“Anyone else moves off—the kids that I catch are gonna get it,” he warned the Jets. “And don’t look so snotty, A-Rab.”

“Unfortunate me—it’s my natural look,” A-Rab protested. “If you know how I can look some other way…”

“Sure,” Krupke interrupted rapidly. “Let’s you and me step into a backyard someplace. Anything I do to your face would have to be an improvement.”

Schrank raised his hand to silence Krupke. “Which one of you threw a stink bomb into the bodega down the street?”

“Bodega?” Baby-John asked. “Please sir, if that’s a dirty word, I am very young and innocent.”

“I think you better get your ass home, kid,” Schrank warned Baby-John. “You’re goofy to be mixed up with these shape-up characters.”

Snowboy draped a protective arm around Baby-John. He had used the last stink bomb on the grocery and was clean. “We’re keeping him out of trouble, Detective Schrank, sir.” He patted Baby-John’s head, and the kid rolled his eyes in mock innocence. “We are keeping him away from evil companions.”

“So you know nothing about the grocery?” Schrank ignored the ribbing to stick with the relevant issue.

Riff shook his head, then raised his right hand as if taking an oath. “We saw a couple of Sharks a couple of minutes ago,” he suggested. “Maybe the grocery slob wouldn’t pay protection or something. Now if you want to induct us as deputies and arm us with the weapons of the law—” he looked with longing at the heavy butt in Krupke’s holster—“we’d be willing to serve without pay.”

“Cut the comedy,” Schrank said. “The Sharks didn’t do it. The grocer said it wasn’t a PR.”

Big Deal exposed both palms as he shook his head sadly. “If it wasn’t the PR’s, and it certainly wasn’t us, then I gotta come to a very sad conclusion. The outrage must have been done by a cop.”

“Maybe two cops,” Snowball said. “Renegades and traitors to their oaths of service.”

“Correct,” Big Deal agreed. “One to open the door, and the other to throw the bomb. Terrible, terrible,” he clucked. “What are things coming to?”

“You’re rubbing my back the wrong way,” Schrank advised Big Deal. “Who did it? The guy who took off? Come on,” he urged. “There’s a difference between being a stool pigeon and cooperating with the law, or don’t you rumblers know that?”

“We know the difference, sir,” Riff looked from Schrank to Krupke. “You gentlemen taught us.”

“It might interest you to know that we’re saving up our scanty pennies to buy both of you gentlemen a suitable gift for giving us this knowledge,” Snowboy declaimed with oratorical flourishes that doubled Baby-John with laughter. “It is the kind of knowledge designed to make us better citizens and without which we could have gone on living in blind ignorance. Then, how could we ever have done full justice to our civic responsibilities?”

After he raised a modest hand to still the applause, Snowboy bowed and took a backward step to put him beyond the reach of Krupke’s nightstick.