Half a block away he could make out men and women running, leaping, hunching over with purses, newspapers and umbrellas over their heads. It was going to be a good day.

He pushed open the door of the Brilliance Deli and stepped inside. The narrow aisle leading to the six tables in the rear was thick with people exuding heavy, musty dampness, jammed together waiting for a break in the rain, a break that wasn't coming. They drank coffee, ate muffins and bagels and donuts, made calls on their cell phones, lost their tempers. Waited.

Dexter looked at Achmed, the deli's owner, who paused in his rush from grill to cash register. Dexter caught his eye and Achmed nodded his approval.

Dexter called out, "Umbrellas five dollars, rain ponchos three dollars."

He had picked up three dozen umbrellas and the same number of ponchos from Alvino Lopez at a graffitti-covered garage on 101st Street. He would have charged a dollar more if the merchandise did not carry the distinctive smell of motor oil.

Arms stretched out, eager for his wares. Dexter served out rain gear to cash-filled hands.

Rain beat down on the awning in front of the Brilliance. So did runoff water from the roof of the three-story brick building. A hole in the awning looked like an open faucet.

The sight was a godsend for Dexter, a sign to those huddled inside the deli that they needed protection.

Under his poncho, Dexter was a stick figure, as black and narrow as one of his umbrellas. Once, not all that many years ago, Dexter Hughes had commanded combat companies in battle in two wars. In the second of those wars, a small steel ball, one of hundreds released from a single bomb, had screeched through the night and torn out his right eye, taking part of the socket with it. Friendly fire tragedy. The army had fitted him with a state-of-the-art eye that looked natural enough if his good eye happened to be facing the same direction as the artificial one.