"Yeah! Oh, yeah! That's it. I remema"" Horace stopped abruptly and pulled back from the table.

"So you're Bill Lacey's kid?" Vale said pointedly.

"Nice box," Lacey remarked, and smiled a little less enigmatically. "I like to box. I like boxing. I like Jorge Ramirez tonight at the Garden."

"Ramirez, he's an eight-to-one shot!" Horace protested.

"Ramirez, the Bold Avenger," said Vale dryly. "Very apropos. You trying to put me outa business, Kid, huh?"

Lacey smiled an unenigmatic smile of a.s.sent.

"The Bold Avenger's a long shot, all right, but you're so hot that I'm gonna cut your odds in half. In addition, you're on rolling odds. If you announce your choices, your odds go down with the others. You understand? Now, maybe you wanna go to someone else."

"Sounds like you're chickening out," said Lacey.

"I never turn down a bet, kid. But those are your odds."

"You're on."

"How much?" asked Vale, tearing off another square of paper and licking the tip of his number 1-1/2 pencil.

Lacey tapped the top of the box again. "You're looking at it."

Tommy Vale was looking, not at the box but at the face of the man named Lacey. "I gotta make a call."

Lacey grinned. "Not broken yet, are you, Tommy?"

Vale stood up and went for the phone. He dug into his pockets for the change but a moment later spoke to Horace in a low, grim voice: "Got a quarter?"

Once more Lacey laughed the laugh of the asthmatic cat, the laugh of the man strangled. He reached deep into the pocket of his white linen trousers. "Add it to the bet, Tommy. Sixty grand and a quarter."

He held the coin up between two fingers, and Vale plucked it from there with a strangled politeness. "I don't extend credit." Lacey smirked.

"But that's your policy, isn't it?"

Vale smiled weakly but made no reply. He dialed his call, then huddled away from Horace and Lacey.

Horace punched out a series of numbers on the calculator and produced a dismal little tune of enormous payoffs. "This new technology . . .

Cripes," he said, looking up at Lacey, "win this one . . .No wonder Tommy's on the phone."

"Guess I'm lucky," said Lacey.

"Guess so," said Horace. "But you didn't get that from your old man.

One thing Bill Lacey wasn't, was lucky. He was a nice guy, though.

Another thing you didn't inherit from him, either."

"He was a fool," said Lacey.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You should respect the dead," said Horace, raising an admonitory finger.

"He shouldn't be dead," said Lacey. "Tommy Vale should be dead."

"Is that what you have in mind, kid?" asked Vale, returning from the telephone.

Lacey smiled, showing no discomfort in being overheard.

"There are ways of doing things, and there are ways of doing things."

"Listen, kid, I didn't kill Bill Lacey. I didn't throw him off the bridge. He took the easy way out of a bad situation."

"You wouldn't see him a quarter. You had his back to the wall!"

"He put his back to the wall! No one told him to bet over his head. And I don't muscle no one."

Nervously Lacey got up, pushing past Horace. "Just have my money here tomorrow."

"If you win," said Vale.

"So," Vale said calmly, "you can't go wrong, it seems." He pushed across the table two boot boxes filled with untidily wrapped packages of twenty-dollar bills.

"You wanna go on taking bets?" Lacey's suit looked brighter, only because his skin looked dingier than the day before.

Vale tapped half an inch of ash from his cigar. "I told you, I never turn away a bet. That's my reputation.

I stick with it. *Course, I get to choose the odds. And for you . . . the odds are gettin' short."

"How about even money? One for one. Double or nothing."

"Now you're talking."

"On your life," said Lacey.

A peanut went the wrong way down Horace's throat and he choked, but Tommy Vale didn't flinch. "I see. The Bold Avenger. What's the bet, kid?"

"I bet you're dead by eight o'clock tomorrow morning."

"That's easy. Shoot me dead and take the money."

"At your autopsy the coroner will find you have died of natural causes."

Horace shook his head sharply no. Vale ignored him.

"That's fair. I'm in good health . . ." Vale looked at his cigar, then crushed out the glowing tip in the ashtray. "You get your dough.

I'll bring mine. Come back tonight and we'll sit it out till morning."

Lacey took his boxes of cash, one under each arm, and headed toward the front door of Phil's Bar and Grill.

"Boss," whispered Horace, leaning on the table, "he ain't lost a bet yet!"

