I was wondering though, it would be of tremendous help to us ... Do you think you could maybe come back around the corner and show me exactly what happened?"

"You know," Eric continued to speak in that lively dissociated tone, "I always heard people say, 'I thought it was a firecracker going off.'And that's exactly what it sounded like. It's like, I don't remember how many years ago, I read this novel, whatever one, and the character is in some city and he witnesses a stabbing, and he says it was like the stabber, I'm paraphrasing here, the stabber just like, tapped the other guy on the chest with the knife, just a pat, really soft, and the stabbed guy just carefully laid himself down on the cobblestones and, that was it."

Eric looked at Matty, then quickly looked away. That's what it was like, 'Pop,' so soft. And that was it."

Coming around the corner back onto Eldridge Street, Eric Cash did a little baby-step shuffle of distress when he saw the blood still there, Matty supporting him by the elbow.

Day was breaking faster now, fresh and soft, the street a madhouse of birds. A dawnish breeze made Nazir's tattered pennants snap above his shop as if they were strung from a mast, and the tenements themselves seemed to be rolling forward beneath the scudding clouds.

Every cop on the scene, every Night Watch, every plainclothes and uniform, was either on a cell phone calling in, calling out, calling up, or else feeding each other's steno pad; Matty always taken by that, how you could literally see the narrative building right before your eyes in a cross-chorus of data: names, times, actions, quotes, addresses, phone numbers, run numbers, shield numbers.

By now the La Bohemers had mostly packed it in, but they were being replaced by another group, the video freelancers hopping out of vans, one of them even rolling up on a ten-speed bike, a police scanner lashed to his handlebars.

"OK," Cash began, wincing and tugging on his hair as if he had forgotten something critical. "OK."

"Take your time," Matty said.

Bobby Oh had stepped off to direct a canvass of those kids who remained on the scene, see if anything personal out here was keeping them from their beds.

"OK, so . . . We were walking across Rivington from Berkmann's, the three of us, heading for Steve's apartment here?" pointing to the tenement next to 27. "He was, we had to get him up there, he was shit-faced, I don't really know him, I think he went to college with Ike, I don't really know Ike either, and . . ." He started to drift, whirling a little as if looking for someone.

"And . . ." Matty nudged.

"And these two guys, they come out of the dark like two wolves, put a gun on us, say, 'Give it up.'And I'm, I immediately hand over my wallet, I had to let go of Steve to do it, he just flops to the sidewalk, but then Ike, I don't know, Ike, he like steps to them, says, 'You picked the wrong guy,' like he's ready to fight, then Top,' just 'Pop,' and they're gone."

" 'You picked the wrong guy.'" Matty wrote it down. The kid had told Bobby Oh his friend said, "Not tonight, my man."

"They didn't say anything else?"

"1 think one might have said, 'Oh.'" " 'Oh'?"

"Like Oh shit,' then maybe the other said, 'Go.'"

"Nothing else?"

" 'Oh' and 'Go.' I think."

"And which way did they go."

"That way," pointing south. "But I'm not sure."

South now, not east, which is what he told Bobby. South presented a whole new set of projects but no subway stations, making the shooters local, most likely from the massive Clara Lemlich Houses. Unless this guy had been right the first time and they ran east . . .

Finished with their canvass, two Night Watch detectives exited the tenement directly across the street from the scene, one of them making slant eyes with her fingertips, i. E., crammed to the rafters with Fooks.

Matty saw Bobby Oh catch the gesture, his expression, Matty hating to admit it, inscrutable.

"And just one more time," he said to Cash. "Describe them for me?"

"I don't know. Black. Hispanic. I'm not trying to be racist, but in my mind? I close my eyes and see wolves."

Matty noticed that Nazir in his store was studying this guy as he spoke, giving him a hard eye.

"Other than wolves . .

"I don't know. Lean, they were lean, with a goatee."

"Both had goatees?"

"One of them. I think. I don't know, I was mostly looking down.