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okay?”
    The answers were quickly drowned out by the piercing sound of sirens. I barely had time to grab my tape recorder as the New York police descended on the restaurant, blocking off all the exits and corralling us like sheep in the bar area.
    Soon, everyone was asking a different question.
    “Haven’t we been through enough already?”
    A few ambitious cops fanned out among us, quickly trying to get as much information as they could before turning the investigation over to the detectives. What they didn’t want to get in return was lip and blowback from a high-class clientele that just wanted to get the hell out of there.
    “Tough shit,” I actually overheard one officer say to some red-faced stuffed shirt complaining that he had to be at an important board meeting all the way downtown.
    The officer’s anger made all the more sense as word got around fast that the two men who confronted the killer had indeed been off-duty cops. Their precinct, the nineteenth, was nearby and they had been grabbing a quick beer and hamburger at the bar after working the graveyard shift together.
    Now they were dead.
    How could that be? I had been there — and it almost hadn’t seemed possible. They had had the guy covered like white on rice!
    Clearly the killer knew what he was doing, and that was the King Kong of understatements. As fast as lightning he’d taken down two of New York City’s finest, and not with lucky shots, either. I’m talking about dead center to their foreheads, twice over. The cops never knew what hit them.
    Then — poof! — the killer was gone. He had apparently escaped unscathed through the kitchen and out a back door.
    All told, he left behind three dead, four wounded, and dozens who were really, really shaken up about what they had just — unfortunately — witnessed.
    Few more so than Dwayne Robinson, who now stood by my side. I almost felt like his bodyguard at this point. Or his sports agent. Someone there to take care of him.
    “Here, drink this,” I said, handing him some Johnnie Walker Black that I grabbed from behind the bar. Technically, I was looting. Officially, I didn’t care.
    “Thanks,” Dwayne mumbled, reaching for the glass. That’s when I saw that his hands were trembling badly. Is there a Valium in the house?
    Or maybe it was his anxiety disorder kicking in. He had that look, like the restaurant walls were caving in on him. Better make that two Valium …
    It didn’t help matters that people were beginning to recognize him. You didn’t need any poker skills, though, to read his body language. It basically screamed, Back off!
    Unfortunately, one idiot couldn’t help himself. He walked right past Donald Trump, Orlando Bloom, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, heading straight for us.
    “Hey, aren’t you Dwayne Robinson?” he asked, removing a slip of paper from inside his suit jacket. “Do you think maybe you could sign —”
    “Now’s not really a good time,” I interrupted.
    The guy turned to me, raising his tweezed eyebrows. He looked like a real slickster, maybe from Madison Avenue. “Who are you?” he asked.
    Good question. Who was I to Dwayne Robinson at this moment? But the answer seemed to come easily. “I’m a friend of his,” I answered. Then I channeled my best tough-guy imitation. “And like I said, now’s not really a good time .”
    I must have been convincing enough, because the guy backed off. He even mumbled, “Sorry.”
    “Thanks,” Dwayne said again.
    “You’re welcome. So what brings you here?” I said, and grinned so he’d know I was trying a joke to ease the tension. Not a good joke, just a joke.
    Dwayne took a big gulp of the Johnnie Walker and finallymanaged to find his voice. “Man, I don’t know if I can do this,” he said. “How long do you think they’ll keep us here?”
    It was another very good question. I was about to tell him I had no idea when some guy with a badge hooked to his belt stood on a chair and introduced himself as