Falling Angel

First Look

at a new novel

It was friday the 13th and yesterday's snowstorm lingered in the streets like a leftover curse. The slush outside was ankle-deep. Across Seventh Avenue, a treadmill parade of light-bulb headlines marched endlessly around Times Tower's terra-cotta façade.

"Hawaii is voted into union as 50th state: house grants final approval, 323 to 89; Eisenhower's signature of bill assured." ... Hawaii, sweet land of pineapples and Haleloke; ukuleles strumming, sunshine and surf, grass skirts swaying in the tropical breeze.

I spun my chair around and stared out at Times Square. My office was two flights up, in a line with Olga's Electrolysis, Teardrop Imports, Inc., and Ira Kipnis, C.P.A. Eight-inch gold letters gave me the edge over the others: Crossroads detective agency, a name I had bought along with the business from Ernie Cavalero, who took me on as his legman back when I first hit the city during the war.

I was about to go out for coffee when the phone rang. "Mr. Harry Angel?" a distant secretary trilled. "Herman Winesap of McIntosh, Winesap and Spy calling."

I grunted something pleasant and she put me on hold.

Herman Winesap's voice was as slick as the greasy kid stuff hair-oil companies like to warn you about. He introduced himself as an attorney.

"The reason I called, Mr. Angel, was to ascertain whether your services were at present available for contract."

"Would this be for your firm?"

"No. I'm speaking in behalf of one of our clients. Are you available for employment?"

"Depends on the job. You'll have to give me some details."

"My client would prefer to discuss them with you in person. He has suggested that you have lunch with him today. One o'clock sharp at the Top of the Six's."

"Maybe you'd like to give me the name of this client, or do I just look for some guy wearing a red carnation?"

"Have you a pencil handy? I'll spell it for you."

I wrote the name Louis Cyphre on my desk pad and asked how to pronounce it.

Herman Winesap did a swell job, rolling his Rs like a Berlitz instructor. I asked if the client was a foreigner.

"Mr. Cyphre carries a French passport. I am not certain of his exact nationality. Any questions you might have, no doubt, he'll be happy to answer at lunch. May I tell him to expect you?"

"I'll be there, one o'clock sharp."

Attorney Herman Winesap made some final unctuous remarks before signing off. I hung up and lit one of my Christmas Montecristos in celebration.

•

Six sixty-six Fifth Avenue was an unhappy marriage of the International Style and our own home-grown tail-fin technology. I took an express elevator to the top floor, got a number from the hatcheck girl and followed the maître de back through a polite murmuring of executives to a small table by a window. Seated there in a custom-made blue pinstripe suit with a blood-red rosebud in his lapel was a man who might have been anywhere between 45 and 60. His hair was black and full, combed straight back on a high forehead, yet his square-cut goatee and pointed mustache were white as ermine. A tiny, inverted, five-pointed golden star gleamed on his maroon silk necktie. "I'm Harry Angel," I said, as the maître de pulled out my chair. "A lawyer named Winesap said there was something you wanted to speak to me about."

"I like a man who's prompt," he said. "Drink?"

I ordered a double manhattan, straight up; Cyphre tapped his glass with a manicured finger and said he'd have one more of the same. It was easy to imagine those pampered hands gripping a whip. Nero must have had such hands. And Jack the Ripper. They were the hands of emperors and assassins. Languid, yet lethal, the cruel, tapered fingers perfect instruments of evil.

Cyphre withdrew a gold-and-leather cigar case from his inside breast pocket, opened it and selected a slender, greenish panatela. "Care for a smoke?" I declined the proffered case and watched Cyphre trim the end of his cigar with a silver penknife.

"Do you by any chance remember the name Johnny Favorite?" he asked, warming the panatela's slim length in the flame of his butane lighter.

I thought it over. "Wasn't he a crooner with a swing band back before the war?"

"That's the man. An overnight sensation, as the press agents like to say. Sang with the Spider Simpson orchestra in 1940."

"Johnny Favorite's before my time. In 1940, I was just out of high school, a rookie cop in Madison, Wisconsin."

Cyphre's features were shrouded in blue smoke as he puffed his cigar. It smelled like excellent tobacco and I regretted not taking one when I had the chance. "This is a city of outsiders," he said. "I'm one myself."

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Let us say I'm a traveler."

"Fine with me. Why did you ask about Johnny Favorite?"

The waiter set our drinks on the table with less intrusion than a passing shadow.

"A pleasant voice, all things considered." Cyphre raised his glass to eye level in a silent European toast. "I took Johnny under my wing when he was getting started. He was a brash, skinny kid from the Bronx. Mother and father both dead. His real name wasn't Favorite, it was Jonathan Liebling. He changed it for professional reasons. Do you know what happened to him?"

I said I had no idea whatsoever.

"He was drafted in January 'Forty-three. Because of his professional talents, he was assigned to the Special Entertainment Services Branch and in March he joined a troop show in Tunisia. I'm not certain of the exact details; there was an air raid one afternoon during a performance. The Luftwaffe strafed the bandstand. Most of the troupe was killed. Johnny, through some quirk of fortune, escaped with facial and head injuries. Escaped is the wrong word. He was never the same again. I can't be very precise about his condition. Some form of shell shock, I suppose."

I said I knew something about shell shock myself.

"Really? Were you in the war, Mr. Angel?"

"For a few months right at the start. I was one of the lucky ones."

"Well, Johnny Favorite was not. He was shipped home, a total vegetable."

"That's too bad," I said, "but where do I fit in? What, exactly, do you want me to do?"

Cyphre stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray and toyed with the age-yellowed ivory holder. "Be patient with me, Mr. Angel. I'm getting to the point, however circuitously. I gave Johnny some help at the start of his career. I was never his agent, but I was able to use my influence in his behalf. In recognition of my assistance, which was considerable, we had a contract. Certain collateral was involved. This was to be forfeited in the event of his death. I'm sorry that I can't be more explicit, but the terms of our agreement specified that the details remain confidential.

"In any event, Johnny's case was hopeless. He was sent to a veterans' hospital in New Hampshire, one of the unfortunate discards of war. But Johnny had friends and money, a good deal of money. Some of this money was invested, with Johnny's agent having power of attorney."

"The plot begins to grow complicated," I said.

"Indeed it does, Mr. Angel." Cyphre tapped his ivory cigar holder absently against the rim of his empty glass, making the crystal chime like distant bells. "Friends of Johnny's had him transferred to a private hospital on the Hudson."

"Do you know the names of these friends?"

"No. I hope you won't consider me entirely mercenary when I tell you that my continuing interest in Jonathan Liebling concerns only our contractual arrangement. All that matters is whether he is alive or dead. Once or twice each year, my attorneys contact the hospital and obtain from them a notarized affidavit stating he is, indeed, still among the living. This situation remained unchanged until last weekend."

"What happened then?"

"Something very curious. Johnny's hospital is outside Poughkeepsie. I was in that vicinity on business and decided to pay my old acquaintance a visit. At the hospital, I was told visiting hours were on weekday afternoons only. I insisted, and the doctor in charge made an appearance. He informed me that Johnny was undergoing special therapy and could not be disturbed until the following Monday."

I said, "Sounds like you were getting the run-around."

"Indeed. There was something about the fellow's manner I didn't like." Cyphre slipped his cigar holder into his vest pocket. "I stayed over until Monday and returned to the hospital, during visiting hours. I never saw the doctor again, but when I gave Johnny's name, the girl at the reception desk asked if I was a relative. Naturally, I said no. She said only family members were permitted to visit with the patients."

"No mention of this the previous time around?"

"Not a word. I'm afraid I made something of a scene. That was a mistake. The receptionist threatened to call the police unless I left immediately."

"What did you do?"

"I left. It's a private hospital. I didn't want any trouble. That's why I'm engaging your services."

"You want me to go up there and check it out for you?"

"Exactly." Cyphre turned his palms upward like a man showing he had nothing to hide. "First, I need to know if Johnny Favorite is still alive. If he is, I'd like to know where."

I reached inside my jacket and got out a small leather-bound notebook and a mechanical pencil. "Sounds simple enough. What's the name and address of the hospital?"

"The Emma Dodd Harvest Memorial Clinic; it's located east of the city on Pleasant Valley Road."

I wrote it down and asked the name of the doctor who had given Cyphre the run-around.

"Fowler. I believe the first name was either Albert or Alfred."

I made a note of it. "Is Favorite registered under his actual name?"

"Yes. Jonathan Liebling."

"That should do it." I put the notebook back and got to my feet. "How can I get in touch with you?"

"Through my attorney would be best." Cyphre smoothed his mustache with the tip of his forefinger. "But you're not leaving? I thought we were having lunch."

"Hate to miss a free meal, but if I get started right away, I can make it up to Poughkeepsie before quitting time."

•

My six-year-old Chevy was parked in the Hippodrome Garage on 44th, near Sixth Avenue. By two o'clock, I was heading north up the West Side Highway. I reached the outskirts of Poughkeepsie a little after three and found Pleasant Valley Road without spotting a single Vassar girl. Five miles out of town, I came to a walled estate with large bronze letters in the brickwork: Emma Dodd Harvest Memorial Clinic. I turned off onto a graveled drive and meandered through dense hemlock, emerging in front of a six-story red-brick Georgian building that looked more like a college dormitory than a hospital.

Inside, the place was all hospital, walls a pale, institutional green and the gray linoleum floor clean enough to operate on. A glass-topped admissions desk was built into a recessed alcove along one wall. Straight ahead, I could see a gleaming corridor where a white-clad orderly pushing an empty wheelchair turned a corner and disappeared from view.

The girl behind the admissions desk was young and homely. She wore a small black name tag that said, R. Fleece. "May I help you?" Miss Fleece had a voice as sweet as angel's breath. Fluorescent light glinted on her thick, rimless glasses.

"I certainly hope so," I said. "My name is Andrew Conroy: I do field work for the National Institutes of Health." I set my black calfskin attaché case on the glass-topped desk and showed her some fake I.D. in an extra wallet I carry as a dummy.

Miss Fleece regarded me suspiciously, her dim, watery eyes wavering behind the thick lenses like tropical fish in an aquarium. "Is there anyone in particular you'd like to see, Mr. Conroy?" she asked, experimenting with a weak smile.

"Perhaps you'll know the answer to that." I slipped my dummy wallet back inside my jacket. "The institute is conducting a survey of incurable trauma cases, gathering information about surviving victims in private hospitals. I understand you have a patient here fitting that description."

"What is the patient's name, please?"

"Jonathan Liebling. Any information you can provide will be kept strictly confidential."

"One moment, please." The homely receptionist with the heavenly voice retreated into the inner office. She returned carrying an open manila folder and slid it across the glass top in front of me. "We did have such a patient at one time, but he was transferred to the VA hospital up in Albany years ago. These are his records."

The transfer was duly recorded on the form and, beside it, the date, 5/12/45. I got out my notebook and went through the motions of jotting down a few statistics. "Who was the physician attending this case?"

She reached over and turned the folder so she could read it. "It was Dr. Fowler." She tapped the name with her forefinger.

"He still work here in the hospital?"

"Why, of course. He's on duty right now. Would you like to speak with him?"

"If it's no trouble."

She made another attempt at a smile. "I'll call and see if he's free." She stepped to the switchboard and spoke quietly into a small microphone. Her amplified voice echoed down a distant corridor: "Dr. Fowler to the reception desk, please ... Dr. Fowler to the reception desk."

Dr. Fowler appeared as if out of nowhere, cat-silent on his crepe-soled shoes. He wore a rumpled brown herringbone suit several sizes too large. I guessed him to be somewhere near 70.

Miss Fleece introduced me as Mr. Conroy and I fed him the line about the NIH, adding, "If there's anything you can tell me regarding Jonathan Liebling, I'd appreciate it very much."

Dr. Fowler picked up the manila folder. It might have been palsy that made his fingers tremble, but I had my doubts.

"So long ago," he said. "He was an entertainer before the war. Sad case. There was no physical evidence of neural damage, yet he didn't respond to treatment. There seemed no point in keeping him here, so we transferred him to Albany. He was a veteran and entitled to a bed for the rest of his life."

"Well, doctor, I won't take up any more of your time."

"That's quite all right. Sorry I couldn't be more help."

"Not at all; you've been very helpful." And he had. One look at his eyes told the whole story.

•

I drove back into Poughkeepsie, stopping at the first bar and grill I came across. First, I called the VA hospital in Albany and they confirmed what I already knew: There never was a transfer patient named Jonathan Liebling. Not in 1945; not any time. Next, I looked up Dr. Fowler and wrote the address and phone number in my notebook.

