Gloves?

"What color shoes?"

"I couldn't see them from behind the desk."

"Beard? Mustache?"

"Clean-shaven."

Priscilla didn't know that the cops had virtually these same questions on the night of grandmother's murder. Nor did she realize, of that the man who lived down the hall from her given them this exact description.

"Anything else you remember about him?"

Sounding more and more like a cop.

Maybe she'd missed her calling.

"Well .. this will sound funny, I know," Logan said.

"Yes?"

"He smelled of fish."

"What do you mean?"

"When he handed the envelope across the desk,

there was a faint whiff of fish rising from his hands." "Fish?"

"Mm."

"James?" a voice from the bedroom called.

"Yes, Daryll?"

"Man, you goan be out there all night?"

"I think we're about finished," Logan called. In explanation, he added, "My cousin. From Seattle."

Georgie raised his eyebrows.

They called on Danny Gimp because they couldn't find The Cowboy again, and they didn't particularly like to deal with Fats Donner, the third man in their triumvirate of reliable informers. Danny, unlike most good informers, was not indebted to the police. They had nothing on him that could send him away. Or, if they did, they'd forgotten what the hell it was. Danny was a businessman, plain and simple, a superior purveyor of information who enjoyed the trust of the criminal community because they knew he was an ex-con, which was true. What was not true was that he'd been wounded during a big gang shoot-out, hence the limp.

Danny limped because he'd had polio as a child, something nobody had to worry about anymore. But pretending he'd once been shot gave him a certain cachet he considered essential to the business of

informing. Even Carella, who'd been shot once or twice himself, thanks, had forgotten that story about getting shot was a lie.

"You ever notice that most of the cases we work together, it's wintertime?"

Danny asked.

"Seems that way."

"I wonder why," Danny said. "Maybe it's cause you hate winter. Don't you hate winter?"

"It's not my favorite season," Carella said. He was behind the wheel of the police car driving Danny and Hawes to an all-night deli on Stem. The snow had stopped and they were in a hurry to get going on this damn thing, but Danny something of a prima donna who didn't like to be treated like some cheap snitch who transfered information in back alleys or police cars. Hawes sitting in the back. Danny didn't ask Hawes what his favorite season was because he didn't particularly like the man. He didn't know why.

Maybe it was the streak in his hair. Made him look like the fuckin of Frankenstein. Or maybe it was the faint trace of Boston dialect that made him sound like one ofthe fuckin Kennedys. Whatever, he directed most of his conversation to Carella.

There were maybe three, four other people in the diner when they walked in, but Danny looked the place over like a spy about to trade atomic Satisfied he would not be seen talking to cops, chose a booth at the back, and sat facing the door. and grizzled, and looking stouter than he actually was because of the layers of clothing he was wearing Danny picked up his coffee cup in both hands

sipped at it as if a Saint Bernard had carried it through a blizzard.

His leg hurt. He told Carella it hurt whenever it snowed. Or rained.

Or even when the sun was shining, for that matter. Fuckin leg hurts all the time.

Carella told him what they were looking for.

"Well, there ain't no cockfights on Sunday nights," Danny said.

He hadn't been to bed yet, either; to him, it was still Sunday night.

"You get them on Saturday nights, different parts of the city," he said, "mostly your Spanish neighborhoods, but you don't get them on Sunday nights." "How about Friday nights?"

"Sometimes, when there's heat on, you know, they change the night and the location. But usually, it's Saturday night."

"We're looking at Friday." "This past Friday?" "Yes."

"There might've been one, I'll have to make some calls."

"Good, make them."

"You mean now? It's two in the morning!" "We're working a homicide,"

Carella said.

"What are those, the magic words?" Danny said. "Let me finish my coffee. I hate to wake people up in the middle of the night."

Carella shrugged as if to say you want to do business or you want to lead a life of indulgence and indolence?

Danny took his time finishing the coffee. Then he slid out of the booth and limped over to the pay phone

on the wall near the men's room. They watched' he dialed.

"He doesn't like me," Hawes said.

"Naw, he likes you," Carella said.

"I'm telling you he doesn't."

"He came to the hospital when I got shot,"

Carella

said.