Carella and Hawes got to The Juice Bar about five minutes after Priscilla and the boys left. Marvin the bartender and Anna the hat check girl both felt it was deja vu all over again. Just a few minutes ago, three people who might, have been under-covers had been here asking about a tall blond man, and now here were two more very definite detectives flashing badges and

asking about the same tall blond man. Then Carella and Hawes asked exactly what they had told Priscilla and the boys.

So now five people were looking for a guy named Bernie Himmel.

The cops had an edge.

At this hour, The Silver Chief Diner was populated with predators. The morning shifts not begin till eight, and any honest person with a job office cleaners and hospital personnel, employees and cops, night watchmen, bakery cabdrivers, short-order cooks, hotel workers, takers was still busy earning a living. Here in the diner, there were mainly prostitutes and burglars and muggers, dealers and users, occasional noncriminal sprinkling of drunk insomniacs, or writers with blocks.

Ollie sorted the wheat from the chaff at once. The minute he got in, every thief in the joint recognized him for what he was, too. None of them even glanced in his

direction He went straight to the counter, took a stool, ordered a cup of coffee from a redheaded girl in a green uniform. Her name tag read SALLY.

"You serve Indian food here?" he asked. "No, sir, we sure don't,"

Sally said. "Native American food?" he asked. "Nor that neither,"

she said.

"Then how come you call yourself the Silver Chief?."

"It's spose to be like a train," she said.

"Oh yeah?"

"That's what it's spose to be, yes, sir." "What part of the South you from, Sally?" "Tennessee," she said.

"You serve grits here, Sally?" / "No, sir."

"You serve hominy?"

"No, sir."

"How about a nice hot cup of coffee then? And one of those donuts there."

"Yes, sir," she said.

Ollie looked the place over again. Each time his gaze fell upon someone who'd been out victimizing tonight, eyes turned away. Good, he thought Shit your pants. Sally came back with his coffee and donut.

"I'm a police officer," he said, and showed her his shield. "Were you working here on Saturday night around this time, a little bit later?"

"I was," she said.

"I'm looking for a blond girl who was wearing a black mini and a red fur jacket."

He didn't mention that she was dead.

"Fake fur," he said. "Fake blonde, too."

"We get lots of those in here," Sally said, and with a faint tilt of her head indicated that lots of those were in here right this very minute, sitting at tables hither and yon behind Ollie.

"How about Saturday night? Remember a blonde in a red fur jacket?"

"I sure don't," Sally said.

"How about three white guys in blue hooded parkas?"

"Nope."

"Or a black guy in a black leather jacket."

"We get thousands of black guys in black jackets."

"These three white guys would've been in the gutter."

"Where?"

"Outside there," Ollie said, jerking his head and shoulder toward the front windows of the diner. "This weather?" Sally said, and laughed. Ollie laughed, too.

"Need Willie warmers, this weather," Sally said Black guy would've run out the diner, told them to stop peeing."

"Can't blame him," Sally said, and began laughing again.

Ollie laughed, too.

"How do you know all this fascinating stuff?." Sally asked.

Ollie figured she was flirting with him. women preferred men with a little girth, as he had.

"Three black guys outside told me," he said. "Oh, those three." ....

"You know them?"

"They're out there every night."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, they're crazy."

"Yeah? Crazy?"

"Yeah, they just got out of Buenavista a few ago."

"Buenavista, huh?"

"Yeah. What they do, these mental hospitals, medicate all these psychos till they're stabilized.

they let them loose on the streets with prescriptions they don't bother filling. Before you know it, they're acting nutty all over again. I saw a man talking to a mailbox the other day, would you believe it? Holding along conversation with a mailbox. Those three guys out there stand around that fire all night like it's some kind of shrine. The one who looks like Morgan Fairchild..."

"That's his name!" Ollie said and snapped his fingers.

"He's the nuttiest of them all. Anything he told you, I'd take with a grain of salt."

"He told me these three white guys were peeing in the gutter when this black man in a black leather jacket came running out of here to stop them."