"Give me your things and watch out for Granny," Sheik said, taking their bundled-up disguises.

Choo-Choo bent his head to the keyhole.

Sheik unlocked a large old cedar chest with another key from his ring and stored their bundles beneath layers of old blankets and house furnishings. It was Granny's hope chest; there she stored things given her by the white folks she worked for to give Caleb when he got married. Sheik locked the chest and unlocked the door to the next room. They followed him and he locked the door behind them.

It was the room he and Choo-Choo rented. There was a double bed where he and Choo-Choo slept, chest of drawers and mirror, pitcher and bowl on the table, as in the other room. The corner was curtained off with calico for a closet. But a lot of junk lay around and it wasn't as clean.

A narrow window opened to the platform of the redpainted iron fire escape that ran down the front of the building. It was protected by an iron grille closed by a padlock.

Sheik unlocked the grille and stepped out onto the fire escape.

"Look at this," he said.

Choo-Choo joined him; Inky and Sonny squeezed into the window.

"Watch the captive, Inky," Sheik said.

"I ain't no captive," Sonny said.

"Just look," Sheik said, pointing toward the street.

Below, on the broad avenue, red-eyed prowl cars were scattered thickly, like monster ants about an ant-hill. Three ambulances were threading through the maze, two police hearses, and cars from the police commissioner's office and the medical examiner's office. Uniformed cops and men in plain clothes were coming and going in every direction.

"The men from Mars," Sheik said. "The big dragnet. What you think about that, Choo-Choo?"