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in the middle of the empty parking lot.
    Then I read the note from Lindgren.
    Apparently some sharp-eyed civilian called in a tip to the cops this morning about a wanted fugitive looking a lot like Michael Walker. The suspect was leaving a Brooklyn gym last night, and the name of the establishment now fills the twenty-two letters set aside for nine across. And when I glance at the backseat, I see Hugo has also left me a little party favor—a brand-new, bright-red Miami Heat basketball cap.
    I may have been underestimating Lindgren all these years. I know it’s only the
Post
and not the
London Times,
but who would have thought that a corrupt, degenerate excuse for a police officer had the balls or vocabulary to do the crossword in ink?

Chapter 23
    Loco
    ON ACCOUNT OF the fact that I’m a whole lot brighter and craftier than I look, locating the Bed-Stuy Community Center is a piece of cake. The tricky part is finding a place to park where the Big Black Beast doesn’t draw too much attention to itself and I still have a halfway decent view of both entrances. This, after all, is a stakeout. Just not by the cops.
    After circling the block a couple times, I double-park half a dozen spaces past the community center. That’s right across the street from Carmine’s Pizzeria, so it looks as if I’m just sitting there enjoying my Pepsi and slice like any other self-respecting neighborhood goombah.
    I thought these boxing clubs were extinct, something out of a black-and-white Cagney flick. These days, tough kids don’t scrap. They strap. So mastering the sweet science is only going to get you killed.
    But maybe I’m wrong, because the place looks all renovated and spiffy, and folks are going in and out at a pretty good clip. Most of ’em have a strut too.
    If nothing else, banging on a heavy bag has got to be good stress management. And right now our man Michael Walker has got to be seriously stressing, what with an APB out for him in fifteen states and an outstanding warrant for triple homicide.
    While Walker works out, I blacken the end of the Graycliff Robusto I bought at the Tinder Box in East Hampton. And it looks like I picked it well. It’s nice and soft, and lights like a dream.
    The bad news is that I’m exactly three puffs into my delightful cigar when Walker slides out the back door in a gray hooded sweatshirt, a big gym bag slung over his bony shoulder.
    Now I’m fucked. If I put it out and relight it, the Graycliff will never taste the same. If I take it with me, it’s hardly going to be the relaxing experience I had in mind when I dropped fifteen dollars on it.
    So making the kind of difficult executive decision that earns me the big bucks, I open the sunroof and place the cigar gently in the ashtray. Then I follow Walker north toward Fulton Street.
    Staying half a block back, I see him take a quick left. Just as I round the corner, he looks both ways and ducks into a six-floor tenement about halfway down the block. Two minutes later, the lights go on and the shades come down on the corner apartment four flights up.
    Gotcha!
    I’ve caught the fugitive.

Chapter 24
    Loco
    AND GIVE THAT lucky man a cigar!
    I get back to the Big Black Beast, and everything, including my slowly burning Graycliff, is just like I left it. Seeing as we’re in Crooklyn, I pop in an old-school Eric B and Rakim CD and head for the Williamsburg Bridge.
    At 8:00 p.m. the Manhattan-bound lanes are flowing, and twenty minutes later, as my cigar burns down to the finish, I’m in Chinatown, Jake.
Killing time.
    It’s a way different world down here, lots of tiny people scurrying over the packed sidewalks with feverish energy, and it never fails to get me jazzed. Makes me think of
Saigon, Apocalypse Now,
and
The Deer Hunter.
    I luck into a parking spot big enough for the Beast, a miracle down here, and wander around for a while until I find a familiar place, where I wash down a couple plates of sweet, soggy dim sum with a couple of sweet,