"I didn't do anything," the girl said.

They were already out the door again.

In the movies, one cop goes out the window and the fire escape and comes thundering down after the fleeing perp, passing windows where ladies in nightgowns are all aghast, while the other cop down the steps inside the building, and dashes into the backyard so they have the perp sandwiched between them, All right, Louie, drop da gat!

In real life, cops know it's faster and especially if the perp is armed, to come down inside steps while he's outside descending to level on narrow, often slippery metal ladders especially when the temperature outside is three zero. Carella and Hawes were a beat behind Bernie Banker Himmel. They rounded the rear corner ofthe building just as he was climbing a small wooden fence separating the backyards.

This was a beautiful night for a little jog through the city. The clouds had passed, the sky above was a canopy studded with stars and hung with an almost moon that washed the terrain with an eerie glow. All was silent except for the sound of their crunching on crusted snow, their labored puffing from chapped lips. They followed over the fence, right hands cold against the stocks of their pistols, left hands gloved, flapping loose, mufflers flying behind them as if they were World War I fighter pilots.

Himmel was fast, and both Carella and Hawes were large and out of shape, and they were having a tough time keeping up with him.

In the movies, detectives are always lifting weights down at the old headquarters gym, or shooting at targets on the old firing range. In real life, detectives aren't often in on the big action scenes. They hardly ever chase thieves. They rarely, if ever, fire weapons at fleeing suspects. In real life, detectives usually come in after the fact. The burglary, the armed robbery, the arson, the murder has already been committed. It is their job to piece together past events and apprehend the person or persons who committed a crime or crimes.

Sometimes, yes, a suspect will attempt flight, but even then there are strict guidelines limiting the use of force, deadly or otherwise. The LAPD has these guidelines, too; tell it to Rodney King.

Here in this city, tonight or any other night, gunplay was the very last thing Carella or Hawes wanted. The second least desirable thing was brute force. Besides, the way this little chase was developing, Bernie the Banker would be out of gun range at any moment. All three of them had now emerged from the barren backyards onto deserted well, almost deserted city streets, Himmel running ahead through narrow paths shoveled on icy sidewalks, banks of snow on either side of him, fast out-distancing Carella and Hawes who followed him and each other through the same narrow sidewalk burrows, knowing for damn sure they were going to lose him.

And then, three things happened in rapid succession.

Himmel rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

A dog began barking.

And a snowplow went barreling up the street.

"This is what I'd like to know,"." Priscilla said. Georgie yawned.

Tony yawned, too. "If this tall blond guy delivered the key to the locker..."

"Well, he did," Georgie said. "We know he "Then he had to know my grandmother, right?" "Well... sure."

"I mean, she had to have given him the key in it, am I right?"

"That's right."

"So why are we wasting time looking for this bookie, is what I'd like to know? When all we do is go to my grandmother's building and see if anyone there knows the blond guy."

"Good idea," Georgie said. "Let's do it in the morning when everybody's awake."

"It is morning," Priscilla said.

"Priss, please. We go knocking on doors at this hour..."

"You're right," she said.

Which astonished him.

Bernie Himmel was astonished to see a large dog standing there like some fuckin apparition on a narrow path cleared through the snow. He stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him was the dog snarling and barking and baring his teeth and blocking Himmel's escape route through the snow. Behind him, somewhere up the street, he could hear the roaring clang of a snowplow rushing through the night.

He did what any sensible man would have done in the face of threatening fangs dripping saliva and slime. He leaped over the snowbank on his left, into the street, just as the plow came thundering by.

Where earlier there had been an evil growling monster guarding the icy gates of hell, now there was an avalanche of snow and ice and salt and sand pouring down onto Himmel's shoulders and head, knocking him off his feet and throwing him back against old snow already heaped at the curb, virtually burying him. He flailed with his arms, kicked with his legs, came spluttering up out of a filthy grey mountain of shmutz, and found himself blinking up into a pair of revolvers.

Fuckin Cujo, he thought.

The questioning took place in the second-floor interrogation room at five-thirty that Monday morning. They explained to Himmel that they weren't charging him with anything, that in fact they weren't interested in him at all.

"Then why am I here?" he asked reasonably.

He had been this route before, though not in this particular venue, which looked like any other shitty police precinct in this city, or even some he had known in Chicago, Illinois, or Houston, Texas.

"Just some questions we want to ask you," Hawes said.

"Then read me my rights and get me an

"Why?" Carella asked. "Did you do something?" "You had my address, chances are you already know from the computer. So you know my record. So you have to ask me some questions. So I'll be back tomorrow morning for breaking parole. I want a lawyer."

"This has nothing to do with breaking parole." "Then why are you even mentioning it?" "You're the one who mentioned it." "Cause I'm six steps ahead of you."

"This has to do with a person you were talking to

in The Juice Bar on Friday night..."

"I want a lawyer."

"... and again on Sunday morning."

"I still want a lawyer."

"Give us a break here, Bernie."

"Why? You gonna give me a break?"

"We told you. We're not interested in you."

"I'll say it again. If you're not interested in me, why am I here?"

"This tall blond man you were talking to'" Carella said.

"What about him? You were talking to him." Progress, Carella thought.

"We traced a murder weapon to him," he said.

"Oh, I see. Now it's a murder. You'd better get me a lawyer right this minute."

"All we want is his name."

"I don't know his name."

"What do you know about him?"