It was bitterly cold and windy, just the kind of night when you don't want to be called to the city morgue. But then Vinnie had a way of turning up where you didn't expect him.

I looked down at the pathetic little corpse and wondered how he had got himself dead after all those years of running with the Mob. It didn't exactly come under the heading of big surprise, but it wasn't two and two making four either, or even three.

He had started out on Manhattan's lower east side just before the war, about the time I started walking a beat there. He would run the errands that gave him an excuse to hang around the big-car, big-cigar hoodlums, and they would give him a c-note or a kick in the rear, depending on their mood, and Vinnie would smile and come back for more. Eventually they let him have his own floating crap game and he prospered, having the dexterity to put his own dice into a game when baby needed a new pair of shoes or a new Packard. Not ones to be chintzy, the Mob also let him be their fall guy, pushing him front and center when, say, a pol wanted his picture on the front pages fighting crime. ("Shown at left above is City Councilman Harvey P. Smedlap at the arrest of notorious gangster Vinnie 'The Rat' Soradelli, smiling, right, suspected in the recent wave of jaywalking, night talking and girl gawking. Mr. Smedlap yesterday announced his candidacy for the Mayor's office, where graft is reputed to flow even thicker than in City Council.")

Personally, I got tired of running him in and ignored him, because no matter what the charge he was back on the street almost as soon as me. He kept the wheels of justice oiled. Nobody knew the ins and outs of officialdom like Vinnie. He got to be almost as good at putting money in the right pockets as he was at taking it from rubes' pockets, and the big boys liked that. Who can know, they reasoned, when one of us guys is going to want a judge of our own? Let's take care of the little guy. So Vinnie not only didn't spend any time ruing his ways at the New York State Stoney Lonesome and Cold Soup Hotel, he flourished as the Mob's fix-it man in Manhattan, draped in pin stripes and show girls.

Now here he was laid out on a marble slab, his black rat-tail mustache and pink skin the only things making him different from the other chunks of cold meat that Mossburger, the assistant medical examiner, would slice and dice that night.

"For a dead guy, he's got a healthy pink glow," I told Mossie.

"Carbon monoxide," he replied. "That's one of its last effects. Usually the victim just notices a headache or nausea. It's colorless, odorless and tasteless. And deadly."

Except for the odorless part, it sounded just like a girlfriend I used to have.

"How does that put him at the front of the line?" I indicated the shrouded figures lined up on gurneys behind Mossie.

"Suspicious death." He pulled the sheet down and showed me a clean white wound in Vinnie's chest. Then he rolled the body up on its side and showed me the ragged hole in the back. Hardly any blood visible there either.

"What kind of gun makes a wound like that?" I asked him.

"Looks like a small caliber, maybe a .22. Almost point blank range."

"You clean him up?"

"Nope."

"Now the sixty-four dollar question: Why'd you call me?"

"Had this in his fist," he said holding out a folded piece of paper while he went on with something I didn't want to watch but couldn't help watching, the slitting of Vinnie from chest to crotch.

"How come a guy trained to be a doctor takes a job cutting people up?" I asked him.

"This is how you really find out what makes people tick," he told me, and added what must have been a knee-slapper at coroners' conventions, "plus if you find a watch inside you get to keep it."

I unfolded the paper. "IMBUR KL5-8842 JK5-5779." I had no idea what "IMBUR" meant and I didn't recognize the first phone number, but the second number was mine. "Couldn't you have let me sleep?"

He looked up briefly from his work and said he didn't know whose numbers they were when he called. "No answer at the first one. Maybe you should have been out on the town."

"I don't know many polar bears." I shivered and looked at my watch. Almost three AM. Any hackies still on duty would be holed up in after-hours joints with a hot toddy, like reasonable people. I'd have to trudge uptown to my place through ankle-deep snow.

Unless.... I looked around at the city morgue, little more than a poorly lighted cement cavern under Manhattan General Hospital, and figured that somewhere in the halls beyond the morgue's shadows there was a City Coroner's office with a couch where I could roost until the sun came up and the cabbies came out. And in that office there would be a desk, and in one of the drawers, I could almost feel and smell, there would be a bottle of hooch.

"Cops bring him in?" I asked Mossie.

