But with congestion pricing . . .:

A shooting suspect blew his brains out after the Con Ed truck he had stolen to flee cops got caught in traffic outside Yankee Stadium just as last night’s game ended, sources said.

The unidentified man — who earlier had shot his girlfriend in the shoulder after a violent argument — killed himself as pursuing officers closed in on him.

The suspect had gotten into a fight with the woman near East 151st Street and Courtlandt Avenue, about 20 blocks from the Stadium, at about 10 p.m.

He suddenly drew a gun and shot her in the shoulder, a police source said.

. . .

The gunman then hopped into a Con Ed truck that was left with its engine running at a work site.

When a utility worker confronted him, the suspect pointed a gun at his head and sped off.

Shortly after, he smashed into a police car, but got away.

As he approached the Stadium, at East 161st Street near the Macombs Dam Bridge, he got stuck in traffic. When cops approached the truck, they heard a gunshot and found the driver dead with a bullet wound to the head, authorities said.

NIMBYers somehow invaded the bodies of the four preservationists devoted to the cause of the Gowanus Canal:

Activists admitted that there was some irony in trying to retain the current polluted state of the canal by seeking protection for the industrial buildings that hastened its demise during the 19th and 20th centuries. But they said it’s possible to separate the buildings themselves from the messy business that went on inside.

“They are perfect specimens of what industrial buildings looked like at the start of the Industrial Revolution,” said Betty Stoltz, a member of Friends and Residents of the Greater Gowanus. “Think of it this way: I don’t love everything the Church does, but I don’t want to see churches destroyed.”

Location Scout: Gowanus Canal.

Because it’s not like anyone would notice you wheeling a dead man over to the check cashing place:

Two men used an office chair to wheel a dead man to a Midtown check-cashing establishment yesterday and attempted to cash his Social Security check, police said. The men were detained by police after onlookers noticed the dead body falling from side to side as the men pushed him along Ninth Avenue near 52nd street — but not before they entered the Pay-O-Matic check-cashing store and attempted to cash his check. The dead man, identified by police as Virgilio Cintron, 66, was the roommate of one of the suspects. He apparently died of natural causes, police said. The suspects lived around the corner from the Pay-O-Matic, and were known to the employees there.

The roommate and a third man, who was a friend of the deceased, reportedly left Cintron outside as they entered the establishment, pointing to him through the window when the cashier told them that Cintron would have to be present to cash the check, according to the police account. When the cashier asked them to bring Cintron inside, they exited the building, where they were confronted by an on-duty Real Time Crime Center detective who had been in the building next door when he noticed the commotion.

. . . it’s as situation like this:

As a throng of mourners converged on Staten Island yesterday to remember the life of one of the Fire Department’s “rising stars,” the specter of his murder seemed to loom over an already grim occasion.

In the morning chill, the crowd of firefighters, police, family and friends gathered around St. Charles R.C. Church in Oakwood watched with tearful eyes as the flag-draped casket of Supervising Fire Marshal Douglas Mercereau was pulled from a waiting hearse. But many of those in attendance — including about a dozen plainclothes police officers — also cast suspicious glances at his widow, Janet Redmond-Mercereau, the sole suspect in the slaying of the 38-year-old Oakwood man.

And while sobbing echoed inside the semicircular chapel, several of those in attendance noted that Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau sat dry-eyed and stonefaced as her husband was eulogized by his brother, Thomas; his boss, Supervising Fire Marshal Louis Garcia, and Monsignor Thomas Bergin, who’d been his principal at Monsignor Farrell High School.

“It made me uncomfortable,” said Westerleigh resident Fran Hogan, a friend of the Mercereau family who attended the funeral yesterday, in respect of the suspicions swirling around Mrs. Redmond-Mercereau.

“But this was about Doug, and we stayed focused on that. The family wanted to give him a respectable, dignified funeral, and we did that,” Ms. Hogan added.

There are at least two acts in there somewhere (some enterprising whippersnapper needs to supply the third):

The Carroll Gardens widow who fought to die in the home she’d lived in her entire life, won a Pyrrhic victory this month — dying in the apartment on Aug. 12 and defeating a developer’s two-year-long quest to evict her.

Angelina Visconti, 88, died of natural causes at Long Island College Hospital, though she was still a resident of the Cheever Place rowhouse.

“She got her wish, and that was what it was all about,” said Leonard Visconti, her son. “She always said she was born here, she wanted to die here.”

Visconti’s residency became an issue in 2005, when her nephew Joseph DeLeonibus, the son of Visconti’s late twin sister, tried to evict her so he could make a killing in the booming Carroll Gardens real-estate market.

The house was eventually sold for $1.13 million to developer Wayne Warnock, who picked up the eviction proceedings where DeLeonibus left off.

