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cops, a chief or something. You can’t fool around with him.”
    â€œHe’s a sergeant.”
    â€œYeh, but he’s in charge of things—he’s a big guy from downtown.” Gazing out from under those eyebrows like he was peering out from under a rock, Oscar made sure no one was listening. “He knows who did it,” he whispered.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œReuben.”
    â€œDid the cop say that?”
    â€œHe didn’t have to say. I know.”
    I didn’t believe Oscar, but I began to wonder if Reuben did kill Angelina. He seemed capable of it. Most of Oscar’s clientele—bitter, angry men, with lifetimes full of unresolved grievances—seemed capable of murder. Already, I knew two of our regulars were murderers, Sam the Hammer and Boss Abbott. There wasn’t any reason to believe Angelina’s killer frequented Oscar’s. But Sheehan seemed to think it was as good a bet as any that the killer was one of Oscar’s lost souls.
    Standing behind the bar near closing time, I’d begun sifting through Oscar’s rogues gallery for any hint that one of them had it in for Angelina when Nigel walked in with Carl van Sagan, just ahead of the nightly crew drifting back home for last call. Nigel looked like I felt, shaken and drawn, like he might be hung over. If he’d been drinking the night before, I was glad I’d missed it. With those thick glasses magnifying the grief in his eyes, he looked at me for sympathy, but I didn’t want to talk to him, or anyone else, about Angelina. Nigel drank a ginger ale. Carl had scotch.
    â€œDuffy showed up yet?” Carl asked. I’d known Carl for years. We’d been watching basketball games together at various corner bars since Earl Monroe began playing for the Knicks. Though we’d each left the neighborhood a few times, we’d always gravitated back. When I saw him now, it felt like we’d grown up together. Carl was my age but a bit heftier. He drank a good deal more than was good for him, but was a peaceful man and a thinker. He also possessed an amazingly expressive face. On his peaceful days, something in the cast of his eyes reminded me of Snoopy; on the days when the hustle of life in the Big Apple became too much for him, he thundered and blustered around the neighborhood like Captain Haddock. When he was thoughtful, he wrinkled his forehead, pursed his lips, and took on an owl-like guise.
    He usually relieved Duffy the doorman at midnight, but tonight was his night off. Carl had trouble keeping track of what day it was because his shift started at midnight. The first week on the job he was off on Saturday, so he got drunk in Oscar’s with me Friday night. When he went into work Saturday night, Duffy was mad as hell.
    â€œWhat are you doing here now?” Duffy bellowed at him. “And where were you yesterday?”
    â€œYou sure this is your night off?” I asked Carl.
    â€œNo. But I don’t give a shit.” He took a sip of his drink and grimaced. He was in one of his Captain Haddock moods. “We’re all being investigated.”
    â€œYou, too.”
    â€œAll the doormen on West End Avenue. We’re watchdogs for the community.”
    â€œWhat did you see?”
    â€œI saw Angelina.”
    â€œDid you tell the police?”
    â€œNo.” He looked defiantly at Nigel.
    Nigel had a higher opinion of law enforcement than the rest of us since he seemed to think of himself as a member of respectable society, so I, too, expected him to complain. But he didn’t, just played with the lime section floating in his ginger ale.
    Sam the Hammer, hunched into his Yankee windbreaker, drank coffee at the end of the bar next to Oscar, who was doping out the races for the next day at Belmont.
    â€œThey busted Boss,” he told no one in particular. “They’re closing his numbers joints.”
    We all sympathized in the way the neighbors might if Mrs.