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waistband. He kept his Smith & Wesson locked in a drawer, preferring not to be weighted down with a handgun. He hadn’t realized the Chinaman enjoyed fire escape privileges at Odette’s. He wanted no encounters on the stairs with César Guzmann’s pistol. So he wagged his goodbyes with a droopy finger and made the street before Odette could shut her door.

3 On Fifth Avenue Coen wore herringbone, and magenta socks. Coming across the park he disregarded the pull of rooflines and burnt stone. Coen dreaded the East Side. During the time of his marriage, while guarding the ingénue of a Broadway musical, a light-headed girl with weak ankles and a list of hectoring suitors, Coen was taken up by the producer of the show. He became a fixed piece in the producer’s entourage, appearing at his Fifth Avenue penthouse with and without the ingénue. Coen flexed his muscles, showed his scars and his gold badge, told stories about gruesome child murderers and apprehended rapists, passed his holster around. It took him three whole days to notice that his wife had moved out. She was staying with the young dentist Charles Nerval.
    The producer gave Coen use of the maid’s room. Coen slept with the ingénue. He slept with the producer’s au pair , a Norwegian girl who knew more English than Coen. After hints and prods from the producer, he slept with the producer’s wife. He got confused when the producer’s friends began calling him “the stickman.” He shook hands with columnists from the Post. Collecting money owed to the producer, Coen wore the fattest of ties. He missed his wife. At parties he wrestled with a muscular thief the producer had put in his entourage. Coen didn’t mind the charlie horses and the puffs on his ear. He drank whiskey sours afterward, spitting out a little blood with the cherry, and sharing a hundred dollars with the thief. The producer would advertise these wrestling matches. He gave Coen and the thief spangled trousers to wear.
    The thief, a Ukrainian boy with receding gums, hated the matches and hated Coen. Once, biting Coen on the cheek, he said, “Kill me, pretty, before I kill you.” The boy had not spoken to Coen until then. Ten years older, with a harder paunch and stronger knees, Coen could have thrown the boy at will, but he prolonged the matches to satisfy the producer’s guests. During the climax of the fifth or sixth match, with Coen scissoring the boy, he heard the twitches of the guests breathing encouragement on him, their bodies forked with agitation, and he closed his eyes. The boy took advantage of the lapse to free himself and hammer Coen with his elbows, an unforgivable act according to the producer’s rules. The guests tore the boy off Coen, booing and launching kicks, the women kicking with as much fervor as the men. Groggy, Coen leaned over the boy, slapping at ankles and shoes. He moved out of the maid’s room. He broke off relations with the producer’s wife. He cooked at home. Stephanie, his wife, was suing him in order to marry the dentist Nerval.
    Coen prepared for Vander Child. He mentioned his name to the doorman of Child’s apartment house. The doorman called upstairs. Coen sat on a scrolled lobby bench with his knees wide apart. The doorman smiled under the starched blue wings of his dickey and began to patronize Coen. “I’m afraid Mr. Child doesn’t know any Manfred Coens. State your business, please.”
    â€œTell him Pimloe ,” Coen shouted into the plugboard. “P-I-M-L-O-E.” The doorman let Coen pass.
    Child welcomed him in a flannel gown with enormous pockets. A handsome man with a mole on his lip and a negligible hairline, he was just Coen’s age. Coen found it hard to believe that Child could have a daughter of seventeen. They stood chin to chin, both of them a touch under five-feet-eight. Child had greener eyes. He liked the detective Pimloe chose for him. He mixed