South Kittridge was a pleasant, tree-lined street not many blocks from the campus. The doctor's house was a carpenter Gothic Victorian with elaborate scrollwork hanging under the eaves like lace on an old lady's collar. Tall lilac hedges screened the yard on either side from the neighboring houses.

The front door framed a beveled-glass oval, allowing a glimpse of a dim, wainscoted hall and a set of carpeted steps leading up to the second floor. I rang the bell twice and waited. No one came. I rang again and tried the door. It was locked. The lock was at least 40 years old and I had nothing to fit it.

I went along the side veranda trying each window without success. Around back, there was a lean-to cellar door. It was padlocked. I got a jimmy out of my attaché case and pried off the hasp.

The steps were dark, festooned with cobwebs. A coal furnace crouched in the center of the cellar like a pagan idol. I found the stairs and started up.

The door at the top was unlocked and I stepped into a kitchen that would have been a modern miracle during the Hoover Administration. There was a gas range with tall curving legs and a refrigerator whose circular motor perched on top like a hatbox. I left my case on the oilcloth-covered kitchen table and cased the rest of the house.

The dining room and front parlor looked never used. Dust powdered dark, ponderous furniture. Upstairs were three bedrooms. The closets in two were empty. The smallest, with a single iron bed and plain oak dresser, was where Dr. Fowler lived.

I had a look through his dresser, not finding anything other than shirts, handkerchiefs and cotton underwear. Several musty woolen suits hung in the closet. I felt the pockets and didn't turn up a thing. In his bedside table, lying next to a small leather-bound Bible, was a 455-caliber Webley Mark 5 revolver. That was the sidearm issued to British officers in World War One. Bibles were optional. I checked the break-front action, but the Webley wasn't loaded.

In the bathroom, I got lucky. A sterilizer was steaming on the washstand. Inside, I found a half-dozen needles and three syringes. The medicine cabinet yielded nothing. I examined several vials containing prescription capsules. None was narcotic.

I knew it had to be somewhere, so I went back downstairs and had a look in the old-fashioned fridge. It was on the same shelf with the milk and eggs. Morphine; at least 20 50-c.c. bottles at rough count. Enough to keep a dozen junkies stoned for a month.

•

It grew dark outside by degrees, the bare trees in the front yard becoming silhouettes against a cobalt sky before merging into blackness. A few minutes before seven, the headlights of an automobile turned into the driveway. I listened for the doctor's footsteps on the porch but didn't hear a tiling until his key turned in the lock. He hung his overcoat on the banister and shuflled toward the kitchen. When he turned on the lights, I started back through the dining room.

He had the refrigerator door open and was bent over, poking around inside. "About time for your evening fix?" I said.

He spun around, clutching a milk carton to his shirt front with both hands. "How did you get in here?"

"Through the mail slot. Why don't you sit down and drink your milk and we'll have a nice long talk."

"You're not with NIH. Who are you?"

"The name is Angel. I'm a private investigator from the city." I pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and he sat down wearily, holding the milk as if it were all he had left in the world.

"Breaking and entering is a serious crime," he said. "You'd lose your license if I were to call the police."

I turned a chair around across the table from him and straddled it. "We both know you're not calling the law. Too embarrassing if they found the opium den in the icebox."

"I'm a medical man. It's perfectly within my rights to store pharmaceuticals at home."

"Come off it, doc; I saw your works (continued from page 178) Falling Angel (continued from page 118) cooking in the bathroom. How long have yon been hooked?"

"I'm not ... an addict!" Dr. Fowler sagged within the folds of his oversized suit. He seemed to be shrinking before my eyes. "What do you want with me?" He propped his head in his hands.

"Same thing I was after back at the hospital," I said. "Information about Jonathan Liebling."

"I've told you everything I know."

"Doc, let's not kid around. Liebling was never transferred to any VA hospital. I know because I called Albany myself and checked it. Not smart making up a story as thin as that."

Dr. Fowler groaned. "I knew it was all over when he finally had a visitor. In almost 15 years, there were never any visitors, not one."

"Sounds like a popular guy," I said. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know." Dr. Fowler pulled himself upright. It seemed to take all he had in him to get the job done. "I haven't seen him since he was my patient during the war."

"He must have gone someplace, doctor."

"I have no idea where. Some people came one night long ago. He got into a car with them and drove away. I never saw him again."

"Into a car? I thought he was supposed to be a vegetable."

The doctor rubbed his eyes and blinked. "When he first came to us, he was in a coma. But he responded well to treatment and within a month was up and around. We used to play table tennis in the afternoons."

"Then he was normal when he left?"

"Normal? Hateful word, normal." Dr. Fowler's nervous, drumming fingers clenched into fists on the faded oilcloth. On his left hand, he wore a gold signet ring engraved with a five-pointed star. "To answer your question, Liebling was not the same as you or me. After recovering his senses, he continued to suffer from acute amnesia."

"You mean he had no memory?"

"None whatsoever. Not even his name meant anything to him. I said he left with friends; I have only their word for it about that. Jonathan Liebling didn't recognize them. They were strangers to him."

"Tell me more about these friends. Who were they? What were their names?"

The doctor pressed his trembling fingers to his temples. "It's been so long. Years and years. I've done my best to forget it."

"Don't you go pleading amnesia on me, doc."

"There were two of them," he said, speaking very slowly, the words dragged out of the distance and filtered through layers of regret. "A man and a woman. I can't tell you anything about the woman; it was dark and she stayed in the car. I'd never seen her before. The man was the one who made all the arrangements."

"What was his name?"

"He said it was Edward Kelley."

I made a note in my little black book. "What about the arrangements you mentioned? What was the deal there?"

"Money." The doctor spat the word out as if it were a piece of rotten meat. "Isn't every man supposed to have his price?"

"How much money?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars."

"What did Kelley want for the money?"

"What you probably already suspect; discharge Jonathan Liebling without keeping a record. Destroy any evidence of his recovery. Most important, I was to maintain the pretense that he was still a patient at Emma Harvest Memorial."

"Which is just what you did."

"It wasn't very difficult. Aside from Kelley, he never had any visitors."

"What about the hospital? Didn't the administration suspect it was missing a patient?"

"Why should they? I kept his charts up to date, week by week; and every month a check came from Liebling's trust fund to cover his expenses. As long as the bills are paid, no one is going to ask too many questions. After a while, all I had to do was fill out a legal affidavit that arrived every six months from a law firm in New York."

"McIntosh, Winesap and Spy?"

"That's the one." Dr. Fowler raised his haunted eyes from the tabletop and met my gaze.

"Tell me about Jonathan Liebling."

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything at all; little things, habits, hobbies, how he liked his eggs. What color were his eyes?"

"I can't remember."

"Give me what you can. Start with a physical description."

"I have no idea what he looked like."

"Don't crap around with me, doc."

"I'm telling the truth. Young Liebling came to us following intensive facial restoration."

"Plastic surgery?"

"Yes. His head was swathed in bandages for his entire stay. I wasn't the one who changed the dressings and so had no opportunity to see his face."

I stood up and leaned against the table. "Give me what you can about Edward Kelley."

"It's been a long time," the doctor said, "and people change."

"Having another amnesia attack?"

"It's been more than fifteen years. What do you expect?"

"Doc, you're stalling me." I reached down and took hold of the knot in his necktie. When I lifted, he came up to meet me as easily as an empty husk. "Save yourself some trouble. Don't make me squeeze the truth out of you."

"I've told you all I can."

"Why are you shielding Kelley?"

"I'm not. I hardly knew him. I——"

"If you weren't such an old fart, I'd bust you up like a soda cracker." I jerked the knot in his tie a touch tighter. "Why wear myself out when there's an easier way?" Dr. Fowler's bloodshot eyes broadcast his fear. "You're in a cold sweat, aren'f you, doc? Can't wait to main-line the junk in your fridge."

"Everyone needs something to help him forget," he whispered.

"I don't want you to forget. I want you to remember." I took him by his arm and steered him from the kitchen. "That's why we're going upstairs to your room, where you can think things over while I go out and grab a bite to eat."

"What do you want to know? Kelley had dark hair and one of those thin mustaches Clark Gable made popular."

"Not good enough, doc." I bullied him up the stairs by the collar of his tweed jacket. "A couple hours' cold turkey should refresh your memory." I pushed him through the narrow door of his Spartan room and he fell forward onto the bed. "You think it over, doc."

"Had perfect teeth. The most engaging smile. Please don't go."

I closed the door behind me and turned the long-handled key in the lock.

•

It was after midnight when I got back to Dr. Fowler's place. I let myself in the front door and walked back through the dark hall to the kitchen. The refrigerator purred in the shadows. I took a bottle of morphine off the top shelf to bait the hook and started upstairs. The bedroom door was locked tight.

"Be right with you, doc," I called, fumbling in my pockets for the key. "I brought you a little taste."

I turned the key and opened the door. Dr. Albert Fowler didn't say a word. He was propped against the pillows, still wearing the brown herringbone suit. The framed photograph of a woman was clutched to his chest in his left hand. In his right, he held the Webley Mark 5. He was shot through the right eye. Thickened blood welled in the wound like ruby tears. Concussion drove the other eye halfway out of its socket, giving him the goggling stare of a tropical fish.

I touched the back of his hand. It was cold as something hanging in a butcher-shop window. Before I touched anything else, I opened my attaché case and put on a pair of latex surgeon's gloves I took from the snap-front pocket inside the lid.

The door was locked and I had the key in my pocket. Suicide was the only logical explanation. "And if thine eye offend thee," I muttered, trying to put my finger on what was out of place.

I picked the leather-bound Bible off the bedside table and an open box of cartridges tumbled out onto the rug. The book was hollow inside, a dummy. I was the dummy for not finding the bullets earlier. I picked them off the floor, groping under the bed for strays, and put them back inside the empty Bible.

I went over the room with my handkerchief, wiping everything I had touched during my initial search. The Poughkeepsie police wouldn't exactly be charmed by the idea of an out-of-town private eye bullying one of their prominent citizens into suicide. I told myself if it was suicide, they wouldn't look for prints and kept on wiping.

The drive back to the city provided plenty of time for thought. I didn't like the idea that I had hounded an old man to his death. It was a bad mistake locking him up with a gun like that. Bad for me, because the doc had a lot more to tell.

I tried to fix the scene in my mind like a photo. Dr. Fowler stretched on the bed with a hole in his eye and his brains spread across the counterpane. The framed photograph from up on the bureau was locked in the doctor's cooling grip. His finger rested on the revolver's trigger.

No matter how many times I went over the scene, there was something missing, a piece gone out of the puzzle. But which piece? And where did it fit? I had nothing to go on but my instincts. A nagging hunch that wouldn't let go. I was sure Dr. Albert Fowler's death was not suicide. It was murder.

•

Monday morning was fair and cold. It was a little after ten when I unlocked the inner-office door. The usual bad news across the street: "New iraq attack on syria alleged ... Guard wounded in border incursion by band of 30...." I phoned Herman Winesap's Wall Street law firm and the machine-tooled secretary put me straight through.

"And what might I do for you today, Mr. Angel?" the attorney asked, his voice smooth as a well-oiled hinge.

"I tried calling you over the weekend, but the maid said you were out at Sag Harbor."

"I keep a place there where I can relax. No phone. Has something important come up?"

"That information would be for Mr. Cyphre. I couldn't find him in the phone book, either."

"Your timing is perfect. Mr. Cyphre is sitting across from me this very moment. I'll put him on."

There was the muffled sound of someone speaking with his hand over the receiver and then I heard Cyphre's polished accent purring on the other end. "So good of you to call, sir," he said. "I'm anxious to know what you found out."

I told him most of what I'd learned in Poughkeepsie, leaving out the death of Dr. Fowler. When I finished, I heard only heavy breathing on the other end.

"I want you to find him," Cyphre said. "I don't care how long it takes or how much it costs, I want that man found."

"That's a pretty tall order, Mr. Cyphre. Fifteen years is a long time. The trail is bound to be cold as ice. Your best bet would be the Missing Persons Bureau."

"No police. This is a private matter. I don't want a lot of nosy civil servants." Cyphre's voice was acid with patrician scorn.

"They've got the manpower for the job," I said. "Favorite could be anywhere in the country or abroad. I'm just one man on my own. I can't be expected to accomplish the same results as an organization with an international information network."

The acid in Cyphre's voice grew more corrosive. "What it boils down to, Mr. Angel, is simply this: Do you want the job or not? If you are not interested, I will engage someone else."

"Oh, I'm interested, all right, Mr. Cyphre, but it wouldn't be fair to you as my client if I underestimated the difficulty of the project." Why did Cyphre make me feel like a child?

"What I want you to do is get started right away. I'll leave the approach up to you. Do whatever you think best. The key to the whole operation, however, must remain discretion."