Earlier: Notices To Quit Thicker Than Blood.

It’s not just immigrants who fake being religious to get their kids an education. Now we’ve got “come for the pre-K, stay for the chocolate-covered matzo”:

In the frenzy to land a preschool spot, some parents have found God. Area churches and synagogues that offer early-childhood programs are swelling with new families that have joined to help gain priority school admission for their kids. Brooklyn Heights’ Plymouth Church, for instance, has had “a surge of growth in young families,” reports the Reverend David Fisher. “We’re not sure if there is a direct relationship between the school and our congregation’s growth — though we strongly suspect there is.”

. . .

Some institutions are growing wise to self-interested joiners. “I laugh when people tell me, ‘I joined Temple Emanu-El in June and I’m applying to the preschool in September,’ says Amanda Uhry, owner of Manhattan Private School Advisors. “I say, ‘Do you think Emanu-El isn’t hip to what’s going on?’” Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church Day School prefers two years of membership and participation to be eligible for an admissions advantage, while the East Side’s Christ Church United Methodist limits preschool priority to congregants who actively worship and give money. “The Day School office sends to the church office the list of people seeking admission, and we go over it to make sure that the criteria are being met,” says Christ Church’s the Reverend Javier Viera.

Other religious leaders, though, are happy to see new faces — no matter what the reason. Andy Bachman, rabbi of Park Slope’s Congregation Beth Elohim, sees a membership bump in early November, when preschool applications are given out, and another in January, during tour season. That’s okay by him. “People approach affiliation from a variety of motivations,” he says. “The same people who say they joined just because of the preschool are the ones who can’t stop eating the chocolate-covered matzo at the children’s Seder.”

The Times (not unironically) profiles some of the great Queens weekly newspapers — and if anyone at Silvercup is paying attention, it’s a great idea for a television series — pitch it as Lou Grant meets Taxi:

[Times Newsweekly publisher and editor Maureen E. Walthers] has had her share of run-ins with the news media world of Manhattan, dating back to the single day she spent in a journalism course at Columbia University. Ms. Walthers hadn’t gone to college; she came to The Ridgewood Times as a divorced mother in her 40s. But she was already an experienced reporter when she sat down for the class, which began with a searching question: What is the most important principle in journalism? The students said “integrity,” “justice,” “truth.” Ms. Walthers was the last to answer. She said, “advertising.”

“They were all looking at me as if I was some sort of crass individual,” she said. She went back to Ridgewood and bought the paper 20 years ago.

“I have a very simple philosophy,” she said. “The stringbean farmer wants to read about the stringbean crop.”

Last Tuesday, a day remained until deadline and things looked grim.

The managing editor, Bill Mitchell, was thinking of running a story about a police forum attended by no one except a reporter from The Times Newsweekly. (”You’re not going to get anything in terms of residents storming the Bastille. The story here is there’s nobody here,” he reasoned.) The sinkhole was still a contender, but it was already three-day-old news. “It has hair on it,” Ms. Walthers said.

Mr. Mitchell left the office hoping for something to break on Wednesday. An exploding manhole cover? A graffiti bust? If worse came to worst, there were photographs from the previous weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Sunnyside.

If it were a movie pitch you might say it was Stand and Deliver meets The Joy Luck Club meets Animal House:

Workers at Church of the Transfigur­ation on Mott St. see their greatest success in children of immigrants, who often were born in the United States and stand with one foot in their Chinese past and another in their American future. The church’s Sunday school classes teach the Catholic faith to area children, and some non-Catholic parents see it as a chance for free babysitting, said Sister MaryAnn Scherr, a nun overseeing religious education at the church.

. . .

Every Sunday morning, Scherr and her team of religious educators teach Catholic catechism to parish children. It is a task fraught with complexities, as often these children know very little about Christianity.

“When people come to us, they often come with no religion at all,” Scherr said. “Some of the parents don’t see the value of the religion program.”

Down one flight of stairs from John Hum’s class, Jennifer Yau teaches first graders about books of the Bible, and routinely struggles with non-attentive students.

“This is boring,” said James, a tiny six-year-old boy with an untucked collared shirt, one leg up on his chair, the other dangling above the floor. “I don’t know it.”

“There is no, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s not an option,” said Yau, visibly at wits’ end. “I’m trying to teach you guys something and you’re not really paying attention, so I’d appreciate it if you would.”

. . .

Overall, progress is being made, Scherr said.

“We can have as many as 30 people we baptize each year,” she said. “Many are men.

“We try not to be people who just work to get certificates,” Scherr said. Too often, she says, immigrants believe their participation in church activities will guarantee them citizenship, or at least a green card.

“If they want to really be baptized, then we work with that,” Sherr said. “It’s not completely our job to doubt sincerity.”

