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Horizon?”
    “There had been an agreement in principle to purchase a ten percent interest for a certain figure. However, that agreement was based on the Golden Horizon being in possession of a certain file, a list of major gamblers. Every casino in the world has one. I believe you Americans call them high rollers. Men who gamble for very high stakes, who can afford to lose as much as five million dollars in a single night.”
    “It’s called a pigeon list,” said Decker. When a casino changed hands, the pigeon list was sold separately. One list Decker knew about contained the names of three hundred gamblers and had sold for three million dollars.
    “Before buying into the Golden Horizon,” said Kanai, “I insisted on seeing its pigeon list, as you call it. I wanted to see the names of men the casino considered favored patrons. I regarded that list as part of my company’s investment. Unfortunately, Mr. Pangalos and Marybelle Corporation could not show me such a list. I can only assume that they do not have it and whoever does wants a high price for it.”
    The Marybelle Corporation and the Molise family won’t stop until they get that list, thought Decker. No outside investor will put a dime into Golden Horizon until they see it, and the hotel casino needs outside investors to keep up the appearance of being legitimate.
    The Molise family would not be happy with what Decker had done to Sergeant Aldo LoCicero either. LoCicero spoke Sicilian and had been assigned to translate wiretaps placed on Molise’s people by LeClair’s task force. LoCicero was not on the task force; he worked out of Decker’s precinct and it was there in the locker room that Decker noticed LoCicero’s new teeth and what appeared to be a persistent chest rash.
    For a long time the Sicilian-American had suffered from bad teeth. Suddenly he’d had them filled, cleaned, capped; overnight LoCicero’s mouth had turned from coal to pearls. And with his proud new smile had come the habit of constantly scratching his chest. Once Decker had come upon LoCicero alone in the precinct locker room, huddled close to his locker in an almost childish attempt to hide while he frantically rubbed lotion on his itching chest.
    At the sight of the detective, the patrolman grew twitchy with nerves. He paled at Decker’s suggestion that he remove his blouse and undershirt, the better to get at the itch.
    Decker often walked the twenty blocks from his apartment, on West Sixty-fourth Street, to the station house for exercise, and it was on one of these morning walks that, unobserved, he watched LoCicero’s wife let her husband out of a car several blocks away from the station house. The car was a Chrysler Imperial, long and black, new and expensive.
    While increasingly disillusioned by what he encountered every working day, Decker still found a cold satisfaction in kicking a hole in other people’s vision of themselves. In his heart he knew what all cops knew, that power was pleasure.
    Decker moved in closer on LoCicero. He telephoned “Ron,” his anonymous contact at police headquarters, and told him about the man’s new car, new teeth, chest rash. A day later Decker learned that the car had been purchased in Nassau County and registered in the name of Mrs. LoCicero, who paid eight thousand five hundred dollars in cash, a third of her husband’s yearly salary after taxes.
    The LoCiceros had also paid cash, five thousand seven hundred dollars, for an upcoming Caribbean cruise aboard an Italian liner, and had contacted real estate agents about a new house, far out on Long Island and away from their “changing neighborhood.” LeClair had to be notified, but Decker didn’t want the information to come from him. Should he turn out to be wrong, the prosecutor would have one strike on him. Ron agreed. The information was passed to the task force through Internal Affairs. And Decker had guessed right about LoCicero.
    LoCicero, while translating Molise wiretaps,