For Pat Prior, Bob Prior, Jane Prior, Lisa Prior and Judy Prior

My thanks to George Rike, Bunny Bakke, Elaine Bloom and Helga Halaki for a whole lot of help—on this book and some others, too.

Overture

I

He'd always said that older hookers were better value; they knew more tricks. Not that this one was old, mid-thirties maybe, but there was a brightness to her, a little spark that made her stand out from the others with their dull eyes and inanimate mouths, so Devine chose her although, in reality, it had been she who'd chosen him.

There weren't many people around. It was a lousy night to be out, with a chilly drizzle falling in fat heavy drops, close to sleet. She surprised him by taking him to a tenement about a block away instead of to a fleabag hotel, although the room was just as crummy: drab, tired out, broken-looking with a stale smell like that of old newspapers. She'd snapped on a bedside lamp, the paper shade burnt brown by the bulb, and stripped quickly.

He wasn't disappointed in her body; or, what she did with it.

When they'd finished he'd been the first to get off the bed. He'd wondered about that, a hustler, the business over, lying there almost like a lover. And there was something else he wondered about, too. While she'd been whispering, talking to him, moaning out words, her voice had been different. She'd spoken with an accent. That interested him.

"You're English, right?"

'That's right."

"You sounded American out on the street. Why the put-on?"

The woman reached for a cigarette and lit up. It was cold outside, and not many customers were around. He figured she was working him to go again.

She blew out smoke. "A lot of men get put off by an ac-

cent. They think you're different or something. They want what they know, I suppose."

Devine sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. He said casually, "How long you been here?"

'Ten years."

"In New York ten years?"

"Chicago." She sucked on the cigarette, then turned away to crush it out. "You want to go again? I'll make you a price."

She turned back to him, shifted her weight toward him. She stopped when she saw the way he was looking at her; his eyes were fixed on her face.

"Something wrong?"

Devine took his time with the answer. "You ever meet a guy in Chicago name of Frank Kurtz?"

"No," she said instantly—then, as if trying to cover a too quick reply—"At least, not that I recall. You meet a lot of guys. You know how it is."

"He was a friend of mine."

"Uh-huh," she said, not fascinated. "Look, mister, if you don't want to go again what do you say—"

"What's your name?"

"My name? What the hell does that matter?" She moved to get off the bed but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. There was no force to it, no pressure, but it wasn't a friendly hand; it lay on her shoulder like a silent threat.

"Patsy Stanley," the woman said.

"Patsy Stanley. English. From Chicago. Never met Frank Kurtz." There was no accusation in Devine's reply, just an easy statement of facts, as if he were waiting for her to qualify one of them.

The woman ran a tongue over her lips. "Look, you didn't come up here to play Twenty Questions" —the words, said in an American pattern, sounded odd pronounced with a British accent—"so why don't we do what you did come for? Or, forget it. What do you say?"

"I say your name isn't Patsy Stanley."

"You don't like Patsy? So, okay, call me honey."

"Okay," Devine said. "What's your name, honey?"

She sighed. "I already told—"

The hand leaped off her shoulder and slammed against her mouth. She didn't cry out, didn't even put a hand to her face or dart a tongue out to taste the blood. She knew the taste. She spoke through a swelling lip; pain, an old and boring acquaintance, was back for another visit.

"You take after your friend. Shots was all I ever got from Ziggy,too."

Devine let out a thin breath. "You're English, you worked Chicago, you knew Ziggy Kurtz. Now, what's your real name?"

"Whoever you are, mister, I think you know it. Lois Pink."

Devine watched her for a second, then said softly, "Prove it."

"You're a cop, aren't you?"

Again the hand came to rest on her shoulder. "Don't worry about me, worry about you."

She swung her long legs off the bed, got up and crossed the room to a tiny wash basin, ran the tap briefly, and patted water on her mouth. She took a tissue from a Kleenex box, dabbed with it, then brought the box back with her. She pulled out a bunch of tissues, reached inside, and produced a thin wad of money, some photographs, one or two documents, and a passport with a gold coat of arms stamped on its navy-blue cover. She tossed it onto the bed and went back to the mirror above the washstand.

Devine picked up the passport, then opened it directly under the bedside lamp and read from it aloud. "Lois Mary Pink. Born Chislehurst, Kent, 1942." He turned the pages slowly, then lifted the shade off the lamp. He doubled back the cover of the passport, examined the binding, held the pages against the naked bulb, and felt the paper as if he were admiring fine cloth.

The woman watched his reflection in the mirror. "Satisfied?"

He glanced at the photograph again. "They should allow

full-length shots," he said. He looked over at her, then tossed the passport aside. "You're a nice-looking broad. Ziggy always used to say that."

She crossed the room and stood very close to him. He sat down on the bed and she leaned over him, her nipples, like tiny pink tongues, moving against his face. "Ziggy used to say a lot of things."

He put a hand on her hip and fashioned its curve. "How much to play slave?"

"A tie-up job?"

"Yeah."

"For a friend of Ziggy's, just an extra ten."

She told him what to use and where to find it. He came back with the dressing gown cord, tied her hands together, and lashed them to a rail of the headboard. He stood over her. "You're really good, lady."

She smiled a little smile. "With some guys it comes easy."

"I don't mean a good little lay. I mean a good little actress."

"What?"

"Actress," he said again. He reached for the lamp, picked it up off the side table. Unshaded, the naked bulb was a white-hot poker. "You should've paid more for the passport. If you don't pay top money, it shows."

"What are you talking about?" The cord twisted into her wrists as she struggled to get loose. She felt the heat of the bulb while it was still inches away from her body.

He said patiently, almost kindly, "What's your real name?"

"I told you. What else can I tell you?" Her voice was rising. "Lois Pink."

Devine said, "Uh-huh," as if he were agreeing and the lamp in his hand came gently down to her navel and buried its bright head there in a long, searing kiss.

ACT I

The Girl

Chapter One

As the van pulled into the curb one of the men up front got out and unlocked the side door. He wore clothes appropriate for July, light slacks, a polo shirt, loafers. The only thing about him that looked anything like a cop was the badge he'd taken from his pocket a half-hour back and pinned to his shirt to make the arrests.

The women trooped out of the van and filed into the precinct. They walked down the hall and into the squad room and stood around the walls, looking bored.

The desk sergeant sent one of the rookies into an inner office with a message.

"Pardon me, Lieutenant"—he looked at the man sitting opposite his chief—"Mr. Redding, there's another batch just got here." He was a very new rookie; you didn't have to call Redding anything but Red.

"Okay, thanks."

The rookie went away. The lieutenant hadn't looked up from the paper cup he held in his hand; he was trying to get an inch of Seven-Up to swirl around ice that had long since melted. He gave up on it, finished the drink, and crushed the container in his big hands.

"You'll never get the truth, Red. They'll either talk about their kids and cry all over you or make out like it's more fun than a weekend on water skis. Either way they'll be handing you a load of crap."

"I only need one," Redding answered, "and I haven't seen every hooker in New York yet."

"Damn near it," the policeman said. "You must have seen what, fifty or sixty?"

"So? That leaves about another five thousand to go."

JThe lieutenant made a face. Hookers were a very sharp

thorn in the side of the entire precinct force; the last thing he needed was to be reminded of the legions out there on the street. He said grumpily, "Listen, if they won't talk to cops, why should they talk to scribes?"

