I cleaned off the table and took out a pack of cigarettes, arranging ten of them in a star formation with the filters pointing toward the open center, then stared deep into the center until the cigarettes disappeared and walked around in the empty space in my mind for a while. Nothing came. Tendrils of thought licked at my brain but nothing ignited-I would have to wait for it to surface when it was ready. I’d already taken too many chances with the Flood thing.

I got up, returned all the cigarettes but one, stuck that one in my mouth unlit, went out to the kitchen with the plates. “See you later, Mama.”

“Burke, when you call this man on the telephone, you meet him at the warehouse, not your office, okay?”

“Mama, I’m not going to call him. I don’t need the work right now. I already have a case.”

“You meet him at the warehouse, okay? With Max, okay?”

“How do you know I’m going to meet him, Mama?”

Mama just smiled, “I know.” She went back to her ledgers.

I made the alley, fired up the car, and headed for the library to meet Flood.

I GOT TO Bryant Park around nine-thirty. This little plot of greenery located behind the Public Library is supposed to enhance the citizens’ cultural enjoyment of their surroundings. Maybe it did once-now it’s an open-air market for heroin, cocaine, hashish, pills, knives, handguns-anything you might need to destroy yourself or someone else. There’s a zoning law in effect, though-if you want to have sex with a juvenile runaway from Boston or Minneapolis, or to buy a nine-year-old boy for the night, you have to go a few blocks further west.

Not too much activity when I first got there. The real scores are at lunchtime. But the predators and the prey were already doing their dance: broads walking through with gold chains and swinging handbags, solid citizens hustling to get to whatever hustle they do for a living, amateur thugs who wouldn’t know an easy score from a steady job lurking as subtly as vultures in a graveyard, small packs of kids moving through fast on their way to one of the porno movies in Times Square, some old lunatic feeding the pigeons so bloated from slopped-around junk food that they couldn’t fly, a bag lady looking for a place to rest her body for a few minutes before she nomads on.

I looked around carefully. There were no real hunters on the set (like someone who got burned in a dope deal looking for the salesman). I sat down on a bench, lit up. Like always, I was early. Sometimes if you come late for one of those meetings, you never leave.

I was smoking my cigarette and watching the flow around my bench when I saw the Prof approach. He was making his way carefully through the clots of people, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words but moving steadily in my direction. Not quite a midget, he was maybe four-and-a-half feet tall, even with the giant afro that shot out of his skull like it was electrified. Maybe forty years old, maybe sixty. Nobody knows all that much about the Prof. But he knows a lot about people: some say “Prof” is short for “Professor,” some say it stands for “Prophet.” Today he’s wearing a floor-length cashmere overcoat that probably fit the guy who originally brought it from Brooks Brothers and was dumb enough to hang it on a restaurant coathook-it trails behind him like the robes of royalty. The Prof speaks from the streets or the skies, depending on his mood:

“Today it is seven-twenty-seven. That’s the plain truth, and that’s no pun.”

“How’s business, Prof?”

“Do you hear the word, Burke? The number today must be seven-twenty-seven.”

“Why?” I asked, not looking up. The Prof was standing to one side, not blocking my view. No matter how he talked, he knew how to act.

“Not what you think, Burke. Not what you think. Not the airplane seven-twenty-seven, but a doom dream in reverse.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Do not mock the Word, Burke. Last night I dreamed of cards and death. Not the Tarot cards-gambler’s cards. You know the Dead Man’s Hand?”

“Aces and eights?”

“This is true. Aces and eights. And death means time, and time means hope, and to hope is to reject death, is it not?”

“Time don’t mean hope when you’re doing it, Prof.”

The Prof doesn’t like to be challenged when he’s talking nonsense.

“Who you talking to, chump? A tourist? Hear what I got to say before you go on your way.”

“Okay, Prof. Run it down,” I told him. That was a cheap shot about time anyway: small as he was, the Prof had stood up when we were inside.

“See the face of a clock in your mind, Burke-the reverse of one is seven, and the reverse of eight is two. The Death Number is one-eighty-one-so the Life Number must be seven-twenty-seven. And today is Life.”

“And you know this how?”

“Every man has a life sentence, brother. I know because I know. I know things. When I appeared, you were listening to a song in your mind.”

“So? What song?”

“A song of aces and eights.”

“I was listening to ‘Raining in My Heart.”

“By Slim Harpo?”

“The very one.”

“And some mock the words of the Prophet! I know what I see, and what I see others do not know. Play seven-twenty-seven today, Burke, and be wealthy for a week to come.”

I reached in my coat pocket and came out with a five, slapped it into his upturned palm. The money vanished.

“You may count on me, Burke. For it is written: those who cannot be counted on, may not be counted in. I will hold the proceeds for you until next we meet.”

“May it be in a better place,” I said, bowing my head slightly.

The Prof said nothing, just stood there sniffing the air like we were back inside, on the yard. And then, from the side of his mouth: “You working?”

“Just waiting for the library to open up so I can do some legal research for a client.”

“How’s Max?”

“The same.”

“I heard your name a couple of nights ago.”

“Where?”

“In a pub near Herald Square-two men, one with a loud voice and a red face, the other better-dressed, quiet. I didn’t get everything they said, but they spoke British.”

“British? You mean English?”

“No, Burke. Like British, but not quite the same. Like with a British accent or something.”

“Hard guys?”

“The loud one, maybe, and only if you let him. Not city people.”

“What’d they say?”

“Just that you were being cute with them, and that they had to meet with you to do some business.”

“How’d you get so close?”

“I was on my cart.” He meant a flat piece of wood with some roller-skate wheels on the bottom. When he kneels down on this and propels himself along wearing his long coat, you’d think he had no legs. It’s a living.

“If you run across them again, I’d like to know where they live,” I said, handing him another bill-a ten.

The Prof took the money, but more slowly this time. “I don’t like those folks, Burke. Maybe you should stick to your legal research.”

“It’s all part of the same case, I think.”

The Prof nodded and put his hand on his forehead as if he were getting a message. Instead, he gave me one: “If there’s a reason; there’s a season,” he said, and flowed back into the crowd.

I watched him disappear into the murk, checked both sides of the street, and got up to meet Flood.