At eleven minutes after four Charlie DeLuca came out and got into the black Town Car, and Pike said, “He’s alone.”

I looked at Pike and gave him Groucho Marx eyebrows.

Charlie pulled away from the curb and went up Bowery to Fourteenth, then across to Eighth and uptown past the theater district and the porno parlors and the street hustlers and a guy carrying a placard that said TRAVIS BICKLE WAS RIGHTEOUS. Heading north. Maybe north to Morningside Heights and Gloria Uribe and a guy named Santiago, but maybe not. He could always turn off to New Jersey.

This time of day the streets were crowded with cars and yellow cabs, and the cars and the cabs accelerated and swerved and stopped without regard to lanes or reason. Yellow cabs roared past the pedestrians who lined the street corners, some speeding up the closer they came to the warm bodies, others veering sharply across traffic, passing within inches of other cabs and cars, and nobody bothered to slow down. Everyone drove as if they were in Beirut, but that made it easy to follow him. In the chaos that was the approaching rush hour, we were just another random particle.

Pike loosened his .357 in its holster.

We stayed north on Eighth for a long time and then Charlie turned off Broadway onto Eighty-eighth and then over to Amsterdam, and suddenly we weren’t going toward Morningside Heights and Gloria Uribe anymore. Pike said, “Change of plans.”

“Unh-hunh.”

Charlie DeLuca pulled to the curb in a No Parking zone on Amsterdam Avenue. A young guy maybe thirty with a rat face and pimples and two sweatshirts came out of a doorway carrying a white, legal-sized envelope and got into the Lincoln. The Lincoln pulled away and we followed. Less than two blocks up Amsterdam the Lincoln again pulled to the curb and the pizza-faced guy got out. He closed the door as soon as he was out and walked away without looking back. He didn’t have the envelope. The Lincoln started up Amsterdam again.

Pike said, “Let me have the kid.”

I jerked the Taurus to the curb and Pike was out of the door before the Taurus stopped moving. I gunned it back into traffic and stayed with Charlie up Amsterdam into Morningside Heights and finally to Clyde’s Bar. Well, well.

Luther and his friend had shown up and were leaning against their Pontiac. Luther didn’t look happy. I drove around the block four times before I found a place to park and then I went back to see Luther. Luther smiled nastily when he saw me and said, “Figure I be seeing you again. The Godfather roll up around five minutes ago. He upstairs now.”

“I know. How about Santiago?”

Luther nodded, slow, maybe remembering the ice pick. “Yeah. He up there, too. So’s the woman.”

“What’s Santiago wearing?”