Survival... ZERO!

'You see him today?'

'Sure, about four. He bought some stuff so he and a friend . . .'

He was talking fast and furiously, happy to know it wasn't him I was leaning on. I cut him short. 'Where is he?'

'His pal got a pad on Forty-ninth. First floor over the grocery in the front.'

'Show me.'

'Mister . . .'

I didn't want him making any phone calls that would scare off my birds. 'Show me,' I said again.

And he showed me. A stinking, miserable two-room flop that reeked of garbage and marijuana smoke where Caesar Mario Tulley and a scruffy-looking jerk in shoulder-length hair were wrapped in Mexican scrapes, stretched out on the floor completely out of their skulls from the pot party.

I said, 'Damn!' and the word seemed to drop in the room like soft thunder.

Austin Towers started edging toward the door. 'Like I showed you, man, so now I gotta cut, y'know?'

'Get back here, freak.'

'Man ...'

'Killing you would be a public service.' My voice had such an edge to it that he scurried back like a scared rat, Ms head bobbing, eager to do anything that would keep him alive. 'How long are they going to be out of it?'

'How would I know, man?'

I snapped my head around and stared at him, watching his breath catch in his chest. 'You sold him the stuff. You know how much they had. Now check them to see what's left and make a guess and make a good one or I'll snap your damn arms in half.'

He didn't argue about it. One look at my face and he knew I wasn't kidding. He bent over the pair, patted them down expertly, finding the remnants of the joints they had gone through, then stood up. 'Used it all. Man, they tied one on, them two. Maybe three-four hours you might reach 'em if you're lucky.'

This time I grinned, my lips pulled tight across my teeth. 'Maybe if you're lucky it'll be one hour. One. You're in the business, boy, so you'd better know all the tricks. You start working on them and don't stop until they're awake. Don't bother trying to run out. You couldn't run fast or far enough that I couldn't nail you, so play it sweet and cool and you might get out of this in one piece. One hour, kid. Get them back and I don't give a damn how you do it.'

'Man, you don't know this stuff!' His voice was nearly hysterical.

'No, but you do,' I told him.

Velda had called in again. She was still on the stakeout but getting edgy because there had been no tip-off to Beaver's whereabouts. She was going to give it one more hour and then try another possible lead. That left me forty-six minutes to work ahead of her.

The taxi dropped me at the corner of Columbus Avenue and a Hundred-tenth Street and when I looked around the memories of the old days from when I was a kid came rushing back like an incoming tide. There were changes, but some things never change at all. The uneven rooftops still were castle battlements, each street a gateway in the great wall. The shufflers still shuffled, oblivious to the weather, urchin noises and cooking smells mingling in this vast stomach of a neighborhood. Plate glass windows protected with steel grilling, others unconcernedly dark and empty. The perennial tavern yellow-lit behind streaked glazing, the drugstore still sporting the huge red and purple urns, the insignia of its trade. On a good night the young bloods would be gathered on the corners, swapping lies and insults, protecting their turf. The hookers

would cruise for their Johns and the pushers would be clearing the path to an early grave for the users.

They didn't know me here, but they knew I wasn't an outsider. I was born part of the scene and still looked it and they didn't mind me asking things and didn't mind answering. I showed the photo of Beaver to the bartender in Steve's Bar and Grill. He didn't know the guy, but took it to the back room and showed it to somebody else. One guy thought he looked familiar, but that was all.

In the candy store, the old man shook his head and told me the man in the picture looked like somebody good to stay away from and tried to talk about the old days until I thanked him and went back outside.

A gypsy cab driver having coffee and a doughnut in his car scanned the photo and said he was pretty sure he had seen the guy around, but didn't know where or when. It was the eyes, he said. He always looked at people's eyes, and he remembered seeing him. He told me to look for Jackie, the redheaded whore who swore she was a prostitute because she wanted money to go to college, Jackie knew everybody.

Jackie knew Beaver, all right. He had bought her pitch about two weeks ago, gone to her apartment and parted with ten bucks for sexual services rendered, leaving her with a few welts and bruises. She had seen him once after that, getting into a taxi down the block. She knew he didn't live in the area, but assumed he dropped up to see a friend who did. No, she couldn't even guess at who it was. The neighborhood was full of itinerants and strange faces. She took my ten bucks and thought I was a nut for not getting the whole go for the money.

Now, at least, I was in the area.

There were three construction sites within two blocks. One was a partial demolition job and the other two were leveled. The last one had wiped out a row of three brownstones all the way to the corner and the cut went deep into the solid rock that was the bed of the city. The hole was spotted with small ponds of rainwater and a yellow backhoe tractor stood lonely and dead-looking in the middle of the gorge, its toothed claw ready to pounce into the granite, but dead, like a suddenly frozen prehistoric beast.

Silent air compressors and equipment shacks lined one side of the street, abutted on either end by battered dump trucks. A square patch of dim light outlined the window of the watchman's stubby trailer and from behind the locked door I could hear Spanish music working toward a

finale of marimbas and bongo drums before the announcer came on to introduce the next number.

I knocked on the door and it opened to a toothy grin and a stale beer smell and the young-old guy standing there said, 'Come in, come in. Don't stand in the rain.'

'Thanks.' I stepped inside while he turned down the radio.

'Not much of a place,' he said, 'but I like it.'

'Why not?'

'Sure, why not? It's a living. I got my own house and nobody to bitch at me. Pretty damn noisy in the daytime, then I got so I could sleep through anything. Maybe that's why they keep me on. Me, I can stay awake all night and sleep daytimes like they want. Don't get much company, though. Now, what can I do for you?'

I showed him the picture of Beaver and let him study it. 'Ever see that man?'

He looked at it intently, then handed it back. 'Can't say. Daytimes I sleep, y'know. After a while them damn compressors get to be like music and they put me right to sleep. Know something? I got so's I can't sleep without 'em going.'

'You're sure?' I asked.

He nodded. 'Don't remember him. We've been here a month already and I don't remember him. Know most everybody else, though. Especially the kids. The ones who like to climb all over things.'

I was about to leave when I turned around and looked at him. 'The crew work in the rain?'

'Hell no! They finished up right after it started and shut everything down. Them boys got the life, they have. Busted up my sleep real awful. When the compressors went off, I woke up. Shit, feller, I haven't been able to get back to sleep since. Everything's just too damn quiet. Look, you want a beer?'

'No thanks.'

'You a cop? Maybe for the company?'

'Private investigator.'

'Oh, about that stuff the kids took last week. Hell, we got it all back before they could hock it.'

'You been cooped up here all day?'

'Naw, I walked around some. Didn't leave the block, though. Just bought some grub and beer, walked around to stretch out. Never leave the place alone long, and never at night. That's why they keep me on.'

I pulled up a folding chair with my toe and hooked my leg over it. 'See any strange faces around at all?'

'Ah, you got bums comin' through all the time. They go from ...'

'Not bums. These wouldn't be bums.'

'Who'd come down this way if they wasn't bums? Maybe some kids from ... hey ... yeah, wait a minute. When