Redding got up and moved across the room. "Because we quit wearing ties." He closed the door in time to block the paper cup the other man threw at him.

He had told the lieutenant he was looking for a prostitute who'd give him her real story; he'd had to tell him something. And despite the confidence he'd shown he was beginning to feel he would never find the right girl, or even one halfway right.

When he walked into the squad room and saw the new arrivals it didn't make him feel his chances had improved much. He'd seen the same sight a couple of times a night for the past week: plump or thin or short twenty-year-olds, half of them with wigs that didn't fit, most of them mindlessly chewing gum and all of them, with rare exceptions, with about as much personality as a box of stale cookies.

He walked slowly around the room, returning their incurious fish-eyed stares. Only two of them were smoking. It was funny how few of them did. Maybe they ran enough risks as it was.

He didn't spot her right off, the one in red; she'd had her face turned. But he noticed her now. Nice. Very nice. Tall, good posture—she didn't slump her body like the others, but then she had a figure to show off, and a face. There was a soft prettiness about it and its fine, open features. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties and was dark-haired, too, her hair thick and shiny and well cared for. Perfect. She was a damn good-looking woman.

Since he was standing right in front of her, she could hardly fail to notice him checking her over and she commented on it, which surprised him. Usually the girls just went right on chewing gum.

"U.S. Grade A."

"Pardon?"

"You're looking at me like a shopper in a meat market."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Redding was, too. He was also a little embarrassed. And pleased. The girl had a brain, and a slight drawl that put her birthplace somewhere in the Midwest. Better and better. "I haven't seen you around before. What's your name?"

"Wanda Podenda."

"Wanda Po—"

"It's Italian."

"Well, it's Latin, anyway," Redding said. He looked at her some more. "You ever done any acting?"

"Sweetie, I go on every night."

A couple of girls laughed. Redding grunted. Not bad. He'd asked two other women that question and all they'd given him had been tired get-lost looks. "You any good at accents?"

The girl raised her eyebrows. "What are you, a cop or a John?"

"I'm serious. Can you do, say, an English accent?"

She shrugged. "I had a guy one time wanted me to pretend I was Queen Elizabeth."

"Was he happy?"

"He said he couldn't tell the difference."

Redding smiled. "Wanda, you're okay."

The cop who'd made the arrest appeared with a sheaf of forms and the interview was terminated. There was nothing more Redding could do and he was on his way out when he ran into the lieutenant.

"So?" the man asked, not that interested. "Any luck with this lot?"

"I got a possible," Redding replied. "Could be good."

He was understating it; it could be terrific. But he wouldn't know until the next day.

Redding could calculate exactly where and approximately when he'd next see the girl because he knew what happened every time the city had a crackdown on prostitution. The girls would be rounded up in the evening, when trade was the most brisk, spend the night in the cells, and come

up for arraignment next morning. Then, usually one of two things happened. The prosecuting attorney, reluctant to go for a slew of doubtful convictions, would refuse to prosecute and the girls would be freed. Or, the judge, who had yet to hear the charge of loitering actually defined and proven in a court of law, would dismiss the cases or, at most, levy a token fine.

The girls were coming out of the courthouse at five-minute intervals, which meant that, in this instance, the city had chosen to add a few bucks to its badly depleted coffers.

She was the fourth one out.

"Hey," he called.

She stopped. "Oh. You." She blinked in the warm sunshine bouncing off the steps. "Look—er—I'm really not in shape to do any business right now. I didn't get much sleep."

"All I want to do is buy you breakfast."

"Breakfast—" She sounded as though she didn't know what it meant.

"Coffee," he said. It must have been the operative word because she allowed him to take her arm and steer her around the corner to a coffee shop. The breakfast rush was over and the place was practically empty, except for a few legal-looking types and a couple of secretaries on early breaks. There was only one waitress visible, who was busy refilling pastry and doughnuts holders. Redding gave her their order on the way by and chose a booth at the rear. What he was planning to tell the girl he didn't want overheard.

"Well," she said. "A fella buying me breakfast. Now that's what I call romantic."

"I wanted to talk to you, Miss—er—Podenda." Redding winced. "You didn't tell the judge that was your name, did you?"

"Sure I did. He knocked five bucks off my fine. Must have been of Italian origin himself."

"Do you mind if I don't call you that?"

"I don't mind if you don't call me anything."

''I've got to call you something. What's your name?"

She looked at him closely, seemed to decide something. "Marsha Williams."

"Hi, Marsha. My name's Henry Redding."

The waitress brought coffee, which the girl was quick to reach for. She leaned back in the booth and watched him over the lip of the cup. It was the first time she'd taken a really good look at him.

"You don't look like a Henry," she said. "All that nice blond hair. You don't look like a cop, either. You're not ugly enough."

"I never said I was a cop. I'm a reporter. The crime type."

"Oh-oh."

"That's bad?"

"Depends on what you want to report. And what was all that kinky stuff last night about accents? I thought you were a cop looking for some special service."

Her eggs arrived and he let her start on them before he said anything more.

She had a good appetite and she ate neatly. The more he saw of her, the more he liked her, and he hoped he was going to go on liking her. He picked up her last remark and played off it.

"Miss Williams, what I want to talk to you about has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with money."

That stopped her fork in midair. "Mister, in the line I'm in sex is money."

Redding checked over his shoulder. They were still isolated but nevertheless he lowered his voice as he leaned forward. "How would you like to make twenty-five thousand dollars for a week's work?"

That got him a sideways look. "A week's what kind of work?"

He answered her question with one of his own. "You ever work in Chicago?"

"No, sir."

Redding brought out three photographs and placed one of

them down in front of her. "Then you've probably never seen these people."

He showed her an old black and white shot of a man and a woman standing together against a vague background. The woman's face was half in shadow, the features unclear. Redding said, 'The man's name was Frank Kurtz. He's dead now. That was his girl friend, what you can see of her. She may be dead, too. Her name's Lois Pink."

The girl said she'd never seen or heard of them.

"How about this guy?" He put the second shot down. "George Devine. He was Kurtz's partner and he's very much alive. You might have seen him around."

She shook her head and he showed her the third photograph. "This man?"

"Oh, sure. King Kong they call him. Hangs out in Charlie's, a bar up there on Broadway. You see a guy looks like that you don't forget him."

"King Kong," Redding repeated. "His name's Harry To-bler. He was Frank Kurtz's bodyguard and now he looks after Devine."

"A bodyguard," she said, looking at the shot. "Yeah, I didn't figure him for a doctor."

Redding paused before asking the next question; it was a sensitive area. If anything was going to ruin it, this would, but it had to be said.

"How about a girl in New York here, Patsy Stanley?"

Evidently the name rang bells for her but she frowned; they weren't wedding bells. "Didn't she end up dead in a hotel room?"

"In her apartment. It was George Devine who killed her."

"How do you know that?"

"I'm a crime reporter, remember? I can report the victims' names but not the culprits' if the police don't have a case. And they didn't have enough against Devine."

"Patsy Stanley," she said. Her mouth tightened and she looked grim. "They found her with burns all over her, didn't they?"

He'd been hoping he wouldn't have to mention that part but there was no point now in not telling her. "He's a real charmer, Devine. He took a lamp to her."

"A lamp?"

"A hundred-watt bulb gets pretty hot."

