."

"Have you been to Puerto Rico?"

"No. Have you?"

"No. It's supposed to be beautiful there. I was born here. I've never been outside this city." She paused. "Oh, yes, I once went to a wedding in Pennsylvania."

"You'd like my town," he said. "You really would."

"Yes, I know I would."

They fell silent. She stared up at him, and he felt terribly unsure of himself all at once, unsure and far younger than he actually was. In a very small voice, he said, "Meet me after church. Please."

"If I met you, we could go to the park," she said. "There are no mountains, but we could take a picnic basket. There are trees there."

"Any place you say. Only ... you know ... I've only got about eighteen bucks. We can go as far as that'll take us." He grinned tentatively. "Okay?"

The girl nodded. "Okay."

"Gee, that's— You'll meet me?"

"Yes."

"Look, I'll ... I'll meet you right here. Right on this spot. I won't budge from this spot until you come back."

"No, not here. When La Gallina opens, the girls'll congregate here, on the sidewalk. Not here."

"The luncheonette then, okay? On the corner."

"Luis? All right, fine." . "What time?"

"Mass'11 be over at about a quarter to twelve. I'll make the lunch now and—"

"Hey, you don't have to—"

"I want to."

"Well ... okay."

"And I'll stop home for it before I come. Twelve o'clock? Would that be all right?"

"Fine. Hey, listen, I'm sorry I mistook you for..."

"That's all right. Twelve?"

"Twelve," he said.

"All right." She stared at him for a moment and then said, "Wait for me."

"Yes, I will."

She turned and began walking up the street, walking quickly, not looking back, almost as if she knew his eyes were on her, almost as if she were waiting for him to call after her. When he did call, she whirled immediately.

"Hey!"

"Yes?"

"Hurry! Please hurry, would you?"

"Yes," she said. She gave a small wave, turned, and began walking again.

"Hey!" he called.

"Yes?"

"I don't even know your name!"

"What?"

"Your name," he shouted. "What's your name?"

"Oh," the girl said, and she giggled.

"Well, what is it?"

"China!" she called back, and then she ran up the street.

7

Heat is a strange thing.

Like love, it can drive men to opposite extremes. Like love, it can be a persistently nagging thing, relentless, unwilling to budge, until one day it explodes in wild passion. "I hit him with the hatchet because it was hot." That is an explanation, a reason, and an excuse. It was hot. Everything is contained in those three words. It was hot, and so I was not responsible for my actions, I only knew that it was hot, that I was suffocating all day long, that I could hardly breathe, there was no air, it was hot, and he said to me, "This coffee is too strong," and so I hit him with the hatchet. It was hot, you see.

A shrug.

You understand. It was hot.

And, like love, the heat can generate a different kind of feeling, a feeling which — had the slick paper magazines not defiled the word — could be described as togetherness, a knowledge that human beings on this day, on this insufferably hot day, are at least sharing one thing in common. The heat becomes a bond as strong as reinforced concrete. Do you hate the color of my skin? That is interesting, but God it is hot, God we are sweating together. Do you lech for my wife? That is unforgivable, but let's go have a beer together to escape this damned heat, and later we can work it out.

Heat, like love, is no good unless you can talk about it. The adulterer seeks a confidante, the lecher boasts of his conquests in the pool hall, the sixteen-year-old cheerleader spends hours on the telephone describing a football player's kiss — you have to talk about love.

Lieutenant Peter Byrnes came out of his office wanting to talk about the heat. He was a compact man with graying hair and steel-blue eyes. He liked to believe that he sweated more than men who were less chunky than he. He liked to believe that the heat had been designed in hell especially for him, sent earthward to plague him. He didn't quite understand why he'd been singled out for such torture, but he did know that he suffered more when it was hot than any man had a right to suffer.

The squadroom was silent. Steve Carella, his shirt sleeves rolled up, was sitting at his desk, reading an FBI report on a suspected burglar. Hot sunlight covered the top of his desk like molasses. Bymes walked to the grilled window and stared out at the street. The cars, the people, all seemed to have been captured in transparent plastic, suspended in time and space, unmoving. Byrnes sighed.

"Hot," he said.

"Mmm," Carella answered.

"Where is everybody?"

"Barker's on the prowl, Hernandez is answering a squeal, and Kling..." Carella shrugged. "He's on a plant, isn't he?"

"That drugstore thing?"

"I think so."

"Yeah," Byrnes said, remembering. "The guy who's passing phony cocaine prescriptions." He shook his head. "He won't turn up. Not in this heat."

"Maybe not," Carella said.

"I always choose the wrong time for my vacation," Byrnes said. "Harriet and I spend months figuring it out. I'm the senior officer around here, so I get first choice. So what happens? I always miss the good weather by a month. It's so hot you can't even think, and then it's time for my vacation, and it starts raining, or it rums gray, or we suddenly get a snowstorm from Canada. It never fails. Every year." He paused for a moment. "Well, every year except one. We went to the Vineyard once. We had good weather." He nodded, remembering.

"Vacations are rough anyway," Carella said.

"Yeah? How so?"

"I don't know. It generally takes me two weeks to unwind, and the minute I start relaxing, it's time to come back to work."

"You going away this year?"

"I don't think so. The kids are too small."

"How old are they, anyway?" Byrnes asked.

"They were a year old in June."

"Boy, time flies," Byrnes said, and fell silent. He thought about the passage of time, thought about his own son, thought how much Carella seemed like a son to him, thought how his squadroom seemed like a family business, a candy store or a grocery store, thought how good it was to have Carella working behind the counter with him.

"Well, talking about the heat never helped it any," Byrnes said, and he sighed again.

"Some day, they're going to invent..." Carella started, and the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver. "Eighty-seventh Squad," he said. "Detective Carella."

The voice on the other end said, "I know where Pepe Miranda iss."

They saw Sixto as he came out of the drugstore. His face looked flushed. It seemed as if he were about to cry. He kept blinking his eyes like a person fighting to hold back tears.

"What's the matter?" Zip asked. He studied Sixto impersonally, not as if he were truly concerned, not as if he really wanted to know what the matter was, but asking the disguised question, "How will your present state affect me?"

"Nothin'," Sixto said.

"You look like somebody hit you with a ball bat."

"No."

"What were you doing in the drugstore?"

"Havin" a Coke. I wass thirsty."

"I thought I told you to keep an eye on Alfie's pad."

"I could see his buildin' from where I wass sittin'," Sixto said.

"We gah dee guns," Papa said, grinning.

"Come on," Zip told them both. "Cooch is rounding up some kids. We got to meet him near the luncheonette."