As Chinese immigrants come into the city, they bring with them their own ideas and customs. In the Chinese province of Fujian, where most of Chinatown’s newest residents emigrate from, it is perfectly O.K. for someone to spit on the floor, even when inside, since most floors there are dirt, Scherr said. The church staff has tried to limit spitting and educate immigrants on American social conventions.

I have to say, this would make for a totally outrageous third act:

Estranged from his father, a gay Brooklyn man came home yesterday to make peace, only to make a horrifying discovery: His mother had been hiding his dad’s corpse in the family’s apartment for three years, police sources said.

. . .

Her horrific secret was exposed when her 38-year-old son, Paul Iversen, knocked on the apartment door early yesterday. He had not been home since he came out of the closet well before his dad’s death, the sources said.

“I want to see Dad,” Paul Iversen told his mom, the sources said. “I want to make everything right.”

The elderly woman — who almost never allowed anyone into her Bay Ridge apartment — opened the door, sources said. “He’s in the bedroom,” she told her son.

Paul Iversen walked through the filthy apartment and to his horror found the skeletal remains of his dad, Frank Iversen, 75, in a fetal position under a pile of bed covers and clothes, the sources said.

And here’s the kicker:

At the 68th Precinct stationhouse, Joanne Iversen told cops that she and her husband had made a pact to hide the death of whoever passed away first so the surviving spouse could continue collecting Social Security benefits.

“He died of natural causes,” she told cops, the sources said. “It was three years ago.”

Detectives questioned the woman for several hours, but released her last night without filing charges. Cops were investigating whether she illegally obtained Social Security checks since her husband’s death.

A police source said Joanne Iversen had told another estranged son she had buried her husband years ago.

Tenants in the Bay Ridge Parkway apartment building between Ridge Blvd. and Third Ave. said they noticed Frank Iversen, a quiet man who had worked as a painter, hadn’t been around in years. But his wife always told them he had moved upstate.

“I always wondered if he was dead in there,” said neighbor Bonnie King. “Frank just disappeared. There was no explanation.” Other residents said there were clues, but no one put it all together.

“There were odor issues in that apartment,” said Carole Clements, 64. “We complained a lot, but I would have never guessed there was a body inside.”

Was this ever an idea for a film script? If not, someone should get on it:

John A. (Junior) Gotti could be headed to the Midwest — and to college — after his latest trial on racketeering charges dead-ended yesterday, buffing his contention that he put a life in organized crime behind him.

“If they let us alone, I’ll leave. I’ll take my family and I’ll go [to the Midwest],” vowed Gotti, who spoke of his desire to further his education.

. . .

In the latest trial, prosecutors tried to prove Gotti was part of a racketeering conspiracy because he has continued to receive mob money and benefit after 1999 from property and other assets he accumulated with proceeds from his crimes.

His defense lawyers say Gotti paid a large fine when he pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1999 and was permitted to keep his assets, regardless of where the money originated.

The Gotti camp clearly saw yesterday’s mistrial as a victory. “We’re just thrilled right now,” said his sister Victoria. “Today’s a humongous step. This win meant a lot to us.”

I can almost hear Jerry Orbach say it — “Some strange characters hang out in this neck of the woods”*:

The body of a man clad in a kinky black leather mask and decked out head to toe in S&M gear was hanging from a chain-link fence on Hudson Street yesterday — as many passers-by ignored it, thinking it was a Halloween display.

The slightly built, fair-skinned mystery man may have been choked to death by a dog collar around his neck, it’s other end strapped around a 3-foot-tall fence post, police sources said.

The 40ish, tattooed man was found kneeling, braced face-first against the fence in front of 424 Hudson St. at around 6:45 a.m.

In a bizarre twist, the body had been there for at least an hour, dismissed by some who walked past as a quirky seasonal display in an area scattered with S&M and gay bars.

“The body was covered with a black suit and he had a mask on his face,” said deli owner Indra Patel, who first spotted the strangely posed corpse when he opened next door around 5:30 a.m.

“I thought it was a dummy. It looked like a dummy, because every year they do decorations like that. I was wondering why they put up the [Halloween] decorations early.”

Patel said at least an hour went by before a woman walking her dog realized the sidewalk exhibit of a man wearing a pair of leather spiked gloves, chaps and a vest was a real person and called police.

Cops were investigating if the man had committed suicide or died during some sort of bizarre auto-erotic sex game.

. . .

Another witness, Kevin Samuel, 50, a porter for a building across the street, said he had looked at the body several times but it just never clicked that it might be a real person.

“I’m staring at him and I think, ‘Is that a prop or a real person?’ His legs looked like he was twisted on an angle and that he fell in it [the fence]. It looked like he was stuck there and couldn’t get up, like he lost his balance,” Samuel said.

