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”

    “That wasn’t you.” Still skeptical.

    “He passed me,” Stan explained. “Moving fast. Listen, the light’s with me now, okay?”

    “Go on,” she said, but she wasn’t happy about it.

    So he went on, headed for the subway as he’d said, because maybe today wasn’t a good day for private wheels, and damn if, three minutes later, she wasn’t back again, pulling in next to a fire hydrant, both cops getting out of the car, hitching their gunbelts, the driver male, skinny, bored.

    It was still the woman doing the talking: “You. Sir.”

    “Hello, again,” Stan said. “Still on my way to the subway,” he said, and pointed up the boulevard. Just a couple blocks to go.

    “Tell us more about this Chinese guy,” she said.

    So then he understood he’d made another mistake. He’d given her the Chinese guy to distract her, throw a little fairy dust in her eyes, and now the Chinaman was coming back to bite him on the ass, because guess what? The first time, they were only interested in an illegally parked car, but since then the satellite has been at its busybody work, and now they’ve got a stolen car, and Stan has already declared himself a witness who saw the perp. Crap — a double scoop, please.

    “Well,” he said, picking his words carefully now that it was too late, “I don’t know he was Chinese, exactly. Oriental, though. I think. Could be Japanese, Burmese. Maybe Thai.”

    “Dressed?”

    “Oh, sure.”

    “Dressed how? ”

    “Oh.” This part he could get right. “Kind of like me,” he said. “You know, normal. Chinos and a light T–shirt. I don’t think his T–shirt said anything.” Stan’s, in fact, said NASCAR, with smoke coming out of tailpipes on all the letters.

    The woman cop gave this shirt a flat look, then said, “And which way did this Oriental person go?” She was still skeptical about the existence of the Oriental person, but so long as she contented herself with sarcasm, Stan didn’t care.

    “Up to the corner and turned right,” he said, and pivoted to point back to where he’d come from. “Back there, that would have been.”

    “How old —”

    The cell in Stan’s pocket ripped off the race–starting jingle, and the woman cop gave him a severe look. “Sorry,” he said, took out the cell, and managed to button it before it announced the second race. “Yeah?”

    It was John Dortmunder’s voice — Stan recognized it right away — saying, “You wanna make a meet tonight? You and your mom.”

    “Oh, hi, John,” Stan said, with a bigger smile than he’d usually offer John, put on mostly for the cops’ benefit. “Oh, you wanna play poker again, huh?”

    “No, I —”

    Stan wasn’t sure whether the cops could hear what John was saying, so it would be better if he didn’t say it. Interrupting he said, “Wanna win your money back, huh? Fat chance. Listen, I’m here helping a couple cops with a car in a no–parking zone —”

    “Ok,” — “so maybe we could talk later.”

    “You gonna be in jail tonight?”

    “I don’t see why, John.”

    “O.J. at ten,” John said, and broke the connection.

    So did Stan. “Friendly game,” he assured the cop. “Nickel–and–dime.”

    She nodded. “May I see some ID?”

    Stan frowned, honestly sorry not to be more helpful. “Gee, I don’t think so,” he said.

    “No?” Skepticism doubled, she said, “You got something to hide?”

    “Not that I know of,” Stan said. “But I don’t believe I have to show ID to walk on the sidewalk, and what else am I doing?”

    “You’re a witness.”

    “To a car in a no–parking zone?”

    “To a stolen car in a no–parking zone.”

    “Oh,” Stan said, showing surprise. “In that case, I’m not a witness at all. I forget everything. Sorry I can’t be more help. Listen, I don’t wanna miss my subway. You probably want to get back to your evidence before it’s towed.”

    And he walked very briskly indeed to the Ozone