Big Hooper was called Big because he was big. You could say he looked like an elephant in sweats, or an Easter Island statue no longer buried up to the neck, but what he mostly looked like was the Chicago Bears front line-not a lineman, the line.

Big Hooper had just bent to his will the front door of a Third Avenue tavern not yet open for business, intending to give himself a morning vodka-and-Chianti before carrying away the cash register, when he realized he wasn't alone. The clinking and tinking from the back room suggested the owner was using this morning downtime to do inventory, having left his jacket and newspaper on the bar.

Big went ahead and made his breakfast, then leafed through the paper while trying to decide whether to deal with the jangling offstage owner or come back another time, when he could have some privacy. He saw the Infiniti impaled on the bank, recognized the name Calhoun, finished his drink, and left. He took the paper.

Stan Little was a driver. If you've got it, he'll drive it. When he wasn't working for various crews around town on their little errands, sometimes he drove for himself, picking up an example of your better-quality automotive cream puff and tooling it to Astoria in Queens, where he would have business dealings with Al Gonzo, an automotive importer-exporter, who would eventually find the merchandise a good home somewhere in the Third World. This morning, while discussing with Al the probable offshore value of a loaded Saab with less than three K on the odometer, Stan took the opportunity of Al's strategic long silences to eyeball the Daily News.

"All right, four," Al said.

"Well, look at that," Stan said. "Morry Calhoun."

The reason Rumsey got off the F train early was because two transit cops went through his car and they both looked at him funny. Rumsey didn't like cops to look at him at all, much less funny, so he quick got off at the next station, even though it wasn't his but was in fact Queens Plaza, which is one of those giant bow ties in the bowels of the New York City subway system. There are 24 separate subway lines in New York, and four of them converge on Queens Plaza, distributing thousands and thousands of people this way and that every second. There's the F, the 6th Avenue local that Rumsey had been on, which begins in nethermost Brooklyn, wanders northward to run under 6th Avenue in Manhattan, then heads on to outermost Queens; the R, the Broadway local, which is similar except its part of Manhattan is lower Broadway; the 8th Avenue E, which only has to deal with Manhattan and Queens; and the poor G, the Brooklyn Queens Crosstown, which never gets into Manhattan at all but just shuttles back and forth between Brooklyn and Queens, full of people wearing hats.

Having got off the F, there was nothing for Rumsey to do but wait for another F, or some other letter, and so continue his journey in peace, but lo and behold, here were two more transit cops, and now they were looking at him funny. Maybe, he thought, he'd take the escalator upstairs to where the surface part of the bow tie was a lot of bus routes starting with "Q," but as he turned away, with millions of people rushing all around him in this great echoing iron cavern, this paean to 19th-century engineering at its sternest, a voice cut through the din and the roar to say, "You. Yeah, you. Wait there."

Now the cops were talking to him; this was very bad. Feeling guilty, even though he hadn't committed any crimes yet today, Rumsey turned about, hunched his shoulders in that automatic way that tells police officers everywhere that you are guilty, and said, "Me?"

It is impossible for two human beings to completely surround one human being, and yet these two cops did it. They were big bulky guys with big dark bulky uniforms festooned with serious extras like a gun in a holster and a ticket book and handcuffs (Rumsey didn't like to look at handcuffs) and a little black radio fastened up high on the black belt that angled down across their chests. Their very presence said authority, it said you're in for it now, Jack; it saidfuggedaboudit.

"See s' ID," one of the cops said.

"Oh, sure," Rumsey said, because, no matter what, you never

disagree when authority is this close into your personal space. He remembered he'd packed somebody's ID when he'd left the house, so he went to his hip pocket for his wallet, while the cops watched him very carefully, and as he handed over somebody's credit card and the same somebody's library card from the branch in Canarsie, he said, "Uh, what's the problem, officers?"

The cop who took the ID said, "How about your driver's license?"

"They took my license," Rumsey explained. "Just temporary, you know."

The other cop chuckled. "You were a bad boy, huh?"

That was cop humor. Rumsey acknowledged it with a sheepish grin, saying, "I guess so. But what's wrong here?"

The cop with the ID said, "We're looking for a guy, Mr. Jefferson."

So he was Mr. Jefferson today. Trying to feel Jeffersonian, Rumsey said, "Well, why pick me? There's a lotta guys here." Millions, in fact-on escalators, in subway trains, on platforms . . .

"The description we got," the humorous cop said, "looks like you."

"A lotta guys look like me," Rumsey said.

"Not really," the cop said, and all at once their two radios squawked, making Rumsey flinch like a rabbit hearing a condor.

Police radios are the aural equivalent of doctor's handwriting. All of a sudden, the little black metal box goes squawk-squawk-squawk, and the cops understand it! Like these two-they understood it when their little metal boxes went squawk-squawk-squawk, and this information they'd just received made them relax and even grin at each other. One of them pushed the button on his metal box and told his shoulder, "Ten-four," while the other one handed Rumsey Mr. Jefferson's ID and told him, "Thanks for your cooperation."

Rumsey said, "Huh? Listen, you don't mind, would you tell me? Wha'd they just say there?"

The cops looked surprised. One said, "You didn't hear? They got the guy."

"The one we were looking for," the other one addended. "Oh," Rumsey said. "Was he me?" "Move along," said the cop.

Algy came up out of the subway and started walking along the boulevard in the cool October sunshine. Three blocks from the bank he was headed for was another bank, on another corner, this one open for business. As a matter of fact, as Algy walked by its front door, a big-boned guy in a black topcoat, carrying a full grocery store plastic bag, hurtled out of that bank and crashed straight into Algy; this is because the guy wasn't looking where he was going, but leftward, off at traffic along the boulevard.

Neither Algy nor his new dance partner went down, though it looked iffy for a second, and they had to grab at each other's coats. "Easy, big guy," Algy advised, while the guy, increasingly frantic, pulled himself free, waving that plastic bag around over his head, shouting, "Out of the way!"

Algy might have said a cautionary word or two about panic and its discontents, but at that instant a black sedan pulled in by the fire hydrant between them and the curb. The driver, another dark-coated big guy, leaned way over to shove open the passenger door and yell, "Ralph! In!"

Algy stepped back, gesturing for Ralph to go catch his ride, but all at once Ralph had a gun in his hand and a glower on his face and a cluster of Algy's coat sleeve in his fist, as he snarled in Algy's face, "Get in."

Algy couldn't believe it. "Get in?"

The driver couldn't believe it, either. "Ralph? What the hell you doin'?"

Over the approaching but still far-off screams of many sirens, under the surveillance of a pair of bank guards, goggle-eyed be-

hind the bank's glass revolving door, Ralph yelled at his partner, "He's a hostage!"