The John Perry Murder Case

He's my beat, and time's critical on the circle. The gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesome-est mile in the world. He's my beat, with Larry Thor as detective Danny Covert. There's a time on Broadway when the splinters at night melt into dawn.

It's a small time, a time that's slept through. The hour or so before the dissonance of the alarm clock shatters the city into waking. And the pavement's glisten now gleam in turn gray, gleam again, where it's touched by the steps of the leftover drifter, and echoes rocket against the channel street make small holes in the city

silence and die when the left over turns the corner and a small time time unnoticed tail and a green time and turn the corner and follow third avenue at five o'clock in the morning therefore squad cars angle against curve with pavement away outside a store lighted by a squad car spotlight pet shop

where i was a detective mother There he is, Danny. See him over near the back counter. Just like the man said, he'll phone it in. Yeah, fly the door. Perry 1204. He's right around the corner.

Fuck you, my german. What's going on? Can you hear me, mister? Yeah, take a look at this wallet, my german. Mr. Can you? A lot of dough in the wallet, knows robbery. Dennification, John Perry.

Get an ambulance, my german. Take over. Tableau of violence. Seen with color. A wounded man who's dying a spilt with night on to the cement flooring of a pet shop. Concrete, bained with a scarlet of a man.

and about him, wild blight and tropic jades and yellows caged, the clipped wings, the silent birds, and in rectangles of glass, dark and gleam and silences of small fish held in greenish tins of water.