She squirmed in her seat, regarding him warily. She wasn't the bright, snappy hooker now. "This guy Devine and King Kong, I take it they're the catch to this twenty-five grand you mentioned."

The opening wasn't the one Redding would have chosen, but since it was practically staring him in the face he took it. He spoke for three minutes uninterrupted, explaining his idea, telling her why it would work and how it would work and exactly what they had to do. When he finished she didn't tell him he was crazy or a genius or that the idea was great or terrible. None of that. Instead she said, "Why me?"

"Because I think you can do it. Devine never met Kurtz's girl, remember. He knows she was tall and had dark hair and you qualify on both counts. And I think you're probably a damn good actress, and I don't think you'd choke when it came to the crunch. I think you'd be perfect for the part."

"You do, do you?" She gathered up her shoulder bag, ready to leave. "Well, I," she said, "sure as hell don't."

His hand stopped her. "Hold on, Marsha. You haven't even given it any thought."

"I don't have to. I don't want to end up like Patsy Stanley, half-burnt to a crisp."

"Nothing like that's going to happen. Besides I'm not suggesting that you say okay right here and now. All I want you to do is give yourself a chance to prove that you can hack it. If you bomb out, no harm done. But if things look good, then you can decide to go on to the next part. Or not. So all I'm asking you now is to give the first part a try, then see if you feel any different."

The sound she made was halfway between a snort and a laugh. "I can promise you I won't feel any different about being killed later than I do now. All my life one of the

things I never really changed my opinion on is getting murdered."

"Nobody's going to get murdered. Forget all that. All I want you to do is agree to give the first part a whirl. That can't bother you. What bothers you about it?"

By making her state her problems with the easy part, he was hoping she'd forget about the hard part that was going to come later. To a certain extent his ploy worked.

"Well," she said, her hands poised in midair. "I just can't suddenly turn myself into Julie Andrews. Somebody's going to have to show me how. You?"

"Uh-uh. I know an expert. Gets terrific results and fast, too."

"How fast is fast?"

Redding shrugged. "Depends on how quick you come along. I suppose, three or four days."

"Look, I have to give my man a hundred a day. Otherwise he gets ornery. Where do I get that from?"

"Me. I'm bankrolling this thing. All expenses, everything." When she didn't come back with a negative right away, he jumped in and piled it on. "Think of it as a vacation. You wouldn't mind a vacation, would you? And that's what it would be. And with the mayor's office cracking down, you'd miss out on a lot of collars you don't need."

She saw the point of that and it swayed her a little, but she still had a basic problem.

"This girl . . . you say she was upper-class English. I mean, I'm Marsha Williams from Gary, Indiana. My old man was a steelworker when he wasn't being a drunk, and when I got my first kiss at sixteen I'd already been flatbacking it for two years. And I'm still in the Life. I don't see myself turning into Cinderella in three days, or three months."

"You never know till you try," he said lamely, then switched his attack. "And if it comes off you're looking at twenty-five thousand dollars. You can't tell me you couldn't use twenty-five grand."

"Not if I'm too dead to get the chance."

She wasn't exactly slipping away from him, but he wasn't exactly overhauling her either. The money angle had to be his best bet. Why do anything if not for money? He took a ball-point from his pocket, flattened out a paper napkin, and began to doodle on it.

He sighed heavily. He looked defeated but resigned.

"Well, at least I gave it the old college try. But if you don't want to do it you don't want to do it and that's that. It's pointless for me to try to talk you into it anymore. I wouldn't want you to do anything against your better judgment. You have to make up your mind, and if your answer is no, it's no. I won't pressure you."

Her eyes watched the pen moving. "What have you got there?"

He held up the napkin, stretching it between his hands like a miniature billboard. On it, running its entire width and in large numerals was printed $25,000.

Marsha looked at the figures, looked at the face above them, and surrendered. Again and again, as if to keep time with her words, she stabbed a finger at him. "The first part, only the first part. You pick up the tab, you pay the expenses. And if I'm no great rave, or even if I am, that's as far as we take it unless I say so. Agreed?"

"Agreed." Redding was delighted, a big smile of success on his face.

"Believe me, Marsha," he said, "you're going to be just great."

Chapter Two

The expert Redding had mentioned to Marsha was a drama coach that a lot of Broadway producers used when they had to get an actor or an actress into a part in a hurry. He'd gone to see her the next day and told her that he was a talent agent who had previously operated on the coast and was now just starting in New York. She believed him, she had no reason not to. Most people believed Redding. His years of digging stories out of people had given him an effortless and almost flawless ability to fib convincingly. He wasn't an amoral person but it was true that, over a long period of time, the gap between a truth that had been stretched and a downright screaming lie had narrowed until he could see very little daylight between the two extremes.

But you couldn't really call him a con man either, for he lacked the forked tongue of silver prevalent in the breed. In fact, there were times when he ran out of words completely. No, Henry Redding was a guy who simply used his imagination, his good looks, and his natural charm; and that, after all, is only doing the best you can.

The drama coach, Miss Cruft, had a studio on Forty-First, a big loftlike room that had belonged to a photographer who'd made it and moved uptown. She was a thin slip of a woman with a figure like a stick, a haircut like an army sergeant, and a constant cigarette in her mouth. Redding explained about the girl he was bringing to her and what it was he wanted.

"She's great talent, a natural; you'll spot it immediately. But she's a little rough around the edges. She needs polishing. You know what I mean?"

The drama coach sucked at the cigarette like a straw in a

chocolate soda, then said she knew exactly what hetnea/rf;,

"She's up for this part of an aristocratic Englishwoman, the kind of part you'd get Vanessa Redgrave for if you could get her."

"Redgrave," the woman repeated. "I see." She spoke in what was known as a RADA accent, named after the London acting school. It was an accent she abhorred in others as too affected, too snobbish. To Redding's ear it sounded perfect. Marsha could get speech and accent lessons just listening to her talk.

"She'll be a shoo-in with a little coaching," he went on. "If she learns fast do you think you can do it in three or four days?"

Miss Cruft snorted smoke from her nose and said in her clipped manner, "It all depends on how close she is to the part now. She has to learn to move properly, speak properly. I'd say it's possible if she's willing to work."

They were interrupted by the opening of the door and Marsha's entrance. To describe Marsha's method of forward propulsion as a walk is a touch inaccurate; it was more of a professional sashay. She was dressed in a pink terry-cloth outfit that started with a sailor collar and ended in hip-hugger shorts, and wore black lace-up boots. She hadn't known what to wear so she'd dressed casually. »

"Hi," she said. She took a look around the furniture-less studio. "What happened, you get behind in payments?"

"I was right, Marsha," Redding said, going to her. "Miss Cruft thinks she can have you ready in three or four days."

"Three or four," Miss Cruft confirmed, running her eyes over her. "Or ten."

So they started.

Miss Cruft agreed to allow Redding to check on progress by telephone but insisted he stay away until her new pupil was ready for unveiling. The arrangement gave Redding time to set up a test. He realized that he couldn't go with Marsha just on Miss Cruft's say-so, or his own. He had to

have a more objective opinion; in short, audition her for real.

He figured he had just the thing.

There was a big society wedding scheduled for the following Friday, and when he called the drama coach a few days later, he explained that the audition had been moved up and asked if Marsha would be ready by then. She said yes and sounded happy, which made Redding happy. He was convinced that once Marsha saw that she could handle the part, she'd go all the way, and that would result in his making so much money he had to stop himself from thinking about it.