"I can be discreet as a father-confessor when I try," I said.

"I'm sure you can, Mr. Angel. I'm instructing my attorney to make you out a check for five hundred dollars in advance."

I said that $500 would certainly take care of things and we hung up. The urge to crack the office bottle for a self-congratulatory toast was never stronger, but drinking before lunch was bad luck.

I started by calling Walt Rigler, a reporter I knew over at the Times. "What can you tell me about Johnny Favorite?" I asked, after the prerequisite snappy patter.

"Johnny Favorite? You must be kidding. Why don't you ask me the names of the other guys who sang with Bing Crosby in the Rhythm Boys?"

"Seriously, can you dig anything up on him?"

"I'm sure the morgue has a file. Give me five or ten minutes and I'll have the stuff ready for you."

"Thanks, buddy. I knew I could count on you."

He grunted goodbye and we hung up. I finished my cigar while sorting the morning mail, mostly bills and circulars, and closed up the office. The Times Building on 43rd Street was just around the corner. I took the elevator to the newsroom on the third floor and gave Walt's name to the old man at the reception desk. He appeared from the back in shirt sleeves with his necktie loosened, like a reporter in the movies.

We shook hands and he led me into the newsroom, where a hundred typewriters filled the cigarette haze with their staccato rhythms. I followed him through the clatter to his desk in the middle of the room. A fat manila folder sat in the top wire basket of the desk tray. I picked it up and glanced at the yellowed clippings inside. "OK if I hang on to some of this stuff?" I asked.

"House rules say no. But I'm going out to lunch. Try not to lose anything and my conscience'll be clean."

Most of the old clippings were not from the Times but from other New York dailies and a selection of national magazines. Favorite was an abandoned child. A cop found him in a cardboard box with only his name and "June 2, 1920," the date of his birth, pinned in a note to his receiving blanket. He was raised in an orphanage in the Bronx and was on his own at 16. He was "discovered" by Spider Simpson in 1938 and soon was headlining with a 15-piece orchestra.

I sorted through the material, making a small pile of the stuff I wanted to keep. Two photos, one a studio glossy of Favorite in a tuxedo, his hair pomaded into a frozen black wave. The agent's name and address were rubber-stamped on the back: Warren wagner, Theatrical representative, 1619 Broadway (The Brill Building). Wyndham 9.3500.

The other glossy showed the Spider Simpson orchestra in 1940. Johnny stood to one side, with his hands folded like a choirboy. The names of all the sidemen were written in beside them on the print.

I borrowed three other items. The first (continued on page 188) Falling Angel (continued from page 180) was a photo from Lift. It was taken at Dickie Wells's bar in Harlem and showed Johnny leaning against a baby grand, singing along with a Negro piano player named Edison "Toots" Sweet. There was a piece from Downbeat claiming the singer went out to Coney Island once a week whenever he was in town and had his palm read by a gypsy fortuneteller named Madam Zora.

The last item was a squib in Walter Winchell's column dated 11/20/42 announcing that Johnny Favorite was breaking off his two-year engagement to Margaret Krusemark, daughter of Ethan Krusemark, the shipping millionaire.

I shuffled all of this stuff together, got a manila envelope out of the bottom drawer and stuffed it inside. Then, on a hunch, I dug out the glossy of Favorite and called the number in the Brill Building stamped on the back.

"Warren Wagner Associates," answered a perky female voice.

I gave her my name and made an appointment to see Mr. Wagner at noon.

•

The Brill Building was at 49th and Broadway. Walking up from 43rd, I tried to remember how the square looked the night I saw it for the first time. So much had changed. It was New Year's Eve of '43. An entire year of my life had vanished. I was fresh out of an Army hospital with a brand-new face and nothing but loose change in my pockets. Someone had lifted my wallet earlier in the evening, taking all I owned: driver's license, discharge papers, dog tags, the works. Caught up in the vast crowd and surrounded by the electric pyrotechnics of the spectaculars, I felt my past sloughing away like a shed snakeskin. I had no identification, no money, no place to live, and knew only that I was heading downtown. That was when I saw the lights in the Crossroads office and played a hunch that led me to Ernie Cavalero and a job I've never left.

Outside the Brill Building, a tramp in a tattered Army greatcoat paced back and forth, muttering, "Scumbag, scumbag," to all who entered. I checked the directory and located Warren Wagner Associates, surrounded by dozens of song pluggers, prize-fight promoters and fly-by-night music publishers. A creaking elevator took me to the eighth floor. The receptionist was knitting when I opened the office door. "You Mr. Angel?" she asked, forming her words around a wad of gum.

I said that I was and got a card out of my dummy wallet. It had my name on it but said I was a representative of the Occidental Life and Casualty Corp. The receptionist pincered the card between fingernails as green and glossy as beetle wings. She had large breasts and slim hips and emphasized them with a pink angora sweater and a tight black skirt. Her hair was on the brassy side of platinum. "Mr. Wagner will see you right away," she said.

I said thanks and went in. The inner office was half the size of the cubbyhole outside. A cigarette-scarred wooden desk took up most of the floor space. Behind it, a young man in shirt sleeves was shaving with an electric razor. "Five minutes," he said, holding up his hand, palm outward so I could count his fingers.

I sat my attaché case on the worn green rug and stared at the kid as he finished shaving. He had curly, rust-colored hair and freckles. Beneath his horn-rimmed glasses, he couldn't have been much more than 24 or 25.

"Mr. Wagner?" I asked when he switched off the razor.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Warren Wagner?"

"That's right."

"Surely you're not the same man who was Johnny Favorite's agent?"

"You're thinking about Dad. I'm Warren, Junior."

"Then it's your father I'd like to speak to."

"You're out of luck. He's been dead four years."

"I see."

"What's this all about?" Warren, Jr., leaned back in his leatherette chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

"Jonathan Liebling is named a beneficiary in a policy owned by one of our customers. This office was given as his address."

Warren Wagner, Jr., started to laugh. "That's terrific," he snorted. "Really terrific. Johnny Favorite, the missing heir."

"Quite frankly, I fail to see the humor in all this."

"Yeah? Well, lemme draw you a picture. Johnny Favorite is flat on his back in a nut hatch. He's been a turnip for nearly twenty years."

"Say, that's a wonderful joke. Know any other good ones?"

"You don't understand," he said, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes. "Johnny Favorite was Dad's big score. He sank every penny he had in the world into buying his contract from Spider Simpson. Then, just as he was riding high, Favorite got drafted. The Army sends a million-dollar property to North Africa and ships home a sack of potatoes."

I stood up. "Can you give me the name and address of the hospital where Favorite is a patient?"

"Ask my secretary. She must have it tucked away someplace."

•

I rode the Seventh Avenue IRT one stop to Times Square to save shoe leather. After struggling out of my overcoat, I sat down behind my desk and took a look at the photos and clippings I'd been lugging around. I stared at Johnny Favorite's smarmy smile until I could no longer stomach it. Where do you search for a guy who was never there to begin with?

The Winchell column was as brittle with age as the Dead Sea Scrolls. I reread the item about the end of Favorite's engagement and dialed Walt Rigler's number over at the Times.

" 'Lo, Walt," I said. "It's me again. I need to know some stuff about Ethan Krusemark."

"The big-shot shipowner?"

"The very same. I'd like whatever you've got on him, plus his address. I'm especially interested in his daughter's broken engagement to Johnny Favorite back in the early Forties."

"Johnny Favorite again. He seems to be the man of the hour."

"He's the star of the show. Can you help me out?"

"I'll check with the Woman's News," he said. "They cover society and all its dirty doings. Call you back in a couple minutes."

After Walt hung up, I dialed Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. After a bit of searching, they were able to provide me with Cornelius "Spider" Simpson's address and phone number in Los Angeles. All they had on Edison Sweet was his agent's number, but I was in luck. Toots was currently playing uptown at the Red Rooster on 138th Street. Next, I tried Spider Simpson in L.A. but connected with the maid. She was Mexican. I managed to leave my name and office number, along with the general impression that it was a matter of importance.

I hung up and the phone rang before I lifted my hand. It was Walt Rigler. "Here's the poop," he said. "Krusemark's very top-drawer now; charity balls, social register, all that sort of thing. Has an office in the Chrysler Building. His residence is number two Sutton Place; phone number's in the book. You got that?"

I said it was all down in black and white, and he went on. "OK. Krusemark wasn't always so upper crust. He worked as a merchant seaman in the early Twenties and it's rumored he made his first money smuggling bootleg hootch. He started putting his own fleet together during the Depression, all Panama registry, of course."

"What about his daughter?" I asked.

"Margaret Krusemark; born 1922; father and mother divorced in 1926. The mother committed suicide later that same year. Margaret met Favorite at a college prom. He was singing with the band. Their engagement was the society scandal of 1941. Seems that he was the one who broke things off, though no one knows why anymore. The girl was generally regarded as something of a crackpot, so maybe that was the reason."

"What sort of crackpot?"

"The kind with visions. She used to tell fortunes at parties. People thought it was cute for a while, but it got too rich for their blue blood when she started casting spells."

"Is this on the level?"

"Absolutely. She was known as the Witch of Wellesley."

"Where is she now?"

"No one I talked to seemed to know. Society editor says she doesn't live with her father and she's not the type who gets invited to the Peacock Ball at the Waldorf, so we haven't got anything on her over here. The last mention she got in the Times was on her departure for Europe ten years ago. She may still be there."

"Walt, you've been a big help. I'd start reading the Times if they ran comic strips."

I got the phone book out of the desk and ran my finger down a page in the K section. There was a listing for a Krusemark, Ethan, and a Krusemark Maritime, Inc., as well as a Krusemark, M., Astrological Consultations. This one seemed worth a try. The address was 881 Seventh Avenue. I dialed the number and let it ring. A woman answered.

"I got your name through a friend," I said. "Personally, I don't put much stock in the stars, but my fiancée is a true believer. I thought I'd surprise her and have both our horoscopes done."

"My desk calendar is completely clean for the afternoon," she said, "so whatever is convenient for you."

"How about right away? Say in half an hour?"

"That would be wonderful."

I gave her my name. She thought my name was wonderful, too, and told me her apartment was in Carnegie Hall. I said I knew where to find it and hung up.

•

I took the uptown BMT to 57th Street and climbed the exit stairs that let me out on the corner by the Nedick's near Carnegie Hall. A bum shuffled up and tapped me for a dime as I headed for the studio entrance.

The lobby of the Carnegie Hall Studios was small and barren of decoration. I got in the elevator and gave M. Kruse-mark's name to an ancient operator who resembled a Balkan army pensioner in his ill-fitting uniform. He looked at my shoes and said nothing. After a moment, he shoved the metal gate closed and we started up.

M. Krusemark's name was painted on her door in gold letters and, beneath it, an odd symbol that looked like the letter M with an upturned arrow as a tail. I rang the bell and waited. High-heeled footsteps tapped on the floor.

"Yes?" asked a voice inside.

"I'm Harry Angel," I said. "I called earlier about an appointment."

"Why, of course. Just a minute, please." I heard the chain sliding free and the door opened. "Do come in," she said, standing aside for me to enter.

She was dressed all in black, like a weekend bohemian in a Village coffeehouse. Her cat-green eyes burned at me from out of a pale, angular face. Walt Rigler had indicated she was about 36 or 37 years old, but without any makeup, she looked much older. Her only ornament was a gold medallion hanging from her neck on a simple chain. It was an upside-down five-pointed star.

Neither of us said a word and I found myself staring at the dangling medallion. A five-pointed star was engraved on the ring that Dr. Albert Fowler was no longer wearing when I found his body locked in the upstairs bedroom. Here was the missing piece in the puzzle.

The revelation hit me like an ice-water enema, raising the hackles along the back of my neck. What had happened to the doctor's ring? It might have been in his pocket; I didn't go through his clothes; but why would he take it off before blowing his brains out? And if he didn't remove it, who did?

I felt the woman's fox-fire eyes focused on me. "You must be Miss Krusemark," I said to break the silence.

"I am," she answered without smiling.

"I saw your name on the door but didn't recognize the symbol."

"My sign," she said, closing and relocking the door. "I'm a Scorpio." She stared at me for a long moment, as if my eyes were peepholes revealing some interior scene. "And you?"

"Me?"

"What's your sign?"

"I don't really know," I said. "Astrology's not one of my strong points."

"When were you born?"

"June second, 1920." I gave her Johnny Favorite's birth date just to try her out, and for a split second I thought I caught a faraway flicker in her intense, emotionless stare.

"Gemini," she said. "The twins. Curious; I once knew a boy born the very same day."

"Really? Who was that?"

"It doesn't matter," she said. "It was a long, long time ago. How rude of me to keep you standing here in the hall. Please come in and have a seat."

