"So?"

"Afraid of gettin' drowned. Din't wanna press my luck." He smiled, showing me four missing teeth. I stuffed the last of the hot dog into my face and wandered off, sipping beer.

The Bowery, situated between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk, was more a circus midway than a street. I strolled past the silent amusements and wondered what to do next. The gypsy community was more clannish than all the Ku Kluxers in Georgia, and I knew I would get no help from that direction. Leg work. Pound the pavement until someone turned up who remembered Madame Zora and was willing to talk about it.

Danny Dreenan seemed like a good place to start He was a retired bunco-steerer who operated a run-down wax museum near the corner of 13th Street and the Bowery. I met him in '52 when he was fresh out from a four-year stretch in Dannemora. The Feds tried to make him on a stock-option swindle, but he was just the fall guy for a pair of Wall Street shysters named Peavey and Munro. I was working for a third party who was also a victim of their grift and had a hand in cracking the case. Danny still owed me for that one, so he put me wise when I needed some knockdown on the q.t.

The Wax Gallery was housed in a narrow, one-story building sandwiched between a pizza stand and a penny arcade. Out in front, in foot-high crimson letters, it said: SEE:.

HALL OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS.

FIFTY FAMOUS MURDERS.

ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN AND GARFIELD.

DILLINGER IN MORGUE.

FATTY ARBUCKLE ON TRIAL.

EDUCATIONAL! LIFELIKE! SHOCKING!.

A henna-haired harpy not a day older than President Grant's widow sat in the ticket booth, playing solitaire like one of the mechanical fortunetellers in the penny arcade next door.

"Danny Dreenan around?" I asked.

"Out back," she grunted, sneaking the jack of clubs from the bottom of the deck. "He's working on a display."

"Mind if I go in and talk to him?"

"Still gonna cost you two bits," she said, nodding her ancient head at a cardboard placard: ADMISSION ... 25e.

I dug a quarter out of my trousers, slid it under the barred window, and went inside. The place smelled like a backed-up sewer. Large, rust-colored stains blotched the sagging cardboard ceiling. Warped wooden flooring creaked and groaned. In glass-fronted display windows along either wall, wax mannequins stood stiffly at attention, an army of cigar-store Indians, The Hall of American Presidents came first: identically featured chief executives dressed in the discards of a vaudeville costume shop. After F. D. R. it was all murderer's row. I walked through a maze of mayhem. Hall-Mills, Snyder-Gray, Bruno Hauptmann, Winnie Ruth Judd, the Lonely Hearts killers; all were there, wielding sashweights and meat saws, stuffing dismembered limbs into trunks, adrift in oceans of red paint.

In the back I found Danny Dreenan on his hands and knees inside a show window. He was a small man wearing a faded blue workshirt and salt-and-pepper wool slacks. A turned-up nose and sparse blond mustache gave him the expression of a frightened hamster. His habit of blinking his eyes rapidly when he spoke didn't help any.

I tapped on the glass and he looked up at me and smiled around a mouthful of carpet tacks. He mumbled something unintelligible, put down his hammer, and slipped out through a small crawl-space in the back. He was working on the barber shop slaying of Albert Anastasia, Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc. Two masked killers pointed revolvers at the sheet-draped figure in the chair, while the barber stood calmly in the background waiting for another customer.

"Hiya, Harry," Danny Dreenan called cheerfully, coming up behind me where I didn't expect him. "Whaddya think of my latest masterpiece?"

"Looks like they've all got rigor mortis," I said. "Umberto Anastasia, right?"

"Give the man a free cigar. Can't be too bad if you guessed it right off."

"I was over by the Park Sheraton yesterday, so it's fresh on my mind."

" 'S gonna be my big new attraction for the season."

"You're a year late. The headlines are as cold as the corpse."

Danny blinked nervously. "Barber chairs are expensive, Harry. I couldn't afford no improvements last season. Say, that hotel sure is good for business. Didja know Arnold Rothstein got knocked off there back in twenty-eight? Only it was called the Park Central in them days. Come on, I got him up front; I'll show you."

"Some other time, Danny. I see enough of the real thing to keep me satisfied."

"Yeah, I guess you do at that. So what brings you out to this neck of the woods, as if I didn't know already."

"You tell me, since you know all about it."