He told the coach to get Marsha ready, to dress her for the part, and not to be afraid to spend money.

Miss Cruft had taken him at his word and first thing Friday morning had hauled Marsha to the hairdresser and then to Lord and Taylor. When Redding got to the studio around eleven, Miss Cruft was waiting for him—alone.

"Where's the butterfly?" Redding asked.

"She wants to make an entrance for you." She turned and called out, "Marsha, he's here."

A door opened at the end of the studio and a woman entered. She wore a plain cotton dress in a muted shade of green, its high scalloped neckline adorned by a single strand of pearls, white gloves, and shoes with a polite half-inch heel. Her hair style was as corny as the girl's in the Breck Shampoo ads, and her walk was a demure glide with about as much body movement as she would have lashed to a tree.

She stopped in front of him and said, in a close approximation of Miss Cruft's plummy accent, "Hello, Henry. Lovely to see you."

She held an arm out, the hand bent at the wrist like a swan's neck. He took it, then slowly moved it aside to get a better look. He didn't believe what he saw.

"Er, Miss Cruft. May I see you a moment?"

She accompanied him to the other side of the room.

"Look," he whispered, "I wanted Vanessa Redgrave." He pointed behind him. "You've given me Peter OToole."

Miss Cruft recognized the beginnings of a serious complaint and moved to squelch it. "She's just overdoing it a little, that's all. Remember, this is her first time out and you're her first audience. She'll settle down. And another thing, she might appear strange to you but that's because you knew her when. But those producers at the audition this afternoon, they'll be seeing her with fresh eyes and it's what they think that counts. She'll come through with flying colors, you watch."

Part of the reason why Redding wasn't a natural con man was that he was so easily conned himself; when Miss Cruft had finished talking to him he was actually looking forward to seeing Marsha perform. He thanked her, paid her what he owed, took her latest graduate downstairs and found a cab.

"The River Club," he said to the driver.

Marsha paled. "That's where the reception is? Oh God, Henry, I'm not sure I can handle it."

"Sure you can. You're going to be great."

"You really think so? You're not disappointed?"

"Disappointed? Listen, when you came out of that dressing room I swear I thought it was Vanessa Redgrave."

"Really? You wouldn't kid an old soldier—"

"Honest. The only thing is, don't lay it on too thick. Back off it a little. Remember, you're a refined upper-class Englishwoman."

Marsha saw the wisdom of it. "You're right. A refined upper-class Englishwoman wouldn't project so much. She'd be softer, less vocal." Marsha had picked up a few words from Miss Cruft.

"Exactly," Redding said.

They arrived outside the River Club behind a Lincoln that was behind a Rolls Royce. Most of the guests spilling out on the sidewalk were dressed somewhat the same, the men in dark suits, the women in fashionable dresses.

The driver took his time making change so Marsha, walk-

ing ahead, wandered into the club by herself. She hadn't gone into her act yet and she should have. A few feet inside the door, a harried catering manager took one look at a woman coming in unescorted—a woman who, despite the dress and the hairdo, looked totally different from the normal run of females who passed through the club's doors— and jumped to a fast, ill-considered conclusion.

"Thank God, I thought you'd never get here." He grabbed her elbow and turned her back. "It's through that doorway and down the stairs."

Marsha freed her arm; she didn't get it. "What on earth are you talking about?"

The man suddenly had doubts. "Aren't you the help we phoned the service for?"

"The help?" She couldn't believe it. She had spent three whole days balancing books on her head, listening to voice tapes, mimicking Miss Cruft, really working. She was shocked, hurt, and very mad. She yelled at him in a voice that was nowhere near a clipped London accent. It sounded closer to Gary, Indiana.

"I'm not the help," she shouted. "I'm a refined upper-class Englishwoman, ya dumb fuck."

Redding, who was just coming through the door, stopped in his tracks. He sighed a long sigh, reached for Marsha, and guided her back to the sidewalk. Marsha had lasted exactly twenty-eight seconds in polite society. A new world's record.

They went into the first place they came to, an Italian restaurant, sat at the bar, and started drinking.

Redding looked shattered. A fortune, almost half a million, and he'd let it get away. Beside him, Marsha's earlier anger had been replaced by a sense of failure and she easily matched his mood. They had two drinks apiece and were sitting looking at a third before they spoke.

"Boy," Marsha said. She raised a hand and let it fall limp-

ly back to a padded bar rest. "I really blew it, didn't I?"

"Yep." Redding picked up a pretzel and snapped it in half—broken dreams.

"I'm sorry, Henry, I really am. This has cost you a lot of money and I didn't come through."

"You did your best, Marsha, and you can't do better than that. It's my fault. I didn't think it through."

"Maybe if you got somebody else—"

He shook his head. "No, it was a busted play to start with. I should've known you can't turn a—" He stopped himself.

"Henry," she said. "You're not going to offend me. A printer's a printer, a banker's a banker, and a hooker's a hooker. You are going to say you can't turn a hooker into a lady, right?"

He didn't have to answer. They both gazed into the amber depths of their drinks.

Marsha gave a sad little laugh. "You would've done better going at it the other way around."

Redding grunted, lifted his glass, chugged its contents down. The cold of the ice cubes clicked against his teeth and seemed to jog his brain. He brought the glass down and turned his head to the woman beside him. "What did you say?" His expression expanded in discovery. "The other way around. . . ."

She hadn't caught on yet.

"Marsha. My God. That-is-it!"

"What it? I don't see any it."

Dazzled, he lowered his forehead into his palm "Lady, you're having a drink with an idiot. What a clunkhead I am. I was going at it the wrong way around." He paced the words carefully, loving every one of them. "Instead of trying to turn a hooker into a lady, we'll turn a lady into a hooker."

She checked to see if he was serious.

He was serious.

"Henry—"

"Why didn't I see it? It's got to be easier for a person to go down the social scale than to come up. Way easier. It just never occurred to me."

"Henry." She tried to let him down easy; he'd had a big disappointment and was grabbing at straws. "Hold on, now. You may be right about that but you'll never swing it. It was possible for you to get a hooker because you're palsy-walsy with the cops, and even then you had to look at a lot of them. But how many upper-class Englishwomen do you know?"

"I don't know any but I'll find one. New York's teeming with them."

"All right," Marsha said. She wanted to be fair about this, rational. "Let's say you do. Let's say it's possible. You find somebody you think would be good. Now, how in God's name do you get her out of Bendel's and onto Eighth Avenue? How do you get her to go for it?"

Redding couldn't see her problem. It was all as plain as the scurrying waiters picking up orders next to them. "You went for it, didn't you?"

"I went for it because it was a chance to stay on my feet for a while. It was a nice break and I'm going to miss it. But your average upper-class English lady, she's not going to think that's such a big deal."

"Come on, Marsha, you had a shot at twenty-five grand. That had to influence you, too."

"Sure, but this woman you're talking about, it's ten to one she'll have money of her own."

"She probably will but the rich need money, too, you know. Hell, they need it more than anybody. They use it faster."

Outgunned by such optimism, Marsha ran up the white flag. In the short time she'd known Redding, she'd found that there was no talking him out of something once he thought it was a good idea. And she liked the guy—with his blond good looks and easy manner it wasn't hard—and she

didn't want to see him bomb out in another variation of what, with the kindest of descriptions, could only be called a hare-brained scheme.

