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. "Perhaps you remember some of their other friends? People who knew them when they were together."

Toots settled on the piano bench and surveyed the room for his tardy sidemen. He spoke to me while his eyes darted from table to table. "S'pose I pacify my mind with some music. Maybe something will come back to me."

"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 off above the joint and bleeding. Below a remaining tuft of white feathers a length of black ribbon was tied in a bow. It was considerably more than nothing.

"What's going on, Toots?"

The guitar player took his seat and switched on his amplifier. He glanced at Toots and fiddled with the volume. He was having feedback problems.

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

"Who's after you, Toots?"

"You git outta 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-white ass never was born."

I met the bass player's implacable gaze and glanced around. There was a full house. I knew how Custer must have felt up on the hilltop at Little Big Horn.

"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 floor, 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. The loiterers on the corner had moved on, their place taken by a thin, dark woman wearing a bedraggled fox fur. She swayed back and forth on her spike-heeled shoes, sniffing air rapidly through her nostrils like a coke fiend on a three-day blow. "Spo'tin', mister?" she asked as I passed. "Spo'tin'?"

"Not tonight," I said.

I got in behind the wheel and lit another cigarette. The thin woman watched me for a while before weaving off down the avenue. It was not quite eleven.

Around midnight, I ran out of smokes. I figured Toots wasn't going to bolt until after work. There was all the time in the world. I walked a block and a half up Seventh to an allnight liquor store and bought two packs of Luckies and a pint of Early Times. On the way back, I crossed the avenue and lingered a moment by the entrance to the Red Rooster. Toots' blend of barrelhouse and Beethoven boomed inside.

It was a cold night, and every so often I ran the engine until the chill was off. I didn't want it warm. Too easy to fall asleep. By the time the last set ended at quarter to four, the dashboard ashtray was full and the Early Times empty. I felt fine.

Toots came out of the club about five minutes before closing time. He buttoned his heavy overcoat and joked with the guitar player. A passing cab squealed to a stop at his shrill, two-fingered whistle. I switched on the ignition and started the Chevy.

Traffic was sparse, and I wanted to give them a couple blocks, so I left the lights off and watched in the rearview as the cab made a U-turn on 138th Street and started back up Seventh in my direction. I let them get as far as the allnight liquor store before I switched on my lights and pulled away from the curb.

I tailed the cab to 152nd Street, where it turned left. Midway down the block it stopped in front of one of the Harlem River Houses. I continued on over to Macomb's Place, swung uptown, and circled back to Seventh at the upper end of the housing development.

Near the corner, I saw the cab waiting out front with the door open and the roof light off. No one was in the back seat. Toots was just running upstairs to get rid of his chicken foot. I turned my headlights off and double-parked where I could watch the cab. Toots was back down 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 to the point where St. Nicholas and Lenox Avenues have their bifurcated beginnings. As I drove past I saw Toots holding his wallet and waiting for change.

I hung a sharp left and parked around the corner on St. Nicholas, sprinting back to 110th in time to see the cab driving off and the retreating form of Toots Sweet, a shadow sliding into the shadow world of the dark and silent park.

SIXTEEN.

He kept to the path bordering the western rim of Harlem Meer, passing through the pooled light under a succession of lampposts like Jimmy Durante saying goodnight to Mrs. Calabash. I stayed off to one side in the shadows, but Toots never looked back. He hurried along the edge of the Meer and under the arch of Huddlestone Bridge. An occasional cab whizzed uptown on East Drive overhead.

Beyond the Drive was 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 here and very still. For a moment I thought I lost Toots. Then I heard the drums.

Light glimmered like fireflies in the underbrush. 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 fifteen people standing in the dim light. There were three drummers, each playing an instrument of a different size. The largest looked like a conga. A lean, gray-haired man beat on it with one bare hand and a small wooden mallet.

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 sandpainter, 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 Proudfoot.

The onlookers swayed from side to side, chanting and dapping in time with the drumming. Several men shook gourd rattles, and one woman produced a frenzied staccato rhythm with a pair of iron clappers. I watched Toots Sweet wielding his maracas like Xavier Cugat fronting a rhumba band. The empty plaid bowling-ball bag sagged at his feet.

Epiphany was barefoot in spite of the cold and danced to the pulsing rhythm, 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 whites of their eyes gleamed like opals in their sweating faces.

