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really don’t know,” Foster said. “You think it’s cause I called him a racist pig?”
    â€œNow why’d you go say something like that?” Carella asked. His eyes, his faint smile betrayed the knowledge that Lester Henderson had been called this before, in many variations on the theme, the most recent one from a state senator, who’d called him “Hitler without a mustache.”
    â€œIt’s a known fact that he was targeting Diamondback for extinction,” Foster said. “If I’m not mistaken, Detective Carella, you yourself investigated a case just recently where the drug problem up here played an important role. Well, Henderson was all for toughening the state’s already Draconian drug laws, laws that are methodically clearing young black people off the streets…”
    Here comes a speech, Kling thought.
    â€œâ€¦and throwing them into already overcrowded prisons that are costing taxpayers a fortune to maintain. Instead of helping these youths to become productive members of a thriving community, we are instead turning them into criminals. I pointed this out to Lester, and I casually mentioned that only a racist pig would pursue a course as politically motivated as the one he was promoting. That was when he tried to pop me.”
    â€œSmall wonder,” Carella said. “So where were you around ten-thirty Monday morning, Gabe?”
    â€œOh dear,” Foster said.
    â€œOh dear indeed.”
    â€œI fear I was asleep in my own little beddie-bye, all by my little self.”
    â€œWhich would have been where?”
    â€œ1112 Roosevelt Av. Apartment 6B.”
    â€œAnd what time did you get out of your little beddie-bye?”
    â€œI came to the office here at eleven. I had a scheduled eleven-thirty interview with a reporter.”
    â€œWhat time did you leave the apartment?” Kling asked.
    â€œAround ten-thirty. Whenever the weather is good, I walk to work.”
    â€œSo you weren’t anywhere near King Memorial at ten-thirty Monday morning, is that right?”
    â€œNowhere near it at all.”
    â€œBe nice if someone had been in bed with you,” Carella said.
    â€œYes, it’s always nice to have someone in bed with you,” Foster said.
    â€œBut no one was.”
    â€œNo one at all.”
    â€œ What’d you say your address was again?” Kling asked.
    â€œ1112 Roosevelt.”
    â€œThat’s between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth, isn’t it?”
    â€œNo, it’s further uptown.”
    â€œNear King Memorial?”
    â€œA few blocks away, yes.”
    â€œWhere exactly?” Carella asked.
    â€œBetween Thirty-first and -second.”
    â€œThe Hall’s on St. Sab’s, corner of Thirtieth,” Kling said.
    â€œSo it is,” Foster said.
    â€œIf you’d walked one block over, you could’ve passed it on your way to work.”
    â€œ If I’d walked one block over,” Foster said. “But I came straight down Roosevelt. Same way I always do.”
    â€œYou walk the ten blocks down to Twenty-first here…”
    â€œYes, and then I walk the block crosstown to St. Sab’s.”
    â€œNice walk.”
    â€œIf the weather’s nice, yes.”
    â€œIt certainly was nice Monday,” Kling said.
    â€œIt certainly was,” Carella said.
    â€œFellas, let’s cut the idle bullshit, okay?” Foster said. “You know I didn’t kill that prick, so it doesn’t matter where I was Monday morning. I could’ve been home in bed with the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or I could’ve been right outside King Memorial tying my shoelaces. I may have done some foolish things in my lifetime, but killing a man a week after we had a brawl is definitely not one of them.”
    â€œI tend to agree,” Carella said.
    â€œMe, too,” Kling said.
    â€œBut we have to ask,” Carella said.
    â€œYou know how it is,”