"Okay," she said, "but that doesn't answer the question of how you're going to find her. You can't run an ad, so where do you start looking?"

Redding had the answer already wrapped. "It shouldn't be that hard. Listen, what do we know about Lois Pink? Not much, but a few things. We know her approximate age and that she was English. And we also know she went to one of the smart women's colleges in the East here."

"You didn't tell me about the colleges."

"There was no need to, it wouldn't have helped us. But it'll help us a whole heap now."

"You mean make a tour of them and try to spot her in their records?"

"Louis Pink? Impossible. The name was a phony; I had a buddy check the immigration rolls. She's in one of those college yearbooks, sure, but under her real name, whatever that is. No, I was talking about finding this new girl."

"Keep talking then."

Redding did, anyway. "We want a girl who's authentic as possible, right? What if we went up to a couple of the colleges and checked out the grads that were English? Places like Smith and Vassar get a lot of English girls. We pick some who are the right age, right physical type, no family hangups, et cetera, and see if we can't find one who'd be good in the part. Then we put the proposition to her. If she has any acting talent at all and thinks money's as cute as we do, she'll go for it."

"Aw, Henry." Marsha tried to shake her head and drink at the same time. "I admire your spirit, the way you can bounce back and all that, but you're asking for the moon. The odds against doing that and coming up with somebody must be, I don't know, a zillion to one."

"I like long shots," he said. "They pay off better."

'Then, good luck to you, Henry. I hope you make it."

The smile on Redding's face shortened. ''Why, where are you going?"

"Well, you don't need me anymore, I flunked."

"Sure, I need you. You're on the payroll as long as you want."

"But what do I do?"

Redding told her. "You're the new Miss Cruft."

Marsha's mouth dropped into a small loop. "You want me to teach a refined English girl how to hustle?"

"Well, she's going to have to know, and she's going to have to be damned convincing at it. She's going to have to look like a hooker, move like one, dress like one. She's going to have to know the lingo. She's going to have to appear to be the genuine made in Gary, Indiana, article."

Marsha just went on looking at him and his Fourth of July grin.

"This is it, Marsha, the big numbers this time. We're going to be rolling in the stuff. We handle it right, it'll be a breeze."

Chapter Three

The shiny new Ford zipped through early-morning Westchester and settled down on the parkway for the run north. Redding had rented the car because, like most of the inhabitants of Manhattan, he didn't own one. Owning a car in New York City was only for the rich or the brave.

Marsha was sitting beside him; she'd wanted to come, claiming that she hadn't been out of the city since the World's Fair. When she got tired of watching trees go by, she asked him a question.

"Which college are we going to again?"

"Vassar."

"You think you'll do better there than the other one— what's its name, Jones?"

"Smith," Redding said. "Yes, I do. Vassar has always had a very strong drama school."

"I don't get the connection."

"We're looking for an actress so it makes sense to start with the drama department."

"I guess," Marsha answered. "Just as long as the drama department had some English girls."

"You kidding? Dozens."

She squinted at him. "What are you, a clairvoyant? How do you know a thing like that?"

She had to wait out his answer while he swept around a big Buick in the wrong lane. "Simple tradition. If we were looking for a German girl, I'd check the music department first; for a French or an Italian girl, the art department. But the English are poets and playwrights. Performers."

"You sure about that?"

'Til prove it to you. Quick, name the best actor you ever saw. Movie, stage, TV, anything."

Marsha didn't have to think about it. "Victor Mature."

"Victor Mature!" Redding took his eyes off the road to see if he was being kidded. He wasn't. "But," he said, flustered, "how about Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, Alan Bates?"

"They're good, too," Marsha conceded.

They argued the relative merits of Mature and Olivier, but it resulted in a stalemate so they were mainly silent for the rest of the trip. When the Poughkeepsie sign came up, Redding took the turnoff and fifteen minutes later they were on the campus.

They parked in the visitors' lot and walked over tailored green lawns, water sprinklers spinning light in the warm morning air. It was a pretty place and surprisingly extensive, new buildings blending in happily with older parts of the college. There was a feeling of expensive serenity about it that Redding liked but Marsha wasn't so sure. Now that she was here, the thought of being surrounded by lots of smart people with degrees made her a little nervous. But she was hardly surrounded; summer school was on and the campus was uncrowded.

When two young men passed them with books under their arms Marsha said, "Isn't this a women's college?"

"Used to be," Redding said. "It's coed now but they still have a lot more girls than boys."

He'd called ahead so they were expected. They found the right building and were shown into the office of the professor of drama, who turned out to be a pleasant, motherly type who looked as though she knew how to bake pies.

Redding introduced Marsha as his assistant and launched right in. "First of all, ma'am, thank you for seeing us at such short notice."

The woman twittered; she was excited and impressed by being consulted by show business people. "Not at all, Mr. Redding. I sometimes think we got a little stale just teaching

theory. It's important to meet people who are actually creating theater today."

Redding backed off a little. "Well, as I explained to you on the phone, I'm only a casting agent."

The professor wagged a finger. "Ah, but you're actively involved in what I call the Now theater, and that's so important. I mean, we study the classics, of course, but in their own way the message that people like Pinter and Stoppard, Storey and Rydell have for us is just as timeless and urgent. Wouldn't you agree with that, Miss Williams?"

"One hundred percent," said Marsha.

Redding jumped in before Marsha added Victor Mature to the list. He told the woman much the same as he'd told Miss Cruft, plus a few new curlicues. "The producer is insisting on a new face, somebody unknown, and English, as I've said. So we thought you might remember one of your girls you've had through the department here, somebody who's living around the New York area and who has some dramatic talent and could be persuaded to read for the part."

The woman was leaning forward, eating it up. "Why, I think that's a marvelous idea, casting a complete amateur." She looked at Marsha. "Wasn't it Rossellini who used to do that?"

"All the time," Marsha said.

Redding said the same thing again so he could say something quickly. "So we thought you might remember somebody."

The woman was really excited now; she was midwife at the birth of a new star.

"Oh, I remember all my girls. All the actresses, anyway."

"You've been here some time?"

"Twelve years. Just a moment, I'll get the yearbooks."

Twelve years; that was a break.

The woman scuttled from the room, banged around in an outer office, and reappeared carrying some large leather-bound scrapbooks. She plunked them down on her desk. "If she's got to be in her mid-thirties, that would make her class

of '62 or thereabouts. I've brought some others, anyway." She began to leaf through the scrapbooks, still talking as they gathered around her. "We usually end the year with a little production of our own. There"—she found what she was looking for—"there's our production of Ring Round the Moon, 1960. You can see all the names listed underneath." The photograph was a glossy eight by ten. It showed the cast gathered for a group shot with some kind of set in the background, and although the shot was poorly lit, the professor seemed to have no trouble identifying the faces.

"English, English," she said. "Donna Greig, but she was from Boston. Funny, I don't see anybody and we always have one or two English girls."

She closed the book and Redding shifted it for her. They opened the next year's.

"Sixty-one," she said, flipping the pages. "Here it is, Saint Joan. Now, let me—" She pointed excitedly to a group shot of the cast. "Why, of course, Jennifer Copeland. A fine actress, played the lead."

