“That your pterodactyl?”

The old man shook his head.

“You’re sure?”

The old man began to tremble. “Honest to God. It ain’t mine. Why’djoo always pick on me?”

“‘Cause you were the guy owned that big monkey we caught climbin’ up the Empire State, that’s why!”

“They never proved it!”

“I don’t give a damn if they didn’t. I knew you were the guy. I knew that big ape belonged to you!”

“Oh yeah, fuzz? How’d you know?”

“You were the only guy on the street with a seventy-five foot tambourine.”

The lean, corsetted, hatted, rouge-on-bones young woman standing au dessus the soot-flecked plate-glass display window of the truss and artificial limb shop on the southwest corner of the blocked intersection compared the watch strapped to her narrow wrist with the oversized timepiece dangling over the sidewalk across the street. Her lips compressed into a hard line like a surgery scar; for the tenth time in thirty seconds she scanned the pavement to left and right, strode a few impatient steps to peer past the upjutting elbow of the pteranodon blocking her view. Still no Melville. Melville wasn’t coming. Stood up. Her. Lilya. Stood up. By a creep like Melville, which she was doing him the biggest favor of his life just to go out with him, the slob, and he’s got the undiluted crust to not show, and after she skipped lunch just to have room for a lousy dinner which he probably would’ve suggested Nedick’s anyway—

A large, slow-moving middle-aged man with moist eyes and a mouth like a prune pit was hesitating, looking at her; Lilya had seen a Museum of Modern Art Film Retrospective of Films of Depravity in 1966; the persistent image of Peter Lorre as “M” kept oozing into her mind; this was probably an out-of-town rapist.