I followed her out of the murky hall into a spacious, high-ceilinged studio living room. There were ferns of all descriptions and palms towering to the ceiling. Greenery dangled from hanging planters. Miniature rain forests steamed within enclosed glass terrariums.

"Beautiful room," I said, as she took my overcoat and folded it over the back of a couch.

"Yes, it's wonderful, isn't it? I've been very happy here." She was interrupted by a sharp whistling in the distance. "Would you like some tea?" she asked. "I just put the kettle on when you arrived."

"Only if it's no trouble."

"No trouble at all. The water's already boiling." She gave me a wan half-smile and hurried off to deal with the insistent whistling. I took a closer look around.

Exotic knickknacks crowded every available surface. Temple flutes and prayer wheels, Hopi fetishes and papier-mâché avatars of Vishnu ascending out of the mouths of fishes and turtles. An obsidian Aztec dagger carved in the shape of a bird glittered on a bookshelf. I scanned the haphazard volumes and spotted the I Ching, a copy of Oaspe and several of the Evan-Wentz Tibetan series.

When M. Krusemark returned carrying a silver tray and tea set, I was standing by a window thinking about Dr. Fowler's missing ring. She placed the service on a low table.

I joined her on the couch. "That's a familiar face." I nodded at an oil portrait of an aging pirate in a tuxedo.

"My father, Ethan Krusemark." Tea swirled into translucent china cups.

There was the hint of a roguish smile on the determined lips, a glint of ruthlessness and cunning in eyes as green as his daughter's. "He's the shipbuilder, isn't he? I've seen his picture in Forbes."

"He hated the painting. Said it was like having a mirror that got stuck. Cream or lemon?"

"I'll take it straight, thanks."

She handed me the cup. "It was done last year. I think it's a wonderful likeness. Would you believe he's over sixty? He always looked ten years younger than his age. His sun is in trine with Jupiter, a very favorable aspect."

I let the mumbo jumbo pass and said that he looked like a swashbuckling captain in the pirate movies I'd seen as a kid.

"Very true. When I was in college, all the girls in the dorm thought he was Clark Gable."

I sipped my tea. It tasted like fermenting peaches. "My brother knew a girl named Krusemark when he was at Princeton," I said. "She went to Wellesley and told him his fortune at a prom."

"That would have been my sister, Margaret," she said. "I'm Millicent. We're twins. She's the black witch in the family; I'm the white one."

I felt like a man waking from a dream of riches, his golden treasure melting like mist between his fingers. "Does your sister live here in New York?" I asked, keeping up the banter. I already knew the answer.

"God, no. Maggie moved to Paris over ten years ago. Haven't seen her in an age. What's your brother's name?"

The entire charade hung limply over me like the skin of a deflated balloon. "Jack," I said.

"I don't remember Maggie ever mentioning a Jack. Of course, there were so many young men in her life in those days. I need for you to answer some questions." She reached for a leather pad-and-pencil set on the table. "So I can do your chart."

"Fire away."

"You were born on June second, 1920," she said. "There's quite a bit I know about you from that fact alone."

"Tell me all about myself."

Millicent Krusemark fixed me with her feline stare. "I know that you're a natural actor," she said. "Playing roles comes easily. Although you are deeply concerned with discovering the truth, lies flow from your lips without hesitation."

"Pretty good. Go on."

"Cruelty comes easily to you, yet you find it inconceivable that you are so gifted at hurting others. On one hand, you are methodical and tenacious, but by contrast, you place great stock in intuition." She smiled. "When it comes to women, you prefer them young and dark."

"A-plus," I said. "You were right on the money." And she was. She had it down pat. Only one problem: wrong birthday; she was telling my fortune with Johnny Favorite's vital statistics. "Do you know where I can meet some dark young women?"

"I'll be able to tell a great deal more once I have what I need." The white witch scribbled on her note pad. "I can't guarantee the girl of your dreams, but I can be more specific. Here, I'm jotting down star positions for your chart. Not yours, really, that boy I mentioned. Your horoscopes are undoubtedly similar."

"I'm game."

Millicent Krusemark frowned, studying her notes. "This is a period of great danger. You have been involved in a death quite recently, within a week at least. The medical profession is involved. Unfavorable aspects are very strong. Beware of strangers."

I stared at this odd woman in black and felt invisible fear tentacles encircle my heart. How did she know so much? "What's that ornament around your neck?"

"This?" The woman's hand paused at her throat like a bird resting in flight. "Just a pentacle. Brings good luck."

Dr. Fowler's pentacle didn't bring him much luck, but then, he wasn't wearing it when he died. Or did someone take the ring after killing the old man?

"I need additional information," Millicent Krusemark said, her filigreed gold pencil poised like a dart. "When and where was your fiancée born? I need to determine longitude and latitude."

I ad-libbed some phony dates and places and made the ritual gesture of glancing at my wrist watch before placing my cup on the table. We rose together, as if on a lift. "Thanks for the tea."

•

I dug out a cigarette on the way down in the elevator and lit it as soon as I hit the street. The March wind felt cleansing. I walked slowly down Seventh, trying to make sense out of the nameless fear that had seized me back in the astrologer's bosky apartment. I knew it had to be a con, verbal sleight of hand, like encyclopedia salesmanship. "Beware of strangers." That was the sort of bullshit you got for a penny along with your weight. She had suckered me with her oracle's voice and hypnotic eyes.

I took the rest of the afternoon off, relaxing at a double feature, and then headed to Gallagher's and the best steak in town. I finished my cigar and second cup of coffee about nine, paid my check and caught a cab on Broadway for the eight blocks down to my garage. It was time to go uptown and hear some music.

Crossing 125th Street, everything was bright as Broadway. Farther along, Small's Paradise and Count Basie's place seemed alive and well. I found a parking spot across Seventh Avenue from the Red Rooster and crossed on the green.

The Red Rooster was plush and dark. The tables around the bandstand were crowded with uptown celebrities, big spenders with their bare-armed ladies glittering beside them in a rainbow display of sequined, strapless evening gowns.

I found a stool at the bar and ordered a snifter of Remy Martin. Edison Sweet's trio was on deck, but from where I was sitting, I saw only the piano player's back as he hunched over the keyboard. Bass and electric guitar were the other instruments.

The band was playing a blues, the guitar darting in and out of the melody like a hummingbird. The piano throbbed and thundered. Above the moody, shifting bass rhythms, Toots traced an intricate lament, and when he sang, his voice was bittersweet with suffering:

I got them voodoo blues,

Them evil hoo-doo blues.

Petro Loa won't leave me alone;

Every night I hear the zombies moan.

Lord, I got them mean ol' voodoo blues."

When the set ended, I told the bartender I wanted to buy the group a drink. He filled their orders and nodded in my direction.

The two sidemen picked up their drinks, shot me a glance and moved off into the crowd. Toots Sweet took a stool at the end of the bar. I collected my glass and made my way over to him.

"Just wanted to say thanks," I said, climbing onto the next stool. "You're an artist, Mr. Sweet."

"Call me Toots, son. I don't bite."

"Toots it is, then."

Toots Sweet had a face as broad and dark and wrinkled as a slab of cured tobacco. His thick hair was the color of cigar ash. He filled a shiny blue-serge suit to the bursting point, yet the feet encased in two-tone black-and-white pumps were as small and delicate as a woman's.

"I liked the blues you played at the end," I said.

"Wrote that one day in Houston, years ago, on the back of a cocktail napkin." He laughed. The sudden whiteness of his smile split his dark face like the end of a lunar eclipse. One of his front teeth was capped in gold. The white enamel underneath gleamed through a cutout shaped like an inverted five-pointed star. It was something you noticed right away.

"That your home town?"

"Houston? Lord, no, I was just visit-in'."

"Where're you from?"

"Me? Why, I'm a New Orleans boy, born and bred. You're lookin' at an amfropologist's dee-light. I played in Story-ville cribhouses 'fore I was fo-teen. I knew all that gang, Bunk and Jelly and Satchelmouth. I went up 'de ribber' to Chicago. Haw, haw, haw." Toots roared and slapped his big knees. The rings on his stubby fingers flashed in the dim light.

"You're putting me on," I said.

"Maybe just a little bit, son. Maybe just a little bit." (continued on page 246) Falling Angel (continued from page 192) I grinned and sniffed my drink. "Must be swell having so many memories."

"You writin' a book, son? I can spot me a book writer quick as a fox recognizes a hen."

"You're close, old fox. I'm working on a piece for Look magazine."

"A story 'bout Toots in Look? Right in there with Doris Day! Haw!"

"Well, I won't put you on, Toots. The story's going to be about Johnny Favorite."

"Who?"

"A crooner. Used to sing with Spider Simpson's swing band back in the early Forties."

"Yeah. I remember Spider. He played the drums like two jackhammers fucking."

"What do you remember about Johnny Favorite?" I asked. "I heard you were pretty good pals."

"Son, he made a record of one of my songs way back when and I thank him for all the long-gone royalty checks, but he sure didn't come uptown to see me."

"Who did he come uptown to see?"

Toots Sweet ducked his eyes in mock coyishness. "You gettin' me to tell tales out of school, son."

"What does it matter after all these years?" I said. "I gather he was seeing a lady."

"She was every inch a lady, to be sure."

"Tell me her name."

"It ain't no secret. Anyone who was around 'fo' the war knows Evangeline Proudfoot was makin' the scene with Johnny Favorite."

"None of the downtown press seemed to know."

"Son, if you was crossin' the line in them days, it wasn't something you wanted to brag about."

"Who was Evangeline Proudfoot?"

Toots smiled. "A beautiful, strong West Indian woman," he said. "She was ten, fifteen years older than Johnny, but still such a fox that he was the one looked the fool."

"Know where I could get in touch with her?"

"Ain't seen Evangeline in years. She got ill. Store's still there, so maybe she is, too."

"What sort of store was that?" I did my best to keep any trace of cop out of my question.

"Evangeline had an herb shop over on Lenox. Stayed open till midnight every day 'cept Sunday." Toots gave me a theatrical wink. "Time to play some mo'. You gonna stick around for another set, son?"

"I'll be back," I said.

•

Proudfoot Pharmaceuticals was located on the northwest corner of Lenox Avenue and 123rd Street. The name hung in the window in six-inch blue-neon script. I parked half a block down and looked the place over. Fluorescent lights hung from a pressed-tin ceiling; old-fashioned glass-fronted wooden shelves ran along the far wall. The swinging of a clock pendulum seemed the only activity.

I went inside. A smell of burning incense stung the air. Bells tinkled above my head as I shut the door. On a revolving metal stand near the entrance, a collection of "dream books" and pamphlets addressing the various problems of love competed for the customer's attention in gaudy Multilith jackets. I was examining the perfumed, colored candles guaranteed to bring good fortune with continued use when a lovely mocha-skinned girl came in from the back room and stood behind the counter. She wore a white smock over her dress and looked about 19 or 20. "May I help you?" she asked. Just beneath her carefully modulated diction lingered the melodic calypso lilt of the Caribbean.

"Is Miss Proudfoot on the premises?"

"I'm Miss Proudfoot," she said.

"Miss Evangeline Proudfoot?"

"I'm Epiphany. Evangeline was my mother."

"You say was?"

"Momma died last year."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"She'd been sick for a long time, flat on her back for years. It was best."

"She left you a lovely name, Epiphany," I said. "It fits you."

Beneath her coffee-and-milk complexion, she flushed slightly. "She left me a good deal more than that. This store's been making a profit for forty years. Did you do business with Momma?"

"No, we never met. I was hoping she might answer some questions for me."

Epiphany Proudfoot's topaz eyes darkened. "What're you, some kind of cop?"

I smiled, the Look alibi engraved on my silver tongue, but I figured she was too smart to buy it, so I said, "Private license. I can show you a photostat."

"Never mind your dime-store photostat. Why did you want to talk to Momma?"

"I'm looking for a man named Johnny Favorite."

She stiffened. It was as if someone touched the back of her neck with an ice cube. "He's dead," she said.

"No, he's not, although most people seem to think so."

"Far as I'm concerned, he's dead."

"Did you know him?"

"We never met."

"Edison Sweet said he was a friend of your mother's."

"That was before I was born," she said.

"Did your mother ever talk to you about him?"

"Surely, Mr.... whoever you are, you don't expect me to betray my momma's confidences. I clearly see you are not a gentleman."

I let that one pass. "Perhaps you can tell me if you or your mother ever saw Johnny Favorite in, say, the last fifteen years or so."

"I told you we never met, and I was always introduced to all Momma's friends."

I got out my wallet, the one I carry cash in, and gave her my Crossroads card. "OK," I said, "it was a long shot, anyway. That's my office number on the bottom. I wish you'd call me if you think of anything or hear of anybody having seen Johnny Favorite."