"And she was English?" Redding asked. He wanted to make absolutely sure. "Oh, yes. Beautiful voice. She'd be perfect for you."

"She wasn't short, was she?" It was hard to tell from the group shot. "We're looking for a tallish girl."

"Above average," the woman told him.

"Great!" Redding checked the name again and scribbled it down. "Anybody else?"

"No-o-o, not that year."

They went on to '62. She came to the group shot and smiled in fond memory. "Hedda Gabbler."

"English?" Marsha asked.

"Any of them?" Redding added, as if that was what his assistant had meant.

"Ummm, yes! Yes, indeed! Judy Prior. Lovely girl. Write her name down."

Redding was already doing it. This was starting to pay off.

The woman went to the next book and once again turned

to the photograph of the class production. "Oh dear," she said, strolling down Memory Lane again, "The Tempest. I'm afraid we were a little ambitious that year, although it's such a fascinating play. You can pull so many different meanings out of it." She looked at Marsha, who saw it coming but had no place to hide. "For example, in Act Two when Antonio says to Sebastian, 'And by that destiny to perform an act whereof what's past is prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge,' what do you think Shakespeare meant by that?"

Marsha looked back at her. "What do you think he meant?"

"Well, I think it's a reference to the fact that the past is a mere prologue decreed by Destiny to the deed they are about to commit, but that the future, that is, when they do the deed, is within their own hands."

Marsha considered it. "That's what /think he meant."

The professor was delighted.

Redding asked about the girls in the cast and the woman spotted somebody but changed her mind.

That left the last book. The photograph showed a group of girls in doublet and hose, one or two in long flowing gowns.

"Ah yes, the Bard again. I don't know why we tried him twice running; he's really too difficult for amateurs. But, um, let me see—" Once again her finger pointed out a face. "Margaret McCann. She played Juliet."

Redding scribbled down the name. "Good actress?"

"Well"—the woman wanted to be kind—"her performance was half-good, half-bad, let's say. But she was crazy about the stage. Desperately wanted to be an actress."

"And she's English?"

"Very much so."

"Great," he said. He looked up from his notebook. "And that's it?"

"That's all, I'm afraid."

Redding sat down and checked his notes. "That gives us three to try. Now comes the hard part, locating them."

The professor handed him a beautiful surprise; she told him that they kept in touch with their alumni and that she could get the addresses with one fast phone call. She proved it, too.

"Too bad," she said as she hung up a few minutes later, "Judy Prior moved back to England. However, the other two are living in the country, both of them within striking distance." She handed Redding the names and addresses she'd jotted down and Redding got to his feet. There was a round of thanks and mutual compliments and the woman showed them out. She held Redding back as Marsha went through the door.

"That's a clever girl you have there, Mr. Redding. I'd hold onto her."

"Oh, I intend to."

Outside, Marsha said, "Just two. Not as good as you hoped, huh?"

"It's two more than we got here with."

"When are you going to contact them?"

"If I can find a phone, right now."

He found a public booth easily enough and he went in to call. On the theory that they may as well shoot their best shot first, Redding called the one the woman had said was a fine actress. It was a Pound Ridge, New York, number.

"Is this Jennifer Copeland?"

The voice that had answered was clearly English but a lot older than he'd expected.

"This is her mother. Can I help you?"

Redding went into his agent story again; he was getting pretty tired of it. ". . . So I was wondering if it'd be possible for me to see your daughter today. Just for a chat, get to know her a little."

The woman on the line went into a flap. "But this is amazing. You can see her perform today. Tonight, that is. She's in a production tonight!"

Redding's heart jumped. Could he be so lucky so soon? A professional actress? That was yards more than he'd ever

hoped for. Christ, that would be fantastic. It would mean her quitting whatever show she was in but with the money she'd be shooting for . . .

'That's perfect," he said. "Which show is she in?"

"The Boyfriend."

He racked his brains. Was the City Center doing a revival?

"Which company?"

'The Bedford Hills Amateur Dramatic Society."

Oh, God! Redding despaired.

"It's at the Bedford Hills Town Hall. Eight o'clock curtain. I'll leave two tickets at the door for you. Your name is Redding?"

"Uh-huh.," he replied in a zombielike voice.

"Jenny will be terribly excited. Maybe this is her big chance."

Redding agreed that maybe it was, thanked her, and hung up. He stepped out of the booth looking glum.

"No luck?"

Redding filled Marsha in but she didn't share his gloom. "But that's terrific, Henry, she's still acting. I mean she could have taken up bowling or something."

Redding said tiredly, "How much acting do you think you'd have to do to play Bedford Hills?"

"Not much, I guess, but you never know. What about the other name?"

He handed her the piece of paper and she read from it. "Margaret McCann, now Mrs. John Ashland. Let me try this time."

Marsha was in and out of the phone booth in a couple of minutes; she looked perplexed.

"No good?"

"Well, we're seeing her. Five o'clock. I only spoke to her husband but I don't think he's wild about the idea."

"How did he sound?"

"Like he was on the way to the electric chair and the phone rang."

"Well, it's her we're interested in, not him." Redding

looked down at his shoes. The day was still gorgeous; a soft breeze blowing in from the river wafted through the elms, moving their dappled shadows on the grass. But Redding looked ready for a cold drizzle.

"Hey," Marsha said, "what happened to all that bubbling confidence? We got two names, didn't we? And we've got two interviews set up. We could have left here with zilch."

He nodded, uncheered. "Yeah, I know. It's just that I'm beginning to have big doubts. Sure, we'll check out those two but we'll probably end up going to Bryn Mawr and then Smith and then Radcliffe . . ."

"Look, what do you say we take them one at a time? Why don't we go into town, grab a bite, then go see what Margaret Ashland is like?" She took his arm. "Come on, Henry. Who knows, we might get lucky first time out."

The Ashlands lived in a big house in a green and leafy suburb outside New Haven. Mr. Ashland had been very definite that they arrive exactly on time, so they had to park and kill twenty minutes before walking up the red pebble drive.

"This Margaret Ashland," Marsha said, trying to recall the yearbooks, "was she the one in the suit of armor?"

"No, that was the other girl, Saint Joan. This one played Juliet, '64."

A man opened the door for them.

"Mr. Ashland, I'm—"

"Come in, please," Mr. Ashland said. He had a face like an usher at a funeral and his voice had a matching sepulchral tone. He gestured toward closed double doors off the hall. "Please go right in. You're expected."

Mr. Ashland watched them walk to the doors, that same hangdog expression on his face.

Redding closed a hand over the knob and pushed.

They froze.

Posed by the sofa in the middle of the room was the absolutely still figure of a large big-boned woman in a long flow-

ing gown. She was gazing into a thick crystal goblet clutched in her hands.

"Oh, if I wake, shall I not be distraught?" she asked the glass in a loud tremolo, "environed with all these hideous fears, and madly play with my forefathers'joints. . . ."

"What did she say?" Marsha said.

"... And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud? Oh, look!" She swung around and pointed a shaking finger at Redding. "Methinks I see my cousin's ghost seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body on a rapier's point. Stay, Tybalt, stay! Romeo, I come . . ."—she got a stranglehold on the goblet—". . . This do I drink to thee."

With a practiced action she tossed back an imaginary shot of poison, let the glass drop to the thick broadloom, rolled her eyes, misjudged a step backward, gave a small cry, and vanished behind the sofa.