They walked down the avenue together, Zip in the middle flanked by Sixto and Papa. He felt rather good with the boys on either side of him. He walked with his shoulders back and his head erect, setting the pace, knowing they would keep up with him, and feeling very friendly towards the boys as he walked, feeling a bond with them which he could not have described accurately if he'd tried. There was no logic to the bond because he admitted to himself that he didn't even particularly like either Sixto or Papa. One was a mama's boy and the other was a half-wit. And yet he could not deny the emotional satisfaction of walking down the avenue with these two by his side, like a general with his trusted aides. The bod, he knew, would become stronger once they had washed Alfredo Gomez. The word crossed his mind, washed, and he was instantly face to face with the other word, the stronger word. Kill. He did not flinch from it. Kill. He repeated the word in his mind. Kill. We will kill Alfredo Gomez. Kill.

By the time they reached the luncheonette, the word had no more meaning to him than the word "wash". Cooch was there, waiting for them. Two small boys were with him. Parker, the bull, had taken off, but the sailor was still inside the luncheonette, probably waiting for La Gallina to open, waiting for a Spanish girl. The idea pleased Zip at first He felt a fierce pride in the knowledge that the sailor had come uptown to seek the passion only a Spanish girl could give him. And then the pride turned sour, and he thought darkly that the sailor had no right to be here, no right to be emptying himself into Spanish girls, the way sewers empty into the river. He frowned and cast a black scowl at the sailor's back, and then walked quickly to where Cooch stood with the younger boys.

The first of the boys was wearing dungarees and a white, sweat-stained T shirt. His nose was running, and he constantly wiped at it with the back of his hand, the mucus streaked there like a healed burn. He was eight years old.

The other boy was nine. He wore khaki shorts and a short-sleeved blue sports shirt. An Army sergeant's stripes had been sewn to the left sleeve of the shirt. He moved his feet constantly, as if trying to erase chalk from the sidewalk.

"These the kids?" Zip asked Cooch.

"Yeah," Cooch said.

Zip looked at the one with the snotty nose. "What's your name, kid?"

"Chico."

"And yours?" he said to the other boy.

"Estaban," the boy answered, his feet erasing invisible chalk.

"Did Cooch explain the picture to you?"

"Si," Chico said.

"You and Estaban, one on each side of the church steps. You keep the pieces under your shirts until we get on the scene. Then you give them to us and hang around until we blast. We give you back the pieces when it's all over, and you cut out. You got that?"

"Si, yo comprendo," Chico said.

"Si, si," Estaban echoed, his feet moving nervously. He seemed undecided as to whether he should break into a dance or begin stamping the sidewalk in anger. Nervously, his feet continued moving.

Zip looked at his watch. "Okay, the church bells should begin ringing any minute now. That'll be first call for the eleven o'clock Mass. You kids cut out as soon as you hear them bells. We'll drift up toward the corner around eleven-thirty. You be ready for us, you hear me?"

"Zip, when we grow up, me an' Estaban," Chico said, "we coul' go gang-bustin' wi' you?"

Zip grinned and touched the boy's hair. "Sure, when you grow up. Right now, you have them pieces ready for us when we need them."

"I know how to shoot, Zip," Chico said. "I know how to shoot good."

Zip laughed aloud. "Not this trip, Chico. You got time yet before you begin..."

The church bells rang suddenly, abruptly, and then were silent. Whoever was pulling on the cord had made an abortive start, perhaps the cord had slipped from his hands, perhaps he'd had a sudden cramp in his fingers. The heavy solemn bonnnnng of metal upon metal sounded, reverberated, and then died. The boys stood in silence, straining for the peal of the bells. And then the bells started again, ringing out on the still July air, calling the flock to Mass, reaching into the streets and into the open windows, summoning the congregation, summoning Alfredo Gomez to whatever waited for him on the church steps.

"That's it," Zip said tightly. He reached beneath his jacket and, one by one, began pulling the weapons from where they were tucked into his belt. Jeff, in the luncheonette, turned at the sound of the church bells, thinking of China, a smile on his face. He saw the first weapon pass from Zip's hand to Chico's snot-smeared fist, and he blinked as the other weapons changed hands, watched as the two youngsters tucked them into their waistbands, four guns in all, and then pulled their shirts down over them.

"Okay, go," Zip said.

The two boys grinned, nodded, and then ran off up the street. A frown had come onto Jeffs forehead. He swung his stool around and picked up his cup of coffee. The church bells had stopped now. An old man rushed from the mouth of a tenement, paused on the stoop while he pulled on his suit jacket, and then ran spryly up the street.

"Nice quiet Sunday," Luis said to Jeff, smiling.

Jeff nodded and said nothing. The four boys in the purple silk jackets had moved to a position near the jukebox. The street had gone silent again. It seemed to be a street of many moods and many temperaments, changing in the space of seconds like a vaudeville performer who snaps a wig into place and becomes a clown, discards the wig, puts on a black mustache and becomes Adolf Hitler. Now, the street in its sunbath seemed like a golden corridor leading to the high overhead arch of the elevated structure two blocks away, the sky a dazzling yellow-white beyond. Quiet, burning with light, the street was mute, the street waited. The boys lounged near the jukebox, their hands in their pockets. Occasionally they glanced in the direction of the church. Their eyes were squinted against the reflected sunlight.

The girl turned the corner from the avenue and entered the street like a circus train. She was wearing a bright-red jacket, a bright-yellow silk shirt, purple spiked-heel shoes with ankle straps. Her hair was a mass of thick black, sticking out from her head in near-burlesque of a Bushman. She was carrying a bright-blue carpetbag, and she walked with a suggestive swagger, the yellow skirt tightening over plump, jiggling buttocks, huge breasts jutting from the V-necked opening of the red jacket. She seemed to be wearing nothing under her outer clothing, and she didn't give a damn who realized it Her buttocks begged to be pinched, her breasts beneath the white rayon blouse and the red jacket pointed sharp nipples like compass needles indicating north. Her walk did nothing to hide the pulchritude. This was what she owned, and if she preferred to exhibit her possessions, that was her business.

But despite the suggestive swagger, despite the bobbing breasts and the fluid grinding motion of buttock against buttock, despite an apparent attitude of indifference, the girl seemed frightened and somehow hesitant. She stared up at the buildings, ogling the city, overwhelmed by the size, somewhat confused and a little lost.

The whistles that came from Zip and Cooch did not help her at all. She suddenly clutched at the small red jacket in an attempt to close it over her thrusting breasts. The boys whistled again, and Jeff turned to watch the girl, fascinated by the tautness of the yellow skirt and the bobble of her backside. The girl began walking faster, just as lost, just as confused, and the whistles followed her up the street until she was out of sight.

Zip began laughing.

And then his laughter stopped when he realized the sailor was laughing too.

"What was that?" Jeff asked.

"Argh, a Marine Tiger," Luis said.

"A what?"

"Marine Tiger. Fresh from the island, her first day here probably. Marine Tiger. That was the name of one of the first boats to take Puerto Rican immigrants to the mainland."

"Boy, that was really something," Jeff said.

