The bottle was wet in his perspiring hands. He glanced at the label. Jose Macho's Four Star Tequila. He could get a gallon for a buck in Mexico City. It had cost him nine dollars at a Weehawken bar.

Squawk. Squawk. Squawk.

"Damn it," Daniels hollered through the shattered pane. "Will you stop that goddamn ringing!" "

"I did," came the voice. It was familiar. Coldly, efficiently, disgustingly familiar.

''Wo estoy aqui," Daniels answered.

"What do you mean you're not home? What other idiot would smash a window instead of answering a doorbell?"

Succumbing to logic, Daniels dropped the bottle on the floor and left the room, the squawks still sounding in his ears. He descended the wooden stairs, slowly pausing to examine all three dusty barren floors.

He walked with grace, each step the product of years of gymnastics, built into a solid muscular body

5

that 35 years of frequent abuse had not managed to debilitate. Daniels was a handsome man. He knew this because women told him so. His rugged face was topped by a shock of short, steel-gray wavy hair. His nose had been broken six times, and the last fracture restored the dignity that the first five had taken away.

A cruel face, women called it. Sometimes the perceptive ones added, "But it fits you, you bastard."

Barney would have smiled remembering that, if he hadn't been seeking desperately to burn out the barnyard-flavored coating of his tongue with a blast of alcohol. Any decent rotgut would do. But there was nothing.

Squawk. Squawk. He waved his arm in the oak-paneled foyer as though the man behind the stained glass window could see his movements and would stop ringing. No good. He fumbled with the three brass locks on the door, finally twisting the last into position.