Redding quietly closed the door and led Marsha back to the front entrance.

Mr. Ashland let them out and as they went past him Marsha gave him a sad look and a little handshake and Redding laid a consoling hand on his arm. Eyes downcast, Ashland nodded his thanks and closed the door silently after them. They got into the car, drove around the corner and parked where they'd waited a few minutes before.

After two thoughtful minutes of staring straight ahead, Marsha spoke. "What did the professor say about that woman's performance?"

Redding was barely there. "She said she was only half-bad in '64."

Marsha made a pensive sucking noise. "Well, she's matured into a full disaster now."

Redding didn't give her an argument. "Jesus, when the professor said that Shakespeare was too hard for them she must have been thinking of her."

"I never knew he was so porny," Marsha admitted. "All that stuff about her playing with her forefather's joint ..."

They drove back to the turnpike and headed south, stopping in Darien for dinner and a couple of drinks. They felt better after that, partly because of the drinks, but mainly because the girl they were on their way to see had to be an improvement.

Saint Joan couldn't possibly be worse than Juliet.

The town of Bedford, in the northeastern part of Westchester, is actually four towns in one: Bedford Village, a little cute for some, authentic for others; Bedford Center, not really the center of anything except itself; Bedford Four Corners, an apt description right there; and Bedford Hills, which has supermarkets, dry cleaners, garden supply stores, the Saw Mill River Parkway, and a Penn Central railroad station.

The town hall stands across from the stores on the other side of the tracks although, strictly speaking, there is no wrong side of the tracks in Bedford Hills, each side containing about an equal proportion of rich and socially prominent people.

Redding parked their Maverick between a BMW and a Jaguar and guided Marsha into the town hall. The tickets were waiting for them and they were shown to their seats, good ones up front. The audience was a living, breathing New Yorker cartoon; the Westchester set, all of them very formally dressed in very casual clothes. Everybody seemed to know everybody else and seat-hopped continually amid the buzz of happy and expectant conversation and the sound of soft, self-satisfied laughter.

Marsha opened her program to find the cast of players. It would have been hard to miss it; its only competitors were ads for a Chinese restaurant and a wine store.

"Polly, Jennifer Copeland," Marsha read out. "We have to look out for Polly."

Redding had already noted the fact.

The band arrived and took their places beneath the small

stage: two middle-aged men with golf-course tans, who sat down at back-to-back upright pianos, a serious-looking young girl carrying a saxophone, and three teen-age boys, one with a banjo, another with an amplified bass guitar, and the third settling himself behind a set of drums.

They tuned up with a few random phrases, the lights dimmed, and the audience scuttled back to its seats.

Redding slumped a little lower in his and whispered to Marsha, "Get ready for a fast exit."

But their exit turned out to be just as slow and protracted as everybody else's. The band was great, the duo pianists were knockouts, the girl on the sax really swung, and the kids backed them up with all the rhythm they needed. The production was smart and moved briskly. But what turned the show into yelling, whistling, foot-stomping delight was Jennifer Copeland.

She was fantastic. She did everything. Sang, danced, acted. In 'The Boyfriend" number, just before the interval, she did an incredibly sexy Charleston that stopped the show and Redding found himself on his feet cheering as loudly as everybody else, but for a different reason.

He turned to Marsha, who was on her feet beside him, pounding her hands together. He had to yell to be heard.

"Bingo!"

There were three encores, then the electrician decided it was late enough and doused the house lights. They went backstage but half the audience was already there and they didn't even get close to the girl. But her mother spotted them; she'd seen them pick up the tickets at the door.

"Mr. Redding? I'm Jenny's mother. We can talk in here."

She bundled them into a tiny dressing room; Mrs. Cope-land was the bundling type, small and plump and effervescent. She was really brimming over now.

Redding quickly introduced Marsha and launched into a glowing review about the star of the show. He said he want-

ed to talk to her and the woman invited them out for the next morning. There was another barrage of praise and she went off in a fizz of excitement.

Redding thumped a fist down onto the dressing room table. "Hot damn! Finding a girl so good so fast . . . it's the kind of break . . . you just know it's going to work now."

"You have to get her to do it first," Marsha said. "She may balk."

"She'll do it." He was back to radiating confidence again; its aura practically glowed around him, like ectoplasm. "She won't be able to turn it down."

There was a plug-in makeup mirror on the table, a dead or spare light bulb beside it. He picked up the bulb, tossed it toward the ceiling, then snatched it out of the air as if it were a prize he'd won. "That girl's going to make this thing go, Marsha. She's going to take us all the way."

Chapter Four

The Copeland residence in Pound Ridge was the kind house paint companies choose when they advertise. It was a many-roomed brick and shingle Dutch Colonial, an original Dutch Colonial. There were no neighbors, just soft green rolling hills leading to a large pond on one side and, at the rear, horse stables with horses in them.

Looking at it, thinking about the job ahead of them, Marsha didn't feel like getting out of the car. "It's not going to be easy. You know that, don't you?" she said to Redding. "She thinks you want her for Broadway only she's thinking the theater and you mean the street. She's not going to like finding that out."

Redding reached behind him and lifted a short boxlike case. "I know it. That's why I brought my sales pitch."

They walked to the door where Jennifer Copeland's mother stood wearing what appeared to be her one expression. She greeted them and smiled them into a huge living room with wide tongue and groove floorboards, Colonial rookers, Welsh dressers packed with pewter, dark whaling paintings on exposed brick walls, and the largest hooked rug Redding had ever seen. They traded pleasantries until Jennifer Copeland walked in, and after making the introductions her mother excused herself and left them alone.

"What are we all standing for? Sit down, please," the girl said.

She looked a lot different from the way she'd looked the night before; it had been hard to get a true picture of her with the stage makeup and the distortion of the footlights, but it was easy now. Individually her features weren't marvelous; the straight nose turned up slightly at the tip, the

mouth was a touch too wide, and the eyes slanted into an elfin look. Her hair was dark brown and cut short with an unadventurous fringe across her forehead. There was no one striking thing about her except the combination of everything—that was striking.

The flapper dress she'd worn had disguised her figure but the shirt and jeans she had on now showed it off. Taken in sections, or as a whole, her figure qualified, maybe not for a Playboy centerspread, but for any man's idea of a good-looking woman; it was certainly Redding's idea and he had to stop himself from looking too long.

He placed the case at his feet and sat back on the sofa. "Miss Copeland," he began. 'T hope you know how good you were last night. I guess you got a hint from the way everybody was cheering."

The girl smiled and took the compliment modestly. "I had a lot of friends there. There couldn't have been more than a dozen people I didn't know."

The voice was unmistakably English but nothing snooty or BBC about it. It was low and modulated, correct but easy on the ear, with crisp endings on her words.

"Friends or no friends," Redding said, "they know talent when they see it."

She made a little bow with her head. "Thank you, sir."

"Have you ever thought of acting professionally?" It was Marsha who asked and she could have bitten her tongue off; she knew she should have let Redding ease his way into it.

"I've been scouted once or twice," the girl replied, "but the consensus always seemed to be good amateur talent and no more." They could see that she hoped they'd come to tell her something better.

Redding shifted uncomfortably and coughed behind a hand. This was the hard part.

"Urn, Miss Copeland—"

"Jenny. Call me Jenny."

