"No cage. Just a pillowcase over his head. Just legs showing."

"You wouldn't know this trainer, would you?" "Not personally." "Then how?"

"I looked up his name." "I'm sorry, you did what?" "On the card."

"The card."

"Yeah, the owners' names are on the card recognized him when he was carrying the bird in the ring. Remembered him driving up in the Caddy. Figured he was a big shot, you know? Caddy I mean, a movie star bird in a limo, am I right?

So I looked up his name on the card."

"And what was his name?" Carella asked, and held his breath.

"Jose Santiago," Luis said.

Priscilla and the boys could not find the club.

Their taxi drove up and down Harris Avenue forever, passing the darkened marquee of the Alhambra theater more times than they cared to count. On their last swing past it, two men in heavy overcoats, both of them bareheaded, one of them a red-head, were climbing into an automobile. Priscilla thought they looked familiar, but as she craned her neck for a better look through the fogged rear window, the car doors slammed shut behind them. A third man, smaller, slighter, and wearing a short green barn coat that looked as if it had come from L.

L. Bean or Lands' End, stood on the sidewalk, watching the car as it pulled away.

"Back up," Priscilla told the cabdriver.

"I'm not gonna spend all night here looking for this club," the cabbie said.

"Just back up, would you please?" she said. "Before he disappears, too."

The cabbie threw the car into reverse and started backing slowly toward where Luis Villada, his hands in his coat pockets, was walking away from the Alhambra. At this hour of the morning, in this neighborhood, Luis would have run like hell if this was anything but a taxi. Even so, he was wary until he saw the blond woman sitting on the backseat, lowering the window on the curbside.

"Excuse me," she called.

He stood where he was on the curb, not moving closer to the taxi because now he saw that the blond was with two men, both of them wearing hats.

didn't trust men who wore hats.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Are you familiar with a club called The Juice B "Yeah?" he said.

"Do you know where it is?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you help us find it, please?"

"There's no sign," he said.

"We can't even find the address," she said. "Half the addresses up here, the numbers are gone "It's supposed to be 1712 Harris."

"Yeah, that's up the block," he said, taking his hand from his pocket and pointing. "Between the cleaners and the carniceria. They probably don't numbers, either."

"Thank you very much."

"It's a blue door," Luis said. "You have to ring." "Thank you."

"De nada," he said, and put his hand back in his pocket, and began walking home.

He was mugged on the next corner.

His hatless assailant stole his watch, his wallet, the envelope containing the three hundred dollars the detectives had paid him for his time and his information

In this city, you could legally serve alcoholic be vera till four in the morning, but the underground operated till a bit before sunrise, when all

to be back in their coffins. The Juice Bar offered booze, beer, wine and the occasional fruit drink right up to the legal closing limit, and then to the accompaniment of a three-piece jazz band began serving anything that turned you on. At six, the club offered breakfast while alone piano player filled the air with dawn like medleys.

It was close to three o'clock when Priscilla rang the bell button set in the jamb to the right of the blue door.

"The fuck is this?" Georgie wanted to know. "Joe sent us?"

They waited.

A flap in the door opened.

Fuckin speakeasy here, Georgie thought. Priscilla held up her card. "I'm here to listen to the band," she said.

"Okay," the man behind the flap said at once, and opened the door. Fact of it was he hadn't even glanced at her card. Until four A.M. the club would be operating legally and he'd have admitted even a trio of Barbary pirates carrying swords and wearing black eye patches.

The club was constructed like a crescent moon, with the bandstand at the apogee of its arc, farthest from the entrance door. The entrance and the cloakroom were side by side on the curving flank of the arc's left horn. The bar was on the right horn, a dozen stools ranked in front of it. Priscilla and the boys left their coats with a hat check girl who flashed a welcoming smile as she handed Georgie the three claim checks. She was Wearing a black mini and a white scoop-necked blouse, and Georgie looked her up and down as if

auditioning her for a part in a movie. The a maitre d' that is to say, he was wearing a jacket offered to seat them at a table, but Priscilla said she preferred sitting at the bar, closer to the In any club, it was always the bartender who came in when and did what where. It was the bartender who had information.

The band was playing "Midnight Sun."

The tune almost brought tears to Priscilla's eyes, possibly because she realized she could never hope to play it as well as the piano player here in a Riverhead dive, possibly because her pathetic note had expressed a hope abandoned ago. Priscilla knew she would never become a pianist. The thought that Svetlana had still this a viable ambition was heartbreaking, when one considered the meager sum of money left for the achievement of such an impossible goal, had there been more in the envelope? Which, after all was why she was here looking for the tall blond man who'd delivered it. But even so, even if there'd been a million dollars in that shabby yellow packet, knew she didn't have, would never have the How could she even begin to approach a beast like presto agitato movement of the Moonlight when she hadn't yet truly mastered the chart "Midnight Sun"? She dabbed at her eyes and

Grand Marnier on the rocks. The boys ordered again.

The bartender looked like an actor.

Every would-be actor in this city was a bartender or a waiter.

Long black hair pulled into a ponytail. Soulful brown eyes. Delicate, long-fingered hands. Great profile.

His name was Marvin.

Change it, Priscilla thought.

I'll tell you why we're here, Marvin," she said. Marvin. Jesus.

He was looking at her card, impressed. He figured the two goons were bodyguards, Lady played piano at the Powell, she needed bodyguards. He hoped that one day, when he was a matinee idol, or a movie star, or both, he would have bodyguards of his own. Meanwhile he was honored that she was here in their midst. Shitty little dump like this, hey.