I edged forward through the trees for a closer look. Someone played a pennywhistle. Shrill, piping notes stabbed into the night above the dissonant clangor of iron clappers. The drums growled and grumbled, the rhythm as insistent as a fever, delirious, entrancing. One woman fell to the ground and writhed like a snake, her tongue darting in and out with reptilian rapidity.

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.

Epiphany placed the drained bird alongside the pit where it jerked and bucked, bound legs twitching in tandem, until the wings spread for a final shudder and slowly folded. One by one, the dancers swayed forward and dropped offerings into the pit. Scatterings of coins, handfuls of dried corn, assorted cookies, candies, and fruit. One 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. Several of the congregation stood whispering to the dangling rooster, heads bowed and hands clasped. Others packed up their instruments and they all slipped off into the darkness after shaking hands, first the right then the left, arm over arm around the circle. Toots, Epiphany, and two or three others walked back along the path toward Harlem Meer. No one spoke.

I tailed them through the shadows, skirting the path and keeping out of sight among the trees. By the Meer the path divided. Toots turned left. Epiphany and the others took the righthand path. I tossed a mental coin, and it came up Toots. He headed toward the Seventh Avenue exit. If he wasn't going straight home, chances were good he'd be there before long. I planned on arriving first.

Ducking through the shrubbery, I scaled the rough stone wall and sprinted across 110th Street. When I reached the corner of St. Nicholas, I looked back and saw Epiphany in her white dress at the entrance to the park. She was alone.

I suppressed an urge to second-guess and ran for the Chevy. The streets were nearly empty, and I sped uptown on St. Nicholas, crossing Seventh and Eighth without missing a light. After turning onto Edgecomb, I followed Broadhurst along the edge of colonial Park up to 151st Street.

I parked near the corner of Macomb's Place and walked the rest of the way through the Harlem River Houses development. These were attractive four-story buildings arranged around open courts and malls. A Depression-era project, it was a far more civilized approach to public housing than the inhuman monoliths currently in municipal favor. I found the entrance to Toots' 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 attache case, so I sat on the steps leading up and waited.

SEVENTEEN.

I didn't have to wait long. I heard him puffing up the stairs and stubbed out my butt against the bottom of my shoe. He didn't see me and set his bowling-ball bag down on the floor as he dug for his keys. When he had the door open, I made my move.

He was reaching for the plaid bag as I caught him from behind, grabbing his coat collar with one hand and shoving him forward into the apartment with the other. He stumbled to his knees, the bag flung rattling into the darkness like a sackful of snakes. 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 muttered something I didn't make out and lumbered forward, waving the razor. I caught his arm with my left hand and stepped in close, bringing my knee up hard, where it did the most good. Toots sagged and sat down with a soft grunt. I twisted his wrist a little and he dropped the razor on the carpet. I kicked it against the wall.

"Dumb, Toots." I picked up the razor, folded it, and put it in my pocket.

Toots sat, holding his belly with both hands as if something might come loose if he let go. "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."

"You'll recover. Want something to sit on?"

He nodded. I dragged a red and black Moroccan leather ottoman over behind him and helped ease his bulk up off the floor. He groaned and clutched his middle.

"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. Powerful spirits speak through that child. She been comin' to humfo meetin'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."

"What do they call you when you're baptized?"

"Hunsi-kanzo."

"That what you are, a hunsi-kanzo?"

Toots nodded. "I been baptized a long time."

"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 wearing a bowtie."

"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 grimacing back onto the ottoman. "You wouldn't do that?"

"I'll do what I have to, Toots. I can break a finger easy as a breadstick."

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. Last time she spoke of him was eight, ten years ago. I recollect it 'cause it was the time some college professor come around wantin' to write somethin' in a book about Obeah. Evangeline told him white people weren't allowed in the humfo. I said, ' 'cept if they can sing,' you know, pullin' her leg an' all."

"What did she say?"

"I'm comin' to it. She didn't laugh but she wasn't mad. She said, 'Toots, if Johnny was alive he'd be one plenty powerful hungan, but that don't mean I have to open the door to ev'ry pink pencil pusher takes a notion to pay a call.' See, 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 no mistakes."

"Why is it upside down?"

"Look nicer that way."