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propped motionlessly on pillows set on window-sills. Children in soiled pants and ripped shirts ran and screamed and climbed stoops or hopscotched across chalked sidewalks.
    In a nearby storefront hung a sign, proclaiming MEMBERS ONLY. This was the entrance to the Friendship Social Club, domino champions of the United States and Puerto Rico. Sandro slid across the front seat. As club attorney and honorary member, he was the only non-Puerto Rican allowed inside. The front room had a desk and a phone. On the wall were pictures of the members, the flags of the United States and Puerto Rico crossed, membership lists, and newspaper clippings which described club victories in domino tournaments. The back rooms were filled with card tables and chairs. A clattering fan shifted the humid air where a dozen men were bent over the tables studying their dominoes. Some held cans of cold beer. Sandro walked to the back.
    â€œHey, Sandro, how are you?” smiled Juan, the president and moving force of the club.
    â€œHi, Juan, com’esta usted ?” replied Sandro, shaking Juan’s strong hand.
    â€œ Muy bueno ,” Juan laughed, calling to one of the men to bring a cold cerveza for the abogado.
    The members looked up and acknowledged the lawyer with smiles and greetings. He pulled a chair up next to Juan, once again engrossed in the game. Juan held a small wooden shield in his lap, containing custom-made mother-of-pearl dominoes with red spots.
    â€œSo, what’s news?” asked Juan.
    â€œI’m waiting for Mike. We’re going down to Delancey tonight to see the building where a cop was killed, and try to talk to some of the people.”
    Delancey is a neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, sometimes called the Delancey Street Bridge. Just like the club’s neighborhood, El Barrio—known to the rest of New York as Spanish Harlem—Delancey is a low-rent area that gets handed down from one wave of immigrants to the next. The Puerto Ricans were the latest, and it was they who had taken to calling it Delancey.
    Mike Rivera was a member of the Friendship Social Club. He was also a private investigator, whom Sandro had helped to obtain his license. It was through Mike that Sandro had become the club’s lawyer.
    â€œMike should be here very soon, then.” Juan moved one of the dominoes from the shield in his lap onto the table. “You see these boys I play with here,” Juan taunted Jesus, his opponent, with mock sternness.
    Jesus smiled. He had a prominent gold tooth. He nodded toward Juan. “When I’m finish with you, Juan, you be sorry you not gone, too, with Sandro.”
    They exchanged moves on the table, frowning as they studied their remaining dominoes.
    â€œYou don’t want to have put that one down, my boy,” Juan said to Jesus. “You don’t, I’m telling you.” He added a piece decisively to the arrangement on the table. “Ah hah,” he crowed. “I tol’ you. I think I am the champ now. Don’t you think, Sandro?”
    â€œ El campeon ,” Sandro allowed. “That is, until you play me, Juan.”
    â€œOkay, I do that, too. I play you and Jesus at one time.” He laughed as he rose.
    â€œ Un otro mas ” said Jesus.
    â€œ Un otro? Tu eres loco ” Juan said, sitting again and starting to turn the pieces face down.
    A Puerto Rican in his late thirties, shorter than Sandro, stocky, with dark short-cropped hair, entered the room. His clothes were good. He walked toward Sandro.
    â€œHi, Mike,” Sandro greeted.
    â€œHello, Counselor.” Mike smiled as they shook hands. “What’s your pleasure?”
    â€œWell, I didn’t want to go into all of it on the phone. What I want to do is talk to some of the people who live down where the cop was killed. Sam Bemer is talking about pleading Alvarado—that’s our man—guilty. I’d