Brian tried to pull away but the woman clung to him, forced herself against him; fingers, steel-strong, dug into his flesh, tore at his clothing. Incredulously, he felt her hands, fingers, plucking at his trousers, yanking the buttons, reaching for him.

He shoved her away from him and slammed the back of his legs against the desk.

"Jesus," he said. "Jesus, lady. Come on!"

She lunged at him and he fled to the outer room, his hands furiously clutching at his disheveled clothing. He whirled around to confront her in the light of the detectives' squad room.

She stood, open mouthed, staring at him, unmoving now. Her thin, skull-like, ruined face froze; the eyes, burned out with desperation, were black glass, uncomprehending, gazing vacantly now. Her cheeks, sunken and fleshless, were smeared with bright blotches of powdery rouge. Her lips were thickly greased with orange lipstick, sharp points of color reaching nearly to her nostrils and down toward her chin, a mouth for a mad clown. Her hair, dyed black with sprouts of white at the roots, was a tangled mass, filthy, greasy, falling on her bone-thin shoulders. Slowly, she moved her head back and forth, whispered, "No. No. No. No. That's not him. That's not Albert. Not yet. No. No. No. No. That's not him. That's not Albert. Not yet. Not yet."

As she spoke, her eyes still on Brian, she moved about the room, hit into desks, chairs, without noticing, until she reached the doorway. Then she bolted from the room and they could hear the sound of her footsteps as she lunged down the stairs.

"Christ," Brian asked breathlessly, "who the hell was that?"

"Jeez," Detective Schenkel said, "that's what we wanted to ask you, kid. Hey, O'Malley, Christ, you better button up, kid, before we get you on indecent exposure." He opened the top drawer of his desk, searched around until he found a cake of soap which he tossed to Brian. "Hey, kid, if she touched your pecker, you better give it a real good wash. She looked like she was crawling with all kinda things."

Brian went into the men's room and inspected the damage to his uniform. The crazy bitch had ripped two buttons off his fly and his tunic was smeared with lipstick, rouge and powder. He scrubbed himself, then rubbed a damp paper towel over his uniform. He used his anger, not trusting himself to go back to the squad room to search for his missing buttons. He could hear the two detectives laughing; he knew he'd been had and that the story would make the rounds and that he'd just have to take it.

He checked his pants, decided he could risk it.

"Hey, Schenkel, here's your soap." He tossed the slippery bar just over the detective's head. "Thanks." He stopped at the doorway and grinned. "By the way, Schenkel. That's a lousy way to get rid of your old girl friends. Next time you want to palm one off, try your partner there. He's a lot more her type than me."

He took the steps two at a time, adjusted his collar, entered the ready room and felt a weight in his stomach. Molly, her cartons and pretzels and the newspaper were gone.

He glanced at Sergeant Weber, bent over some papers on his high desk, didn't know what to do until the clerical man signaled him silently, jerked an index finger toward the back exit.

Out in the alley, the patrol wagon waited impatiently. A uniformed man opened the cage door and Brian climbed into the back of the wagon while a motley assortment of pickups complained.

"Nu, you got all night maybe, making us wait, you're fooling around with your friends. Well, I ain't got all night. You should be ashamed."

Softly, Brian said, "Molly, shut up."

The Night Court detention pen was a Saturday-night madhouse. Through some error, twenty-five derelicts had been misrouted and their stench permeated the wire-meshed enclosure long after they had been collected and sent to another court.

"Holy shit, this place smells like a fucking zoo," a patrolman observed bitterly.

Detective Horowitz, from the Ninth Squad, whom Brian knew by sight and reputation, commented, "You can always tell a Catholic; whenever he shits, it's holy." His prisoner, a young Negro homosexual, kept his face down so that no one could see that he was crying.

Brian tried to detach himself from Molly and her boxes of pretzels. There was something big going on downstairs, where male prisoners were held prior to being brought up to the detention pen adjacent to the courtroom. Several reporters and press photographers were circulating and there was a general air of something happening.

Detective Horowitz yanked his prisoner to Brian's side and asked him, "Hey, Jeffrey, ain't this young patrolman cute?" He punctuated his question with a light, friendly jab of his elbow. The homosexual pretended not to be interested but he raised his face shyly and studied Brian, then smiled and blinked.