*OK, OK — being Jerry Orbach is harder than it looks!

This week, Brian Carter outlines a pitch perfect “first ten” pages of a script — assuming anyone would be interested in a script about the dog-eat-dog world of rental agents and the struggle to close the deal:

I’ve gone through dry spells before, and it would be easy enough to chalk this one up to a bad market and a slow time for everyone. But I have the misfortune of sitting next to Stacey, who is currently knocking back deals like shots of tequila on Cinco de Mayo. While I’m in a terrible debate over whether to play another game of solitaire or take a walk, she’s closing her second deal of the day.

. . .

At first, I thought it was merely a coincidence that every time I went cold, Stacey started a hot streak. Part of it may have to do with some weird karmic alignment, but my manager is also pulling some strings in this tiny universe. The hotter one agent gets, the slower everyone else seems to become. Managers take a cut of the overall office profits. That’s a lot of incentive. They steer business away from agents with slippery hands and feed the closers every decent client who calls or walks in the office. Work breeds work and managers rarely encourage slumping agents by wasting potential clients on them, no matter who’s due on the list. She’s working a $3,200 corporate transfer, with the rent and fee paid by the company, and I’m looking all over town for a one bedroom with a terrace large enough to call a porch . . . in a high traffic area no less.

. . .

I don’t harbor any hurtful feelings toward Stacey, but I do hide my client list when she’s in the office. Let’s just say she’s thorough and a really good real estate agent. When I first started, she was one of the few people who went out of her way to teach me about the business. It doesn’t matter that her method of teaching entailed screwing me out of my first deal and using her seniority to justify it. I learned my lesson, and have never forgotten the special attention she showed me. The slacker agents in my office, including myself, could all learn much from her example. She’s a real asset.

It’s all there — complex and morally ambiguous figures, high stakes, conflict — with New York as a character! How about Michel Gondry to direct?

If you were to set Six Feet Under within the five boroughs, this would become an opening sequence:

A newly married Queens woman was killed yesterday when she turned in front of an SUV as she moved her car to avoid an alternate-side parking ticket, police and friends said.

Other shows that same season include.

It was high-tension back-and-forth drama for St. Brigid’s Church last week, with details straight out of a movie script:

It was an anxious week for East Villagers who have been fighting to save the turn-of-the-century old P.S. 64 and 158-year-old St. Brigid’s Church from demolition. Some neighbors and activists have been involved in both struggles, and probably could have used a scorecard to keep up with the flurry of emergency press conferences outside the two historic Avenue B buildings — located just a block apart — plus a candlelight vigil and court hearing.

Last Friday, State Supreme Court Judge Barbara Kapnick enjoined further demolition of St. Brigid’s Church until Aug. 24, pending a Board of Standards and Appeals hearing on the validity of the demolition permit.

Last Thursday — just two days after demolition workers started hacking historic terracotta off the old P.S. 64 building on E. Ninth St. — a demolition crew a block to the south pounded an ugly hole through the back wall of St. Brigid’s Church, starting the destruction of the historic East Village famine church. The workers shoved antique wooden pews and delicate wainscoting from inside the church through the hole and into a rear yard. Then — as stunned and angry neighbors and former St. Brigid’s parishioners pleaded with him to stop — one of the workers, smiling, spun his bulldozer over the pile, crushing it all to bits.

. . .

Next morning at 7 a.m., to the anguish of about 20 neighbors, activists and former parishioners who showed up hoping to head off further destruction, the workers — this time wielding long crowbars — knocked out the seven, 25-foot-tall, painted, stained-glass windows on the church’s north side. Again, the neighbors and former parishioners begged them to stop.

“When I saw those crowbars destroying those stained-glass windows this morning, I thought about the Taliban destroying those Buddhas in Afghanistan,” said Matt Metzgar, a former East Village squatter who had been among the protesters shouting for the workers not to break the windows.

“We were all yelling ‘Stop!’ We were screaming,” said Beth Sopkow. “We were all calling 311 and E.P.A, saying that there were hazardous conditions and dust.”

Patti Kelly, who has a stained-glass studio on Avenue C and also had sadly watched as the venerable windows depicting Jesus’ life were smashed, estimated they were worth $100,000 apiece.

“That was heartbreaking, because I know exactly what it takes to do those windows. It took them a year to do them,” she said.

Perhaps you assumed that godless New Yorkers were uninterested in churches. That would be untrue:

At a candlelight vigil outside St. Brigid’s the night before, East Villagers accused the archdiocese of planning to cash in by developing the prime property on the eastern edge of Tompkins Square Park.

A large silver crucifix ring on his finger, poet Barry Allen shouted, “Our Lord Jesus went into the temple and threw out the money changers — goddammit!”