"Nah, couple of ambulance drivers from Bellevue. Got a call from someone about a body on the sidewalk."

"You call the cops?"

"Got to, anytime there's a gunshot wound, even if it's incidental."

Just then a metal door clanged somewhere in the dark across the big room and two figures in overcoats with hats low over their eyes came out of the shadows. One was big and round and the other a little taller and slimmer and broader in the shoulders. I didn't have to see their faces to know it was Crull and his buddy English, detectives from Downtown. I shoved the piece of paper in my pocket.

"Okay, Bruck, let's have it." Crull held his hand out like I'd stolen something from Tiffany's window.

"Private," I told him and turned to go.

He grabbed my wrist, planted his foot between my legs and spun me in a half circle, twisting my arm up behind me. But I'd been expecting the arm twist and stomped his instep before he got much torque on it. As he bent down howling with pain, I gave him a bolo shot to the solar plexus that straightened him up a couple of inches. He chuffed like a locomotive and collapsed, eyes staring, mouth gaping. English got his arm around my neck from behind and had me two inches off the floor, trying to squeeze cider from my Adam's apple, before I reached up and jabbed with two fingers where I guessed his eyes would be. I guessed right. He screamed and let go, holding his hands over his eyes. I wheeled and brought my left around in an arc that covered most of the compass points, catching him on the jaw and making the satisfying crack of bone or teeth breaking. He didn't stop for inventory, just went down like a pole-axed bull and rolled onto his face.

I told Mossie, "If they don't wake up in five minutes, put 'em on the table and see if you can find watches inside." I went in search of that hoped-for couch and the even more hoped-for antifreeze.

Dawn broke for me about eleven the next morning when the Coroner of The City of New York walked into my boudoir and turned on the lights. Or at least I think it was him. He looked and acted the part: middle-age, fat and grumpy. "What are you doing in my office?"

"You the Director of Nursing?"

"Get out of here."

I creaked my bones and thanked him for his hospitality.

"What hospitality?" he roared. "Get out of here!" As I walked out, the empty bottle rolled from the couch onto the floor.

Over scrambled eggs and black coffee in the hospital cafeteria, I caught an item on page six of the Daily Blat that gave a few details about Vinnie's last appearance on the sidewalks of New York. "Vincent Soradelli, address unknown, was found dead in front of the Bramledge Arms apartments on 125th Street. He was for years a suspected member of New York's criminal element. Wanted for questioning in connection with the death is Peter B. Bruck, a private investigator. Detective Lieutenant F. E. Crull of Downtown Police Headquarters says that Mr. Bruck fled custody last night when he and another officer attempted to question him. 'We believe Bruck is responsible for Soradelli's death, and we're asking citizens to report anything that will help us track him down,' Detective Crull said."

Sure, Crull. I pumped carbon monoxide up his nose on a cold winter's night on the sidewalk and shot him. Nice going. You got the brains of a bridge abutment.

But I knew Crull and English. If I didn't get the story on how Soradelli did die they'd put me away for twenty years of rock hockey.

I used a pay phone to call the first number on the slip of paper.

"Immigration Bureau," a bright voice answered.

So now I knew what IMBUR stood for. And I thought I knew who that voice belonged to. "Verna, is that you?"

"Mr. Bruck?"

"Long time," I told her. Verna had been my secretary until about two years ago. Clients were scarce and slow to pay, so one day she told me she had found a new job with better pay and a brighter future. I winced when she said it was the Federal government that had beat me on both counts.

"And what may I do for you?" she asked.

"I give up. What do you do?"

"Process visa renewal requests." I urged her to go on. "Well, when a person wants a renewal, I check the name of any sponsor or employer and their address. You know, stuff like that, looking for something that might be wrong."

"Like what?"

"Well, you know, if they're running around with communists or criminals or something like that."

"You ever hear of Vinnie Soradelli?"

"Oh, him. He still around? Last I heard, he was selling the Brooklyn Bridge. Why?"

"Just wondered. Nice talking to you, kid."

In the Emergency Room, I flashed my private investigator's badge and let the ambulance driver and his helper believe I was a cop. "Tell me about that call up on 125th last night. Anybody else around?"

"You kidding? Five degrees below, two o' clock in the morning?" the driver said.

"There was that woman," his helper said. "Hubba hubba."