"Did you see that hair?" Luis waved his hands around his head in demonstration. "And now she'll ride the subway, and everyone will think all Puerto Ricans are like her." He shook his head. "I need more soup out here," he said vaguely and went into the back of the shop.

"I wouldn't have minded dumping her on her back, huh, sailor?" Zip said.

"Well, she's not exactly my type," Jeff said. He turned back to the counter. He did not like talking to this boy, and he did not wish to encourage a friendship which, now that he was sober and now that he had met China, seemed hardly necessary.

"Not your type, huh?" Zip said. "What's the matter? You don't like Spanish girls?"

"I didn't say that."

Zip lighted a cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. He considered his next words carefully. He did not know why, but the sailor was beginning to annoy him immensely. At one and the same time, he wanted the sailor to desire a Spanish girl, and yet wanted him to have nothing to do with a Spanish girl. The conflict disturbed him. He frowned as he began speaking.

"I've got a few minutes to kill. You still interested in a girl, I can fix you up with something real nice."

"I'm not interested," Jeff said.

"No?" The frown got deeper. "Why not? You got something against Puerto Rican girls?"

"No. I'm just not interested any more."

"What'd you come up here for? A girl, right?"

"That's right," Jeff said.

His answer angered Zip. "So why won't you let me get you one?"

"I told you. I'm not interested any more."

"Then why are you hanging around here?"

"That's my business," Jeff said curtly.

"If you ain't interested any more, why don't you get out of the neighborhood?"

"You ask a lot of questions," Jeff said.

"Yeah, that's right. What about it?"

"Suppose you answer one," Jeff said.

"I don't have to an—"

"Why'd you pass out those guns?"

Zip's eyes opened wide. "What?"

"You handed an arsenal to those two kids. Who do you plan on shooting?"

They sat side by side on adjacents stools, Jeffs fists bunched on the counter, Zip's eyes narrowing as the sailor's words penetrated. The other boys, with the exception of Sixto, had moved away from the jukebox, and advanced towards their leader.

"You got big eyes, Grandma," Zip said, as he suddenly struck Jeff full in the face with his closed fist. Jeff, surprised by the blow, tried to maintain his balance on the stool, realized intuitively that it would be a mistake to fall, a mistake to be on the ground. He clutched for the counter top, but the imbalance was complete and his hand slid over the Formica top as he went over and back, his foot hooked into the stool's rung, the asphalt tile floor coming up to meet his back. He caught the force of the fall with his shoulder blades, snapping his head so that it wouldn't collide with the floor. He was struggling to get his foot free of the rung when the first kick exploded against the side of his head.

He brought up his hands instinctively, trying to free his foot, squirming to get his foot loose from this ridiculously foolish position, and the second kick caught him in the rib cage, and he felt all the breath in his body escape from his mouth in a grunt, and then another kick caught the side of his neck, and now the kicks were coming with methodical precision and his foot was still hooked into that goddamn rung, a boot connected with his right eye and he felt shocking, stabbing pain and then the warmth of blood and he thought I'm going to be kicked to death on the floor of this goddamn luncheonette and then he heard Luis shouting, "What are you doing? Bastards, what are you doing?" And above that, or beyond it, around it, circling it, filling the air, the high penetrating wail of a police siren.

8

Hernandez had seen this apartment before, had been inside it. Not this one, exactly, but countless others like it in buildings of the precinct This could have been the very apartment he had lived in as a boy.

The front door opened into the kitchen. There was the usual police lock; the first plate screwed to the door, the second plate embedded in the floor, and the unbending steel bar which, when wedged into its triangular place between the two, made forcible entry impossible. A window was at the far end of the kitchen. It opened on the interior shaftway of the tenement. There was linoleum on the kitchen floor, a spatter pattern. It had been scrubbed clean but left unwaxed. It had worn through in patches near the door, the icebox, and the stove. A white enamel-topped table was on the wall opposite the stove. A picture of Jesus in supplication was above the table. The walls were painted a pale green, but the grime of countless meals in preparation had worn itself into the walls so that the green seemed darker, bile-like. The paint, too, was beginning to flake off in several places on the walls and on the ceiling. A toaster was on the table. A plastic shield covered it. The room seemed shoddy but clean. It was a room he remembered well.

On winter days, when he was a boy, he would sit on the floor by the stove, playing with his soldiers on the clean worn linoleum. His mother had miraculously managed to cook her meals with him underfoot. The smells of arroz con potto would fill the kitchen, and it was cozy by the stove where he endowed each of his metal men with a personality and an identity. There was warmth in the kitchen of the Hernandez home, warmth from the stove and the smell of cooking food, warmth in the gentle voice of his mother as she went about her work, warmth in the monologues the boy Frankie addressed to the metal men surrounding him.

There was no warmth in the Gomez kitchen on that day in July, no warmth but the suffocating heat of summer. Outside, they could hear the wail of the siren. Mrs. Gomez went to the window and closed it. The sound withdrew.

"Always fires," she said. "Always the sirens. Never a day without a fire." She shook her head. "And it's worse in the winter."

"Where's the boy?" Hernandez asked.

"In the bedroom. Frankie, please go easy with him. This thing he is in, it is great trouble. But... he is hard to know."

"I'll go easy," Hernandez said.

She led him through the apartment, into the "parlor" furnished with a three-piece living-room suite, a television set, a floor lamp, the fixture in the ceiling boasting three light bulbs of different colors. When he was a boy, he had done his homework in the parlor, stretched out on the floor. There had been no television in those days. In those days, the "William Tell Overture" had announced the arrival of the Lone Ranger. In those days, there was Omar the Mystic, and The Witch's Tale, and Renfrew of the Mounted, and, of course, on Sundays — the Shadow. He had grown up with the idea that Lament Cranston was the most glorious name in the entire world. He now laughed whenever anyone mentioned it and yet, despite his sophisticated laughter, the name still touched a core of envy and awe somewhere deep within him. Lamont Cranston — the Shadow. Memories of a boy, the howl of a wolf and then the words, "Rennnnnnn-frew offfffff the Mounnnnnnn-ted," Dick Tracy every afternoon at — five was it? — five-fifteen? — milk on the kitchen table and chocolate-covered graham crackers, the memories of a boy. And now, the same living-room, called a "parlor" as it was in Puerto Rico, the same colored lights in the ceiling fixture, the same peeling paint, the same long tred through a railroad flat, a man entering a bedroom which could have been the twin of the one he'd slept in as a boy, and a man coming face to face with a boy of sixteen, and seeing in that face pain and trouble, trouble in the eyes and the mouth, and Hernandez the man suddenly wondering where Hernandez the boy had gone. And wondering what had been lost somewhere along the way.

"This is Frankie Hernandez," Mrs. Gomez said.

