Max and I watched them walk up to the dark-glass front of the social club. If a couple of the old men were sitting outside-always wearing a plain white shirt over dark suit pants, polished shoes, talking quietly-the young guys would stop and pay their respects. They were muscle all right, but family muscle, working their way up the ladder.

The young guys would go in, but they wouldn't come out for hours. It didn't add up-boys like that might be allowed in the club to get an assignment, or on a special occasion, but the old guys wouldn't let them just hang around.

Max and I learned to be patient in different places, but we both learned it well. It took another few weeks to work our way around to the back of the club and find a spot where the constantly watching eyes in that neighborhood couldn't see what we were doing. Sure enough-ten minutes after they went in the front door, the muscle boys went out the back. One carried a suitcase, the other held a pistol parallel to his leg, barrel pointed down. The guy with the suitcase tossed it into the open trunk of a black Chevy sedan, slammed it closed, and got behind the wheel while the gunman watched the alley. A minute later, the Chevy took off with both of them in the front seat.

I didn't have the Plymouth then, so Max and I followed them in a cab-me behind the wheel and Max as the passenger. I didn't mind taking some reasonable risks to make some unreasonable money, but I wasn't about to let Max drive.

The muscle boys took their time-they cruised up Houston Street to the East Side Drive. When they crossed the Triboro into the Bronx, I looked a question at Max, but he just shrugged his shoulders-they had to be going to Harlem sooner or later. Sure enough, they circled Yankee Stadium, hooked onto the Major Deegan Expressway, and took the exit to the Willis Avenue Bridge. At the end of the exit road all they had to do was make a quick right and they were back over the bridge and into 125th Street, the heart of Harlem. Another few minutes and they parked in the back of a funeral parlor. We didn't follow them any farther.

The next two runs followed the same route-we just had one more piece to check out and we were ready to operate. We met in Mama's basement-me, Max, Prophet, and the Mole.

"Prof, can you get a look at how they transfer the stuff? It's in the back of the Golden Gate Funeral Parlor on Twenty-first," I said.

"The next time the move goes down, the Prof shall be around," he assured us.

"Mole, we need three things, okay?" I told him, holding up three fingers to let Max follow along. "We need to disable their car real quick, get the trunk open, and get in the wind."

The Mole nodded, his pasty skin gleaming in the dark basement. "Tiger trap?" he wanted to know. He meant one of his bombs under the lid of a manhole cover-one flick of a switch and the street would open up, dropping the car into the pit. That would sure as hell disable the car, open the trunk, and give us all the time in the world to walk away. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind-the Mole's heart was in the right place, but it would take years of therapy to reduce him to a lunatic.

"Mole, we don't want to kill them, okay? I had in mind maybe the Prof gets their attention for a second, Max and me hit them from either side and brace them-you pop open the trunk, grab the suitcase, and slash the rear tires. How's that?"

"How does the trunk lock?" the Mole wanted to know. It was all the same to him.

I looked over to the Prof and he nodded-we'd know soon.

"You can get us an old Con Ed truck, Mole?" I asked him.

The Mole made a face like "Who couldn't?" It was true enough for him-he lived in a junkyard.

THE NEXT time the muscle boys stopped at the red light before they turned onto the bridge for Harlem, things were a little different. The battered Con Ed truck was nosed against the metal support for the traffic light, blocking most of the intersection. The black Chevy slid to a smooth stop-running red lights wasn't the best idea when you were carrying a trunkful of dream dust.

I climbed out of the driver's seat, wearing a set of Con Ed coveralls and a thick leather tool belt around my waist with another strap over one shoulder. My eyes were covered with blue-tinted sunglasses-I had pasted on a heavy mustache a few minutes ago. The Con Ed cap covered a thick blonde wig and the built-up heels on my work boots made me two inches taller. The Prof was slumped against a building wall, an empty bottle of T-Bird by his side, dead to the world.

I walked toward the Chevy, spreading my hands in the universal civil-service hostile apology: "What can I do?" The driver wasn't going for any delay-he spun the wheel with one hand to pull around the truck: I could get out of the way or get run over. His hard face said it was all the same to him. He was in control.

Then it all went to hell. I tore open the snaps on the coveralls and unleashed the scattergun I had on a rawhide cord around my neck just as the Mole threw the truck into reverse and stomped the gas. The truck flew backward right into the Chevy's radiator, and one chop from Max took out the guy in the passenger seat before he could move. The Prof flew off the wall, an ice pick in his hand. I don't know if the driver heard the hiss from his rear tires-all he could see were the twin barrels of the sawed-off staring him in the face from a distance of three feet.

I flicked the scattergun up a couple of inches and the driver got the picture-his hands never moved off the wheel. He didn't see the Mole slither out of the truck and around to the back of the Chevy-another couple of seconds and the trunk was open and Max had the suitcases.

I patted the air in front of me to tell the driver to get down in the front seat. As soon as his head started to drop, I cut loose with the scattergun right into his door. I blasted the second barrel where his head had been a second ago, taking out most of the windshield, and sprinted for the side of the warehouse where the cab was waiting. Max was at the wheel, with the Mole beside him, the engine already running. I tossed the empty scattergun to the Prof in the back seat, dove in beside him, and we were rolling. Everyone knew what they had to do-we were pretty sure there was no backup car, but it was too early to relax. The Mole had his grubby hands deep in his satchel and the Prof was already reloading the shotgun for me.

WE LEFT the suitcases with the Mole in his junkyard and split up. We didn't make our move for a few weeks-the mobsters were too busy murdering each other to answer anonymous telephone calls. I don't know if they dusted the driver and his partner or not-probably kept them alive long enough to make sure they were telling the truth, and then started looking. But they weren't looking outside the family. Me and Max and the Prof were sitting in Mama's restaurant when we read the headline in the Daily News.-"Torched Building Was Gangster Tomb!" It seems someone had wiped out a whole meeting of the heroin syndicate and then set fire to the building-the Fire Department hadn't discovered the bodies for a couple of days, and it took another few days for the cops to make positive identifications. That kind of massive hit didn't sound like it was connected to our little hijacking, but we didn't know who we could ask.

The Prof looked up from the paper. "Sounds like Wesley's work to me," he whispered.

"Don't ever say that name again," I snapped at him. Wesley was a guy we had done time with before-if I thought he was operating in New York, I'd move to the Coast.

Anytime you pull a snatch-and-switch, the last part is the hardest. You can grab the goods easy enough-the mark isn't expecting the move-you just disappear and let them look in their own backyard. But when it gets down to exchanging the goods for cash, you got major troubles. It's easy enough to do if you don't mind losing some of your troops along the way, but our army was too small for that kind of sacrifice.