She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "What're you after him for?"

"I'm not 'after' him; I just want to know where he is."

She stuck my card in the glass of the ornate brass cash register. "And what if he's dead?"

"I get paid either way."

It was almost a real laugh this time. "I hope you find him six feet under," she said.

•

By the time I got back to the Red Rooster, I'd missed an entire set and Toots was sitting on the same stool at the bar. A glass of champagne fizzed at his elbow. I lit a cigarette as I edged through the crowd. "Find out what you were after?" Toots asked without interest.

"Evangeline Proudfoot is dead."

"Dead? Now, that is a for-certain shame. She was one fine lady."

"You seem to have known her pretty well. What more can you tell me about her affair with Johnny Favorite?"

Toots Sweet lumbered to his tiny feet. "I can't tell you nothin', son. I'm too big to go around hiding under beds. 'Sides, it's time fo' me to go back to work."

He flashed his star-studded grin and started for the bandstand. I tagged along like an eager newshound. "I'm in no hurry. I can listen to you play all night."

"Just sit out the set, son." Toots lifted the curved lid of the baby grand. A chicken foot lay on the keyboard. He slammed the lid shut. "Stop hangin' over my shoulder!" he growled. "I got to play now."

"What was that?"

"That was nothin'. Never you mind that."

But it was not nothing. It was the foot of a chicken, spanning an octave from the sharp yellow claw on the lizardlike toe to where it was cut oil above the joint and bleeding.

"What's going on, Toots?"

Toots hissed. "Nothin's going on you got to know about. Now, I ain't talking to you no mo'. Not alter the set. Not never!"

"Who's after you, Toots?"

"You git outa here."

"What does Johnny Favorite have to do with it?"

Toots spoke very slowly, ignoring the bass player who appeared at his shoulder. "If you don't get the hell out of here, an' I mean clean out onto the sidewalk, yo' gonna wish yo' lily-while ass never was born."

I met the bass player's implacable gaze and glanced around. There was a full house. I knew how Cluster must have felt upon the hilltop at Little Bighorn.

"All I got to do," Toots said, "is say the word."

"You don't need to send a telegram, Toots." I dropped my butt onto the dance Moor, ground it under my heel and left.

My car was parked in the same spot across Seventh and I headed for it when the light changed. I got in behind the wheel, lit another cigarette and settled down to wail.

Toots came out of the club about five minutes before closing time. A passing cab squealed to a stop at his shrill, two-fingered whistle. I switched on the ignition and tailed the cab to 152nd Street, where it stopped in front of one of the Harlem River Houses and waited out front with the door open and the roof light oil. Tools was just running upstairs. I turned my headlights oil and double-parked where I could watch the cab. He was back in minutes. He carried a red-plaid canvas bowling-ball bag.

The cab took a left at Macomb's Place and continued downtown on Eighth Avenue. I stayed three blocks back and kept it in sight all the way to Frederick Douglass Circle, where it swung east on 110th and followed the northern wall of Central Park. I parked around the corner on St. Nicholas in time lo see the cab drive off and the retreating form of Toots Sweet, a shadow sliding into the shadow world of the dark and silent park.

•

He kept lo the path bordering the western rim of Harlem Meer. I stayed off to one side in the shadows, but Toots never looked back. He hurried along toward the Loch, the most remote section of Central Park. The path wound into a deep ravine crowded with trees and shrubs and completely cut off from the city. It was dark there and very still. For a moment, I thought I had lost Toots. Then I heard the drums.

I edged through the trees until I reached the cover of a large rock. Four white candles flickered on saucers set on the ground. I counted 15 people standing in the dim light. There were three drummers, each playing an instrument of a different size.

A girl wearing a white dress and turban inscribed convoluted designs on the ground between the candles. She used handfuls of flour like a Hopi sand painter, tracing the swirling figures around a circular hole dug into the packed earth. She turned and her face was illuminated by candle flame. It was Epiphany Proud-foot.

The onlookers swayed from side to side, chanting and clapping in time with the drumming. Several men shook gourd rallies. I watched Toots Sweet wield his maracas like Xavier Cugat fronting a rhumba band.

Epiphany was barefoot in spite of the cold, twirling handfuls of Pillsbury's Best onto the ground. When the design was finished, she jumped back, reaching her ghost-white hands above her head like a cheerleader of doom. Her spastic shimmy soon had the whole crowd dancing.

Shadows shifted grotesquely in the uneven candlelight. The demonic heartbeat of the drums caught the dancers in its throbbing spell. Their eyes rolled back in their heads; spittle frothed on the chanting lips. Men and women rubbed together and moaned, pelvises thrusting in an ecstatic approximation of sex. The whiles of their eyes gleamed like opals in their sweating faces.

Epiphany's white dress clung to her wet. young body. She reached into a wicker basket, removing a leg-bound rooster. The bird held up his head proudly, his blood-red comb vivid in the candlelight. Epiphany rubbed the white plumage against her breasts as she danced. Weaving among the crowd, she caressed each of the others in turn. A piercing cockcrow silenced the drums.

Gliding gracefully, Epiphany bent to the circular pit and cut the rooster's jugular with a deft turn of a razor. Blood spouted into the dark hole. The rooster's defiant crow became a gargling scream. Its wings thrashed wildly as it died. The dancers moaned. One by one. they swayed forward and dropped offerings into the pit. Scatterings of coins, handfuls of dried corn, assorted cookies, candies and fruit. A woman poured a bottle of Coca-Cola over the dead chicken.

Afterward, Epiphany took the limp bird and hung it, upside down, from the branches of a nearby tree. Things began to break up about then. The congregation slipped off into the darkness without a word of farewell. Toots, Epiphany and two or three others walked back along the path toward Harlem Meer.

I tailed them through the shadows, skirting the path and keeping out of sight among the trees. By the Meer, the path divided. Toots headed toward the Seventh Avenue exit. I planned on beating him home.

I scaled the rough stone wall and ran for the Chevy. The streets were nearly empty and I sped uptown without missing a light.

I parked near the corner of Macomb's Place and walked the rest of the way through the Harlem River Houses development. I found the entrance to Toots's building on 152nd and looked for his apartment number on the row of brass mailboxes set into the brick wall.

The front door was no problem. I got it open with my penknife blade in less than a minute. Toots lived on the third floor. I climbed the stairs and checked out his lock. There was nothing I could do without my attaché case, so I sat on the steps leading up and waited.

•

I didn't have to wait long. I heard him puffing up the stairs and stubbed my butt out against the bottom of my shoe. When he had the door open, I made my move. I caught him from behind, grabbing his coat collar and shoving him forward into the apartment. He stumbled to his knees. I switched on the ceiling light and closed the door behind me.

Toots huffed to his feet, panting like an animal at bay. His right hand plunged into his coat pocket and came out holding a straight razor. I shifted my weight. "I don't want to hurt you, old man."

He lumbered forward, waving the razor. I caught his arm with my left hand and stepped in close, bringing my knee up hard. Toots sagged and sat down with a soft grunt. I twisted his wrist and he dropped the razor onto the carpet. I kicked it against the wall.

"Dumb, Tools." I picked up the razor, folded it and put it into my pocket.

Toots sat, holding his belly with both hands. "What you want with me?" he moaned. "You're no writer."

"Getting smarter. So save the bullshit and tell me what you know about Johnny Favorite."

"I'm hurt. I feel all busted up inside."

"Listen, Toots," I said. "I saw your little shindig in the park. Epiphany Proudfoot's number with the chicken. What was going on?"

"Obeah," he groaned. "Voodoo. Not every black man is a Baptist."

"What about the Proudfoot girl? How does she fit in?"

"She's a mambo, like her mother was before her. Been comin' to humfo meet-in's since she was ten. Took over as priestess at thirteen."

"That when Evangeline Proudfoot got sick?"

"Yeah. Somethin' like that."

I offered Toots a smoke, but he shook his head. I lit one myself and asked, "Was Johnny Favorite into voodoo?"

"He was runnin' 'round with the mambo, wasn't he?"

"Did he go to meetings?"

" 'Course he did. Lots of 'em. He was a hunsi-bosal."

"A what?"

"He'd been initiated but not baptized."

"When was the last time you saw Johnny Favorite at one of your chicken snuffings?"

"I tol' you, I ain't seen him since 'fo' the war."

"What about the chicken foot? The one in the piano?"

"Means I talk too much."

"About Johnny Favorite?"

" 'Bout things in general."

"Not good enough, Toots." I blew a little smoke in his face. "Ever try to play piano with your hand in a cast?"

Toots started to rise, but sagged back, grimacing. "You wouldn't do that."

"I'll do what I have to, Toots."

There was considerable fear in the old piano player's eyes. I cracked the knuckles in my right hand for emphasis. "Ask me anything you want," he said. "I been telling you the truth right along."

"You haven't seen Johnny Favorite in the last fifteen years?"

"No."

"What about Evangeline Proudfoot? She ever mention seeing him?"

"Not where I could hear it. Far as she was concerned, Johnny Favorite was dead and buried."

"Toots, I'll take a chance and believe you. How come you wear a star on your tooth like that?"

Toots grimaced. The cutout star glinted in the overhead light. "That's so folks be sure I'm a nigger. Wouldn't want 'em to make any mistakes."

"Why is it upside down?"

"Look nicer that way."

I placed one of my Crossroads cards on top of the TV. "I'm leaving a card with my number on it. If you hear anything, give me a call."

"Yeah, I ain't got enough troubles awready I got to start phonin' up mo'."

"You never know. You might need some help next time you get a special-delivery chicken foot."

Outside, dawn smudged the night sky like rouge on a chorus girl's cheek. Walking to the car, I dropped Toots's pearl-handled razor into a garbage can.

•

The sun was shining when I finally hit the sack, but I managed to sleep until almost noon in spite of bad dreams. I was haunted by nightmares more vivid than any Late Show horror feature. Voodoo drums throbbed as Epiphany Proudfoot cut the rooster's throat. The dancers swayed and moaned, only this time the bleeding didn't stop. A crimson fountain gushed from the thrashing bird, soaking everything like a tropical rain, dancers all drowning in a lake of blood. I watched Epiphany go under and ran from my hiding place, gore splashing at my heels. I woke up screaming.

A hot shower settled my nerves. I was shaved, dressed and driving uptown inside of 20 minutes. I dropped the Chevy off at my garage and walked to the out-of-town newsstand next to Times Tower. Dr. Albert Fowler's picture was on the front page of Monday's Poughkeepsie New Yorker. "Noted doctor found dead," said the headline. I read all about it over breakfast at the Whelan's drugstore in the corner of the Paramount Building.

Up in the office, I considered my options. I had planned on driving out to Coney Island to try to locate Madam Zora, Johnny Favorite's gypsy fortuneteller, but decided to play a long shot and go back up to Harlem first. There was a lot Epiphany Proudfoot hadn't told me last night.

I got my attaché case out of the office safe and was buttoning my overcoat when the phone rang. It was long distance, person-to-person collect from Cornelius Simpson. I told the operator I would accept the charges.

"I'd like to ask you some questions about Johnny Favorite," I said.

"What kind of questions?"

"Have you seen him at all in the past fifteen years, for starters?"

"Last time I saw Johnny was the day after Pearl Harbor. What's this all about, anyway?"

"I'm doing a story for Look on forgotten vocalists of the Forties. Johnny Favorite is at the top of the list."

"Not my list, brother."

"That's fine," I said. "If I spoke to just his fans, I wouldn't get a very interesting story."

"The only fans Johnny had were strangers."

"What can you tell me about his affair with a West Indian woman named Evangeline Proudfoot?"

"Not a damn thing. This is the first I've heard of it."

"Did you know he was involved in voodoo?"

"Sticking pins in dolls? Well, it figures; Johnny was a weirdo. He was always into something strange."

"Such as what?"

"Oh, let's see; one time, I saw him catching pigeons up on the roof of our hotel. I thought maybe he didn't like the chow in the place, but later, I dropped by his room, and there he was, poking through the guts with a pencil."

"What was that all about?"

"That's what I asked him. He told me some fancy word I can't remember. Said he was predicting the future like the priests in ancient Rome used to do."

"Sounds like that ol' black magic had him in its spell," I said.

Spider Simpson laughed. "You said it, brother. If it wasn't pigeon guts, it was some other damn thing, tea leaves, palm readers, yoga. He carried a skull in his suitcase."

"A human skull?"

"Once upon a time, it was human. He said it came from the grave of a man who murdered ten people. Claimed it gave him power."

"Sounds like he was putting you on," I said.

"Could be. He used to sit and stare at it for hours before a performance. If that was a put-on, it was a damn good one."

"Did you know Margaret Kruscmark?" I asked.

