And the man takes a wadded bill out of his pocket and unfolds it like a magic trick and then he waves the money at the group in front of him.

"You see the eye that hangs over this pyramid here. What's pyramids doing on American money? You see the number they got strung out at the base of this pyramid. This is how they flash their Masonic codes to each other. This is Freemason, the passwords and handshakes. This is Rosicrucian, the beam of light. This is webs and scribbles all over the bill, front and the back, that contains a message. This is not just rigamarole and cooked spaghetti. They predicting the day and the hour. They telling each other when the time is come. You can't find the answer in the Bible or the Bill of Rights. I'm talking to you. I'm saying history is written on the commonest piece of paper in your pocket."

And he holds the bill by its edges and extends his elbows, showing the thing for what it is.

"I've been studying this dollar bill for fifteen years. Take it to the privy when I do my hygiene. And I worked those numbers and those letters all whichway and I hold the bill to the light and I read it underwater and I'm getting closer every day to breaking the code."

And he draws the dollar to his chest and folds it five times and puts it in his pocket, smaller than a postage stamp.

"This is why they're watching me with that eye that floats over the top of the pyramid. They're watching and they're following all the time."

Manx needs a drink. He hurries up Amsterdam past a TV-radio store where a TV is flickering and half a dozen people are watching in the cold. About a block away he see some guys running toward him, grown men, you know, pounding over the sidewalk, over the iron hatchways that lead to storage cellars, rattling the metal as they come, and he sees they're sort of half laughing, they're embarrassed, must be a crap game down an alley that the police broke up, and they go past him rattling the hatchways and looking back, running and half laughing and looking back.

He almost wants to turn around and run with them. He sees the humor of it. They'll meet in some doorway three blocks away laughing and panting and catching their breath, feeling grown-up stupid, and they'll find a place to do their gambling, the back room of a barbershop or someone's living room if the wife's not there.

But the wife is there.

Because I got a wife can't stand the sight of me even if I'm ten miles away, and will not let me breathe without a comment, and makes more comments in her head, and she is definitely there.

A dog looks out a first-floor window.

Yeah, black men running in the streets. Manx found himself running in the '43 riot and he probably had that same look on his face, conscious of being caught up in something he shouldn't be doing but doing it anyway, running past Orkin's where Ivie bought a sample coat, a coat a dummy used to wear, on sale cheap, and it rankled his mind all right, and all the Orkin's dummies were on the sidewalk now, torsos tumbled in the gutter, and heads without bodies, and slim necks and pale hair, and dummies armless like famous statues. He recalls this now, the big windows busted and dummies in garters, dummy legs in stockings and garters and kids in tuxedos, men running in the streets and a kid maybe twelve years old in a top hat and looted tux and a cop was leading him to a prowl car, funniest damn thing, top hat and tails and dragging pants-even the cop had a sweetheart smile.

He goes the last four blocks with his head turned away from the wind and the wind is whipping off the Hudson and Manx is walking like a horse with a spooked head.

But how different once you step inside the bar. The warm buzz, the easy breathing, the rumps happy on their stools. The buzz in Tally's is special tonight, more bodies than the usual midweek slump and more static in the air-and then he remembers. There's a tone, a telling rustle in the room and he pats the side of his jacket and feels the baseball and understands that they're talking about the game.

He waves to Phil, who's behind the bar, Tally's brother, in his plain shirt and fancy suspenders, and he gestures a question where-and Phil nods toward the far corner and there is Antoine Cooper sitting with a drink in front of him and two tall shovels leaned on the wall behind.

Manx sits across from Antoine, sits sideways in his chair so he doesn't have to look at the shovels.

"I seen Franzo standing in the dark."

"I know it. He wants my car. But he can't have it."

"What's that you're drinking?"

"He's looking to make some chick he's better off avoiding. Trust me. I already done her."

Manx looks around the room, takes in the buzz, hears half a sentence fly up out of shared laughter and he decides not to mention the shovels. He is aghast at the shovels. The shovels should not be here in any manner, way, shape or form. But he decides for now he won't say a word.

"What was that riot in forty-three? I'm trying to recall how it started. They filled so many holding cells in so many station houses they had to open an armory."

"Forty-three. I'm in the army, man."

"They had bleeding men carrying their loot under armed guard. Put them in an armory on Park Avenue."

"We had our own riot," Antoine says.

Manx goes to the bar and gets a Seagram's from Phil-he likes his rye in a short glass with a single ice cube.

Phil says, "What's happening?"

"I hear they played a ball game today."

"Goddamn it was something."

Manx carries the drink back to the table with one hand clutching the glass in the usual manner and the palm of the other hand under the glass, supporting it like some polished object in a church.

The ice cube is mainly scenery.

Antoine says, "How the boys doing?"

"The boys. The boys spread far and wide," Manx says. "Randall's in the South somewhere, bivouacking, you know, training in the field. And Vernon."

"I know where Vernon 's at."

" Yemen 's on the front line is where he's at. They got a quarter million troops they're looking at across the line. Them Chinese."

"What division he's with?"

"What division."

"Second Infantry's in Korea," Antoine says.

"I don't know what division."

"You don't follow the war?"

"What's that you're drinking?"

"I like to follow the war. They plot their strategies."

"They blow horns and whistles, that's their strategy, them Chinese. They come charging down in swoops."

"This here's brandy, my man. Drinking imported tonight."

"It's sitting there a little potent," Manx says.

"Only in the glass. Goes down the hatch real smooth."

"They come in swoops. That's their strategy."

"You say a prayer now and then. That's what you do."

"Sure, Antoine. I kneel by the bedside."

"You done okay with your kids."

"Sure, Antoine. They take care of me in my old age."

"You got some work?"

"They come visit me in the old folks. Slip me a bottle through the gate."

"You done okay, considering."

"Rosie's the one. That's a great girl. That's the only one that shows respect."

"You need some work. Change your temperament around. You're walking on eggs lately."

"They're laying off. They're not hiring. They're laying off."

"You need to get into long-distance moving."

"They bring me a cake on my birthday," Manx says.

"Long-distance, that's the ticket. I got a cousin in Alabama, which he's based in Birmingham, gets plenty of work long-hauling furniture and whatnot."

"I keep that in mind."

"Yellow yams from Birmingham."

"I place that on my list of things I need to think about."

"Greenest greens you ever seen," Antoine says a little croony.

Manx decides he can't contain it any longer. But he doesn't look at Antoine. He looks across the room at one of those wall lamps, the old-fashioned-type lamp bracketed to the wall where the sleeves that hold the bulbs have fake candle wax running down the sides.