eat shit!" at the bouncer who'd told them the club was now closed and then politely but firmly showed them

the front door, they came reeling out onto the sidewalk and stood uncertainly toggling their parkas closed, pulling the hoods up over their heads, wrapping their blue and white mufflers, trying to light cigarettes, burping, farting, giggling, and finally throwing their arms around each other and going into a football huddle.

"What we need to do now," Richard the First said, "is to get ourselves laid."

"That's a good idea," Richard the Third said. "Where can we find some girls?"

"Uptown?" Richard the First suggested.

"Then let's go uptown," Richard the Second agreed. They clapped out of the huddle.

Uptown, Yolande was Climbing into another automobile.

The three Richards hailed a taxi.

Jimmy Jackson's kids knew there was a black Santa Claus because they'd seen one standing alongside a fake chimney and ringing a bell outside a department store downtown on Hall Avenue after their mother had taken them to sit on the lap of a white Santa Claus inside. The white Santa apparently hadn't listened all that hard because James Jr. hadn't got the bike he'd asked for, and Millie hadn't got this year's hot doll, and Terrence hadn't got this year's hot warrior. So when the doorbell rang at a quarter to five that Sunday morning, they ran to wake up their father because they figured this might be the black bell ringing Santa coming back to make amends for the white department-store Santa's oversights.

Jimmy Jackson was only mildly annoyed to be awakened by his kids so early on a Sunday mornin when his mother-in-law was coming to visit, not to mention his sister Naydelle and her two screamin brats. He became singularly irritated, however, when he opened the door and found it wasn't no joke but, really two honkie dicks, just like they'd said through the wood, standing there with gold and blue badges in their hands. On a Sunday no less, did the motherfuckers have no consideration whatever?

The kids were asking if he would make pancakes. since everybody was up, anyway.

Jackson told them to go ask their mother.

"So whut is it?" he said to the cops.

"Mr. Jackson," Carella said, "we realize it's early in the morning..."

"Yeah, yeah, whut is it?"

"But we're investigating a homicide..."

"Yeah, yeah."

"And we're trying to track the murder weapon." Jackson looked at them.

He was a tall, rangy, very dark man, wearing a over pajamas, his eyes still bleary from sleep, his mouth pulled into a thin angry line. Man had a right to the sancty of his own home on Sunday morning, he was thinking, th out these motherfuckers comin roun. Murder weapon my ass, he was thinking.

"Is this about that damn gun again?" he asked.

From somewhere in the apartment, a woman asked, "Who is it, James?"

"It's

the police," one of the children shouted gleefully. "Can Daddy make pancakes now?"

"The police?" she said. "James?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said.

"It's about the gun again, yes," Hawes said.

"I tole Pratt I dinn see no damn gun in his car. Nobody seen that damn gun. You want my opinion, that gun is a fiction of Pratt's imagination."

No one had yet invited them into the apartment. Mrs. Jackson came down the hall now in a robe and slippers, a perplexed frown on her face. She was a tall woman with the bearing of a Masai warrior, the pale yellow eyes of a panther. She didn't like cops here scaring her kids, and she was ready to tell them so.

"What's this," she said, "five o'clock in the mornin?"

"Ma'am," Carella said, "we're sorry to be bothering you, but we're working a homicide and..."

"What's anybody in this household got to do with a homicide?"

"We're simply trying to find out when the murder weapon disappeared from the owner's car. That's all." "What car?" she asked.

"Caddy was in for service," her husband explained.

"You work on that Caddy?"

"No. Gus did."

"Then why they botherin you?" she said, and turned to the cops again.

"Why you botherin my man?"

"Because an old lady was killed," Carella said simply.

Mrs. Jackson looked into their faces.

"Come in," she said, "I'll make some coffee." They went into the apartment. Jackson closed the door behind them, double-bolted it, and put on the safety chain. The apartment was cold; in this city, in

this building, they couldn't expect heat to start comin up till six-thirty, seven o'clock. The radiators will begin clanging then, loud enough to wake the dead. Meanwhile, all was silent, all was chilly. The children wanted to hang around. This was better than TV. Jackson hushed them off to bed again. Husband and wife sat at the small kitchen table with the two detectives, drinking coffee like family. This was A.M." it was pitch-black outside. They could hear police sirens, ambulance sirens wailing into the night. All four of them could tell the difference; sirens the nocturnes of this city.

"That car was a headache minute it come in," Jackson said. "I'da been the night man, I'da tole go get a tow truck, haul that wreck outta here, trouble'n it's worth. Had to turn away two, three cars the next day, cause Gus had that damn Caddy on the lift. When I finely figured we were done with it. I come in yesterday mornin, the car's a mess. Man'

coming in to pick it up at ten, it's a mess like I seen before in my life."

"What do you mean? Was there still trouble with the engine?" Carella asked.

"No, no. This was inside the car."

Both detectives looked at him, puzzled. So did his wife.

"Somebody musta left the window open when they moved it outside," Jackson said.

They were still looking at him, all three of them trying to figure out what kind of mess he was talkin about.

"You see The Birds he asked. "That movie Alfred Hitchcock wrote.?"

Carella didn't think Hitchcock had written it. "Birds tryin'a kill people all over the place?" "Whut about it?" Mrs. Jackson asked impatiently.

"Musta been birds got in the car," Jackson said. "Maybe cause it was so cold."