"No, I'm not," Willis said.

"Then I won't bother you with an explanation because we're both busy men,"

Schulz said, and then went on to give along, erudite dissertation on feather sacks and quills and shafts and barbs and barbules and l hooklets and knots, all of which differed in orders of birds, did Willis happen to see the film

Alfred Hitchcock wrote?

Willis didn't think Hitchcock had written it.

"The determination of which feathers came from what order of bird is important in many investigations," Schulz said.

Like this one, Willis thought.

"I don't know whether the Caddy was being used for any illegal activity, but that's not my domain, anyway."

Domain, Willis thought.

"Suffice it to say," Schulz said, "that the feathers we recovered from the backseat of the car were chicken feathers. The shit is anybody's guess." "Chicken feathers," Willis said. "Pass it on," Schulz said.

"I will."

"I know you're busy," Schulz said, and hung up.

The second call came from Captain Sam Grossman some ten minutes later.

He told Willis that he'd

examined the clothing of the murder victim Svetlana Dyalovich and had come up with nothing of any real significance except for what he'd found on the mink.

Willis hoped he was not about to hear a dissertation on the pelts of slender-bodied, semi aquatic carnivorous mammals of the genus Mustela.

Instead, Grossman wanted to talk about fish, Willis braced himself. But Grossman got directly to the point.

"There were fish stains on the coat. Which in itself is not unusual.

People get all sorts of stains on their garments. What's peculiar about these stains is their location."

"Where were they?" Willis asked.

"High up on the coat. At the back, inside and outside, near the collar. From the location of the stains, it would appear that someone had held the coat in both hands, one at either side of the collar, thumbs outside, fingers inside."

"I can't visualize it" Willis said, shaking his head. "Have you got a book handy?"

"How about the Code of Criminal Procedure?"

"Fine. Pick it up with both hands, palms over the spine, fingers on the front cover, thumbs on the back." "Let me put down the phone."

He put down the phone. Picked up the book. Nodded. Put down the book and picked up the phone again.

"Are you saying there are fingerprints on the coat?" "No such luck,"

Grossman said. "But the stains at the back are smaller, which might've been where the thumbs gripped it near the collar. And the larger ones

inside the coat could have been left by the fingers of each hand."

"So what you're saying..."

"I'm saying someone with fish oil on his or her hands held the coat in the manner I just described. to you," he said, and hung up.

Fish oil, Willis thought. And chicken feathers. He was glad this wasn't his case.

"Anything happen while we were gone?" Carella asked.

"Same old shit," Willis said. "How are the roads?" "Lousy."

The clock on the squad room wall read eleven-forty P.M. It was twenty minutes to midnight. Cotton Hawes was just coming through the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squad room from the corridor outside. Beyond the steel mesh on the high squad room windows, it was still snowing. This meant they could add a half hour, maybe forty minutes to any outside visits they made.

"Frozen tundra out there," Hawes said, and took off his coat. Carella was leafing through the messages on his desk.

"Chicken feathers, huh?" he asked Willis. "Is what the man said,"

Willis answered. "And fish stains on the mink." "Yeah."

"What kind of fish, did Grossman say?"

"I didn't ask."

"You should have. Just for the halibut."

Willis winced.

"Meyer and Kling tossed the piano player's apartment again," he said.

"Zilch."

"That means a hundred and twenty-five K is still kicking around someplace."

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

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

"If somebody stole it," Carella said. "Otherwise, Pratt's our man."

"Alibi a mile long." "Sure, his wife."

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

"We can dismiss illegal hunting..."

"Nobody hunts chickens."

"So that leaves theft from a chicken market." "Not too many chicken markets around these days." "Lots of them in Riverhead and Majesta.

Some of the ethnics like their chickens fresh-killed. Hangover from the old country."

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

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