Danny's eyes were going like insane semaphores. "I don't know beans about it," he stammered. "But I figger, if Harry comes to see me, he's gonna want some info."

"You figured it just right," I said. "What can you tell me about a fortuneteller named Madame Zora? She worked the midway here back in the early forties."

"Aw, Harry, you know I can't help you there. I had a Florida real estate scam going in them days. It was Easy Street for Danny Dreenan back then."

I shook a cigarette from my pack and offered one to Danny who wagged his head negatively. "I didn't think you could finger her for me, Danny," I said, lighting up. "But you've been around a while now. Tell me who the old-timers are. Put me wise to someone who knows the score."

Danny scratched his head to show me he was thinking. "I'll do what I can. Problem is, Harry, most everybody who can afford it is off in Bermuda or someplace. I'd be lying on a beach myself if I wasn't up to my neck in bills. I ain't complaining; after the joint, Brighton Beach looks good as Bermuda any day."

"There must be someone around. You're not the only one open for business."

"Yeah, now you mention it, I know just the people to send you to. There's a freak show over on 10th Street near the Boardwalk. Ordinarily, most of the oddities would be working the circus this time of year, but these are old people. Semiretired, you might say. They don't take vacations. Going out in public is not their idea of a lot of laughs."

"What's the name of this place?" I asked.

"Walter's Congress of Wonders. Only it's run by a gent named Haggarty. You can't miss him. He's all covered with tattoos like a road map."

"Thanks, Danny. You're a fund of valuable information."

TWENTY-ONE.

Walter's Congress of Wonders stood on 10th Street near the ramp leading up to the Boardwalk. More than any of the surrounding attractions, it had the look of an old-time carnie midway. The front of the low building was festooned with bunting, below which hung large primitive paintings of the exhibits inside. Simple as cartoons, these vast canvases depicted human deformity with an innocence that belied their inherent cruelty.

MY IS SHE FAT! read the caption under the picture of a woman big as a blimp holding a tiny parasol above her pumpkin-sized head. The tattooed man - BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP - was flanked by portraits of Jo-Jo, the Dog-faced Boy, and Princess Sophia, the Bearded Lady. Other crude portraits showed an hermaphrodite, a young girl entwined by snakes, the seal man, and a giant wearing evening clothes.

OPEN SAT. & SUN. ONLY, a sign announced in the empty ticket booth by the entrance. A chain hung across the open doorway like the velvet ropes in nightclubs, but I ducked underneath and went inside.

The only illumination came from a dingy skylight, yet it was sufficient to reveal numbers of flag-draped platforms arranged along both sides of the deserted room. A smell of sweat and sadness hung in the air. At the far end, a line of light showed under a closed door. I went over and knocked.

"It's open," a voice called.

I turned the knob and looked into a large, bare room, made homelike by several sagging second-hand couches and gay circus posters brightening the mildewed walls. The fat lady filled a couch like it was an armchair. A diminutive woman with a black curling beard spread across her demure pink bodice sat engrossed in a half-assembled jigsaw puzzle.

Under a dusty fringed lampshade, four curious misshapen humans engaged in the familiar ritual of draw poker. A man with no arms or legs perched Humpty Dumpty-fashion on a large cushion and held his cards in hands growing directly out of his shoulders like flippers. Next to him sat a giant, playing cards reduced to postage stamps in his massive fingers. The dealer had a skin condition which made his cracked complexion look like the hide of an alligator.

"You in or out?" he demanded of the player on his left, a wizened leprechaun wearing a tank-top undershirt. His neck, shoulders, and arms were so heavily tattooed that he appeared to have on some exotic skin-tight garment. Unlike the gaudy epidermal artwork pictured on the canvas poster outside, he was bleached and faded, a blurred carbon of what was advertised.

The tattooed man eyed my attache case. "Whatever you're selling, we don't want any," he barked.

"I'm not a salesman," I said. "No insurance or lightning rods today."

"Then what the hell're you after, a free show?"

"You must be Mr. Haggarty. A friend of mine thought someone here might be able to help me out with some information."

"And just who might this friend be?" the multicolored Mr. Haggarty demanded.

"Danny Dreenan. He runs the wax museum around the corner."

"Yeah, I know Dreenan, a two-bit con man." Haggarty hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat into a wastebasket at his feet. Then he smiled to show he didn't mean it. "Any friend of Danny's is jake with me. Tell me what you need to know. I'll give you the straight dope if I can."