The boy regarded him without hostility. But there was determination in his eyes, a stubborn committment to reveal nothing. Hernandez had seen this look before. He had seen it in the squadroom and it had been worn by hardened criminals and by docile housewives; it was the same look, it never varied. It was a look which plainly stated, "You are the Law, and anything I tell you will be held against me."

"Hello, Alfredo," Hernandez said.

"Hello," the boy answered warily.

"Your mother's worried about you."

"She hass nothin' to worry abou'."

"Well, she seemed to think so. Came all the way over to the police station because she thought so. What about it, Alfredo?"

Alfredo sighed deeply. "I'm goin' to church, Mr Hernandez," he said. "I got nothin' to tell you."

"Your mother thinks you've got plenty to tell me."

"My mother doesn't know. She don' know this neighborhood."

"I know this neighborhood, Alfredo," Hernandez said flatly, and their eyes met, and in the boy's eyes was a recalculation now, a quick estimate of Hemandez's knowledge of the streets, an appraisal of the extent to which he was a neighborhood boy, and the extent to which he was a cop like all the rest. "Now what's all this about?" Hernandez asked.

Alfredo made his decision in a single moment. The decision changed nothing. Hernandez could not help him, Hernandez was the law, there was nothing he could tell him. "It ain't abou' nothin'," he said.

"Your mother said somebody's going to kill you, is that right?"

Alfredo did not answer.

"Answer me!" Hernandez said, and he seized the boy by the shoulders and forced the contact, forced eyes to meet eyes levelly and honestly. "Answer me!"

Alfredo remained mute, his eyes probing Hemandez's. And then he nodded.

"Who?" Hernandez asked.

"The ... the boys," Alfredo answered. His shoulders ached where Hernandez gripped him. His eyes remained locked with the detective's.

"Why?"

"No reason," Alfredo said.

"Is there a girl involved in this?"

"Si."

Hernandez released his grip tiredly. This was an old story, and he had heard it many times before. "What'd you do to the girl?" he asked.

"Nothin'."

"Come on."

"Nothin'."

The room went silent again. Hernandez stared at the boy. Patiently, he asked, "Then why do they want to kill you?"

"To show they big shots, thass all," Alfredo said. "They tink iss big to kill." He paused. He was talking more freely now, but he still wondered how far he could trust Hernandez. In a very low voice, he said, "She am' even his girl. China ain' nobody's girl."

"You must have done something to the girl!" Hernandez said angrily.

"Nothin'! I swear! I swear on my mudder's eyes. Nothin'! I ony say hello to her. She a nice girl, smilin' an' everything, she smile at everybody. So I say hello. Iss somethin' wrong with dat? On the islan', you could say hello to girls, nobody bodder you. So now I am come here the city, an' now I cann say hello."

"How long have you been in this city?" Hernandez asked.

The boy shrugged and turned to his mother. "Mama?"

"He's a year now," she said. "We took the girl over first. His sister. Alfredo we left with his grandmother in San Juan. A year ago, we could afford to bring him here, too."

"Where's the girl now? Your daughter?"

"She .belongs to the Girl Scouts. Today, they went on a picnic. Honeyside Beach, you know that?"

"Yes," Hernandez said. "You like this city, Alfredo?"

"Sure. I come from La Perla, thass where my gran'mudder lives. La Perla, thass a big fanguito in San Juan. A slom, you know? Shacks."

"I know La Perla."

"It means The Pearl, but thass jus' a joke, you know? It's not sush a pearl. Here iss better. Not so poor, you know? There, it iss all dirty an' mud, an' iss poor all the time. Here iss better." He paused. "But what can you do here?"

"You can do a lot here, Alfredo."

"Yeah? You go outside the neighborhood, they call you 'spic.' It's my fault I cann speak English so good? How I'm spose to learn? There's only one teacher in all my high school who speaks Spanish!"

"Others have learned English, Alfredo."

"Sure, I know. I'm tryin', ain' I? I do pretty good, don't I?"

"You do fine."

"Still..."

"Still what?"

"Am I ... am I spose to join a gang or somethin'?"

"Do you belong to a gang now, Alfredo?"

"No, I don' belong no gang. In Puerto Rico, we don' have this bullshit, these gangs like here. In Puerto Rico, you can say hello to girls, you can hang aroun' like whoever you want, you know? An' there's none of these dope. The kids here take dope. So I don' wann take dope, an' I don' wann belong to no gang. I ony wann to go my own way, nobody should bodder me."

"So how'd you get into this mess?" Hernandez asked.

"I say hello! I swear to God, all I say is hello! So Zip, he..." Alfredo cut himself short.

"Who?" Hernandez said quickly.

Alfredo was silent for several seconds. Then, as if finally committing himself, he said, "Okay. Zip. He sees me an' he says I bodderin' his girl. He says I don' go to church or they wash me."

"You ever been in trouble with this Zip before?"

"Once or twice. Like he try to shake me down at school, you know? We go the same school."

"What school is that?"

"A trade school. I'm learn a job."

"What kind of job?"

"Automotive. But thass not what I wann to be."

"What do you want to be?"

"I wann study radio. So when I wass in junior high school, I go the adviser, you know? I say, 'I wann study radio.' She tell me I should be an automotive. She says iss better for a Spanish kid. She says iss better opportunity. But I still wann study radio."

"Why don't you tell this to someone at your school?"

"Oh, I don' know. Who's to listen? Sometimes I feel ... I don' know... like as if bein' here I'm jus'... not a real human bein', you know? Like I feel ... secondhand."

Hemandez nodded. "What happened with this Zip? When he tried to shake you down?"

"Oh, I give him my lunch money," Alfredo said. "It wass ony a quarter. I dinn want bad blood with him."

"And that was the extent of it? And you haven't had any trouble with him since that time?"

"Never. Like he's ony new aroun' here, you know? Maybe he lives here fi', six months. He come from somewhere downtown, you know? So I don' bodder with him, I ony want to go my own way, thass all. I don' like this ... I mean ... look, they go aroun' stomping people ... they have these street bops ... what I got to fight for? For what? I'm here this city now, so here should be better, not worse than Puerto Rico. So why I got to bodder with kids like Zip? He thinks to be big is to kill." Alfredo paused and then stared solemnly at Hernandez. "To be big is to live, no?" he asked.

"Yes, Alfredo."

"Sure. But he's leader of the Latin Purples. So I don' belong no gang, no Royal Guardians, no Spanish Dukes, nothin'. So who's to protec' me?"

"I'm to protect you, Alfredo."

"You? What can you do? You tink they afraid of cops? If I don' show in the street, they call me turkey, they say I afraid of them. So den everybody laugh at me. So den how can I walk the street? If I be turkey, how can I walk the street?"

"It's not turkey to want to live, Alfredo. Every man wants to live."

"I tell you the truth, I'm tired," Alfredo said. "I'm tired of walkin' alone. You walk alone, they all pick on you. But I'm spose to join a gang? I'm spose to go aroun' shootin' people?