"There wasn't no woman there," the driver objected.

"In that front apartment, behind the window, way back in the shadows," the helper said, almost salivating at the memory.

I got the location of the apartment in the building and thanked them.

The Bramledge Arms was one of a string of aging yellow brick buildings on 125th Street. In the dull winter light, everything had a grungy look. Except the shiny black Packard sedan parked out front in a snowbank. It stood out like a bear in a birdcage. I bent down to look in the driver's window, then tried the door and slipped in, my knees cramped up against the steering wheel. Somebody a lot shorter than me had driven it, somebody about the size of Vinnie, for example. The car smelled like an ashtray and looked like one, with butts everywhere. The key was in the ignition and turned to the On position. I turned it a notch to Start and got a grinding mrrrrrr from the starter but the engine didn't catch. The fuel tank read empty. I got out and checked the exhaust pipe. Sure enough, it was partly blocked by snow. So that's how Vinnie gassed himself, I guessed. He sat here smoking with the motor running and the exhaust gas building up inside. But then why had he been shot, and who done it?

Something came back to me that Mossie had been saying about the bullet wound just as Crull and English walked into the morgue--that he had to call the cops if there was a gunshot wound, even when it was incidental. Now I knew what he had been telling me.

I took the ignition key and headed for the Bramledge Arms. Mossie's autopsy report and the car should be enough to convince the D.A. I didn't kill Vinnie, but there were other answers I wanted for myself.

Inside the building entryway, I checked the rows of mail boxes by the pay phone for the apartment where the driver's helper said he had spotted the woman. Apartment 1-B, first floor on the right, was occupied by a Rosalinda Cruz.

I rang her bell, and when she opened the door a few inches on the chain she rang mine.

There's a kind beauty given by the gods, a smoothness of skin and perfection of features that aren't traceable to parents, a cosmetic counter, or the tricks of a plastic surgeon. It's the kind that makes you wonder how all that could come together in one woman when some others don't get so much as a dimple.

But she was staring up at me with deep chocolate eyes, lips parted, a look of nervous anticipation on her face like I had horns growing out of my head. She waited for me to speak. Hubba hubba almost came out. "Miss Cruz?" I asked.

"Yes?" An accent that I guessed was South American made it "Ches?"

I started to reach inside my coat for my P.I. badge. "If you don't mind, I'd like--"

"You come back later." She slammed the door on my foot. I pushed back.

"No, no, no" she screamed loud enough to be heard in Yonkers. I had to get in now to keep the building's tenants from coming down on me, if not the building itself. With a final shove I tore the chain loose and plunged in.

"Just a few minutes," I pleaded, finger to my lips, asking for silence.

The lady was a tiger. She went for my eyes with her fingernails, screaming something in Spanish that I took to mean You're in a fight for your life, laddy buck. Fists and feet flew at me in a blur. I would have socked her if I could have found a spot that wasn't in motion. I took her down with a football tackle that carried us into a wall and all but knocked us both out. I let go and stood up. In time to fight her off again. At one point I would have surrendered if I could have gotten a word in edgewise, but finally one of Einstein's or Newton's laws came into play--two and hundred ten pounds beats one hundred and ten--if the two hundred and ten pounds can protect his family jewels and his eyes at the same time.

I had her on the floor with a hand over her mouth. "Now, I'm gonna let you up if you promise not to come at me. I'm not here to hurt you. I just want to ask a few questions, okay?" I took the look of diminishing fierceness as a yes. My fiftieth mistake of the past few minutes. She was on me again in a second, this time swinging a purse that landed like a wrecking ball behind my ear. I staggered backwards, saw stars and barely got my hands up in time for round three. Our battle carried us into a curtain. I ripped it down and threw it over her.

Straddling her on the floor again, I stuffed a piece of her torn blouse in her mouth and tied her hands in front of her with the curtain sash. "One last time, Tiger. I'm not here to hurt you."

I helped her to her feet. Her ripped and twisted clothing barely covered what had almost mesmerized me before the struggle, and now it did mesmerize me. Her dark eyes softened, signaling surrender and more. I think. All I know is that suddenly I was kissing her fiercely on the neck, the eyes, the nose, and she was voicing something through the gag. I took it from her mouth and she put the passion of her battle into her kisses. Her eyes hooded and she mumurred something about amor, fitting her body to mine. I carried her to the bedroom and was a caveman, crushing and cradling and consuming her, first with her hands still tied, then without them and me holding on for dear life.