"How do you like this little fickle bastard?" Horowitz asked with feigned anger. "An hour ago, he had the hots real bad for me; now he's rolling them big eyes at you, O'Malley. Just don't go reaching, Jeffrey. Remember, that's how come you're here in the first place."

Brian had heard that Julie Horowitz was a dangerous man, despite the wide, friendly face. He was about forty, nearly as tall as Brian but much broader, more solid, though not yet fat. He had a thick fringe of yellowish-red hair surrounding a huge freckled skull and his tiny eyes were constantly disappearing into the crinkles of his laughter. He laughed a lot, but the laugh was deceptive: loud, frequent but humorless.

"Hey, O'Malley, you know what they got down there?"

"No, but I've noticed a lot of action. What gives?"

Horowitz leaned into Brian. At the same time, he firmly pushed his prisoner around in back of him. "They got some big jigaboo bastard on a rape. Little kid on a roof. She was a little colored kid, but what the hell, rape is rape." He laughed in anticipation of what he was to say. "The arresting officers seen it that way too. See, they was a couple spade sleuths who took him and they really creamed the guy. I was talking to this guy from the Journal, a pal of mine. You know Sid Lewis? Well, he told me they put the cuffs on this guy and they nearly butchered him."

The laugh spilled over the words and Brian had some difficulty in understanding what Horowitz was saying. "Christ, the guy is a real nut, you know? Built like a brick shithouse, and Sid tells me they beat up on him and he keeps trying to fight back. You gotta be crazy, right? They finally knock him cold and he comes to and tries to rise up, roaring like a ruptured bull and wants to take them on. He ended up by smashing his head into the bars downstairs." Horowitz took a deep wheezy breath and sputtered more words in a gush of breath and laughter. "Now get this, get this. This dumb bastard, see, he's all beat the hell up, and he starts ramming his head against the bars in the holding cell. And every time he bangs his head, see, he yells, 'Bang!'; rams his head, yells, 'Bang!'" Horowitz turned away for a moment to regain his composure. "Like he was making music on a drum, only the drum was his stupid head."

"He must be a nut," Brian said, impressed.

"Or pretending to be a nut case. They sent for the nut wagon and he'll get carted off to Bellevue." His thick lashes batted a few times, eyes darted, examined the crowded room. "Well, kid, wadda you got?"

Brian ran his finger around the inside of the stiff collar of his tunic and shrugged. "I had to take the old woman. You know. The pretzel seller."

Sound sputtered from Horowitz' mouth. "Oh, kid, you're in for it tonight. We got old Morry Glittsman sitting. You know about him?"

Everyone knew about Magistrate Morris Glittsman. He was the weekend drawing attraction at Night Court and deserved the attention accorded him. He conducted each session with the wit and timing and pace and audience sense of a master showman. Anyone coming before him might be the target of his sudden, biting, searing verbal assault: police officer, alleged culprit, complainant, court clerk, it was all the same to Glittsman. The perpetrator of the most horrendous crime might, for some unknowable reason, bring forth a kind, concerned, gentle bit of fatherly advice and encouragement and the most timid miscreant might be the recipient of a cruel, malicious tongue-lashing.

"I'll give ya some advice, kid," Horowitz offered. "Ya don't say nothin', nothin' at all, no matter what Glittsman pulls. Don't let the mob in the courtroom bother ya neither; they're nothin' but a bunch of fucking cheap-date phonies and don't you provide them with no free entertainment. You just 'Yes, your Honor,' 'No, your Honor' and...Jeez, I remember one time a coupla years back..."

The broad smile froze on Horowitz' face, his eyes congealed into a glinting bright awareness and he moved swiftly and decisively before Brian realized there was a need to move.

By the time he turned toward the terrible noise which shrieked through the thick stale air, it was difficult to determine what he saw, to understand the sudden, unexpected burst of violence all around him.

