It was pushing four-thirty in the morning, and the big transport trucks were on the streets, coming from the west, through the tunnels underneath the Hudson River, and heading north through Manhattan Island toward upstate New York—Troy, Albany, Schenectady or the Boston road.

A trailer track was going north on Third Avenue when Grave Digger made the turn, and for a moment it looked as though he might go underneath it. Coffin Ed was leaning out the window with his pistol in his hand. He ducked back, but his gun was still in sight when they passed the driver’s cabin.

The truck driver’s eyes popped.

“Did you see that cannon?” he asked his helper.

“This is Harlem,” his helper said. “It’s crazy, man.”

The white driver and the colored helper grinned at one another.

The motorcycle was taming west into 114th Street when Grave Digger got the sedan steadied from its shimmy. The melting ice on the windscreen was blurring his vision, and he turned on the wipers. For a moment he couldn’t see at all. But he turned anyway, hoping he was right.

He bent too sharp and bumped over the near-side corner curb. Coffin Ed’s head hit the ceiling.

“Goddam, Digger, you’re beating me to death,” he complained.

“All I can say is I’ve had better nights,” Grave Digger muttered through clenched teeth.

They kept the motorcycle in sight until it turned north on Seventh Avenue, but didn’t gain on it. For a time it was out of sight. When they came into Seventh Avenue, they didn’t see it.

Three tracks were lined up on the outside lane, and a fourth was passing the one ahead.

“We don’t want to lose that son,” Grave Digger said.

“He’s passing on the sidewalk,” Coffin Ed said, leaning out his right-side window.

“Cut one over his head.”

Coffin Ed crossed his left arm to overtop the window ledge, rested the long nickel-plated barrel atop his left wrist and blasted at the night. Flame lanced into the dark, and three blocks ahead a streetlamp went out.

The motorcycle curved from the sidewalk back into the street in front of the line of trucks. Grave Digger came up behind the truck on the inside lane and opened his siren.

At 116th Street Coffin Ed said, “He’s keeping straight ahead. Trying to make the county line.”

Grave Digger swerved to the left of the park that ran down between the traffic lanes and went up the left-hand side. The windshield wipers had cleared half-moons in the dirty glass, and he could see an open road. He pushed the throttle to the floor, gaining on the motorcycle across the dividing park.

“Slow him down, Ed,” he said.

The park, circled by a small wire fence, was higher than the level of the street, and it shielded the motorcycle’s tires. It was going too fast to risk shooting at the lamp. He threw three shots in back of it, but the rider didn’t slow.

They passed two more northbound trucks, and for a time both lanes were clear. The sedan came up level with the motorcycle.