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angled his body so he could watch the flow of detectives coming in and out of the Broadway Arms. He could tell the
     detectives by the way they walked. Cocky little bastards, strutting around as if they owned the city. Pale, paunchy guys in
     cheap suits, hair sprouting from their ears. Cops didn’t frighten him at all. He’d already buried one in a tropical swamp.
    “Show time,” Pinto said. “Grease the crowd for the star… the Mexican stud horse. Maybe some rich lady is here who will buy
     restaurant for you. All you have to do is fuck her five times a day. Right, my friend?”
    “Find her and tell her it’s a deal.”
    Victor heard the laughter as Pinto began. He worked the back of the crowd slowly, pretending they weren’t there, like Emmett
     Kelly sweeping away the spotlight. Then the scarf trick; he blew his nose in the last one. Bodily functions were guaranteed
     laughs.
    Across the street, cops on the eighteenth floor of the Broadway Arms lined up on the terrace. All doing the same thing: looking
     down. As if that would somehow reveal the answer. Their heads lined up along the rail like painted coconuts on the cart of
     a Juarez street vendor. If he had an M-16, he could pick them off one by one. Splat, splat, splat.
    On the sidewalk, under the green canopy of the Broadway Arms, the big red-faced detective flailed his arms at the doorman.
     Victor wondered where the other one was, the thin one. The one who had climbed onto the roof of the van.
    Victor reached into his bag and took out his performing gloves. Right on top for a change. He pushed his hands into the tight
     leather fingers. He rolled his shoulders back toward the statue and heard the pop of cartilage. The sounds of his body grew
     louder every day, crying out to him that enough was enough. The family curse of rheumatoid arthritis had not skipped his generation.
     But he could sense change in the air, the life he’d dreamed of, a life he could almost taste.
    Opportunity knocked, and he had answered. The days of passing the hat were numbered, days of sunshine promised to be endless.
     He could pull it off. It was like the trapeze. The critical moment in trapeze was the moment you left the platform. The timing
     had to be perfect, and his was flawless. The courage to push off… he’d always had that. Victor Nuñez was fearless. It was
     the most exhilarating feeling in the world, the rush of danger. Off into the darkness. Without a net. No turning back. He
     was airborne.

5
    E verybody in my family sneezes twelve times,” Detective Joe Gregory said, the back of his hand up to his nose. “Exactly twelve.
     Physically impossible for any of us to quit before twelve sneezes.”
    He was sitting on Gillian Stone’s bed, recovering from sneeze number six, surrounded by delicate lacy bras and French-cut
     bikini panties in shimmering Jell-O colors.
    “Maybe you’re allergic to perfume,” Danny Eumont said.
    “It ain’t perfume I’m allergic to, kid,” he said. “Trust me on that one.”
    Danny told Gregory the same story he’d told his uncle: the time sequence they were so worried about. Gregory added that the
     Broadway Arms night doorman said Gillian got out of a cab a little before ten-thirty. They both seemed to think this backed
     up Danny’s story.
    “Do you still have a key to this place?” Gregory said.
    “I never
had
a key to this place.”
    Gregory registered sneeze number seven. Ryan excused himself, saying he was going to see what the Crime Scene Unit had done
     on the terrace. A male uniformed cop from the precinct sat in the living room, reading magazines.
    “You’re sure you never had a key,” Gregory said. “Young stud like you might have so many keys he forgets which is which.”
    “I was never even
in
this place before. When I was going out with her she lived on the East Side. And I never had a key to that place, either.”
    Danny had overheard Gregory saying that detectives responding from the Mid-Town North