The man was some nightmare apparition, a dark face contorted with pain and anguish and madness. Blood streaked unbelievably from heavy lips and flared nostrils, in long smears, bright and star-ding against the strange garment. He seemed partially encased in a white wrapping, and as he relentlessly raised tremendous arms against Horowitz' onslaught, a collection of belts and buckles clattered against the escaped prisoner's body. He received the impact of Horowitz' strength without a sound and Brian tried to get to the man but found himself caught up amidst the bodies which moved toward the confusion or away from it A small hand clutched frantically, childlike, at his sleeve and it was with considerable difficulty that he managed to break free of the terrified grasp which Horowitz' prisoner had on him.

Finally, Horowitz pinned the man's arms from behind and two Negro detectives placed themselves in front of him, one on each side. A team, perfectly coordinated, wordless, soundless, expressionless, they grasped the flapping material, twisted it about the man's body so that his arms were firmly secured. Finally, an animal cry came from deep within the man's throat as he twisted wildly against the restraint He began to buck his head, bent forward suddenly for balance, and as he did so, one dark hand reached out, pressed on the bloodied wool-matted skull. Two fists raised, hammerlike, crashed down with a sickening, smashing sound. Brian caught a glimpse of the blunt end of a blackjack within one of the clenched fists.

The prisoner lay motionless on his stomach. One of the Negro detectives reached down and turned him over. The man's eyes were rolled back in their sockets and the white that showed was bloodshot and yellow. Horowitz stepped back, disclaiming any part of what might take place. The two detectives breathed heavily with exertion and excitement, regarded the man, then each other. With a curiously passive concentration and a savagery that seemed devoid of anger or passion, they kicked the prisoner's body deliberately and professionally. They stopped, regarded the trussed body, and without a word or signal between them, each in turn delivered one devastating kick to the groin.

Brian clenched his teeth, felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach, a sudden ache along his navel, down into his groin. The homosexual sobbed and pressed his face into his hands. Someone sighed "Oh, Jesus," but whether in supplication or admiration was not clear.

The two detectives reached for their prisoner and dragged him back inside toward the waiting ambulance attendants.

Brian lit a cigarette and tried to hold his hands steady or at least to hide the tremble.

Horowitz' laugh was a little thin and stretched but otherwise he seemed untouched by what had just happened. He jerked his thumb over his shoulders toward the door. "Listen," he said and moved his head to one side, "you are now gonna hear a body make contact with some steps."

His prediction was almost immediately confirmed. There was a heavy dull thudding sound. Horowitz rested a heavy freckled hand on his prisoner's shoulder. "Come on, Jeffrey, stop crying. Aren't you lucky you didn't play games with them boys?"

For a moment, Brian didn't see Molly and he looked around wildly, but before panic set in, she pulled herself heavily to her feet from behind her boxes. She looked better than he felt.

"To be in such company, I had to lose my whole night?" she complained. "Ach, these Schwartzes, they want to kill each other, they shouldn't do it here."

Horowitz engaged in a loud and friendly conversation with a plain-clothes man. Brian watched the detective with admiration. He was a big, boisterous, laughing man who knew how to move, what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

The court attendant appeared and announced that the judge would be off the bench for a ten-minute break. This was greeted with groans and curses.

"Shit, there goes another hour. Okay, move your ass," a detective instructed his prisoner back into the detention cells.

"Fifteen, twenty minutes the most," the court attendant assured them. "Look, if he ain't heavy stuff, don't bring him back down. They're loaded already."

"This bastard cut his girl friend's throat, Hennessy. That heavy enough, for Christ's sake?"

There was a shuffle of feet and rearrangement of bodies as some policemen returned prisoners to detention and others, resigned, slumped on available benches or leaned against the wall and lit cigarettes or read folded newspapers or exchanged gossip or opinions with each other.

Brian opened his tunic, rubbed his flat empty stomach and debated briefly whether he ought to risk one of Molly's pretzels. He was pretty hungry but her hard, scarred hands were dirty and he saw her dig her index finger into an ear or her nose from time to time.

Horowitz lit a cigar and told his prisoner he could sit on the floor if he wanted. A young patrolman, pale, tightly buttoned, bewildered, came from the door leading to the holding cells.

"Hey. Hey, Francis," Brian called out.

Francis Kelly looked around, then waved. "Hey, Brian." He came to Brian's side and spoke in a low, tense voice. "Jesus, Brian, it's a madhouse down there. Listen, I gotta go and get commitment papers. I don't know where the hell I'm supposed to get them or who's supposed to give them to me. Jesus, I don't know anything that's going on, Bri, but I'll tell you one thing: I'm getting a royal hosing."

