And it doesn't get any better, thought Kramer. It was not just young assistant D.A.s like him and Andriutti and Jimmy Caughey. All over Gibraltar, at this moment, from the lowest to the highest, the representatives of the Power in the Bronx were holed up in their offices, shell-backed, hunched over deli sandwiches, ordered in. Around the big conference table in Abe Weiss's office they were hunched over their deli sandwiches, they being whomever Weiss thought he needed and could get hold of that day in his crusade for publicity. Around the big conference table in the office of the chief administrative judge for the Criminal Division, Louis Mastroiani, they were hunched over their deli sandwiches. Even when this worthy jurist happened to have a great luminary in to visit, even when a United States senator came by, they sat there hunched over their deli sandwiches, the luminary, too. You could ascend to the very top of the criminal justice system in the Bronx and eat deli sandwiches for lunch until the day you retired or died.

And why? Because they, the Power, the Power that ran the Bronx, were terrified! They were terrified to go out into the heart of the Bronx at high noon and have lunch in a restaurant! Terrified! And they ran the place, the Bronx, a borough of 1.1 million souls! The heart of the Bronx was now such a slum there was no longer anything even resembling a businessman's sit-down restaurant. But even if there were, what judge or D.A. or assistant D.A., what court officer, even packing a .38, would leave Gibraltar at lunchtime to get to it? First there was plain fear. You walked from the Bronx County Building across the Grand Concourse and down the slope of 161st Street to the Criminal Courts Building, a distance of a block and a half, when you had to, but the prudent bearer of the Power kept his wits about him. There were holdups on the crest of the Grand Concourse, this great ornament of the Bronx, at 11:00 a.m. on nice sunny days. And why not? More wallets and handbags were out on foot in the middle of nice sunny days. You didn't go beyond the Criminal Courts Building at all. There were assistant D.A.s who had worked in Gibraltar for ten years who couldn't tell you, on a bet, what was on 162nd Street or 163rd Street, a block off the Grand Concourse. They had never even been to the Bronx Museum of Art on 164th. But suppose you were fearless in that sense. There remained another, subtler fear. You were an alien on the streets of the 44th Precinct, and you knew that at once, every time Fate led you into their territory. The looks! The looks! The deadly mistrust! You were not wanted. You were not welcome. Gibraltar and the Power belonged to the Bronx Democratic Party, to the Jews and Italians, specifically, but the streets belonged to the Lockwoods and the Arthur Riveras and the Jimmy Dollards and Otis Blakemores and the Herbert 92X's.