“I love the building and the color, that beautiful yellow, right at the park,” said Susi Schropp. Though she never attended the church, she said, “It’s beyond just being a parishioner — it’s about the community being besieged.”

. . .

Jerome O’Connor, who used to own St. Dymphna’s bar on St. Mark’s Pl., originally had the idea to investigate the demolition permit to check if it was valid — which is the only thing currently standing in the way of the building being razed.

“You don’t tear down a 158-year-old church for anything,” O’Connor said. “I’d like to see all the Catholic churches leveled, because of what they do. But not this one.”

The Post reports that several Times Square-area businesses closed temporarily on Easter Sunday to observe Gang Initiation Day:

Police, unable to contain a Times Square street-gang invasion, advised several restaurants to close down early “for safety reasons” on Easter Sunday, The Post has learned.

A 24-hour McDonald’s on Seventh Avenue between 46th and 47th streets closed “from 8 o’clock at night to 1 o’clock in the morning,” manager Alex Donato told The Post.

“They [police] said, for security reasons, to close it down — cause there were too many gang members.”

A complement of 88 cops — including five on horseback — along with eight sergeants, three lieutenants, a captain and a deputy chief had been deployed to Times Square on April 16 to police an influx of approximately 40,000 pedestrians, including an Easter Parade of gang members, mostly from the notorious Bloods.

But despite the heightened police presence, cops warned at least three restaurants to close as hundreds of crimson-hued hoods swaggered by, police sources said.

. . .

At another Mickey D’s, on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, management hired six private security guards for the Sunday-night shenanigans.

“We were much better prepared than last year” when the McDonald’s closed “all night,” said one employee.

They only shut down for 45 minutes this year at the cops’ suggestion, he said.

“Easter is gang-initiation day. I don’t know why — no respect for the lord, I guess,” the employee added.

“Easily over 200″ gang members were strutting up and down Seventh Avenue and Broadway between West 42nd and West 50th streets until about 3 a.m., one police source said.

An opening sequence for Six Feet Under: New York City:

A 24-year-old Manhattan man was thrown to his death into a parking lot at Long Island City’s Silvercup Studios after crashing into a wall on the Queensborough Bridge early Friday morning, Channel 7 News reported.

Luis Colon was pronounced dead at the scene after his 2003 Honda Pilot struck the left wall of the bridge just before 4 a.m., ejecting him 30 feet, police said. Colon was thrown through the driver’s side window and fell into the parking lot of Silvercup Studios at 42-22 22nd St., Channel 7 reported.

Silvercup, home of The Sopranos (get it?), is under the Queensboro Bridge . . . yeesh, what a way to go.

Don’t oversell it or anything:

A New Jersey amusement park king is rushing to reopen the shuttered [Nellie Bly] Shore Parkway kiddie park by Memorial Day weekend — with brand-new rides, a new name and wi-fi technology.

Martin Garin and his co-owner son Marc plan to restore five of Nellie Bly’s ancient rides and introduce seven new ones — most of them with kid-friendly names like Venture Elephant.

“I don’t know if its going to be much different, but it’s going to be quality — it’s going to have rides and food and entertainment,” said Garin, who ran New Jersey’s Meadowlands Fair until 2002.

Minor thrillers such as bumper cars, the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the Scrambler will be reintroduced, and a handful of less-scary attractions, such as a carousel, also will hopefully draw the kids, the Garins said.

“It’s like every kiddie ride,” Marc Garin said of the Venture Elephant and others like it. “It just goes ’round and ’round.”

The hunt for Molly* the cat, who has been trapped in a Greenwich Village wall for like two weeks, has reached a Vivi-esque levels. Today, the Daily News reports on the latest:

For 13 days, Molly the cat has been trapped behind the wall of a Greenwich Village food shop, and would-be rescuers yesterday enlisted the help of kittens, humane traps, and even a feline therapist to lure the animal out.

As those efforts failed, the surreal spectacle surrounding 634 Hudson St. only grew as animal welfare workers, elite NYPD cops, and curious onlookers all pleaded for the 11-month-old black cat to emerge.

“We love you. Come out, Molly, we’re not going to hurt you,” cat therapist Carole Wilbourn cooed into a hole in the wall from which Molly’s meows have been heard. “It’s okay, we have the Molly fan club out here.”

Wilbourn used recordings of whale and sea gull sounds to try to coax Molly out — until she was asked to stop by an Animal Care & Control worker who feared the noise was only “stressing” the cat further.

“I can hear she’s distressed and she’s trying to get out,” said Wilbourn, who said she has treated 10,000 cats in her 30-year career. “I just want to help her.”

Molly catches mice at Myers of Keswick, a British food store, and apparently squeezed into a small hole in the 19th century building’s wall on March 31, said her owner, Peter Myers.