"Margaret who?"

"Johnny Favorite's fiancée."

"Oh, yeah, the debutante society girl. I met her a few times. What about her?"

"What was she like?"

"Very pretty. Didn't talk much. You know the type, lots of eye contact but no conversation."

"I heard somewhere she was a fortune-teller."

"That may be. She never told me mine."

"Why did they break up?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Can you give me the names of any of Johnny Favorite's old friends? People who might be able to help me out with the story."

"Brother, aside from bonehead in the suitcase. Johnny didn't have a friend on earth."

"What about Edward Kelley?"

"Never heard of him," Simpson said. "I knew a piano player named Kelly in K.C., but that was years before I ran into Johnny."

"Well, thanks for the information," I said. "You've been a big help."

"Any time."

We both hung up.

•

I dodged chuckholes on the West Side Highway up to 125th and drove east along Harlem's Rialto, past the Hotel Theresa and the Apollo Theater, over to Lenox Avenue. The neon sign was dark in the window of Proudfoot Pharmaceuticals. A long green shade reached all the way down behind the front door and a cardboard sign said closed today.

I found a wall phone in a luncheonette in the next block. There was no listing for Epiphany Proudfoot. I tried the store but got no answer. Thumbing through the directory, I located Edison Sweet's number. I dialed the first four digits and hung up, deciding a surprise visit would be more effective. Ten minutes later, I was parked on 152nd Street across from his building.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor. There was no one on the landing, and when I bent to check the make of the lock. I found that the door was not quite shut. I pushed it all the way open with my foot. A vivid red splash stained the opposite wall like a Rorschach-test blot. It might have been paint, but it wasn't.

I closed the door behind me, leaning my back against it until the lock caught.

The room was a mess, furniture thrown about haphazardly on a carpet waved with wrinkles. A shelf of flowerpots lay overturned in the corner. The curtain rod was bent in a V and the drapes sagged like the stockings of a hooker on a week-long drunk. Amid the wreckage, the TV stood intact. The set was on and a soap-opera nurse discussed adultery with an attentive intern.

I was careful not to touch anything as I stepped over the upended furniture. Beyond the babbling TV, a short, dark hall led to a closed door. I got my latex surgeon's gloves out of the attaché case and rolled them onto my hands before turning the knob. One look in the bedroom made me want a drink badly.

Toots Sweet lay on his back on the narrow bed, his hands and feet bound to the posts with lengths of cotton clothesline. He would never get any deader. A crumpled, blood-soaked flannel bathrobe draped his potbelly. Beneath his black body, the sheets were stiff with blood.

Toots's open, bulging eyes were yellowed, like antique ivory cue balls, and stuffed into his gaping mouth was something resembling a fat, severed hunk of Bratwurst. Death by asphyxiation. I knew that without waiting for the autopsy.

I took a closer look at what protruded from his swollen lips and suddenly one drink wasn't going to be enough. Toots had choked to death on his own genitalia. Outside, in the courtyard three flights down, I heard the happy laughter of children.

On the wall above the bed, a number of childlike drawings had been daubed in Toots's blood: stars, spirals, long zigzag lines representing snakes. The stars, three of them, were five-pointed and upside down. Falling stars were getting to be a habit.

I said goodbye to Edison Sweet and closed the bedroom door on the sightless stare of his bulging eyes. My tongue felt heavy and dry in my mouth when I thought of what was stuffed in his. f wanted to check out the living room before I left, but there was too much dirt strewn about and I was afraid of leaving heelprints.

At the front door, I squinted through the peephole before letting myself out. I left the door open a crack, just the way I'd found it, and peeled off my rubber gloves, shutting them inside the calfskin case. I paused at the top of the landing and listened to the silence below. I made it down the stairs without being seen. When I left the building, the only ones around were a group of small children playing hopscotch in the courtyard.

•

Three straight shots settled my nerves. It was a quiet neighborhood bar and I sat with my back to the TV and thought things over. Now I had two dead men on my hands. They had both known Johnny Favorite and worn five-pointed stars. The stars maybe were a coincidence; it's a common design. And maybe it was just by chance that a junkie doctor and a blues piano player both knew Johnny Favorite. Maybe. But deep down in my gut, I had a feeling that it was tied in to something bigger. Something enormous. I scooped my change off the damp bartop and went back to work for Louis Cyphre.

The drive out to Coney Island was a pleasant distraction. I rolled down my window on the Shore Parkway and breathed the cold sea air blowing in through the Narrows. By the time I reached Cropsey Avenue, the smell of blood was gone from my nostrils.

I parked beside a boarded-up bumper-car ride. Coney Island in the off season had the look and feel of a ghost town. The skeletal tracks of the roller coasters rose above me like metal-and-timber spiderwebs, but the screams were missing and the wind moaned through the struts, lonesome as a train whistle.

Nathan's Famous was open for business as always, and I stopped for a hot dog and a cardboard cup of beer under the boldly lettered billboard façade. The counterman looked like he'd been around since the days of Luna Park, and I asked if he'd ever heard of a fortuneteller named Madam Zora.

"Madam who?"

"Zora. She was a big attraction here back in the Forties."

"Was she a skinny broad? Dark hair?"

"You tell me. A crooner named Johnny Favorite used to come see her a lot."

"That's the dame. Folded her mitt camp during the war. Ain't never been back."

"What do you remember about her?"

"Not a thing, bud." He smiled, showing me four missing teeth. "Know who might be able to help you out?"

"No, who?"

"Old Paul Boltz. He used to be her shill back then. He's still around."

"Where can I find him?"

"Over at Steeplechase. He's the watchdog there now."

I said thanks and wandered off, sipping beer.

•

Steeplechase Park spanned 25 acres. The Parachute Jump, a hand-me-down from the '39 World's Fair, towered above the factory-sized, glass-walled pavilion like the framework of a 200-foot umbrella. A sign out front said, the funny place, above the leering, painted face of founder George C. Tilyou. Steeplechase was as funny this time of year as a joke without a punch line, and I looked up at the grinning Mr. Tilyou and wondered what there was to laugh about.

I found a man-sized hole in the chain-link fence and pounded on the salt-encrusted glass near the locked front entrance. The noise echoed through the empty amusement park like a dozen poltergeists on a ghostly spree.

Turning a corner, I came face to face with a Colt's Police Positive .38 Special. Holding the .38 without a tremor was an old party in a brown-and-tan uniform. A pair of pig-squint eyes sized me up above a nose shaped like a ball-peen hammer. "Freeze!" he said. His voice seemed to come from under water. I froze.

"You must be Mr. Boltz," I said. "Paul Boltz?"

"Never mind who I am. Who the fuck are you?"

"My name is Angel. I'm a private detective. I need to talk to you about a case I'm working on."

"Show me something to prove it."

When I started for my wallet, Boltz jabbed his .38 emphatically at my belt buckle. "Left hand," he snarled.

I shifted the attaché case to my right hand and got out my wallet with my left.

"Drop it and take two steps back."

Boltz stooped and picked it up. His Police Positive stayed trained on my belly button. "This here honorary buzzer don't mean shit to me," he said. "I got a piece of tin at home just like it."

"I didn't claim that was valid; just look at the photostat."

The pig-eyed watchman flipped through the cardholders in my wallet without comment. I thought of rushing him then but let it rest. "OK, so you're a private dick," he said. "What do you want with me?"

"You Paul Boltz?"

"What if I am?" He tossed my wallet onto the deck at my feet.

I stooped and picked it up with my left hand. "Look, it's been a hard day. Put the gun away. I need your help. Can't you tell when a guy is asking for a favor?"

He looked at the revolver for a moment, as if considering having it for supper. Then he shrugged and slipped it back into his holster, pointedly leaving the flap unbuttoned. "I'm Boltz," he admitted. "Let's hear your spiel."

"Is there someplace we can get out of all this wind?"

Boltz motioned his misshapen head, indicating I was to lead the way. He followed a half pace behind and we went down a short flight of steps to a door marked no entry. "In here," he said. "It's open."

Our footsteps boomed like cannon shots in the empty building. The place was large enough to contain a couple of airplane hangars. We paused in front of a row of fun-house mirrors, the distorted images making freaks of us both. "OK, shamus," Boltz said. "Give with your pitch."

I said, "I'm looking for a gypsy fortuneteller named Madam Zora. I understand you used to work for her back in the Forties."

Boltz's phlegm-thickened laughter rose to the light-bulb-studded girders overhead like the barking of a trained seal. "Bub," he chortled, "you ain't gonna get to first base the way you're headed."

"Why not?"

"Why not? I'll tell you why not. First off, she ain't no gypsy, that's why not."

"Tell me about it."

"OK, dick, I'll give it to you straight. She weren't no gypsy and her name wasn't Zora. I happen to know she was a Park Avenoo debutante."

It took a while to get my tongue back in gear. "Did you know her real name?"

"Whadya take me for, a gazoonie? I knew all about her. Her name was Maggie Krusemark. Her father owned more boats than the British navy."

My elongated reflection stretched like Plastic Man across the wavy surface of the trick mirror. "When did you see her last?" the rubber lips asked.

"Spring of 'Forty-two. One day, she pulled a fade. Left me holding the crystal ball, you might say."

"Did you ever see her with a singer named Johnny Favorite?"

"Sure, lots of times. She was stuck on him."

"Did she ever say anything about him that you can remember?"

"Power."

"What?"

"She said he had power."

"And that's all?"

"Look. I never paid much attention. To me, it was just a carny hustle. I didn't take it serious." Boltz cleared his throat and swallowed. "It was different with her. She was a believer."

"What about Favorite?" I asked.

"He was a believer, too. You could see it in his eyes."

"Have you ever seen him again?"

"Never. Maybe he flew off to the moon on his broomstick."

"Did she ever mention a Negro piano player named Toots Sweet?"

"Nope."

"Can you think of anything else?"

Boltz spit on the floor between his feet. "Why should I? Them days are dead and buried."

There wasn't much else to talk about. Boltz walked me back outside and unlocked the gate. I hesitated before giving him one of my Crossroads cards and asked him to call if anything came up. He didn't say he would, but he didn't tear up my card, either.

•

Toots Sweet made page three of the Daily News. I read the morning paper on the uptown IRT, having left the Chevy in a parking lot around the corner from the Chelsea. My first stop was the public library, where, after several misdirections, I asked the right question and came up with a current Paris telephone directory. There was a listing for an M. Krusemark on the Rue Notre-Dames-des-Champs. I wrote it down in my notebook.

It was nearly noon by the time I unlocked the inner door to my office. I sorted the mail, finding a $500 check from the firm of McIntosh, Winesap and Spy. All the rest was junk I filed in the wastebasket before phoning my answering service. There were no messages, although a woman who refused to leave a name or number had called three times that morning.

Next, I tried to reach Margaret Krusemark in Paris, but the overseas operator could get no answer after 20 minutes of trying. I was struggling back into my overcoat when the phone rang. I grabbed it on the third ring. It was Epiphany Proudfoot. She sounded out of breath. "I've got to see you right away," she said.

"What about?"

"I don't want to talk on the phone."

I said, "Take your time. I'm going out for something to eat and will meet you back in my office at one-fifteen."

She hung up without saying goodbye.

Before leaving, I locked Winesap's check in the office safe. I was kneeling there when I heard the doorstop's pneumatic wheeze in the outer room. When someone barges in without knocking, it's either a cop or trouble. Sometimes both in the same package.

This time it was a plainclothes dick wearing a wrinkled gray gabardine raincoat unbuttoned over a brown mohair pipe-rack special with cuffs sufficiently shy of his perforated brogans to provide a sneak preview of his white athletic socks.

"You Angel?" he barked.

"That's right."

"I'm Detective Lieutenant Sterne. This is my partner, Sergeant Deimos."

He nodded at the open partition door, where a barrel-chested man dressed like a longshoreman stood scowling.

"What can I do for you gentlemen?" I said.

"Answer a couple questions." Sterne was tall and lantern-jawed, with a nose like the prow of an icebreaker. When he spoke, his lips scarcely moved.

"Be glad to. I was just heading for a bite to eat. Care to join me?"

"We can talk better here," Sterne said. His partner closed the door.

"Suits me." I walked around in back of my desk.

"Where were you yesterday morning around eleven?"

"At home. Asleep."

"Sure is great being self-employed," Sterne cracked out of the side of his mouth to Deimos. The sergeant just grunted. "Why is it you're snoozing when the rest of the world is at work, Angel?"

"I was working late the night before."

"Where might that have been?"

"Up in Harlem. What's this all about, Lieutenant?"

Sterne got something out of his raincoat pocket and held it up for me to see. "Recognize this?"

I nodded. "One of my business cards."

"Maybe you'd like to explain how come it was found in the apartment of a murder victim."

