Bernard C. Daniels awoke in a flophouse two doors down from Mickey's, his home being three blocks away and therefore too far to walk after several days of riotous drinking throughout the town of Weehawken.

He rummaged around in his pockets. The two hundred dollars was missing. Well, I hope I enjoyed some of it, he thought as he scratched the tracks of a flea that had made its home on his scalp.

Then he discovered something that made him feel very sad. His credit at Mickey's Pub was no longer good.

He should have asked the Grand Vizier for more. But then, that would have been gone by now, too, he realized.

"What day is it?" he asked the bartender.

"It's Friday, Barney."

He looked at the luminous clock over the bourbons, scotches and ryes which rested atop planks of wood where the bar's mirrors had been. It read 8:30. It was already dark outside. "I'd better go," he said.

If he didn't hurry for his appointment with the woman, he would be late. Four days late instead of three.

The cab fare came to $4.95.

Barney handed the driver a five-dollar bill the bartender had lent him. The driver swiveled his big neck, rolled and folded to resemble the Michelin Tire Man, and yelled after him: "You promised me a big tip. I never would have came to this here neighborhood for a nickel."

Bernard C. Daniels could not be bothered with boorish taxi drivers, not amid the squalor surrounding him.

He checked the number on the building. It was correct. It was wedged between unending rows of dirty, drab brownstones. Every window on the block appeared dark, hiding faded shades and curtains, when there were curtains.

A weak street light glowed like a lonely torch high above the garbage cans and metal gratings that protected cellars. A single dog scurried with undue noise across the black-topped gutter. Traffic lights blinked their useless signals, Barney heard the cab pull away as he mounted the steps. It left with a grumble.

The brownstone seemed identical to the others until Barney noticed the door and discovered it was only a distant relative of those stench-filled houses surrounding it.

His knock told him. There was no doorbell. Only a thin layer of the door was wood. The knock sounded like steel, extremely heavy steel. Then Barney noticed that the windows were not really openings to the street at his level. There were Venetian blinds, all right, but they were permanently mounted on steel sheets that closed up the window.

He knocked again.

His instinct warned him, but only a split second before he felt the gentle point against his back. How many times had he felt that tender prelude to pain, that first searching of a man unsure of his blade? If he had thought, he might not have done what he did. But years of survival did not allow the mind time to think. There was a point at which the body took over, dictating its demands.

Without will, Barney's right hand slashed around, twisting his body down and away from the blade and finding a target for the line of bone from his pinky tip to his wrist. It was a black temple. It cracked with a snapping sound.

The man's head took off, followed by his neat small body encased in a neat black suit. The spectre tottered momentarily, then fell backward and would have tumbled down the steps, but for more than a dozen men identically dressed in neat black suits.

They were packed into the staircase behind him and the mass of their bodies caught their comrade.

A small bright blade with bluish edges tinkled beneath their feet on the stone steps. They all held similar blades. And they closed in on Barney almost noiselessly, a sea of shaven skulls making waves under the yellow light of the street lamp.

Barney pressed his back to the metal door and prepared to die.

Just then, two men moving so fast they were little more than blurs shot out of the darkness and into the moving sea of shining black heads.

In an instant, the quiet street was filled with screams and the groans of dying men as blade after shimmering blade dropped to the ground and bodies twisted like wire fell on top of them.

For Barney, it was a vision of hell, witnessing the torment of men convulsed by pain and glad to die in order to end that pain.

Barney thought about that pain as he fired up a cigarette and winked at the two white men who were causing it. Better them than me, he thought philosophically.

But one of the men was not white. He was an aged Oriental sporting a turquoise kimono. "Jesus Christ," Barney muttered.

It was all very confusing to him. Here were two guys, the same two guys he was sure were out to hit him, saving his life. And fighting like bastards to boot. He had never seen fighting like that. It was effortless, artful, utterly economical of movement, totally effective. Were it not for the carnage surrounding them, the young white man and the old Oriental could have been dancing a ballet.

Very confusing. He would have to think about this matter. He would think about it immediately, in fact, just as soon as he had a drink of tequila to help him think better.

As the two men silenced the last of the mob, Barney rose to dust himself off. His eyes followed the movements of the men as they dashed out of sight. The thin young man disappeared like a bullet. The old Oriental followed, his robe floating behind him.

But just as Barney was preparing to knock again, the Oriental returned. Standing beneath the street lamp, grinning broadly, the old man stiffened like a tiny tin samurai soldier and flicked Barney an elegant salute.

"Thank you, sir," Barney said, his voice echoing down the street, and returned the salute. Then the old man was gone.

Barney knocked twice more. After a long silence, the door surrendered and opened to him over a field of white plush carpeting. Standing at the door was the Grand Vizier of the Afro-Muslim Brotherhood, two flesh-colored Band-Aids decorating his forehead. Flesh-colored here meant brown, but against the Vizier's eggplant skin, the two strips of tape stood out like an accusation.

"Am I late?" Barney asked.

"What you done?" the Grand Vizier yelled, looking out over the heap of broken bodies in the street. One of the Vizier's large black hands came down to Barney's right shoulder and lifted him like a toy.

"Leave him alone, y'hear?" came a woman's voice. "I'll take care of him, Malcolm."

"Yes, ma'am," the Grand Vizier said and allowed Barney's feet to touch the floor.

She wore white slacks and a white blouse and Barney almost couldn't see her because of the camouflage. The whole interior of the building, fireplace, sofa, lamps, walls, ceiling, steps leading upstairs, all were painted bunding white. Marble, wood and cloth, all as white as the inside of a bathtub factory run amok with hospital orders.

Her platinum hair fit the decor perfectly. Barney shook his head as if to clear it. There was something about her. Something. He tried to think but couldn't.

Malcolm, the Grand Vizier, stood out, as he left the room, like an ink blot on a snowy towel. In the room, a faint fragrance of lilacs replaced the stink of garbage outside. Barney sniffed. He preferred the garbage.

"Beautiful," said the woman, peeking out the door.

She reached for a telephone, which was hidden by its absence of color, on a white table Barney could barely make out against the white wall.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Tell them, Malcolm, that their friends have all gone to Allah and will be rewarded there. Don't forget to mention that it was a white devil who killed them. Very good. Was it clean? Immediate death? Good. Well done, Malcolm."

Barney heard, rather than saw, her hang up. She smiled, a pale, thin-lipped smile. "You killed all those men out there."

"I had some help," Barney admitted. "A hundred-year-old Chinaman did most of it."