What for I want to shoot people?"

"Don't leave the apartment today, Alfredo," Hernandez said.

"You'll be safe here. I'll see to that." "And tomorrow?" Alfredo asked. "What about tomorrow?" "We'll see. Maybe this'll all be cleared up by tomorrow." "Will tomorrow be any better?" Alfredo asked. "Tomorrow I'm still here. I'm always here in this neighborhood." He began to weep suddenly and gently. "Always," he said. "Always here. Always."

There were four squad cars in the street outside when Hernandez got downstairs. They formed a loose cordon about the bar called La Gallina, and Hernandez immediately wondered if a Vice Squad raid was in progress. The street was filled with people who seemed to gather immediately at the sign of any excitement, who stood speculating in small knots outside the barrier formed by the squad cars on either end of the bar. Hernandez pushed his way through the crowd, saw that Parker was standing and talking to Lieutenant Byrnes and Steve Carella, who stood leaning against a fender of one of the squad cars. His first thought was Who's minding the store? and he realized instantly that this was no vice raid, that something big must have happened. Quickly, he walked to where the other detectives were standing.

"When do we start, Lieutenant?" Parker asked. There was a glow in Parker's eyes. He reminded Hernandez of a Marine who had been in his outfit. The guy's name had been Ray Walters, and he had joined the company on the day before the Iwo Jima landings. He hated the Japanese, and he couldn't wait for the landings to begin. He was the first man out of the landing barge, his eyes glowing, a tight grim smile on his mouth. The smile was still there when the Jap bullet took him between the eyes.

"We're getting cars on the next block," Byrnes said, "so we'll have radio contact with the men there. We'll start as soon as they're ready. This isn't going to be a picnic. He said we wouldn't take him alive."

"Are we sure it's him?" Parker asked.

"Who knows? We got a telephone tip. If it is him, we can't take any chances."

A woman came out of the tenement doorway to the left of La Gallina. She was carrying a baby in one arm and a bird cage in the other. A blue parakeet fluttered wildly about the cage. The woman came off the stoop, glancing over her shoulder to the windows above La Gallina. She seemed to sense that she was a star performer stepping into the spotlight and that an impatient audience was waiting for the one line she had to deliver, a line which would suddenly solve and resolve doubts and uncertainties which would have been mounting ever since the curtain rose. She stopped in the middle of the street, faced the crowd that milled restlessly beyond the squad cars and, in her loudest voice, shouted, "Ees Pepe! Ees Pepe Miranda up there!" and then she extended the bird cage, pointing with it to the first-floor windows while the bird fluttered and screamed against the brass bars.

"Come on, lady," a patrolman said, "before you stop a bullet."

The woman rushed into the crowd where the whisper had already gone up, a confirming whisper passed from mouth to mouth, accompanied by a knowledgeable shaking and nodding of heads, "Pepe Miranda, Pepe Miranda, Pepe Miranda."

"Is that what this is?" Hernandez asked Byrnes.

"It looks that way, Frankie," Byrnes said.

"Who called in the tip?"

"Don't know," Carella said. "He gave the info and then hung up."

"I'm going to see what the hell's happening with those other cars," Byrnes said. He walked around to the other side of the squad car, sat with his legs out on the street, and picked up the hand mike. "This is Lieutenant Byrnes," he said. "We're about ready to roll here. Are those other cars in position yet?"

"So we finally cornered your landsman" Parker said, grinning. "And we're gonna kill him. I'm personally gonna see to that."

"He's no landsman of mine," Hernandez said.

"Of course not," Parker answered. "That's just a way of speaking. All I meant was you're both Puerto Ricans."

"Sure."

"Hell, you know me better than that. I don't care if a guy's Puerto Rican or even Chinese."

"Sure."

Parker looked around suddenly. "Boy, look at these kids, will ya? They think Miranda's a god."

"He's only a god to the ones who don't know any better," Carella said, looking at the kids who had joined the crowd around the squad cars. The kids ranged in age from toddlers to adolescents. Some of them tried to climb onto the squad cars, but the patrolmen swiped at them with their night sticks. None of the kids seemed certain as to what sort of behavior was expected of them. Some laughed, and some stood solemnly staring at the first-floor windows of the building. Some seemed on the verge of tears. It was curious to watch their faces and to study their fidgeting. Each of them knew that this was an occurrence of unusual interest, and each of them was quite naturally excited by it. But they had seen many things, these children, and their reactions to all of these things had always been mixed. They had seen sudden blood, and every fiber in their bodies had urged them to scream at the sight of a man leaking his life onto the pavement, but fear had coalesced in their throats and erupted into the laughter of bravado. For these children, the emotions had become confused, with vague boundary lines separating one from the other. Fear was a twin to courage; tears and laughter were interchangeable.

"He's gonna be a dead god soon, that's for sure," Parker said. "He's gonna pay for every damn heartache he ever gave this city."

Carella, watching the children, said simply, "The city gave him a few too, Andy."

"Sure," Parker agreed. "It's the neighborhood. A kid grows up here, what the hell do you expect? Miranda was cutting up people before he knew how to walk."

"Maybe nobody ever took the trouble to teach him to walk," Hernandez said.

"Hey, you ain't getting sore at me, are you?" Parker asked, his eyes opening wide. "I thought he was no landsman of yours."

"He isn't. He's a punk. He's going to die. That doesn't make it all his fault."

"I can understand how you feel," Parker said. "There's a blood tie that..."

"There's no blood tie between me and..."

"I didn't mean a real blood tie, for God's sake. I know he's not your relative or anything. But, you know, you're both Spanish. That sort of makes you brothers, you know what I mean?"

"No. What the hell do you mean, Parker?"

"Aw, forget it. If you're gonna get sore, there's no sense talking. You're the touchiest guy I know, Frankie. I mean it. You oughta get over that. It don't help you none, believe me." He smiled at Hernandez and put his arm around his shoulder. "All I was saying, in a manner of speaking, is that I'm gonna kill your brother up there. I'm gonna put a dozen bullets in his goddamn skull and watch him bleed all over the sidewalk."

Hernandez shook the arm free. "You know something, Parker?"

"What?"

"He's more your brother than he is mine."

A half-dozen patrolmen had begun erecting barricades across the street. The people crowded the barricades. The kids began sitting on them, spilling over onto the side where the policemen and the squad cars waited for the word from the next street. Byrnes came out of the squad car and yelled, "All right, everybody back! Step back! Back of the barricade! Let's go!" He walked rapidly to Hernandez, pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping at his sweating face. "Frankie, do me a favor, will you?" he said. "Make with some Spanish. These people are gonna get shot up if they don't respect that barricade. Get them to move back, will you?"

"Sure," Hernandez said. He moved up to the wooden horses with their supporting crossbars, the stenciled police department letters shrieking against the white paint. "Bueno!" he shouted. "Todos retroceder, Detrds de la barricada! Todos retroceder!"

