"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 attache case to my right hand and got out my wallet with my left.

"Drop it and take two steps back."

"Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars."

"What was that?" Boltz stooped and picked it up. His Police Positive stayed trained on my belly button.

"Nothing. Just talking to myself. Open the flap and you'll see my photostat right on top."

"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 it 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. "Okay, 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 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 with room left over for a half-dozen basketball courts. Most of the attractions remained from an earlier, unmechanized era. A large, undulating wooden slide gleamed in the distance like a mahogany waterfall. Another slide called the "Whirlpool" spiraled down from the ceiling, spilling out onto "The Human Pool Table," a series of polished, revolving disks built into the hardwood floor. It was easy to imagine Gibson girls in leg-o'-mutton sleeves and dapper gents tipping their straw boaters as the calliope played "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

We paused in front of a row of "fun house" mirrors, the distorted images making freaks of us both. "Okay, shamus," Boltz said. "Give with your pitch."

I said: "I'm looking for a gypsy fortuneteller named Madame Zora. I understand you used to work for her back in the forties."

Boltz's phlegm-thickened laughter rose to the lightbulb-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."

"I heard that, but I wasn't sure if it was on the level."

"Well, I'm sure. Didn't I know her racket inside and out?"

"You tell me."

"Okay, 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."

A mule's kick would have seemed the kiss of an angel alongside that bombshell. 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 carnie 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 for all I care. Her, too."

"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. After a moment's hesitation, I gave 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.

I tried calling Millicent Krusemark from the first phone booth I came to but got no answer. Just as well. It had been a long day and even detectives are entitled to some time off. On my way back to Manhattan, I stopped in the Heights and gorged myself on seafood at Gage & Tolmer's. After poached salmon and a bottle of chilled chablis, life no longer seemed like a glass-bottomed boatride through the city's sewer system.

TWENTY-THREE.

Toots Sweet made page 3 of the Daily News. No mention of the murder weapon in what was slugged SAVAGE VOODOO KILLING. There was a photo of the bloody drawings on the wall over the bed, and one of Toots playing the piano. The body had been discovered by the guitar player in the trio, who stopped by to pick up his boss before work. He was released after questioning. There were no suspects, although it was widely known in Harlem that Toots was a longstanding member of a secret voodoo cult.

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.

On my way to the office, I sat on a bench in Bryant Park long enough to chain-smoke three cigarettes and rehash recent events. I felt like a man chasing a shadow. Johnny Favorite had been mixed up in a weird underground world of voodoo and black magic. Offstage, he led a secret life, complete with skulls in his suitcase and fortunetelling fiancees. He was an initiate, a hunsi-bosal. Toots Sweet got knocked off for talking. Somehow, Dr. Fowler was a part of it, too. Johnny Favorite cast a long, long shadow.

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 called three times that morning.

Next, I tried to reach Margaret Krusemark in Paris, but the overseas operator could get no answer after twenty minutes of trying. I dialed Herman Winesap down on Wall Street and thanked him for the check. He asked how the case was getting along. I said just fine, mentioning I wanted to get in touch with Mr. Cyphre. Winesap said he was meeting him later in the afternoon on business matters and would see he got the message. I said fair enough, and we both chirped our goodbyes and hung up.

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."

"Where are you now?"

"At the store."

I said: "Take your time. I'm going out for something to eat and will meet you back in my office at one-fifteen. You know how to find it?"

"I've got your card."

"Swell. See you in an hour."

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. Clients are always welcome, that's why COME IN is painted on the front door under the name of the firm. But clients usually knock on the inner door. When someone barges in without a word it's either a cop or trouble. Sometimes both in the same package.

This time it was a plainclothes dick wearing a wrinkled grey 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. Deimos wore a knitted wool cap and a black-and-white plaid lumberjacket. He was cleanshaven, but his beard was so dark it looked like powder burn under the skin.

"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. His face thrust forward aggressively above his stooped shoulders. 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 dosed the door.

"Suits me." I walked around in back of the desk and got out a fifth of Canadian whisky and my Christmas cigars. "This is all the hospitality I can offer. Paper cups're over by the water cooler."

"Never drink on duty," Sterne said, helping himself to a handful of cigars.

"Well, don't mind me. This is my lunch hour." I carried the bottle over to the cooler, filled a cup halfway, and added a finger of water. "Cheers."

Sterne tucked the cigars in his breast pocket. "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 grey hat back on his forehead.

"Not much to tell. Sweet was the reason I went up to Harlem. I needed to interview him regarding a job I'm working on. He turned out to be a cold lead, which I half-expected. I gave him the card in case anything came up."

"Not nearly good enough, Angel. Give it to me again."

"Okay. 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 dosing 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. Like it better this time?"