"A place called The Juice Bar," Ramon said. an after-hours club on Harris Avenue. In Near the Alhambra Theater."

At two-thirty that morning, Luis Villada was outside the Alhambra Theater when Danny arrived with the two detectives. Danny with them all around, told them he was sure they had no further use for his services, hailed a cab and downtown without so much as a backward glance. Hawes was ever more certain that the man didn't like him.

Luis looked the two detectives over.

He was not afraid of telling them anything they wanted to know about Friday night because in the city already knew what had gone down. least every cop in Emergency Service and every cop in the Four-Eight Precinct and every cop on Riverhead Task Force, not to mention twenty from the ASPCA, which not very many German, or Arabian tourists knew stood for American Society for the Prevention of cruelty to Animals. As if cock fighting was being animals. Besides, they couldn't charge him anything more than they already had. As a he'd been arrested for one misdemeanor count

to animals and another misdemeanor count for )ating in animal fights.

"They kept us in the theater overnight," he said,

tickets."

Not a trace of an accent. Carella figured him for third-generation Puerto Rican.

"They let us go after they gave us dates for court appearances," he said. "I have to go downtown on

february twenty-eighth."

He looked the cops dead in the eye.

"Danny says you have something for me," he said.

Hawes handed him an envelope.

Luis didn't bother to open it or to count what was inside it. Hey, if you couldn't trust cops, who could you trust? Ho ho ho. He pocketed the envelope and an walking them down along dark alley smelling of piss, toward the back wall of the theater, where he there was a door the police had broken down night and couldn't padlock afterward. The door in splinters, small wonder. Nailed to the lintel was printed CRIME SCENE notice, which should have

:l anyone from seeking entry, door or no door.

Luis believed that printed notices from the police were to be ignored, and so he stepped over the ng bottom panel of the door and into a ss deeper than the one outside. The detectives d him in. Hawes turned on a penlight. vejor, Luis said. Hawes flashed the light around. They moved deeper into the theater. Luis began talking.

He seemed to think he'd been given a miilion-dollar publishing advance to cover a sporting event, rather than a mere three hundred for information about whatever he'd seen and this past Friday night. Like an eyewitness ab to describe a major disaster like an earthquake, avalanche, or a plane crash, he began setting the scene by describing the excitement of the night, the sheer excitement of being there on this special occasion. penlight Carella offered him, he led them through abandoned movie theater that had served as the Where once there had been upholstered seats, were now bleachers surrounding a carpeted Dried blood stained the carpet.

"The walls are on rollers," Luis explained. "If police come, the promoters slide them back to look like a prizefight is going on. They have two in boxing trunks and gloves in the back office. lookout sounds the alarm, the walls move. out, boxers are in the ring hitting each other, nice and legal. Cockfighting shouldn't be against the law, anyway. It's legal in some states, like Louisiana, Oklahoma, I forget the other two. It's legal in four states altogether. So why should it be against the law here? Farmers in the South get to cockfights, but here in a sophisticated city like this one, it's against the law. Shit, man! I go to a cockfight to enjoy myself, and all of a sudden I'm charged two misdemeanors, I can go to jail for a year on What for? What crime did I commit? This was a social gathering here."

The social gathering, as he tells it to them, began at nine o'clock on Friday night, when the spectators,

some two hundred and fifty of them, began gathering at this theater on Harris Avenue in the Harrisville section of Riverhead, both avenue and neighborhood named for along-ago councilman named Albert J. Harris. The fight was supposed to take place on Saturday night, at another Venue, but someone leaked it to the police and so the date and the place were changed although, as it turned out, someone leaked this to the police as well.

This is an important event tonight because it's the first big fight of the season, which begins in January and runs through to July. Roosters don't molt during these months. When they're molting, blood flows into their quills, causing them to become vulnerable and incapable of fighting... "Did you see that movie The Birds?" Luis asked. "There was a line in it where the girl says that birds get a hangdog expression when they're molting. That was a very funny line Hitchcock wrote. Because how can birds get hangdog expressions?"

Carella shook his head in wonder.

"Anyway, there was only one other event after the holidays, and then came this one on Friday night, which was supposed to be the next night, but the promoters sold a lot of tickets in advance, and it was just a matter of letting people know the date had been changed and instead of the athletic club on Dover

Plains, it was now the Alhambra here on Harris. The tickets cost..."

... twenty dollars each, which is practically giving the seats away. The promoters don't expect a lot of money on the gate. What's twenty two-fifty? Five K? So what's that? Where the real money is selling food and alcohol. And, of course, the betting. Thousands of dollars are wagered on each of the fights. During a typical night, there can be anywhere from twenty to thirty matches, depending on the ferocity and duration of each contest. The average match will run minutes, but some will end in five and more popular ones with the crowd can last as long as half an hour or even forty minutes, the birds tearing themselves apart in frenzy.

