"We believe you," Malone assured him grandly. "As a matter of fact, we appreciate the joke so much that we want you to tell it to a panel of twelve citizens, a judge and a couple of lawyers, so they can appreciate it, too. They get little fun out of life and your joke may give them a few moments of happiness. Why hide your light under an alibi?" The horn continued its dismal wail for a few seconds more before two patrolmen and a sergeant came up on horses. It took somewhat more time than that for Malone to convince the sergeant that he didn't have time to go down to the station to prefer charges. He showed his identification and the police were suitably impressed. "Lock 'em up for violating the Sullivan Law," he said. "I'm sure they don't have licenses for these lovely little guns of theirs." "Probably not," the sergeant agreed. "There's been an awful lot of this kind of thing going on lately. But here's an idea: the cabbie here can come on with us." The top of the cabbie's head turned pale. "That," he said, "is the trouble with being a law-abiding citizen such as I have been for upwards of thirty years. Because I do not want to lose twenty dollars to these young strangers, I lose twenty dollars' worth of time in a precinct station, the air of which is very bad for my asthma." Malone, taking the hint, dug a twenty out of his pockets, and then added another to it, remembering how much he had spent in Las Vegas, where his money funneled slowly into the pockets of Primo Palveri. The cabbie took the money with haste and politeness and stowed it away. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am now prepared to spend the entire night signing affidavits, if enough affidavits can be dug up." He looked pleased. "Mr. Malone," the sergeant said wearily, "people just don't realize what's going on in this town. We never did have half enough cops, and now, with so many men resigning and getting arrested and suspended, we haven't got a quarter enough. People think this strike business is funny, but if we spent any time fiddling around with traffic and parking tickets, we'd never have time to stop even crimes like this, let alone the big jobs. As it is, though, there haven't been a lot of big ones. Every hood in the city's out to make a couple of bucks--but that's it so far, thank God." Malone nodded. "How about the FBI?" he said. "Want them to come in and help?" "Mr. Malone," the sergeant said, "the City of New York can take very good care of itself, without outside interference." Some day, Malone told himself, good old New York City was going to secede from the Union and form a new country entirely. Then it would have a war with New Jersey and probably be wiped right off the map. Viewing the traffic around him as he hunted for another cab, he wasn't at all sure that that was a bad idea. He began to wish vaguely that he had borrowed one of the policemen's horses. * * * * *