"I know," said Vale. He glanced over his shoulder, but Lacey was already gone. And no one had heard the door close.

That night Phil leaned across the bar on his elbows and talked in a low voice to the drunk. The drunk snored lightly.

The light from an ocher sodium lamp flickered through the front window, shining glumly on the gritty tile.

Horace played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with precision and surety, but no heart.

"Horace," said Tommy Vale, "I'm touched at how well you're playing that thing. And if I lose the bet, I want you to play at my funeral."

"Boss!" Horace protested.

Tommy Vale broke into laughter that was at once genial and hysterical.

Horace didn't laugh at Vale's morbidity, and neither did the large square man in a cheap dark suit and porkpie hat, hunkering at one of the center tables. This man, who was guarding a battered briefcase laid flat on the table, had a thick mustache, hunched shoulders, and no neck at all. He only looked puzzled at Vale's joke, but a moment later he shuddered against the cold draft that blew through Phil's Bar and Grill.

Lacey stood beside the pool table, in his white linen suit again, his white linen hat not jauntily but perched businesslike atop his head.

Beside him stood another man, of identical build and height, but his face in shadow. This companion wore a linen suit of identical cut to Lacey's, but black. The identical black linen hat atop his head, too, was perched in an identically businesslike fashion, and he carried a battered briefcase, identical to the one watched over by the no-necked guardian in the porkpie hat.

Lacey and his companion came forward, their pace at once casual but lockstepped. One in black, one in white, they looked like negative images of each other.

"This guy gives me the creeps, boss," Horace whispered.

Lacey's negative-imaged companion seated himself at the same table as the man with no neck. They opened their identical cases at the same time, revealing that each was filled with untidy stacks of twenty-dollar bills, three hundred thousand dollars in each. They closed their cases at the same time.

Snap, snapa"in unison. The bets were placed. Even odds that Tommy Vale would die of natural causes before eight A.M. the following morning.

Lacey slipped into the booth across from Vale, pressing Horace against the peeling wall.

From his breast pocket Tommy Vale took a toothpick and politely offered it to Lacey. Lacey politely declined with a wave of his hand.

Tommy Vale smiled and pressed the tip of the toothpick into his gums. "I gave up cigars," he said. "They can be hazardous to your health."

For a long moment no one said anything. Then Vale leaned back, closed his eyes, and sighed a deep sigh.

The no-necked guardian jumped up from the table, hurried over, and shook Vale by the shoulders.

"Whaddaya doin'?" Vale demanded.

"What are you doin'?" echoed the man who was present to guard the bet.

"I'm relaxing! Is that okay? The bet is I won't die! I'm allowed to sleep. Shees!" Vale shook his head impatiently. "Look, I don't know about you guys, but I'm gonna get a little shut-eye. Horace," he said, giving his lieutenant the kind of look that had kept Horace loyal for so many years, "wake me if I die."

Vale closed his eyes and dropped his head back on the hard vinyl seat.

The man with no neck nervously fingered the weapon weighing down the inside pocket of his cheap suit.

"He always sleeps sitting up," said Horace rea.s.suringly, and waved the nervous guardian back to his table Beep beep beep.

Chime.

The hands on the round Ballantine clock read midnight.

Vale slowly opened his eyes and looked around at all the unclosed eyes staring back at him.

Beep beep beep.

Chime.

The hands on the round Ballantine clock read one.

Vale's head slid along the back of the vinyl seat and banged softly against the wall.

Lacey stared and watched. Not sweatinga"but not smiling, either.

Horace and the man with no neck and a gun in his pocket fought against sleep. The man in the black linen suit with the black hat perched businesslike atop his head kept his face turned into the shadows so that no one could say if he slept or kept watch.

Phil, whose real name was Mikey, didn't fight the hour but slept leaning against the wall, his arms crossed across his chest, his fists wrapped in a damp towel.

Beep beep beep.

Chime.

Three o'clock? Four o'clock?

Horace was asleep. The man with no neck snored.

The light in Phil's Bar and Grill was murkier than on days when it stormed, murkier than on nights when the acrid fog spilled in from the East River.

Beep beep beep.

Chime.

"Boss? Hey, boss!"

Horace reached across the table and shook Tommy Vale by the shoulders.

Shook him without response.

The guard with no neck shook himself awake with a snort, checked to make certain he had his weapon, checked to see if the three hundred thousand dollars was still beneath his elbow, then finally checked to see if Tommy Vale was still alive.