. . .

Rescue work has been slowed by the four-story walkup’s designation as a historic landmark, but city officials yesterday gave permission to remove more bricks to find the elusive cat. Mewing kittens and traps baited with food also were deployed as enticements.

Meanwhile, the Times focuses on the media frenzy surrounding the story:

Outside the 157-year-old, four-story building, reporters, photographers and television and radio crews recorded the scene and hung on every word from rescuers, who emerged now and then from steel trap doors in the sidewalk to report no progress. With little news, some reporters solicited the views of dog walkers and others who paused to watch the activity, which was making news across the country and even abroad.

Mr. Myers told of receiving calls from across America and letters from dozens of schoolchildren, all voicing hope for Molly. Reports on Molly appeared on Web sites of The Chicago Tribune and The Times of London, which noted that the deli sold clotted cream and meat pies and hit the home audience angle: “A cat who protects the delicacies much sought after by British expatriates is trapped behind a wall.” Some reporters, waxing eloquent, spoke of “the peripatetic pussycat” and “the timorous tabby.”

(By the way, what has Terry Gilliam been up to lately?)

*Incidentally, I’m hearing from reliable sources that the cat is actually named Millie . . .

The strange alternate universe the Manhattan Cat inhabits — permanently holed up in cramped apartments, never interacting with the natural world — reaches a new level:

Animal-rescue workers and cops in the West Village are fighting to save an unlucky little black cat that’s been trapped in a wall for 12 days.
The indefatigable animal, Molly, was heard meowing as late as yesterday morning.

But when the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit showed up hours later — complete with sensor-detecting equipment and snake-head cameras to find the kitty, there was no sign of any of her nine lives.

“I can’t tell you how many of these we’ve done, and this is a hard one,” said one cop.

No one’s seen the 11-month-old tabby, who lives at the British grocery store Myers of Keswick, since March 31.

Owner Peter Myers said he thought someone stole the pretty kitty, whose wandering ways have made her popular in the tony ‘hood.

But a few days later, he heard a familiar meowing coming from the store’s northern walls.

The Times profiles an opera singer whose story will at least become a fantastic made-for-TV movie, showing what would happen if Hoosiers were set on the Upper West Side:

Until 18 months ago, Erika Sunnegardh, a soprano, had never sung an opera role on stage.

For nearly 20 years she toiled as a waitress, caterer and tour guide in New York. Sure, there was singing: a few recitals and plenty of funerals as a church cantor in the Bronx. Often the choice boiled down to rent or voice lessons.

But in a story that will give a jolt of hope to every would-be performer with a serving tray, Ms. Sunnegardh, 40, has been assigned to appear today at the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” as a last-minute substitute for an ailing Karita Mattila. What’s more, the performance is one of the house’s Saturday radio broadcasts, heard by 10 million people around the world.

Compare it to the Yankees starting a pitcher who had done nothing more than toss batting practice, or the president appointing a beat cop as defense secretary. In the annals of opera, it ranks with Plácido Domingo stepping in for Franco Corelli in 1968 to make his Met debut.

Astonishingly, the Met embraced Ms. Sunnegardh solely on the basis of two brief auditions in May 2004, well before her first appearance on any opera stage.

In order not to disrupt the fairy tale, she had to turn in a great performance. The Times reports that if it wasn’t exactly perfect, it was nonetheless great:

A number of people in the audience, perhaps aware of her story — years of working as a waitress, singing at church, and a barren career (until now) — walked out with red-rimmed eyes.

When she came out for her first curtain call, she put her hands together in front of her face and said, “Thank you very much.”

She turned to look at the chorus behind her, which included several former conservatory classmates and neighbors in her building in Riverdale, and raised her hands in acknowledgment. They, in turn, cheered her, she said later in her dressing room.

. . .

The pressure on Ms. Sunnegardh was enormous. Not only was she singing a difficult role before a packed Met, but the performance was being broadcast worldwide to 10 million people.

She had difficulties in Act I: a brief memory lapse and what she called “little mishaps” that made her feel “human.” But she warmed up. “The second act felt like it was really on,” she said.

. . .

In her dressing room, after she had showered and changed into a black dress, she received a stream of visitors. One was Peter Gelb, the Met’s incoming general manager. “So we’ll talk?” Ms. Sunnegardh asked. “We will talk,” he answered.

In the literary free-for-all that the “mafia cop” trial has become, Brooklyn itself becomes a character:

It could be argued that one of the most intriguing characters in the trial of Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa is not a person, but a place. As absorbing as the witnesses, the lawyers and the two defendants is the borough of Brooklyn, which has arisen in the trial as something like an empire of the ill-fated and often illicitly employed.

