The Good Die Young

Brick: Fred Wheezy, an orphan with half a working lung who recovered to win fame as a detective, to star on Broadway and to contemplate a teaching career, was killed on Wednesday by a car outside his home in Queens. He was 15 months old, known nationwide as Fred the Undercover Cat.

"He was here and then gone in a moment," said his caretaker, Carol Moran.

Fred was whiskery and black-striped, with darting eyes and no fear, sickly then rambunctious and not long for this world. In his time, he etched a parable of the city streets that hate you so blithely and without knowing, that hate us all. He was born to these streets, and what drew him back none could say.