No formal demands had been made.

Not a single clue had been offered as to why Green Bank was happening.

Stemkowsky's heart was still beating loudly as he numbly maneuvered his wheelchair along an aisle lined with colorful deodorants and toiletries, up toward the gleaming soda fountain counter.

The short-order cook, Wally Lipsky, a cheerfully mountainous three-hundred-and-ten-pound man, turned from scraping the grill as Stemkowsky wheeled up. Lipsky's pink-cheeked face brightened immediately. The semblance of a third or fourth chin appeared out of rolling mounds of neck fat.

“Well, look what Sylvester the Cat musta dragged in offa the street! It's my man Pennsylvania. Whereyabeen keepin' yourself, champ? Long time no see.”

Stemkowsky had to smile at the irresistible fat cook, who had a well-deserved reputation as the Greenpoint neighborhood clown. Hell, he was in the mood to smile at almost anything this morning.

“Oh, he-he-here and there, Wally.” Stemkowsky burst into a nervous stutter. “Muh-Manhattan the mo-most part. I been wuh-working in Manhattan a lot these days.”

Stemkowsky tapped his finger on the tattered cloth tag sewn into the shoulder of his jacket. The patch read VETS CABS AND MESSENGERS. Harry Stemkowsky was one of seven licensed wheelchair cabbies in New York; three of them worked for Vets in Manhattan.

“Gah-gotta good job. Real job now, Wah-Wally… Why don't you make us some breakfast?”

“You got it, Pennsylvania. Cabdriver special comin' up. You got it, my man, anything you want.”

2

Manhattan

As early as six-fifteen that same morning, an endless stream of sullen-looking men and women carrying bulging black briefcases had begun to rise out of the steam-blooming subway station at Broadway and Wall Street.

They were the appointed drones of New York 's financial district, the straight-salary employees who understood abstract accounting principles and fine legal points but perceived little else about the Street and its black magic.