The crowd began moving back from the barricade. On the edge of the crowd, Zip grabbed Cooch's arm and said, "You hear that? You hear what that bull said? There's gonna be shooting!"

"With Miranda up there, there's gotta be shooting," Cooch said, his eyes wide.

"Who's Miranda?" Papa asked.

"Don't you know nothing, you dumb tiger?" Cooch said, shoving at him. "Miranda's the greatest thing ever happened to this neighborhood." He turned to Zip. "How you like this jerk? Don't know Miranda."

Zip shook his head, his eyes searching the first-floor windows for a sign of life. He could see nothing.

"When he lived around here," Cooch said to Papa, "this neighborhood really jumped, I kid you not."

"Even in my old neighborhood we knew about him," Zip said, his eyes never leaving the first-floor windows. "He was down there once, you know. I seen him. He was driving a big yellow Caddy."

"No crap?" Cooch said.

"Sure, I seen it. And he had this blonde with him. Man, you could see she was gassed completely out of her skull, just being with him. This was before things got so hot for him. Man, he was swinging then, swinging."

"A Caddy, huh?" Cooch said. "That's for me. Give me the wheel, man. I'll know just what to do with it."

"You should see the way this guy walks, Cooch," Zip said. He stepped away from the barricade and did a quick imitation. "This real cool glide, you know? Like he owns the world. That's the way to walk. Pepe walks with his head up. He ain't afraid of nothing or nobody!"

"Look at the way he got out of that Riverhead apartment!" Cooch said. "A dozen cops, and they couldn't touch him."

"Nobody can touch him," Zip said.

"Man, when he lived here, Zip, you shoulda been here, I mean it. A nice guy, you know? I mean, you think him being a big shot an' all, like he'd think us kids was dirt. But he was always nice to us, I swear. Used to hand out nickels, like that, you know? And stories? Man, the stories he used to tell us. You know, real straight-from-the-shoulder stuff. Not like the crap you get from your people."

"Man, I read you," Zip said, "If my old man gives me his pitch about the island one more time, I'm gonna lose control. Who gives a damn about customs on the island, huh? Who cares about the hospitality there, or the sunshine there, or the way the people close the doors when a stiff goes by, huh? This is here, man! This is where people are living!"

"You can bet Pepe knows how to live."

"Ohhh, brother, does he? This cat knows the story, dad! Hey, hey, look at that!"

"What?" Cooch said.

"Over there."

Two patrolmen were entering the tenement. They moved cautiously and with their revolvers drawn.

"It's about to start," Zip said, straining to see over the heads of the people in front of him. "We gotta get something to stand on, Cooch. We won't be able to see nothing this way."

"What about our other business?" Cooch asked.

Zip glanced cursorily over his shoulder, looking into the luncheonette where Jeff sat at the counter. "The sailor? Forget him. We scared him half to death."

"I mean Alfie," Cooch whispered.

For a moment, Zip seemed to have forgotten something that had kept him awake most of the night, something that had accompanied him as he'd got out of bed this morning, roaring in his mind as he dressed. For a moment, Zip seemed to make no association with the name "Alfie" and puzzlement showed plainly on his face. And then, as if being called away from something which was extremely pleasant and entertaining to take care of some simple task which was at best boring, he said, "Well, what about him?"

"We got a date, remember?"

"Of course I remember," Zip said angrily. "But how we gonna get to the church? The block's shut off. Besides, the kids with the pieces are on the other side of the street."

"Iss better this way, Zip," Sixto said. "We let heem..."

"Oh, shut up, will ya, Sixto?" Zip snapped. "Man, where'd we scrounge up this yo-yo?"

Papa burst out laughing. "You a yo-yo, Sixto," he said.

Cooch looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he said, "Zip, I can cut around the avenue and reach the kids that way. I can get those pieces for us."

Like a business magnate who cannot be bothered by a petty administrative detail, Zip answered, "Yeah, good. Gc ahead, get them. Bring them back here." His eyes wanderec up to the first-floor window again. "Man, I wonder how manj pieces Miranda has in that pad with him."

"They say he took guns from all them cops in the..."

"Oh, man, this is gonna be the unholiest! Jee-sus, is he gonna give it to them bastards! Go ahead, Cooch. Go get the pieces. Come on Sixto!"

"Where we going?"

"Get something to stand on. There's always a million boxes in that empty lot on..."

The shots exploded from inside the building, a short volley with the echoing roll of distant thunder. The crowd went instantly silent. The silence hung over the street, and then was shattered instantly when a woman in the crowd screamed. An instant chorus went up after the scream, filling the street A wisp of smoke drifted from the mouth of the building. The smoke hung on the air for an instant, silencing the crowd again, as if they had been a crowd in St. Peter's Square waiting for the smoke to rise from the Sistine Chapel, announcing the new pope, and now that they had seen the smoke, they still did not know who the pope was, and so they fell silent, and they waited.

From inside the building, a voice shouted, "Lieutenant! Lieutenant!"

9

The policemen on the rooftops and on the fire escapes, dangling from open windows perched behind parapets, seemed like a band of monkeys who had climbed into an intricate zoo gymnasium and now didn't know what to do with themselves. To say that Pepe Miranda was completely surrounded would certainly have been the understatement of the century. There were two tenements facing La Gallina, within the rather narrow confines of the cordon. These two tenements bristled with cops of every size, shape and rank — and each of these stalwart defenders of the peace was carrying a loaded and drawn revolver. An additional armory which seemed sizable and formidable enough to have stormed the gates of Stalingrad included such choice delicacies of destruction as rifles with affixed telescopic sights, submachine guns, regulation hand grenades, gas masks, tear-gas pellets, and even a flame thrower or two.

Nor did the siege confine itself to the two buildings facing La Gallina. The police had moved into the adjoining block as well, entering apartments which faced the back windows of the apartment in which Miranda, like an animal driven into a hole, was trapped. Clean white wash fluttered on the back-yard lines. Policemen leaned out of open windows, pistols drawn, peering between the fluttering underpants and brassieres. There were policemen facing the front of the apartment and policemen covering the back of it, and policemen on the roof of the building itself, ready to descend upon Miranda from above.

The adjoining rooftops were covered with the citizenry of the city. Like a bunch of hicks who had come to see a circus daredevil dive eight hundred feet into a thimbleful of water, the people of the neighborhood were anxious to see whether or not Miranda could make the dive without splattering his brains out on the sawdust. To many of these people, Miranda was simply the rebel and the underdog. Consciously or not, they were rooting for him. They wanted him to stand up to this formidable army of men in blue, blast his way out of that goddamn apartment, tip his hat, throw a kiss to the ladies, and ride off into the sunset. Perhaps all of them knew how it would really end. Perhaps they all knew that a single man, no matter how mighty, could not withstand such forces arrayed against him. But many of them nurtured the secret hope that for once, just for once, the rebel would win, the revolutionary would defeat the incumbent dynasty, the anarchist would throw his bomb and escape.

