“That’s a helluva way to treat an officer of the law.”

So while Red Fred and his group were hysterically splitting the scene, Captain Cozenage and his staff turned their attentions to rumors of a high-dice game going on among a pre-puberty peer-group in the tool shed of a private quay off the foot of Christopher Street.

Let’s face it…that is the way the old cop flops.

Big Patsy, sweating copiously, and not from the sun (that Stone that Puts the Stars to Flight), either: Big Patsy, we say, observing that there appeared to be not only no pursuit but no indication of public interest in the caterpillar’s rapid transit from Rechov MacDougal—save it might be a grumpy moue of, “Cool it, paddys!” from a passing citizen of Nigerian extraction as Old 96 tore past at a rapid 38 m.p.h., narrowly missing him—beat his way around the Horn and entered the semi-sacrosanct purlieus of Washington Square.

At which juncture he found his intention of losing the caravan in the first cul-de-sac and bespeaking a mechanical clarence, or taxi-cab, for Kennedy International, frustrated by the unforeseen presence of a teeming mob of citizens; all of whom greeted his arrival with loud huzzahs of joy.

“Oh, goody, the answering service did manage to get in touch with you!” cried a busty matron in harlequin bifocals and bermudas which, though roomy, were not quite roomy enough. See now The Kerry Pig, tears still wet on his ginger-colored face, hastily avert his eyes.

Red Fred groggily clung to the controls. Big Patsy considered swift flight, but the sans-culottes were all around him, thick as fallen leaves in Vallembrossa or pollen-footed bees on the violet-woven slopes of Mount Hymettus: choose one. (One from Column “A” and two from Column “B” or two from “A” and one from “B”—you get egg roll, either way.) Squealing merrily, the citizens climbed—thronged, rather; swarmed—aboard, displaying banners with such strange devices as Save The Village, Hold That (Tammany) Tiger, Destruction Of Landmarks Must Cease, Preserve Low-Rent Housing, Urban Renewers Go Home, and sic c.