September 13, 1991

On many a weekday morning at, say, 5:30 or 6, a visitor to the New York City Department of Buildings will step out of an elevator into a series of empty corridors and stumble upon briefcases, standing in lines like toy soldiers, with their owners nowhere in sight. That anyone would leave their briefcase unattended in New York for five minutes, let alone three hours, might come as something of a shock. But then the briefcase line, marking the order of who gets first shot at seeing a building examiner, is just one of many tribal customs that have evolved over the years among expediters, to aid them in their daily battle with the Buildings Department.

HAVING fun is never easy, and at Six Flags Great Adventure here it can verge on the impossible. It can also be as simple as screaming with ecstatic terror as your roller coaster car narrowly misses an overhead strut and then loops into the alluring sky. The 2,200-acre park, whose season stretches from March to November, combines acute thrills with endless lines, mediocre food, tacky souvenirs and amateur entertainment. Nevertheless, it can be a diverting family experience on a fall Saturday or Sunday (the only days it is open now), without summer heat to make feet swell and turn children (and parents) cranky.

Markets Long-term bond yields fell to their lowest level since late 1989, as credit market participants reacted to a favorable inflation report and sharp declines in the money supply. [ D1. ]

Testifying in a Queens divorce case, a woman yesterday accused her former husband of arranging the unsolved 1983 killing of a millionaire consultant, helping to revive a celebrated case whose investigation had stalled long ago amid hints of international arms and drug deals. The State Police, who had exhausted all leads in the tangled case, said yesterday that the woman's accusations and other recent tips had provided new avenues of investigation in the death of George M. Perry, whose body was found in a lake in Orange County, N.Y., in April 1983, three months after he vanished from a Manhattan hotel. He had been shot in the head, weights had been attached to his legs and investigators had said his body might have been dropped into the lake from a helicopter.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union sent urgent letters to the European Community and the head of the Group of Seven industrial democracies today seeking food aid on a scale dwarfing previous Western commitments. In a letter to Jacques Delors, the president of the European Community, Mr. Gorbachev said the Soviet Union needed $6 billion to $7.3 billion worth of free food for the coming winter, said Ella Krucoff, a spokeswoman here for the community.