For many others, there was an undeniable cultural tie between themselves and the man in the apartment. The tie was a curious one in that they all knew Miranda was a criminal. In all probability, none of them would have welcomed Miranda into their homes. He was a dangerous man, an unreliable man, a thief and a murderer. But he was Spanish. And, in much the same way that they took pride in the work of Pablo Picasso, they took a strangely curious pride in the fact that Miranda was causing so much excitement. In their minds, there was a very thin line between fame and infamy. Miranda, whatever he had done, was a celebrity. And he was a celebrity whom most of his audience knew on a first-name basis.

For the others who watched, there was only curiosity. A man was trapped in an apartment. The other men wanted to get him out of that apartment. This was a baseball game. There were no good guys or bad guys, only two teams which were trying to win.

At the moment, Miranda's team seemed to have scored the first run. The cry of "Lieutenant! Lieutenant!" which had come from the hallway of the tenement was followed almost immediately by the sight of the man who'd shouted the words. He was a police sergeant, and he had a patrolman's arm draped over his shoulder as he dragged him into the street. The patrolman had been shot. The blood on his blue shirt was plainly visible even to the people who crowded the edges of the rooftops. The sergeant carried the man out and put him on the ground beside the radio motor patrol car. The cop inside the car immediately picked up the hand microphone and requested an ambulance. The crowd watched all this with the eyes of prophets who are noting an interesting development, but who are aware that the final outcome will have little or nothing to do with this minor incident. Miranda had shot one of the cops. That was interesting. But the fireworks were yet to come. Patiently, they awaited the fireworks. It is a rare year that has two Independence Day celebrations.

Standing alongside the wounded patrolman, sweating profusely, Lieutenant Byrnes asked, "How bad is it, Sergeant?"

"His shoulder, sir," the sergeant said. He paused, catching his breath. He was a big beefy man with graying hair. His uniform was a little too tight for him, but he didn't want to buy a new one because he expected to retire next year. When a man pays for his own working clothes, he's apt to consider replacements carefully. "Sir, you shoulda heard Miranda," he said, wedging the words in between his gasps for breath. "We was just making sure all the tenants was out of the building, sir. He began cursing in Spanish and shooting through his door. He must have fired about six shots. Two of them clipped Cassidy."

Byrnes stared at the man lying in the street. "Well, we're getting an ambulance, Sergeant. Stay with him, will you? Do whatever you can to make him comfortable."

"Excuse me," a man on the other side of the barricade said. He was a tall, thin man with penetrating blue eyes. He wore a tan tropical suit and a blue straw Panama. "Did I understand the sergeant to say...?"

"Who the hell are you?" Byrnes asked.

"I'm a reporter. I work for the city's largest afternoon tabloid. I couldn't help overhearing..."

"I know your paper," Byrnes said flatly.

"Did I understand the sergeant to say..."

"I'm busy, mister," Byrnes replied, and he went around to the other side of the squad car and picked up the hand mike.

"Nice guy, your landsman" Parker said to Hernandez. "Couple of inches lower, and Cassidy'd be dead."

"I didn't do the shooting," Hernandez said. "Miranda did."

"So who's blaming you? Listen, every race has its crumbs, ain't that so?"

"Knock it off, Parker."

"Ain't nobody blaming all the Puerto Ricans for a foul ball like Miranda. Look at yourself, for God's sake. Didn't you come from this neighborhood? So look at you now. A detective third grade. It took guts to do what you did. Hell, think of all your own people you had to arrest."

"I do my job, Parker."

"No question about it. You're a good cop, Hernandez. And it sure don't hurt to talk Spanish in a precinct like this one, does it?" He began chuckling. "Listen, who cares if you're taking unfair advantage of the rest of us poor slobs? You keep on the way you're going, and some day you'll be commissioner. Then your father can hang another picture in his candy store."

"Why do you needle me, Parker?"

"Who? Me? I needle you?"

"Why?"

"I don't needle nobody," Parker said innocently. "I'm just like you, pal. I do my job."

"And what's your job?"

"My job is keeping the streets clean. I'm a street cleaner with a gun. That's a cop's job, ain't it?"

"That's not all of a cop's job."

"No? Maybe you think I should go around holding junkies' hands, huh? I used to be that way, Hernandez. I used to be the kind of cop who felt sorry for people. Used to break my heart to tag a car even."

"I'll bet it did."

"You don't have to believe me. Ask any of the old-timers at the station. But I learned my lesson, all right. I learned my lesson."

"How?" Hernandez asked.

"Never mind," Parker answered, and he turned away.

He had been turning away for a long time now, for fourteen years, to be exact. He had been turning away from his duty as a cop, and from his duty as a man, but he excused his negligence by telling himself that he had once been the kind of cop who'd felt sorry for people, and that he'd learned his lesson since. There was a slight inaccuracy to his rationale. Andy Parker was not the kind of man who had ever felt sorry for anybody in his life. It was simply not in his make-up to exude sympathy for his fellow humans. What he probably meant was that one time he felt a closer identification with the people of the precinct than he did now.

And, to give the devil his due, Parker had once approached this somewhat elusive task of law and order with a distinctly different viewpoint. When he was a patrolman — though it never broke his heart to tag a car — he was inclined to be lenient with petty offenders, letting them off with a whack of his billet and a warning. There was, he had concluded, enough real crime going on in this precinct without persecuting decent people for minor infractions. He learned in those days that the law was open to interpretation long before it reached the law courts. He learned that the lowest arbitrator in the city's judicial system was a man who wore no legal robes at all; he was the patrolman on the beat. And so he handed down a dozen decisions each day, and his decisions definitely leaned toward giving the petty offender a break. At the same time, he felt he was tough and uncompromising with the out-and-out thief. He considered himself a good cop.

One day, the good cop who was Andy Parker was walking his beat when the proprietor of a dry goods store called him over. The man was holding the wrist of a young kid who had allegedly stolen a bolt of silk from the sidewalk stand. Parker questioned the owner, and Parker questioned the kid, and then he donned his judicial robes and said, "Well, we don't want to cause this kid any trouble, do we? Now, can't we just forget about all this?" The proprietor of the store was loath to forget about all this because the kid had allegedly passed the bolt of silk to an accomplice who had made his escape with the merchandise. But Parker kept administering his sidewalk practice, and finally everyone seemed satisfied to let the entire matter drop.

That evening, after he had changed to his street clothes, Parker went for a beer in a neighborhood bar. He had the beer, and he had a shot, and then he had another beer and another shot, and he was feeling like a pretty nice guy by the time he left the bar, and that was the last time in his life he ever felt like a pretty nice guy.