"Toots Sweet?"

"Tell me about it." Sterne sat on the corner of my desk and tipped his gray hat back on his forehead.

"OK. What I've got going is a missing persons' operation. The party in question took a walk more than a dozen years ago. One of my few leads was an old photo of the guy posing with Toots Sweet. I went uptown last night to ask Toots if he could help me out. He played cagey at first when I talked to him at the Red Rooster, so I tailed him down to the park after closing time. He went to some kind of voodoo ceremony over by the Meer. They shuffled around and killed a chicken. I felt like a tourist."

"Who all is 'they'?" asked Sterne.

"About fifteen men and women, colored. I'd never seen any of them before except Toots."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. Toots left the park alone. I tailed him home and got him to talk straight. He said he hadn't seen the guy I was looking for since the picture was taken. I gave him my card and said to call me if he thought of anything."

Sterne looked at his thick fingernails with disinterest. "What did you use to get him to talk?"

"Psychology," I said.

Sterne raised his eyebrows and regarded me with the same disinterest he lavished on his fingernails. "So who is the famous party in question? The one who walked?"

"I can't give out that information without the consent of my client."

"Bullshit, Angel. You won't do your client any good downtown, and that's just where I'll take you if you clam up on me."

"Why be disagreeable, Lieutenant? I'm working for a lawyer named Winesap. That entitles me to the same right to privacy as him. If you pulled me in, I'd be out within the hour. Save the city carfare."

"What's this lawyer's number?"

I wrote it out on the desk pad along with his full name, tore the sheet loose and handed it to Sterne. "I told you all I know. From what I read in the paper, it sounds like some of Toots's chicken-snuffing fellow parishioners put him away. If you make a pinch, I'll be happy to look him over in the line-up."

"That's white of you, Angel," Sterne sneered.

"Any further questions, Lieutenant?" I asked.

Sterne turned his dead cop's gaze on me again. You could tell from his eyes that he never smiled. Not even during a third-degree session. He was just doing his job. "None. You and your 'right to privacy' can go eat lunch now."

We all wedged into the tiny elevator together and rode down without saying a word.

•

Gough's Chop House was across 43rd Street from the Times Building. The place was packed, but I squeezed into a corner by the bar and ordered roast beef on rye. Walt Rigler spotted me on his way out. "What's up, Harry?" he shouted over the din of newspaper shoptalk.

"Very little. Thanks for letting me raid the morgue. I owe you one."

"Forget it. How goes your little mystery? Digging up any good dirt?"

"More than I can handle. Thought I had a strong lead yesterday. Went to see Krusemark's fortunetelling daughter, but I picked the wrong one."

"What do you mean, the wrong one?"

"They're twins; Maggie and Millie, the supernatural Krusemark girls."

Walt rubbed the back of his neck and frowned. "Someone's pulling your leg, pal. Margaret Krusemark's an only child."

"You sure of that?"

" 'Course I'm sure. I just checked it out for you yesterday. Krusemark had a daughter by his wife. Just one, Harry. The Times doesn't make mistakes in the vital-statistics department."

"I should have known she was playing me for a sucker. It was too pat."

"Slow down, pal, you're way ahead of me."

"Sorry, Walt. Just thinking out loud. My watch says five after one; is that right?"

"Close enough."

I stood up, leaving my change on the bar. "Got to run."

"Don't let me stop you." Walt Rigler grinned his lopsided grin.

•

Epiphany Proudfoot was waiting in the outer room of my office when I got there minutes later. She was wearing a tartan-plaid kilt and a blue cashmere sweater and looked like a coed.

"Sorry I'm late," I said.

"Don't be. I was early." She tossed aside a well-thumbed back issue of Sports Illustrated and uncrossed her legs. On her, even the secondhand Naugahyde chair looked good.

I unlocked the door in the pebbled-glass partition and held it open. "Why did you want to see me?"

She stood by the window with the eight-inch gold letters, staring down at the street. "Who's paying you to look for Johnny Favorite?"

"I can't tell you that. One of the things my services include is discretion. Won't you sit down?"

I took her coat and hung it next to mine as she settled gracefully into the padded-leather chair across from my desk. It was the only comfortable seat in the place. "You still haven't answered my question," I said, leaning back in my swivel chair. "Why are you here?"

"Edison Sweet has been murdered."

"Uh-huh. I read the papers. But you shouldn't be too surprised: You set him up."

She clenched her handbag on her lap. "You must be out of your mind."

"Maybe. But I'm not dumb. You were the only one who knew I was talking to Toots. You had to be the one who tipped off the boys that sent him the chicken foot."

"You've got it all wrong."

"Have I?"

"There was no one else. After you left the store, I called my nephew. He lives around the corner from the Red Rooster. He hid the claw in the piano. Toots was a blabbermouth. He needed reminding to keep his trap shut."

"You did a good job. It's shut for keeps now."

"Do you think I'd be coming to see you if I had anything to do with that?"

"I'd say you were a capable girl, Epiphany. Your performance in the park was quite convincing."

"You have no right to spy on me," she said, not meeting my gaze.

"The Parks Department and the Humane Society would disagree. Quite a gruesome little religion."

Epiphany's glance was black with fury. "There never was an Obeah Holy War, or an Obeah Inquisition!"

"Yeah, sure; you've got to kill the chicken to make the soup, right?" I lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling. "But it's not dead chickens that worry me; it's dead piano players."

"Don't you think I'm worried?" Epiphany was a tall drink of water, as they say uptown, and it was easy to imagine quenching my thirst on her tawny flesh. "You come around looking for Johnny Favorite and the next day a man gets killed. That's not just a coincidence."

"What is it, then?"

"Toots Sweet's death didn't have anything to do with obeah."

"How do you know that?"

"Did you see the pictures in the papers?"

I nodded.

"Then you know they're calling those bloody scribblings on the wall voodoo symbols."

Another silent nod.

"Well, the cops don't know any more about voodoo than they do about peas and rice! Those marks were supposed to look like vévé, but it just isn't so."

"What's vévé?"

"Magic signs. All that bloody trash's got as much to do with the real thing as Santa Claus has to do with Jesus."

I stubbed out my butt in a Stork Club ashtray left over from a long-dead love affair. "You say the marks are phony?"

"Not phony so much as, well, wrong. Like someone describing a baseball game and calling a home run a touchdown."

I folded the copy of the News to page three and pointed to the snakelike zigzags, spirals and broken crosses in the photo. "Are you saying these look like voodoo drawings but they're used incorrectly?"

"That's right. See that serpent swallowing its own tail? That's Damballa, sure enough vévé. But no initiate would ever draw it right next to Babako like that."

"So whoever drew those pictures at least knew enough about voodoo to know what Damballa or Babako looked like in the first place."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you all along," she said. "Did you know that Johnny Favorite was once upon a time mixed up with obeah?"

"I know he was a hunsi-bosal."

"Toots really did have a big mouth. What else do you know?"

"Only that Johnny Favorite was running around with your mother at the time."

Epiphany made a face like tasting something sour. "It's true." She shook her head as if to deny it. "Johnny Favorite was my father."

I sat very still, gripping the arms of my chair as her revelation washed over me like a giant wave. "Who all knows about this?"

"No one, 'cept you and me and Momma, and she's dead."

"What about Johnny Favorite?"

"Momma never told him. He was away in the Army long before I was a year old."

"How come you're opening up to me now?"

"I'm scared. There's something about Toots's death that has to do with me. I can feel it deep down in my bones."

"And you think Johnny Favorite is mixed up in it somehow?"

"I don't know what to think. You're supposed to do the thinking."

"If you're holding out on me, now would be the time to tell."

Epiphany stared at her folded hands. "There's nothing more to tell." She stood up then, very brisk and efficient. "I must be going. I'm sure you have work to do."

"I'm doing it right now," I said, getting to my feet.

She collected her coat from the rack. "I trust you meant that stuff earlier, you know, about discretion."

"Everything you told me is strictly confidential."

"I hope so." She smiled then. It was a genuine smile and not designed to get results. "Somehow, against all my better judgment, I trust you."

I stood at the corner of my desk, not moving until I heard the door to the outer room close behind her. In three steps, I grabbed my attaché case, wrestled my coat off the rack and locked the office.

I waited with my ear to the outer door, listening for the self-service elevator opening and closing before I left. The hallway was empty. I sprinted for the fire stairs and took the steps three at a time on my way down.

•

I beat the elevator by 15 seconds and waited inside the stair well. Epiphany walked past me out onto the street. I was right behind, following her around the corner and down into the subway.

She caught the uptown IRT local. I got on the next car in line. Two stops later, she got off at Columbus Circle. She walked east along Central Park South and turned downtown at Seventh Avenue. I watched her studying the entrance numbers as she hurried by the Athletic Club and the sculpture-encrusted Alwyn Court Apartments. She slowed her pace along the side of Carnegie Hall. I saw her pause at the far end of the block and go inside the building. I already knew the address: 881 Seventh. It was where Margaret Kruse-niark lived.

I walked along the deserted hallway to the door wearing the brand of Scorpio. I unsnapped my attaché case on the threadbare carpet. A bunch of dummy forms and papers in the accordion file on top made it look official, but underneath a false bottom, I kept the tools of the trade. A layer of polyurethane foam held a set of case-hardened burglar's tools, a contact mike and miniaturized tape recorder, ten-power Lietz binoculars, a Minox camera with a stand for photographing documents, a collection of skeleton keys that cost me $500, nickel-steel handcuffs and a loaded .38 Special Smith & Wesson Centennial with an Airweight alloy frame.

I got out the contact mike and plugged in the earphone. It was a nice piece of equipment. When I held the mike to the surface of the door, I heard everything that went on inside the apartment. I heard Margaret Krusemark say, "We were not the best of friends, but I had a great respect for your mother." Epiphany's mumbled reply was inaudible. The astrologer went on, "I saw quite a good deal of her before you were born. She was a woman of power. Our relationship was a peculiar one, I don't deny it. I should hope that you are sufficiently sophisticated not to be swayed by bourgeois convention. Your mother certainly never was."

"What could be more bourgeois than a ménage, à trots?"

"It was not a ménage à trois! What do you think we were involved in, some hideous little sex club"

"I'm sure I have not the faintest idea what you were involved in. Momma never mentioned you to me at all."

"Why should she? As far as she was concerned, Jonathan was dead and buried. He was all that linked us."

"But he's not dead."

"Has someone been around asking questions about Jonathan?"

(continued on page 263) Falling Angel (continued from page 258)

"Yes."

"What did he look like?"

"Just a man. Ordinary."

"Was he on the heavy side? Slovenly? By that I mean a sloppy dresser, wrinkled blue suit and shoes that need a shine; closely cropped hair starting to go gray?"

Epiphany said, "Kind blue eyes. You notice them first."

"Did he say his name was Angel?" Margaret Krusemark's voice betrayed a strident urgency.

"Yes. Harry Angel."

"What did he want?"

"He's looking for Johnny Favorite."

"Why?"

"He didn't tell me why. He's a detective."

"A policeman?"

"No, a private detective. What is this all about?"

There was a faint clinking of china and then Margaret Krusemark said, "I'm not exactly sure. He was here, pretending to be a client. I know this is going to seem very rude, but I must ask you to leave now. I have to go out myself. It's urgent, I'm afraid."

"Do you think we're in danger?" Epiphany's voice broke on that final word.

"I don't know what to think. If Jonathan's back, anything could happen."

"There was a man killed in Harlem yesterday," Epiphany blurted. "A friend of mine. He knew Momma and Johnny, too. Mr. Angel had been asking him questions."

A chair scraped against the parquet floor. "I've got to go now," Margaret Krusemark said. "Come, I'll get your coat and we'll ride down together."

There was the sound of approaching footsteps. I pulled the contact mike from the door and sprinted the length of the long hallway like a wide receiver in the clear. I hung on to the banister for balance and took the fire stairs four and five steps at a time.

I ran down all the way to the empty lobby. Gasping, I paused to check the indicators over the elevators. The one on the left was going up, its partner coming down. Either way, they would be there in a moment.

I ran across Seventh Avenue without paying heed to the traffic. On the other side, I loitered near the entrance to the Osborn Apartments, wheezing like an emphysema victim.

•

Epiphany and the Krusemark woman came out of the building together and walked half a block uptown to 57th Street. I strolled along the other side of the avenue, keeping abreast of them. When the light changed, Epiphany started across in my direction. Margaret Krusemark waved frantically at passing taxis. A new Checker cab approached with its roof light on and I flagged it down, climbing inside before Epiphany had me spotted.

"Where to, mister?" a round-faced driver asked as he dropped the flag.

"Like to make a deuce above what it says on the meter?"

"Whatcha got in mind?"

