«I'm not almost sure,» the dignified owner said.

Reed demolished his notebook in his twisting hands. Grover swallowed again, his throat suddenly as dry as a summer sidewalk. He started to say something, but a motion from Felton's hands cut him off.

«I'm not almost sure, I'm positive,» Felton said.

The two detectives sat motionless. Felton continued: «There have been several families in this building who have entertained rather… how can I say it… rather odd types. We have a careful screening process before leasing an apartment, but as you men know, you cannot always be sure of the caliber of tenant. I believe the man jumped or…» Felton lowered his head as if gaming strength to force the words out. He looked into the blinking eyes of Grover and said: «God forgive me, I believe he may have been pushed.»

Felton stared at the thin volume of poetry on his lap. «I know how horrendous this may sound to you, the taking of a human life. But it is possible, you know. There are cases of it.»

If their jobs had not been at stake, Grover and Reed would have been hysterical with laughter at someone telling two homicide detectives that murder actually existed in the world. But what could you expect from someone so refined, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who insulated himself against the world with books of poetry?

Felton went on. «I was on the balcony of my apartment an hour ago, leaning over and looking down at the street below when I saw the man fall. He came off the balcony of the eighth floor. My butler and I went down there, but it is an empty apartment. It has been vacant for some time. No one was there. If the man was pushed, his assailant had escaped. I was going to volunteer this information, but I was so unnerved I had to return here for a few minutes to regain my composure. What a terrible thing.»

«Yeah. We know how rough it must be on you, sir,» Grover said.

«Rough,» Reed agreed.

«Terrible and frightening,» Felton continued. «And to think that whoever pushed this person… if he was pushed… may be living in this very building now.»

Felton looked into the eyes of the two detectives. «I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you a great favor. I've already told Bill and he's agreed.»

«Bill?» Grover asked.

«Yes. Mayor Dalton. Bill Dalton.»

«Oh, yes,» Grover said. «Sure.»

«That man who was in the street. The dead one.»

«He's not dead,» Grover said.

«Oh.»

«He will be in a little while, but he ain't yet. Pretty bad though, you know, sir.»

«Oh, how terrible. But this may help us. I want you to find out who he is, where he is from, as soon as possible. Before midnight if possible. We have extremely good references and background on all the people living here. If there is some connection, we might be able to find it.»

The detectives nodded. «We already started a routine check,» Grover said.

«Make it more than routine and I'll see you will be well rewarded.»

Grover pushed out his fat, thick hands as though shoving away a second helping of strawberry shortcake. «Oh, no. We don't want nothing like that. We're just happy to…»

Grover didn't get a chance to finish his refusal. Felton had smoothly taken two envelopes from the pages of the volume of poetry. «My card is in here, gentlemen,» he said. «Please call as soon as you learn something.»

When the butler returned after ushering out the two policemen, he said: «You could have bluffed your way through. You didn't have to buy them off.»

«I didn't buy them off, stupid,» Felton said, flipping the poetry on the desk. He rose from the chair and rubbed his hands.

The butler shrugged. «What'd I say, boss? What'd I say?»

«Nothing, Jimmy. I'm kind of griped.»

«What's to worry?»

Felton shot a cold glance at Jimmy. Then he turned his back on him and walked toward the curtains shielding the balcony. «Where'd he come from?»

«What?»

«Nothing, Jimmy. Fix me a drink.»

«Right, boss. And one for me.»

«Yeah, sure. One for you.»

Felton parted the curtains and walked out into the twilight air, twelve stories over East Hudson, on the building he had created.

He brushed some spilled earth from a toppled potted palm with his white velvet slipper. It made a scratching noise against the white tiles of the balcony. He walked to the edge, rested his hands on the aluminum railing and inhaled the fresh air blowing off the Hudson.

The air was clean up there. And he had paid for every brick to get him that high into the cool refreshing breezes. It was free of soot, not like the streets across the river on the lower East Side with pushing crowds, vendors, factories and mothers screaming at kids-when mothers were home. Felton's had rarely been.

Of course, there had been the nights. He would feel a tap on his shoulder, look up, and see his mother and smell the stench of alcohol. There was always a man behind, outlined by the light of the hallway. There was no place else for him to stand. It was a small apartment. One room. One bed. He was in it.

She'd nudge and he'd go out in the hallway. «Hey, leave the pillow,» she would yell. And he'd leave it and go outside into the hallway and curl up near the door. During the winter he would bring his coat.

He lived on the top floor then, too. But on Delancey Street on the lower East Side, the top floor was the bottom of the social ladder, even without a whore for a mother. There were no elevators on the lower East Side. The top meant walking.

Sometimes she would lock the door. And then he couldn't sneak into the apartment in the morning to get a jacket or brush his teeth or comb his hair. He would go to school with the hairy dust of the hallway floor still on his back. But none of the students would laugh.

One had tried it once. Norman Felton had settled it in an alley with a broken bottle. The boy had been bigger, by a full half foot, but size never bothered Norman. Everyone had weak points and on the big ones, it was bigger. All the more space for a stick, a rock, a broken bottle.

By the time he was fourteen, Norman Felton had done two stretches in the reformatory. He was headed for his third when one of his mother's sleeping partners left a wallet in his pants. Norman, heading for the sink, picked up the wallet and left the room. It wasn't the first time he had lifted a wallet near his mother's bed, but it was the first time it had been so full. Two hundred dollars.

This was too much to split with mom, so Norman Felton walked down the stairs of the tenement house for the last time. He was on his own.

His success was not immediate. He ran through the two hundred dollars in two weeks. No firms would hire a fourteen-year-old boy, not even when he said he was seventeen. He tried to work his way in with a bookie, but even they wouldn't touch kids as runners.

He had spent his last nickel on a hot dog and was nibbling around it, saving it, caressing it, as he strolled down Fifth Avenue, scared for the first time he could remember, when a large man leaving a mansion bumped into him and knocked Norman's last food to the pavement.

Without thinking, he flailed into the grownup. Before he got off his second punch, two giants were upon him, beating him.

When he recovered consciousness, he was in a large kitchen with servants buzzing around. A middle-aged woman, attractive and heavily-jeweled, was wiping his forehead.

«You certainly know who to take on, kid,» she said.

Norman blinked.

«That was quite a show out in front of my house.» He looked around. There were more pretty women than he had ever seen in his life.

«What do you think, girls?» the middle-aged woman asked. «Does he know who to take on?» The girls laughed.

The woman said «Kid, you're not going to tell anyone about this, right?»

«Got no one to tell,» Norman said.