"Mind if I sit down?"

"Be my guest." Haggarty pushed an unoccupied folding chair away from the card table with his foot. "Park it there, pal."

I sat between Haggarty and the giant, scowling above us like Gulliver among tike Lilliputians. "I'm looking for a gypsy fortuneteller named Madame Zora," I said, setting my case between my feet. "She was a big attraction before the war."

"Can't place her," Haggarty said. "What about you fellas?"

"I remember a tea-reader named Moon," piped the man with flippers in place of arms.

"She was Chinese," the giant growled. "Married an auctioneer and moved to Toledo."

"Why're you looking for her?" the alligator-skinned man wanted to know.

"She used to know a guy I'm trying to find. I was hoping she could help me out."

"You a shamus?"

I nodded. Denying it now would only make things worse.

"Gumshoe, eh?" Haggarty spit into the wastebasket again. "I don't hold it against you. We all gotta earn a living."

"Me, I could never stomach a peeper," grumbled the giant.

I said: "Eating detectives gives you indigestion, right?"

The giant grumped. Haggarty laughed and pounded the card table with his red-and-blue-embroidered fist, upsetting careful stacks of chips all around.

"I knew Zora." It was the fat lady who spoke, her voice delicate as bone china. Magnolias and honeysuckle bloomed in her melodic accent. "She was no more a gypsy than you are," she said.

"You sure of that?"

" 'Course I am. Al Jolson wore blackface, but it didn't make him a nigger."

"Where can I find her now?"

"I couldn't tell you. I lost track of her after she folded her mitt camp."

"When was that?"

"Spring of forty-two. One day she just wasn't there any more. Walked away from her racket without a word to anyone."

"What can you tell me about her?"

"Not a whole lot. We'd have a cuppa Java together once in a while. Jaw about the weather and stuff like that."

"Did she ever mention a singer named Johnny Favorite?"

The fat lady smiled. Somewhere under those acres of suet lurked a little girl with a brand-new party dress.

"Didn't he have a pair of golden tonsils?" She beamed and hummed a tune from long ago. "He was my favorite, all right. I read once in the scandal sheet that he consulted Zora, but when I asked her about it she clammed up. It's like a priest hearing a confession, I guess."

"Is there anything more you can tell me, anything at all?"

"Sorry. We weren't that close. You know who might be able to help you out?"

"No, who?"

"Old Paul Boltz. He used to be her shill back then. He's still around."

"Where can I find him?"

"Over at Steeplechase. He's the watchdog there now." The fat lady fanned herself with a movie magazine. "Haggarty, can't you do something about the steam heat? It's like a boiler room in here. I'm about to melt!"

Haggarty laughed. "You'd make the world's biggest puddle if you did."

TWENTY-TWO.

The Boardwalk and Brighton Beach were deserted. Where summertime crowds lay sweating like wall-to-wall walruses a few determined scavengers probed the sand for discarded pop bottles. Beyond them, the Atlantic was the color of cast iron, surf surging against the breakwater in a leaden spray.

Steeplechase Park spanned twenty-five acres. The Parachute Jump, a hand-me-down from the '39 World's Fair, towered above the factory-size, glass-walled pavilion like the framework of a two-hundred-foot umbrella. A sign out front said THE FUNNY PLACE above the leering, painted face of founder George C. Tilyou. Steeplechase was as funny this time of year as a joke without a punchline, and I looked up at the grinning Mr. Tilyou and wondered what there was to laugh about.

I found a man-size hole in the chain-link fence and pounded on the salt-encrusted glass near the locked front entrance. The noise echoed through the empty amusement park like a dozen poltergeists on a ghostly spree. Wake up, old man! What if I was a gang of thieves out to boost the Parachute Jump?

I started on a circumnavigation of the vast structure, beating the glass with the flat of my hand. Turning a corner, I came face-to-face with the muzzle of a gun. It was a Colt's Police Positive .38 Special, but seen from my vantage point, it looked about the size of Big Bertha.

Holding the .38 without a tremor was an old party in a brown and tan uniform. A pair of pig-squint eyes sized me up above a nose shaped like a ball-peen hammer. "Freeze!" he said. His voice seemed to come from under water. I froze.