The tourists, at least, seemed to love him. Sometimes they snapped his picture to bring home as an example of New York City 's famed squalor and heartlessness. He enjoyed posing. Asked them for a buck or whatever the traffic would bear. He'd hold his two puffy shopping bags and smile extra pathetically for the camera. Pay the cashier, sport.

Now, through gummy, half-closed eyes, Crusader Rabbit stealthily watched the usual early evening promenade along Atlantic Avenue 's Middle Eastern restaurant row.

It was a constant, day-in day-out noisy bazaar here: transplanted rag-headed Arabs, college assholes, Brooklyn professionals who came to eat ethnic. In the distance there was always the clickety-clack of the subway.

A troop of counter kids from McDonald's was passing by Crusader Rabbit, walking home from work. Two chunky black girls and a skinny mulatto boy around eighteen, nineteen.

“Hey, McDonald's. Whopper beat the Big Mac. Real tough break. Gotta quarter? Something for some McCoffee?” Crusader coughed and wheezed at the passing trio of teens.

The kids looked offended; then they all laughed together in a high-pitched chorus. “Who asked you, aqualung? You old geek sheet-head. Kick your ass.”

The kids continued merrily on. Rude little bastards when Ronald McDonald wasn't watching over their act.

If any of the passersby had looked closer, they might have noticed certain visual inconsistencies about the bag man called Crusader Rabbit. For one thing, he had impressive muscle tone for a sedentary street bum. His shoulders were unusually broad, and his legs and arms were as thick as tree limbs.

Even more unusual were his eyes, which were almost always intently focused. They scanned the teeming avenue over and over again, relentlessly watching all the street action, everything that happened.