He was ambushed on his way to the subway by three men who didn't allow him the opportunity to draw his revolver. He was ambushed and beaten within an inch of his life. He lay on the sidewalk in a pool of his own blood, and when he regained consciousness he wondered why he'd been beaten or who had done the beating, and he drew what seemed to be the only logical conclusion. He figured that he had been beaten by friends of the shopowner because he'd let the kid get away with the theft of the silk.

He never did find out who had administered the beating on that lonely autumn night.

Perhaps it had been friends of the shopowner. Actually, it could have been any one of a hundred people who disliked Parker even in those days of amiability. Actually, it didn't matter who'd beat him up.

He learned several things.

The first thing he learned was that it wasn't nice to receive a beating. In the movies, a beating is usually a battle. The person getting the lumps is a fighting devil .who manages to pick off a dozen of his assailants before he is finally subdued. Then he gets up, shakes the dizziness out of his head, wipes a trickle of blood from his lip, dusts off his clothes, and narrows his eyes, leaving the audience to speculate on just what that narrowing of eyes meant. In real life, a beating is very rarely administered with fists. The men who worked over Parker on that night in autumn were all as big as he was, and they were armed with sawed-off broom handles, and they really beat the piss out of him. They kept beating him long after he was unconscious, they beat him within an inch of his life, and the cliche happened to fit the situation well because they damn near beat him to death, and he may have been a lot closer than an inch to leaving the land of the quick. He had not liked that experience at all. So the first thing he learned was that he would never again, ever, as long as he walked the earth, be on the receiving end of a beating. Ever. He learned this the way a young boy learns his catechism. I will never again take a beating. I will never again take a beating.

And the way to be certain you will never take a beating is to hit first and ask questions later. It's handy to own a policeman's badge at such times. It makes apologies to innocent people easier afterward.

The second thing that Parker learned was that he was being entirely too easy and naive in his approach to police work. From that day on, Parker would give a summons to anyone who so much as spat on the sidewalk. In fact, and curiously, from that day on Parker brought in more drunks, vagrants and innocuous offenders than any other cop working in the precinct. In his own eyes, Parker had stopped being a nice guy. He was a mean, tough son of a bitch, and he knew it. And if you didn't happen to like him, that was just too bad. Parker had a life to lead, and he knew how to lead it.

I will never again take a beating, he told himself.

I will never again take a beating.

In the luncheonette on the corner, Jeff Talbot held the wet handkerchief to the cut on the side of his face, wiping away the blood. Some of the blood had spilled onto the collar of his jumper, and he was already looking ahead to the scrub job he would have to do on it to get out the stain. Luis, behind the counter, was more concerned with the sailor's condition than with the excitement in the street outside. He watched the sailor anxiously, almost like a father.

"You all right?" he asked.

"I'm all right," Jeff replied. "What's that kid supposed to be?"

"Zip?"

"Is that his name? Yeah. Him."

"I don't know."

"I mean, what the hell, who was giving him any trouble? I was minding my own business."

"His business is minding other people's business. He'll wind up no good. Like Miranda up there."

"What I'm trying to get at ... well, what's he looking for trouble for? Is he hotheaded or something?"

Luis shrugged. "No more than most,"

"Spanish people are supposed to be hotheaded, ain't they?"

"Some are, some aren't," Luis said, shrugging again.

"We ain't got a single Spanish person in all Fletcher, you know that?" Jeff said, a touch of surprise in his voice. "I never even seen a Spanish person until today, how do you like that?"

"I never saw anybody from Fletcher until today," Luis answered.

"What I'm trying to figure out..." Jeff paused, studied the blood-smeared handkerchief, and then looked up at Luis. "Well, you seem all right."

"All right?"

"I mean ... you ain't like him." Jeff paused. "That Miranda's Spanish too, ain't he?"

"Si."

Jeff said nothing. He nodded, and then seemed to fall into silent thought.

"If you figure that way, sailor, you will be making a big mistake."

"What way?"

"You know what way. That's the easy way to figure."

"This is pretty personal with me, Louise," Jeff said. "I got to know. I ain't doing this just for the fun of it. It's ... it's important to me."

"Why is it so important to you?"

"Because, well..." He looked at the clock on the wall, and he wondered if China would keep her date with him. And then he wondered if he still wanted to see her. He frowned and said, "It's just important to me, that's all."

10

Everyone seemed ready for whatever might lie ahead.

The police in the streets and on the rooftops and in the back yard were ready. The people watching the show were ready. Zip and Sixto had obtained a large packing crate from the lot on the corner and had set it up just beyond the barricade; they were ready. And even Lieutenant Byrnes seemed ready now. He apparently had learned that his forces were deployed exactly the way he wanted them. He held a large, battery-powered megaphone, and he stepped out from behind the squad car, put the cumbersome apparatus to his mouth, blew into it several times to test the volume, and then said, "Miranda? Pepe Miranda? Can you hear me?"

His voice echoed on the silent street. The people waited for Miranda's reply, but none came.

"Can you hear me?" Byrnes said again, his voice booming out of the speaker. Again, there was silence. In the silence, the crowd seemed to catch its breath together, so that something like a sigh escaped their collective lips. "All right, I know you can hear me, so listen to what I'm saying. We've got this street and the next street blocked. There are policemen with guns in every window and on every rooftop facing that apartment, front and rear. You're trapped, Miranda. You hear that?"

Zip and Sixto clambered up onto the crate and peered over the heads of the crowd. "This is our box, you dig me?" Zip said. "Only for the Latin Purples. I don't want nobody else climbing on it."

"How about it, Miranda?" Byrnes said. "You coming out, or do we have to come in after you?"

"Why don't he answer?" Zip said impatiently. He turned to the first-floor windows, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted, "Answer him, Pepe!"

"If there's shooting around here," Byrnes said into the megaphone, "some of these people in the street might get hurt. Now how about it, are you coming out?"

There was another long silence. Byrnes waited.

"Okay," he started, "if you..." and the voice came suddenly from one of the first-floor windows. There was .no body attached to the voice, no one visible in any of the windows. The voice seemed to materialize from nowhere, a shouted voice which rang into the street, cutting off the lieutenant's words.

"Who did I shoot?"

"It's Pepe!" Zip shouted, and the cry spread through the crowd like lava rushing down a mountainside, "It's Pepe, Pepe, it's Pepe, it's Pepe, Pepe, Pepe."

"You shot one of our patrolmen," Byrnes said.

"Did I kill him?" Miranda shouted from the apartment, still invisible, his voice floating down into the street.

'Wo."

"You're lying to me. I killed him."

"You hit him in the shoulder. Are you coming out?"

"Did I kill him? Is he dead?"

"Let them come after you, Pepe!" Zip shouted.

"Miranda, we don't want to play games here. If you 're coming out..."

A new sound erupted, drowning out the words that came from the megaphone, filling the air with its familiar wail.

"What's that?" Miranda shouted.

"It's an ambulance. What do you say, Miranda?"