"The man we're looking for, Marvin..."

Jesus.

"... is someone who would've been here yesterday morning around eleven-thirty, maybe a bit later."

She was figuring half an hour or so to get uptown by cab, on a Sunday morning, when the traffic would've been light The blond man had left the hotel at a little past eleven. Placing him on Harris Avenue at eleven thirty was reasonable.

"Yeah, it's possible," Marvin said. "We start serving breakfast at six."

"Are you still serving at eleven-thirty?"

"On Sundays, yeah. We-get a big brunch crowd, serve till two-thirty, three o'clock, then open again at nine. We're open all weekend, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, dead nights here in the city."

"Were you working this past Saturday night?"

"I come on at four every night. That's when underground and the shift changes. Well, Tuesdays or Wednesdays."

"Did you come on at four this past Saturday nil "Yeah. Well, Sunday morning it was, actually." "Four A.M." right?" "Yeah."

"Were you here at eleven-thirty, twelve o'clock "Yeah, I work through till we close. Sunday's a day I put in almost twelve hours. Rest of the close at nine in the morning. It's like a breakfast we serve. For the all-night crowd."

Georgie was wondering how come, if Marvin on at four every morning but Tuesday and how come he was here, now, at three- whatever the hell it was on a Monday morning? looked at his watch. Twenty after.

So how Marvin?

Marvin was a mind reader.

"Jerry called me to come in early," he

Who's Jerry? Georgie wondered. "Cause Frank started throwing up."

Who's Frank? Georgie wondered.

"Must've been one of those flu bugs," explained.

"So today you came in early, is that what saying?" Tony asked.

"Yeah, I got here about an hour ago." "How about yesterday?"

Priscilla asked. "I got here the usual time." "Four A.M." "Right."

"The man we're looking for would've been blond,"

Priscilla said.

"You're a cop, right?" Marvin said.

"No, I'm an entertainer. You saw my card."

"How about your two friends here? Are they cops?" "Do they look like cops?" Priscilla asked. They didn't look like cops to Marvin.

"Tall blond man wearing a blue coat and a red scarf," Priscilla said.

Marvin was already shaking his head.

"See anyone like that?" Georgie asked.

He was pleased that Marvin was shaking his head. What he wanted to do now was get out of here fast, before Marvin the mind reader changed his mind.

"I don't remember anyone who looked like that," Marvin said.

Good, Tony thought. Let's get the hell out of here.

"But why don't you ask Anna?" Marvin said. "She's the one who would've taken his coat."

They finally found Jose Santiago at 3:25 A.M. that Monday. They figured that a man who kept pigeons, and also drove a fighting rooster around in the backseat of a borrowed limo, had to be a bird fancier of sorts. So they checked out the roof of his building again, and sure enough, there he was, sitting with his back against the side wall of his pigeon coop. Last time they were here, dawn was fast approaching on a cold Sunday morning. Now, on an even colder Monday morning, sunrise was still approximately four hours away, and they were no closer to learning who killed Svetlana Dyalovich on Saturday night.

Nor

did it appear that Santiago was going to offer assistance in that direction. Santiago was also very, very drunk.

"Jose Santiago?" Hawes asked.

"That is me," Santiago said.

"Detective Cotton Hawes, Eighty-seventh Sc "Mi gusto," Santiago said.

"My partner, Detective Carella." "lgualmente," Santiago said, and tilted a Don Quixote rum to his lips and took along

It was perhaps two degrees below zero out here, Santiago was wearing only blue jeans, a white shirt, and a V-necked cotton sweater. He was a slender man early thirties, Carella guessed, with curly black hair anda pale complexion, and delicate features. His brown eyes seemed out of focus, moist at the moment because he was still weeping. Immediately after the detectives introduced themselves, he seemed to be unaware of their presence. As if alone here on the roof, he kept shaking his head over and over again, weeping bitterly, clutching the rum to his narrow chest, knuckles white around the neck of the bottle. In the bitter cold, his breath plumed onto the night.

"What's the matter, Jose?" Hawes asked.

"I killed him," Santiago said. "Here in the dead of night, the pigeons still silent behind Santiago, both detectives felt themselves stiffen. But the man who'd just confessed to a killing seemed completely harmless, sitting there clutching the bottle to his chest, hot tears rolling down his face and freezing at once.

"Who'd you kill?" Hawes asked.

Voice still gentle. The night was black around them. Carella standing beside him, looking down at the sobbing man in the pink cotton sweater, ridiculous for this time of year, sitting with his knees bent, his back to the dark silent pigeon coop.

"Tell us who you killed, Jose." "Diablo." "Who's Diablo?"

"Mi herma no de sangue."

"My blood brother."

"Is that his street name? Diablo?" Santiago shook his head. "It's his real name?" Santiago nodded. "Diablo what?"

Santiago tilted the bottle again, swallowed more rum, began coughing and sobbing and choking. The detectives waited.

"What's his last name, Jose?"

Hawes again. Carella stayed out of it. Just stood there with his right hand resting inside the overlapping flap of his coat, where three buttons were unbuttoned at the waist. He may have looked a bit like Napoleon with his hand inside his coat that way, but his holster and the butt of a .38 Detective Special were only inches away from his fingertips. Santiago said nothing. Hawes tried another tack.

"When did you kill this person, Jose?"