I don't know how much time passed or how many times we locked up in the battle of bodily needs, but at some point while it was still daylight we called a time-out, drew a deep breath and slept sprawled like broken toys.

She woke up before I did and kissed me awake.

"What is this, heaven? Or do you just want to fight again?"

She shook her head. "Peace is better."

I asked her why she'd fought me in the first place.

"I don't want anything to do with the police. You look like police."

She stroked my chest and smiled. "But you don't act like police."

"I stay as far away from them as I can."

"What do you come to see me for?"

"A guy died on the sidewalk in front of your place last night. The cops think I had something to do with it. I just--"

"You did not kill him."

"I know that and you know that. But come to think of it, how do you know that?"

"You are not a killer."

"Anyhow, I thought you might be able to tell me something. The guys who picked him up said there was a woman in this apartment who watched them."

"I did not see anything. It was dark. I just come home from work, and then there is the siren and they come to pick up the man. I watch for a while and go to bed."

"What kind of trouble are you in with the police?"

"I am not in any trouble," she insisted a little too quickly.

"C'mon, you already know I'm not a cop. Who knows, I might be able to help."

She considered a long moment, then: "It is a small matter I do not want to become trouble. My permit to be in this country has expire, and I want to stay on my job at the Copacabana Club. With no permit, I am not within the law. I do not know how to get a new one without risking, you know, the sending me out of this country. My girlfriend who is a dancer there too says she has a boyfriend who can help, but...."

A few more things fell into place. Vinnie had been doing his doll a favor. Well, let's just say no cash was changing hands, Vinnie not being the type to do anything for nothing. He probably figured the favor would put him in tight with his girlfriend. Or Rosalinda. Or both. And he was giving Rosalinda my phone number because he knew my name on her renewal application would virtually guarantee Verna's approval.

"But what?"

"I am worried why he will do it. I think he maybe want money, or, you know, he want something else from me."

"You ever meet him?"

"No, she only tell me, but it, how you say, smell funny."

"I have a feeling," I told Rosalinda, "that guy on the sidewalk was your friend's boy friend. He came by to give you a phone number."

Her hand went to her mouth and she shuddered. "Oh no. And he was shot trying to help me?"

"Well, I...." A light went on inside my head. I leaped off the bed and went for her purse, with her right behind me. I got to it first and pulled out a ladies home companion, a small chromed .22. I tossed its compact weight in my hand and remembered the wrecking ball that almost laid me out. "Why?" I asked her.

"Why what? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that nobody said anything about him being shot. But it was you who shot him, wasn't it?"

Puzzlement and then fear played across her face, and I should have known that the tiger wouldn't be far behind. She lunged at me and I went over on my back onto the floor, her on top, my hands pinned above me before I knew what was happening. Her naked form struggled inches above my face, her hands trying to wrestle the gun from my grip. Talk about mixed emotions--should I go for the girl or the gun? I debated. Gun won.

Holding the gun in one hand, I managed to tie one of her hands to a leg of the bed with the curtain sash. I pulled the knot tight. "Now, Tiger," I said, "let's have it, why'd you shoot him?"

The story came out bit by bit, her eyes wide with fear at the gun in my hand. He got out of his car, she said, when she came home from work a little after one-thirty. He made a noise like an animal and lunged at her, arms reaching out. "I did not know what he would do. I do what any woman would do. I shoot him. I had to."

"No, you didn't," I got rid of the gun and sat next to her on the floor.

"He was dead when you shot him. There was no bleeding from the bullet wound, so his heart had stopped pumping. The autopsy showed that."

Her eyes went even wider. "What do you say? He was dead when he was shot?"

I nodded. "Probably the shock of cold air had something to do with it too, but his car's exhaust fumes had gassed him and the effort to get out of the car finished him off. He wasn't lunging at you, he was staggering because his heart had stopped. You shot a dead man."

After a moment: "So I am not guilty? Why do you not let me go?"

"We just had a fight over the gun." I took her face in my hands and kissed her. "We have to make peace again."