Countless times, Brooklyn — or specifically southern Brooklyn — has been painted as a universe of two-bit deals and three-time losers, of gangster bars and catering halls and auto-body shops. It has come to seem in testimony like a world where people are forever swapping envelopes of cash and owing money to their loan sharks and their mothers — a world of which a witness could say, without a whiff of irony, “I was having some bad times and I committed bank robbery,” or “a few times back in the 80’s people paid me to make their cars disappear.”

. . .

Countless times, Brooklyn — or specifically southern Brooklyn — has been painted as a universe of two-bit deals and three-time losers, of gangster bars and catering halls and auto-body shops. It has come to seem in testimony like a world where people are forever swapping envelopes of cash and owing money to their loan sharks and their mothers — a world of which a witness could say, without a whiff of irony, “I was having some bad times and I committed bank robbery,” or “a few times back in the 80’s people paid me to make their cars disappear.”

Backstory: Alan Feuer’s other article about the literary flavor in a murder trial; Feuer is obviously making notes for a wonderful script and/or novel.

The Advance has fun relating the details of radio host-gadfly Curtis Sliwa’s 1992 run-in with John Gotti’s goons — “Organized Crime? Hardly!”:

Mob snitch Joseph D’Angelo, in his second day on the stand at the retrial of John A. (Junior) Gotti in Manhattan federal court, recited a litany of disorganized screw-ups in their effort to carry out their mission.

First, they forgot to fill the tank. The taxi in which he and an accomplice lay in wait for Sliwa outside his apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side was just about out of gas, necessitating a hurried fill-up.

Then, D’Angelo, who was behind the wheel, had to shoo away a couple who thought the cab was legit. Had the couple entered the cab, they wouldn’t have been able to get out, as it was rigged to thwart Sliwa’s escape.

And, the surveillance was so lengthy and unproductive that alleged gunman Michael Yannotti complained that his wife suspected he was seeing a girl friend.

Early in the morning on June 19, 1992 the two were again waiting for Sliwa. A beat cop told the two to move their car. They circled around the block. Then Sliwa jumped into the cab:

Sliwa gave D’Angelo an address. As they started off, “Mike jumped up and said, ‘Give me your wallet!’ The next thing I know, Mike is shooting,” D’Angelo said.

“The gun is going off. We’re driving. [Sliwa is] jumping around in back. Mike’s wrestling with him in front. It was just a crazy scene,” D’Angelo recalled.

Sliwa escaped by jumping through the front passenger window, which was open.

Dr. Jeffrey Nicastro, now the director of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care at Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze, treated Sliwa in Bellevue Hospital’s emergency room.

Yesterday, Dr. Nicastro testified that a bullet tore through Sliwa’s rectum and bladder. The surgeon noted that a second bullet entered the outside of Sliwa’s right thigh, exited through the inside of the thigh, then lodged in the left thigh.

“I was a shooting duck in a duck pond,” Sliwa told jurors on Monday.

D’Angelo and Yannotti ditched the cab on Delancey Street, where they hopped into the getaway car, a Lincoln, that had been trailing them.

They repaired to an apartment in Brooklyn, where, according to D’Angelo, Gambino captain Nicholas (Little Nicky) Corozzo sputtered, “What the hell happened? You better hope this [expletive] guy don’t [expletive] die.”

D’Angelo said Corozzo offering to call him a cab to get back to Staten Island. “I said, no, I don’t feel like taking a cab.”

An amnesiac who left behind his family in August has been found living as a homeless man in Chicago, apparently unaware of his former life back in New York:

Raymond Power Jr. stepped out of his life some time on Aug. 1, 2005, the last day he awoke in Westchester County as a lawyer and New Rochelle resident, a 57-year-old husband and father of two, a Boy Scout leader and churchgoer.

Within two days, he had stumbled into a new, uncertain and evidently unwanted life: as a homeless man in Chicago who could remember nothing of his former existence but for a semblance of his name: Jay Tower.

Earlier this week, Mr. Power, who is apparently suffering from a severe case of amnesia, was found after a homeless friend discovered his picture on “America’s Most Wanted” Web site.

His wife, Jane, and the couple’s two children, 11 and 17, were overjoyed. But as he undergoes tests at a Chicago hospital before his return, they are bracing for what comes next.

“He doesn’t know who we are,” said Mrs. Power, his wife of 30 years, who has spoken with him on the phone. “He said, ‘Do I have children?’ and I said, ‘Yes, you have two children.’ Our prayers have been answered but yet they are very sad that he doesn’t know who they are and also very scared.”

In a telephone interview, Mrs. Power said that her husband, a Vietnam War veteran, had been treated for depression since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, both with medication and counseling.