Julie Horowitz blew acrid smoke into the air and studied it thoughtfully. He made no attempt to turn from the two patrolmen; he was frankly interested.

"What do you mean, Francis? What've you got?"

Francis Kelly looked strange. There was a gray circle around his mouth and his skin had a white cast. He blinked a few times and his eyes moved restlessly around the small, crowded enclosure.

"Brian, you know that big colored guy that they took outta here in a strait jacket? Well, I'm the guy that caught him. And those two, those colored detectives, they just barged right in and took the collar offa me."

"You got him?" Brian asked incredulously. Francis Kelly was a slight, wiry guy, fast and tough, but the prisoner was a gigantic raving maniac. And Francis didn't have a scratch on him.

Francis understood Brian's surprise. "Yeah, well, he wasn't playing King Kong when I collared him, Bri. See, I was doing my post, and I was just looking things over when this colored woman, she comes up to me yelling and all that this guy took her little kid to the roof. And I ran up." Francis Kelly wiped a thumb over his lower lip thoughtfully. "Jesus, I don't even remember taking those steps, I swear I don't. Okay, I hit the roof and there was this guy, standing there, looking down at the little kid and she was, well, the little kid was like spread out, you know. And I had the gun out and the guy, Christ, he was a big sonuvabitch, and he sees me, and he just says, 'Okay, okay, okay, no trouble, man, no trouble,' and he comes along. I got the cuffs on him nice as you please and the mother rushes past me to the little kid and starts screaming and down we go and I call for a wagon and for an ambulance.

"I cuffed him around a lamppost. Hell, the guy was so damn big and he was in that funny kind of calm state, like he wasn't really aware of what was happening yet. Well, before anyone else arrives on the scene, wham, up comes these two colored guys, they flash shields at me, one guy says, 'Gimme the key to them cuffs,' he takes the key and all hell busts loose. They get this guy off the lamppost; hell, first I thought they were setting him free, when wham! in the stomach; wham! in the guy's face." Francis Kelly cupped his hand over his mouth and said to Brian, "Jeez, they was using a jack, Brian; they did it so nice though, you couldna told unless you knew. The guy was spitting teeth, just like in the movies.

"Holy God, and then these two take my prisoner into their car and I start after them and they tell me, 'You wait for the ambulance; you stay with the little girl and the mother.'"

Brian held out his pack of cigarettes to Francis, held a match to one for him and then to his own. "Jeez, Francis, they took your collar away from you?" He turned to Horowitz. "Can they do that, Julie? I mean, hell, it's Francis' pinch, right?"

Horowitz puckered his lips and blew a narrow stream of smoke toward the ceiling and smiled. "Kid," he said to Francis Kelly, "you seen what that prisoner looked like when they shoved him into the Bellevue ambulance?"

Francis Kelly's pale face nodded and he closed his eyes for a moment. "Man, he was bad."

"Kid," Horowitz continued, "did it ever occur to you that that nigger bastard might just kick off from all of them head and body injuries? He looked pretty bad to me."

"You think he might?"

Horowitz threw a friendly arm around Kelly's shoulder. "Kid, you're O'Malley's friend, right? Okay, so I'll give you a little advice for free. When you get something like that and one of them spade sleuths wants it, consider yourself lucky to get out from under. Now, if they came looking for you after the way they messed him up, and said to you that your prisoner is on the critical at the nut factory and some questions was going to be asked, then you got a beef. Capisce?" Horowitz winked.

"Well, yeah, I guess, but hell."

"You get the commitment papers from the clerk in the court, he hands them to the judge to sign, you bring them over to Bellevue and give them to the D.C. guy there and you're home free." He gave Kelly's shoulder a friendly rap with his knuckles. "Forget it, kid. There'll be plenty more collars where that came from. What's the matter, they didn't teach you nothing like this at the Academy?"

Francis Kelly pulled his lips back tightly and grimaced. "They didn't teach us shit at the Academy."

Brian O'Malley managed to avoid revealing why he was present and he was glad that Francis Kelly was too upset to ask what kind of collar he'd made.

