"And peace be unto you," Gautier said seriously.

"Thanks for the ham. You saved us from another night of peanut butter sandwiches."

Outside, walking back to the car, Jason Two said, "Nice guy. You think he's lying? Protecting one of his boys?"

"I doubt he can lie," Keisman said.

"I think that Gerber is doing exactly what Gautier said-confessing his sins every Friday night."

"Crazy world," Jason said.

"And getting crazier every day. Will you do the report for Delaney?"

"Sure. Tonight. What do you want to do right now?"

"Let's go back and have a beer or two with Gerber. That poor slob."

Detective Benjamin Calazo sat lumpishly in the rancid lobby of the fleabag hotel on West 23rd Street, waiting for Betty Lee, the Chinese hooker, to return from her daily visit to her mother. Mama-san lived down on Pell Street and looked to be a hundred years old at least.

Calazo had been tailing Betty for four days and thought he had her time-habit pattern down pat. Left the hotel around 9:00 A.M had coffee and a buttered bagel at a local deli, then cabbed down to Chinatown.

Spent the morning with Mama, sometimes bringing her flowers or a Peking duck. A good daughter.

Then back to the hotel by noon. The first john would arrive soon after-probably a guy on his lunch hour. Then there would be a steady parade until three or four o'clock, when business would slack off and Betty would go out to dinner.

Things picked up again after five o'clock and continued good until two in the morning.

Betty wasn't pounding the pavements as far as Calazo could tell. She had a regular clientele, mostly older guys with potbellies and cigars. There were also a few furtive young kids who rushed in and out, looking around nervously like they expected to get busted at any minute.

Betty Lee herself was far from what Benny Calazo envisioned as the ideal whore. She was dumpy and looked like she bought her clothes in a thrift shop. But she must have had something on the ball to attract all those johns. Maybe, Calazo mused idly, she did cute things with chopsticks-it was possible.

She came into the hotel lobby. Benny folded his Post, heaved himself to his feet, and followed her into the cage elevator. They started up. He knew her room was 8-D.

"Good morning," he said to her pleasantly.

She gave him a faint smile but said nothing.

When's he got off on the eighth floor, he followed her down the hall to her door. She whirled and confronted him.

"Get lost," she said sharply.

He showed her his shield and ID.

"Oh, shit," she said wearily.

"Again? Okay. How much?" :"I don't want any grease, Betty."

"A nice blowjob?" she said hopefully.

He laughed.

"Just a few minutes of your time."

I got a client in fifteen minutes."

"Let him wait. We going to discuss your business in the hall or are you going to invite me in?"

Her little apartment was surprisingly neat, clean, tidy. Everything dusted, everything polished. There was a small refrigerator, waist-high, and a framed photograph of John F Kennedy over the bed. Calazo couldn't figure that.

"You like a beer?" she asked him.

"That would be fine," he said gratefully.

"Thank you."

She got him a cold Bud, one of the tall ones.

He sat there in his overcoat and old fedora, so worn that there was a hole in the front at the triangular crease.

"Betty," he said, "you got a nice thing going here. You take care of the locals?"

"of course," she said, astonished that he would ask such a question.

"And the prick behind the lobby desk. And the alkie manager. How else could I operate?"

"Yeah," he said, "it figures. I've been checking you the last three or four days. Regulars mostly, aren't they?"

"Mostly. Some walk-in trade. Friends of friends."

"Sure, I understand. You got a regular named Ronald Bellsey?"

"I don't ask last names."

"All right, let's concentrate on Ronald. Comes in two afternoons a week.

A chunky guy, an ex-pug."

"Maybe," she said cautiously.

"What kind of a guy is he?"

"He's a pig!" she burst out.

"Sure he is," Calazo said cheerfully.

"Likes to hurt you, doesn't he?"

"How did you know that?"

"That's the kind of guy he is. I want to take him, Betty.

With your help."

"Take him? You mean arrest him?"

"No.

"Kill him?"

"No. Just teach him to straighten up and fly right."

"You want to do that here?"

"That's right."

"He'll kill me," she said.

"You take him here and you don't kill him, he'll come back and kill me."

"I don't think so," Detective Calazo said.

"I think that after I get through with him, he'll stay as far away from you as he can get. So you'll lose one customer-big deal."

"I don't like it," she said.

"Betty, I don't see where you have any choice. I don't want to close you down, I really don't, though I could do it. All I want to do is punish this scumbag. If he does come back, you can always tell him the cops made you do it."

She thought about it a long time. She went to the small refrigerator and poured herself a glass of sweet wine. Calazo waited patiently.

"If he gets too heavy," Betty Lee said finally, "I could always go to Baltimore for a while. I got a sister down there.

She's in the game, too."

"Sure you could," the detective said, "but believe me, he's not going to come on heavy. Not after I get through with him."

She took a deep breath.

"How do you want to handle it?" she asked him.

He told her. She listened carefully.

"It should work," she said.

"Give it to him good."

Detectives Venable and Estrella walked in on Mrs. Gladys Ferguson without calling first. They didn't want her phoning Mrs. Yesell and saying something like: "Blanche, two police officers are coming to ask me about you and our bridge club.

What on earth is going on?"

Mrs. Ferguson turned out to be a tall, dignified lady who had to be pushing eighty. She walked with a cane, and one of her shoes had a builtup sole, about three inches thick. She was polite enough to the two cops after they identified themselves, but cool and aloof.

"Ma'am," Estrella started, "we'd like to ask you a few questions in connection with a criminal investigation we're conducting. Your answers could be very important. I'm sure you'll want to cooperate."

"What kind of a criminal investigation?" she asked.

"Into what? I've had nothing to do with any crime."

"I'm sure you haven't," Detective Estrella said.

"This involves the whereabouts of witnesses on a night a crime was committed." She stared at him.

"And that's all you're going to tell me?"

"I'm afraid it is."

"Will I be called to testify?" she said sharply.

"At a trial?"

"Oh, no," Detective Helen Venable said hastily.

"It's really not a sworn statement we want from you or anything like that.

Just information."

"Very well then. What is it you wish to know?","Mrs. Ferguson,"

Estrella said, "are you a member of a bridge club that meets on Friday nights?"

Her composure was tried, but it held.

"What on earth," she said in magisterial tones, "does my bridge club have to do with any criminal activity?"

"Ma'am," Helen said, beginning to get teed off, "if you keep asking us questions, we're going to be here all day. It'll be a lot easier for all of us if you just answer our questions.

Are you a member of a bridge club that meets on Friday nights?"

"I am."

Estrella: "Every Friday night?"

"That is correct."

Venable: "How long has this club been meeting?"

"Almost five years now. We started with two tables. But members died or moved away. Now we're down to one."

Estrella: "And you've never missed a single Friday night in those five years?"