There is a huge indoor parking garage across the street from the Alhambra, and it is here that the customers park their cars, hidden from the eyes of prying police officers though on this Friday informers have already been paid, and a massive is in preparation even before the first of them arrives. Inside, there is joviality and conviviality, atmosphere reminiscent of the old days on the where cock fighting is still a gentleman's sport. can remember attending his first fight when he was seven years old. His father was a breeder of fighting birds, and he recalls feeding them special diets of meat and eggs supplemented with vitamins for their stamina and strength. Now, here in this city, owners of fighting birds sometimes pay three, hundred dollars a month to hide their roosters clandestine farms in neighboring states. These

areexpensive birds. Some of them are worth five, ten thousand dollars.

"It's a gentleman's sport," he says again.

Drinking rum at the bar, eating cuchifritos, speaking their native tongue, the customers mostly men, but here and there one will see a pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman dressed elegantly for the occasion relax in an ambiance of total acceptance and fond recall. There could easily be tropical breezes blowing through this converted theater, the swish of palm fronds outside, the rush of the sea against a white sand beach. For a moment, there is respite for these transplanted people who more often than not are made to feel foreign in this city.

The fights are furious and deadly.

This is a blood sport in every sense.

The roosters are crossbred with pheasants to fortify their most aggressive traits. Nurtured on steroids that increase muscle tissue, dosed with angel dust to numb pain, they are equipped with fighting spurs and then are moved into the carpeted cockpit to kill or be killed. In India, where the sport enjoys wide popularity, the birds fight "bare-heeled," using only their own claws to shred and destroy.

In Puerto Rico, the trainers attach to the birds' heels along plastic apparatus that resembles a darning needle. Here in this city, the chosen device is called a slasher. It is a piece of steel honed to razor-sharp precision. These spurs are fastened to both claws. They are twin weapons of mutilation and destruction.

Luis himself can't bear to watch the final moments of a fight, when the roosters, doped up with PCP, rip

and tear at each other with their metal talons, and feathers flying, the crowd screaming for a More often than not, both birds are killed.

"It's a sad thing," Luis says. "No one likes to animals hurt. This is a gentleman's sport."

The police who raided the theater at eleven-twenty-seven P.M. last Friday apparently with his premise. Captain Arthur Forsythe, Jr., led the team of E.S. officers who spearheaded operation, later told the press that the forced these birds was nothing less than barbaric, a criminal act that had to be abolished if this city were ever to call itself civilized.

His men had taken out the lookouts posted at the entrance, handcuffing them putting them down on the sidewalk before they sound an alarm. They then went in wearing vests and carrying machine guns, followed by the Four-Eight, the Task Force, and the

"There's cameras and guard dogs," Luis don't know how they got in so quick and easy."

Even so, by the time the raiders broke into the ring area upstairs, some of the false walls had been moved back and the event's organizers fleeing over rooftops and through tunnels, one out to Harris Avenue, another running under a beauty parlor adjacent to the parking garage.

police caught only one of the promoters, a man Anibal Fuentes, who was charged with two counts.

"This shouldn't be allowed to happen," Luis shaking his head. "Kings and emperors used to cockfights, did you know that? Even Am

presidents! Thomas Jefferson! George Washington! The father of the nation, am I right? He liked to watch cockfights. This is a sin, what they're doing. Persecuting people who enjoy an honest-to-God sport!"

In his report to the Police Commissioner, Captain Forsythe noted that on the street behind the theater his men had found twenty-five bloodied roosters, all fitted with metal talons, twenty of them dead, the rest still alive and twitching in agony. In rooms behind the false walls, officers from the Four-Eight found another forty birds in cages, pillowcases over their heads to keep them calm in the dark before they were tossed into the ring.

"They came from all over," Luis said. "Florida and Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. Some trainers brought their birds all the way from San Juan and Ponce! This was a big event, man! There were birds coming to the ring from all over! Like toreadors arriving!"

"You didn't happen to notice a black limo, did you?" Carella asked.

What the hell, he thought, toreadors arriving!

"Oh sure," Luis said.

"What kind of limo?" Carella asked at once. "A Caddy." "Where'd you see it?"

"Back of the theater. When I was walking over from the garage. The door we came in before. Where the trainers take the birds in, you know? The stage door, I guess they call it. The one that's busted now."

"You saw a trainer taking a chicken out of a Black Caddy limousine, is that right?"

"Not a chicken. A rooster. A fighting cock!" "Trainer drove him up in a Caddy, is that right?" "That's right. Took him out of the backseat." "In a cage, or what?"