Francis Kelly was right: they didn't teach them shit at the Academy. But Francis was learning what it was all about. He was right in the middle of it. He was getting to be a part of it.

And Brian O'Malley was out locking up crabby old women for selling pretzels.

TWENTY-ONE.

THERE WAS NOTHING UNUSUAL about the tenement building where Arthur Pollack lived. The only odd thing to Brian was that he'd never before had a friend with an apartment of his own.

Brian took the long narrow staircases easily. On each landing were four doors, behind each door were muffled sounds, cooking odors wafted into the hallway, mingled with other fragrances. The third-floor landing vibrated with a male voice which attempted to keep up with a loud, tinny Caruso record.

On the fourth floor, Brian found 4-C, dropped his cigarette to the linoleum floor, stepped on it, fingered his tie lightly, then tapped. Arthur Pollack opened the door immediately.

"Hey, Brian, great. Come on in, kid, come on in."

The apartment was unexpected. It was brightly lit, the walls were painted white, there were oak-stained bookshelves ranged across one entire wall and they were filled with books and magazines and records. A studio couch against an opposite wall was covered with a dark-red throw and a collection of brightly colored pillows was piled haphazardly to serve as back rests.

The ceilings were very high; Arthur must have used a tall ladder to place his collection of prints on the wall between the molding and the ceiling. The pictures, some framed, others unframed, were mainly bright splotches of color which didn't convey much of anything to Brian. The two windows, wide and tall, were covered with shutters. The slats of the shutters slanted downward to catch the fading early-evening light.

"Hey, this is quite a place, Arthur. Gee, it doesn't look like what you'd expect. You know what I mean."

Arthur beamed. "Yeah, it's pretty good. A matter of letting the light in. Come on into the kitchen; we'll find something to drink."

The kitchen was also painted white and the old-fashioned potbelly coal stove, freshly painted black, seemed too shining and clean to be in use, but Arthur assured him that was his cooking stove and provided most of the heat in the flat as well. Against one wall, covered with a huge enamel lid, was a bathtub which stood on lion-claw legs. Covered, it served as a combination table and storage unit for groceries.

Arthur held up a bottle of Scotch for Brian's approval, then reached into the top section of the red-enamel icebox and chopped some slivers of ice and dropped them into the glass. Pasted on the upper door of the icebox was a pen-and-ink line drawing, a cartoon of a thin, emaciated policeman who could only be Arthur Pollack.

The shoulders sagged, the knees bent within baggy, ill-fitting trousers, the gun holster was longer than the short legs, the brim of the policeman's hat rested on a sharp, beaky nose. Beneath the drawing were printed the words, "Don't worry about a thing. Arthur is on the job!" There was a long, fragile trailing line and then the signature of the artist, "With love from Arlene."

Brian was both surprised and impressed. "Hey, you got a girl friend who's an artist?"

"Pretty good likeness, isn't it? She's what you call a quick-sketch artist. You know, caricatures. She works Coney Island, the Greenwich Village street show. Wherever she can turn a buck. Mostly though, she works on the second floor of Gimbels, selling ladies' 'you-knows.' Come on, let's get comfortable."

Arthur waved him into the living room and with a flourish offered Brian a modernistic sling chair, which they both stood and studied for a few moments.

"Wrong end to," Arthur explained, "just take a deep breath and lower away."

Arthur sat, shoeless, cross-legged, on the couch. "I hope you're good and hungry, Brian. The girls have been cooking up a storm."

Brian took a long, deep swallow and glanced around appreciatively. The Scotch sent warm, pleasant waves of easiness through his head and across his chest. "Jesus, Arthur, this is very nice."

"There's even a toilet over there. It's about the size of a closet, but at least it's inside my own door. If you've ever had to use a common hallway toilet, you'd know what luxury this is."

There was a staccato of sharp taps, the sound of long fingernails, followed by a soft, breathy voice outside the door. "Arthur, are you there, honey?"

Brian was nearly consumed by curiosity. At first when Arthur had invited him for a dinner to be prepared by two "lady friends," he envisioned fat old aunts or motherly neighbors. But Arthur assured him he'd be delighted and surprised. So far, the apartment surprised him, and he managed to wiggle forward in the strange chair, his eyes on Arthur at the door.