Mr. Power walked between the two towers 15 minutes before the first plane hit, she said, but was on board a subway bound for the Bronx when the attack took place. She believes that Sept. 11 dredged up painful memories of Vietnam.

Crazy:

Damages to Casale Jewelers, located at 1639 Richmond Rd., are estimated at $100,000, including the hole in the roof through which the thieves tried — and failed — to hoist an 8,000-pound safe out of the building.

“They got the safe, but they dropped it,” said manager Kim Scarlotta.

. . .

Even though nothing was stolen, owner Dominick Casale said he’s offering a $10,000 store gift certificate for information leading to the capture and conviction of the holes-in-the-store gang.

“They came on an excavator they stole from a job site down the road, drove it up one of the driveways and ripped the roof off,” said Ms. Scarlotta.

The intruders also drove the machine through the wall of the store, breaking a gas line.

“They almost blew up themselves and my building!” exclaimed Casale.

Water pipes were smashed, electrical wires severed and merchandise crushed, including jewelry and a Swarovski crystal piece.

. . .

“They were watching too many movies like the ‘Italian Job’ to think they could pull this off,” said Casale.

Things I’d rather not know about include extrajudicial mafia justice:

The Gambino organized-crime family, furious at the shooting of one of its bosses, is calling for a sit-down with the rival Bonannos to decide the fate of the ex-cop who allegedly pulled the trigger, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

The Gambinos are absolutely livid because the victim, Carmine Sciandra, who runs the Top Tomato produce market, is a top captain in the Mafia family and was once considered a successor to “teflon don” John Gotti, the sources said.

Both residents and law-enforcement officials fear that unless the dispute is resolved, it could lead to war between the two families.

Sciandra was shot in the belly outside the market on Dec. 7 by former cop Patrick Balsamo, who brought along two Bonanno thugs to use as muscle, police said.

Balsamo was angry because he believed Carmine’s brother, Salvatore, groped the cop’s 18-year-old daughter, Maria, a College of Staten Island student. The teen had worked as a cashier at the market before being fired.

Swinging a baseball bat, Balsamo smashed several windows before a melee erupted. During the fracas, the ex-cop drew a gun and blasted Sciandra, police said.

You may be thinking, “Eliot Ness wouldn’t allow these produce-pimping monsters get away with this!” but apparently the feds are watching them:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn and the FBI’s organized crime task force are watching to see if any mobsters retaliate.

The feds fear a mob war could erupt because the brazen attack on Sciandra was not approved by other bosses.

“This was a renegade act,” a police source said.

And yet, the Top Tomato Code of Silence stays intact:

At the time of the shooting, witnesses said that they heard a shot and saw Sciandra go down.

Then they saw several men with baseball bats chase a sedan out of the parking lot.

Top Tomato employees would say only, “I don’t know nothin’.”

The police officer (allegedly) killed by this idiot loved his (alleged) murderer’s best-known film — and in a strange twist, taped the movie to watch later when it aired on cable just a week before his death:

Days before he was shot dead trying to stop a burglary near his home, Officer Daniel Enchautegui asked a relative to record the movie “A Bronx Tale” — the coming-of-age film starring one of the men now charged in his murder.

The eerie twist emerged yesterday as family and friends packed a Bronx funeral home to pay respects to the heroic cop.

According to Charles Spruill, a cop who worked with Enchautegui at the 40th Precinct, “A Bronx Tale,” starring Lillo Brancato, aired on cable TV about a week before the shooting, but Enchautegui wasn’t home to watch it.

“He wanted his nephew to tape the movie because he really liked [it],” Spruill said. “It’s so ironic.”

Brancato, who played a teen torn between his father’s love and a mobster’s loyalty in the 1993 film, was charged with second-degree murder. He and a gun-toting friend were caught by Enchautegui, 28, Saturday morning as they tried to break into a Bronx home, police said.

INT. QUEENS DINER:

The end came for Omar Castro, of 40th Street, in the New Post Coffee Shop on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside as the gunman shot him once in the face and once in the chest, police said.

Witnesses said the desperate Castro, 41, ran from his apartment building on 40th Street and fled down the block with the assailant right behind him. The gunman got off as many as five shots, witnesses said, but none found their mark — until the final two inside the diner.

A waitress at the New Post named Candy, 44, said Castro burst into the place, terrified, just as a handful of customers were settling down for breakfast at about 6:30 a.m.

“A man came running in and said, ‘Call the police, the guy’s coming,’” said the waitress, who fled to a basement kitchen. She said the victim ran into a restroom then came back out, the last thing he ever did.

. . .

A woman identified as Castro’s wife later arrived at the scene in her pajamas. When she looked at her husband’s body beneath a sheet, she showed little emotion, said a family friend.

“She says, ‘He’s dead,’ but she wasn’t crying,” said Giselle Vargas, 42.