"Tail job. Pull over for a minute in front of the Russian Tea Room." He did as I asked and turned around in his seat to check me out. I gave him a glimpse of the honorary button pinned to my wallet and said, "See the dame in the tweed coat getting into the hack in front of Carnegie Hall? Don't lose her."

"A piece of cake."

The other cab made an abrupt U turn on 57th. We stayed half a block behind as they turned downtown on Seventh and tailed them across town to the Chrysler Building. I paid my driver and started across Lexington Avenue. Margaret Krusemark was nowhere in sight. It didn't matter. I knew where she was headed. Passing through the revolving doors, I checked the directory in the angular marble-and-chromium lobby. Krusemark Maritime, Inc., was on the 45th floor.

I stepped off the elevator and spotted a window washer on his way to work. He was bald and middle-aged, with the retread nose of a retired boxer. He ambled down the gleaming corridor whistling last summer's big hit, Volare, a half tone flat. He wore dirty green coveralls and his safety harness dangled like a pair of unfastened suspenders.

"Got a minute, buddy?" I called, and he paused mid-note and regarded me with lips still pursed, as if waiting for a kiss. "Bet you can't tell me whose picture is on a fifty-dollar bill."

"OK, wise guy; it's Thomas Jefferson."

"You're wrong."

"So? Big deal. What's this all about?"

I got out my wallet and removed the folded half-century note I carry for emergencies and occasional bribes and held it up so he could see the denomination. "I thought maybe you'd like to find out who the lucky President was."

The window washer cleared his throat and blinked. "Are you off your rocker or something?"

"Rent me your outfit for an hour and take a walk. Go downstairs and buy yourself a beer."

He rubbed the top of his head, although it needed no further polishing. "You are some kinda nut, ain'tcha?" There was a hint of real admiration in his voice.

"What difference does it make? All I want is to rent your rig, no questions asked. You make half a yard for sitting on your duff for an hour. How can you beat that?"

"OK. You got a deal, buddy. Long as you're giving it away, I'm a guy who'll take it."

The window washer jerked his head for me to follow and led me back down the corridor to the custodial closet. "Leave all my gear in here when you're done with it," he said, unstrapping his safety harness and peeling off the dirty coveralls.

I hung my overcoat and suit jacket on top of a mop handle and pulled on the coveralls. They were stiff and smelled faintly of ammonia, like pajamas after an orgy.

I had the window washer show me how to use the safety harness. It seemed quite simple. "You ain't planning on going outside, are you?" he asked.

"You kidding? I just want to play a gag on a ladyfriend. She's a receptionist on this floor."

"Fine with me," the window washer said. "Just leave the stuff in the closet."

I tucked the folded 50 into his shirt pocket. "You and Ulysses Simpson Grant go have a party." He sauntered off whistling.

I removed my .38 before stashing the attaché case under the concrete sink. I slipped the little five-shot into my coveralls and transferred the contact mike to the other pocket. Bucket and brush in hand, I strolled down the corridor toward the impressive bronze-and-glass entrance of Krusemark Maritime, Inc.

•

The receptionist looked right through me as I crossed the carpeted lobby between glass-cased tanker models and clipper-ship prints. Beyond was a long hallway with offices opening off either side. I ambled along, swinging my bucket. At the end of the hall was a large room where a pert blonde sliced envelopes behind an L-shaped desk. Off to one side was a polished-mahogany door. At eye level, raised bronze letters said, Ethan Krusemark.

The blonde glanced up and smiled, the stack of mail beside her a foot high. My hopes of being alone with the contact mike went right out the window, an image I would soon regret.

The blonde ignored me, busy with her simple task. Clipping the bucket to my belt harness, I pulled open a window and closed my eyes. My teeth were chattering, but it wasn't from the rush of cold air.

I sat backward on the sill and hooked one strap of the safety harness to the outside casing. There was only the thickness of glass separating me from the blonde inside, but she might as well have been a million miles away. I switched hands and clipped in the other strap.

There was barely room for my toes on the narrow ledge. I pushed down the window and the comforting sound of the teletypes inside was lost in the gusty wind. I told myself not to look down. That was the first place I looked.

The shadowed canyon of 42nd Street yawned beneath me, pedestrians and traffic reduced to ant specks and crawling metallic beetles. I felt like a mountain climber on an incredible first ascent. Several floors above, radiator-cap gargoyles jutted from the corners of the skyscraper and, beyond them, the building's stainless-steel spire tapered into the sunlight, shining like the ice-clad summit of an unconquered peak.

It was time to make my move. I un-dipped the right-hand harness strap, attaching it to the same fastening that held the other. Then I unclipped the inner strap and reached across to the casing on the next window over and clipped into the fastener there.

Secured to both windows, I stepped across with my left foot. I looked into the office of Ethan Krusemark as I fastened the left-hand safety strap to the opposite casing of his window. His desk was a vast, oval slab of Pentelic marble, bare except for an executive six-button telephone and a patined bronze statuette of Neptune waving his trident above the waves.

Krusemark and his daughter sat on a long beige couch set against the far wall. He looked like his portrait: a ruddy-faced, aging pirate crowned with a mass of well-combed silver hair. To my way of thinking, the resemblance was more Daddy Warbucks than Clark Gable. Margaret Krusemark still wore the upside-down gold penlacle. Occasionally, one of them looked straight at me. I brushed soapy water onto the glass in front of my face.

I got the contact mike out of my coveralls and plugged in the earphone. Wrapping the instrument in a large rag, I pressed it to the glass and pretended to wipe the window. Their voices sounded so clear and sharp, I could easily have been sitting next to them on the couch.

Krusemark was speaking: "You're sure he's a detective?"

"Evangeline Proudfoot's daughter said he was. He knows enough to have gotten to her."

"What about the doctor in Poughkeepsie?"

"He's dead. Suicide. I called the clinic. It happened earlier this week."

"Then we'll never know if the detective spoke with him or not."

"I don't like it, Father. Not after all these years. Angel knows too much already. Why not get rid of him?"

"This town is crawling with two-bit private eyes. It's not Angel we need to worry about but the man who hired him."

Margaret Krusemark gripped her father's hand in both of hers. "Angel will be back. For the horoscope."

"Good. Play him along. You're a clever girl. Slip a drop of something in his tea. We must know the name of his client. We can't let Angel die until we find out who he's working for." Krusemark stood up. "I have several important meetings coming up this afternoon, Meg. Call me as soon as you hear from the detective. I picked up the art of persuasion in the Orient. We'll see if I've lost my touch."

"Thank you, Father."

"Come, I'll walk you out. What are your plans for the rest of the day?"

"I thought I might go over to Saks and do some shopping. After that——" The rest of it was lost as the heavy mahogany door closed behind them.

I stuffed the rag-wrapped contact mike into my coveralls and opened the window. I unclipped the safety harness and swung my trembling legs inside the relative safety of Krusemark's office. The risk had paid off; playing window washer was a picnic compared with finding out about Krusemark's Oriental artistry firsthand.

I shut the window and glanced around. As much as I wanted to do some snooping, I knew there wasn't time.

•

On my way out, I blew a loud kiss at the receptionist. The face she made suggested a mouthful of caterpillar guts, but two salesmen cooling their heels in matching Barcelona chairs thought it was real cute.

I did a quick-change number in the broom closet and left the coveralls and safety harness crammed into the dented bucket. There was no sign of Margaret Krusemark out on the street. She had mentioned going to Saks and I figured she'd caught a cab. Deciding to give her time to change her mind, I cut across Lexington to Grand Central.

I detoured down the ramp to the Oyster Bar and ordered a dozen blue points on the half shell. Twenty minutes later, I pushed my plate back and headed for a pay phone. I dialed Margaret Krusemark's number and let it ring ten times before hanging up. She was safe at Saks.

The shuttle train hauled my mollusk-stuffed carcass over to Times Square, where I caught an uptown BMT local to 57th Street. I called Margaret Krusemark's apartment from the phone booth on the corner and again got no answer. The lobby was empty. I went straight to the fire stairs. There was no percentage in being recognized by elevator operators.

When I got to Margaret Krusemark's door, I was breathing hard and my heart hammered like a metronome in presto. The hallway was deserted. I opened my attaché case and pulled on the rubber surgeon's gloves. The lock was a standard make and the third skeleton key I tried did the trick. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. The smell of ether was overpowering. It hung in the air, volatile and aromatic, bringing back memories of the ward. I got my .38 out of my overcoat and edged along the wall of the shadowed foyer.

Margaret Krusemark hadn't gone shopping, after all. She was lying on her back in the sunlit living room, spread out across the low coffee table under all those potted palms. The couch was pushed over against the wall, so that she was all alone in the center of the rug like a figure on an altar.

Her peasant blouse was torn open and her tiny breasts were pale and not at all unpleasant to look at except for the ragged incision that split her chest from a point below the diaphragm to midway up her sternum. The wound brimmed with blood and red rivulets ran down across her ribs and puddled on the tabletop.

I put my gun away and touched my finger tips to the side of her throat. Through the thin latex, I could feel she was still warm. Her features were composed, almost as if she were only sleeping, and something very much like a smile lingered on her lips.

I found the murder weapon under the coffee table. An Aztec sacrificial knife from Margaret Krusemark's own collection, the bright obsidian blade dulled with drying blood. I didn't touch it. There was no sign of any struggle. A wrinkled prayer rug near the entrance showed where she'd been dragged into the living room. Carefully, almost lovingly, the killer had lifted her onto the table and moved the furniture back so there'd be lots of space to work in.

Over by the tall window, between a philodendron and a delphinium, I made one small discovery. Resting in the basin of a tall bronze Hellenic tripod was a glistening lump of blood-soaked muscle about the size of a misshapen tennis ball. It looked like something the dog might have dragged in and I stared at it a long time before I knew what it was. Valentine's Day would no longer seem the same. It was Margaret Krusemark's heart.

After a bit of poking around, I found an ether-saturated rag in a woven wicker wastebasket in the foyer. I left it there for the homicide boys to play with. Let them take it downtown with the dead meat and run it through the lab. There'd be reports to file in triplicate. That was their job, not mine.

In the bedroom, the bed was unmade, rumpled sheets stained with sex. The witch was not without her warlocks. In a small adjoining bathroom, I found the plastic case to her diaphragm. It was empty. If she got laid this morning, she must still be wearing it. The boys from downtown would find that. too.

Margaret Krusemark's medicine cabinet overflowed. Aspirin, tooth powder, milk of magnesia and small vials of prescription drugs competed for space with jars of foul-smelling powders marked by obscure alchemical symbols.

A yellow skull grinned up at me from the top of a Kleenex box. There was a mortar and pestle on the counter next to the Tampax. A double-edged dagger, a copy of Vogue, a hairbrush and four fat, black candles crowded the lid of the toilet tank.

There was a small alcove off the bedroom where she did her work. A filing cabinet crammed with customers' horoscopes meant nothing to me. I looked under the Fs for Favorite and the Ls for Liebling without success. There was a small row of reference texts and a globe. The books were propped against a sealed alabaster casket about the size of a cigar box. Carved on the lid was a three-headed snake.

As I searched among the disordered papers on the desktop, a small printed card edged in black caught my attention. The symbol of an inverted five-pointed star inscribed within a circle was printed at the top. Below the talisman, it said Missa Niger in ornate caps. The text was also in Latin. At the bottom were the numerals III. XXII. McMlix. It was a date. Palm Sunday, four days away. I slipped the card inside my attaché case.

Most of the other papers on the desk were horoscopes in progress. I glanced at them without interest and found one with my name written on the top. Wouldn't Lieutenant Sterne like to get his hands on that? I should have set fire to it, or flushed it down the toilet, but, instead, like a dummy, I tucked it into my attaché case.

Finding the horoscope made me think to check Margaret Krusemark's desk calendar. There I was on Monday, the 16th: "H. Angel, 1:30 P.M." I ripped the page free and put it with the other stuff in my case. Today's page on the desk calendar showed an appointment for 5:30. My watch was a few minutes fast, but 20 after was close enough.

On the way out, I left the apartment door slightly ajar. Someone else could find the body and call the police. I wanted no part of this mess. Fat chance! I was in it up to my neck.

is harry angel, private eye, tough enough to solve the most diabolical murder mystery in years?

"I took a bottle of morphine off the top shelf to bait the hook and started upstairs."

"The receptionist had large breasts and slim hips. Her hair was on the brassy side of platinum."

"She stiffened. It was as if someone touched the back of her neck with an ice cube."

"I tucked the folded 50 into his shirt pocket. 'You and Ulysses Simpson Grant go have a party.' "

The concluding installment of this excerpt from William Hjorlsberg's forthcoming novel "Falling Angel" will appear in our November issue.