"Okay, Jenny." That put it off for another five seconds.

"As your mother's probably told you, Miss Williams and I are looking for a fresh English talent. And, as I told your mother, there's this Broadway show so we went up to Vas-sar—"

"Yes, my mother told me."

"Yes," Redding said. "Only what I told your mother, the part about the big Broadway show—well, I suppose you could call that a—well, I suppose you could call it a lie."

The girl frowned as if she'd only half-understood what he'd said. She glanced at Marsha but Marsha was looking down at her hands.

"I'm not a casting agent, Jenny. I'm a reporter on the Daily News."

"I see," she said slowly.

"I'm afraid I fooled you."

"I'm afraid you did. I was convinced you'd come here to—" She broke off. Then her face and her body straightened. "A reporter? You're here for some kind of story?"

"No, no story. I really am looking for an actress. It's just that it's not for a show."

"Mr. Redding"—her tone was polite enough but there was anger and disappointment buried in it, too—"if you don't want me for a show, what do you want me for?"

"Is there some place I can show some slides?"

"Slides?"

"It's the best way of explaining."

For a moment Redding didn't think she was going to give him the chance, but then she rose quickly, told them to follow her, and led them through a door into an adjoining room. It was a small space set up as a workroom, a sewing machine on a tabletop, a dressmaker's dummy, some baskets around the floor.

She watched in silence as Redding opened the case he'd brought, took out a carousel projector, plugged it into a wall socket, and pulled the curtains over the window to darken the room.

Marsha stood behind him; she had no more idea of what was coming than the other girl had.

The click of a switch sounded and a circle of brilliant light splashed against the white wall. He slipped a transparency into the machine and the circle of light was transformed into a shimmering bottle green. He moved the focus dial and the green swam away from them, focused down, and became a superb necklace enthroned on black velvet.

"Jenny, do you know anything about jewelry?"

He couldn't see her face clearly in the half-light but there was a hostile straightness to her back and her arms were folded tightly. "Mr. Redding, I asked what you wanted with me. You have exactly sixty seconds to answer."

"I'm getting around to that, but it's best if I tell you the whole thing from the start." He went straight on with it. 'There are eight emeralds in that necklace, perfectly cut and matched. Harry Winston bought the stones in Colombia and made them up. About a month later—in May, 1964, to be exact—Ben Kull, the oil man, saw it in Winston's window, bought it, and gave it to his wife. The next time she came to New York she brought it with her, but it was stolen when she left it on her hotel dressing table while she took a bath. It made headlines. Maybe you remember it—"

"I was out of the country that year," she said flatly. "Please hurry."

"The police never got it back, never found out who stole it. But they're pretty sure they know who bought it from the thief."

Redding clicked the switch in his hand and the slide changed. The brilliant green stones were replaced by a grainy black and white photograph that had been transferred to a slide. "This man."

The face was moon-shaped, fiftyish, clefts in the chin and forehead, the hair shiny and combed back flat. There were two other pictures and Redding clicked them on one after the other. The second one showed the man getting out of a car, and the third, seated by a pool, his stomach bulging

against a swimsuit. In all three the mouth wore a half-smile as if the man knew a secret he wasn't going to share.

"Frank Kurtz," Redding said. "He was the top jewel fence in the country until he died in October of '64."

The girl said nothing and Redding hurried on.

"About a week or so before Kurtz died he met this girl."

The switch clicked in Redding's hand and on the wall the man's face vanished and was replaced by a woman's. It was a blowup of the shot Redding had shown Marsha but the enlargement failed to make the girl's face any clearer; the shadows across it were just as impenetrable and the way the raised collar of her coat blended in with her hair made it even harder to see any detail.

"She was a prostitute. She called herself Lois Pink. We don't know what her real name was and we don't know what she looked like. This is the only photo anybody's been able to find."

He changed the slide to the original shot of Kurtz and the girl standing together. "We know she was dark-haired, as you can see, and around five feet seven or eight. We know Kurtz's height so we know hers."

Jenny Copeland still said nothing; she was standing very still as she looked at the picture, and Redding figured he had her hooked.

"Okay, so Kurtz met Lois Pink and fell for her. When he died he left her a little trinket. Guess what it was. Only problem was the girl wasn't around to collect. Just before Kurtz died she disappeared; just vanished, no trace. Kurtz really must have been crazy about her because he asked somebody to find her and give her the necklace: his partner, George Devine."

There followed three shots of Devine: one walking a dog, another talking to somebody, and the third full face. It was unmistakably the same man in all three, the face well bar-bered and massaged, the sparse hair faultlessly in place, and a mustache like a third eyebrow above lips so thin it was hard to believe they concealed a mouth.

"Devine never did find her so he still has the necklace."

"How do you know that?" The words jumped from her mouth.

"Because something happened a few months ago—well, we know he's still looking." He changed the slide. "This is the last character in the story, Devine's bodyguard."

There was only one slide of Harry Tobler; that kind of face needed only one shot. It was big and lumpy and hard and totally lacking in any kind of expression. The eyes were the main feature. Enlarged behind enormously thick lenses, they stared at the camera like dead things floating in a pool. Redding thumbed the switch and the wall became a circle of light again.

"Jenny, stand against the wall for a moment."

"What?"

"Please."

She hesitated, seemed about to say something, then walked forward. She turned and shaded her eyes against the bright beam.

"Close your eyes," Redding told her. "Keep your hand down."

He put the projector into reverse, clicked the switch repeatedly, stopped at a slide. It was the blowup of Lois Pink. He focused the shot so that, in effect, Jennifer Copeland's face was superimposed over that of the girl in the photograph. The outline of the hair and the coat collar matched exactly. "My God," Marsha said, "that's not a bad fit."

The girl opened her eyes, blinked, then moved. She leaped to the window, ripped open the curtains and yanked the projector's lead from the wall point. She wheeled on Redding, a look of fury on her face.

"You can't be serious. You can't honestly—you want me to impersonate that girl. You want me to play a New York whore for real, just so you can get your grubby hands on some jewelry."

"Now hold on for—"

Redding's appeal was refused; she went at him like a storm.

"You've come out here telling me how great and marvelous I was and stupid me believing you, then you turn round and—I just can't believe it. You lie your way into my living room and calmly put on a show about the wildest scheme I ever heard of. And why me? That's what I want to know. Of all the people in the world, why pick on me?"

"Because you fit the part. Lois Pink was upper-class English like you. She went to an eastern women's college like you. She was tall and dark-haired like you. And lastly, and most importantly, we need a damn good actress like you."

"But there must be other women who qualify on all those scores, hundreds."

"I know it. But why look any further when we've found somebody perfect?"

"Why?" His effrontery staggered her. "I'll tell you why. Because you haven't found somebody. You haven't found anybody at all. It's the stupidest thing I ever heard of, your whole thinking's cockeyed. If the girl's supposed to be a prostitute why don't you get a real one, some dumb floozie who'd jump at the chance to be an actress."

Marsha answered that one. "He already tried that but the dumb floozie turned out to be a dumb actress, too."

The way Marsha said it, with a hint of tired worldliness, wasn't lost on the girl. She whipped her gaze to her, took a second look at the clothes Marsha wore, and the cocky stance of her body, and made a quick reappraisal of Red-ding's assistant.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean—"

"Forget it. I'm unwoundable on that score."

Redding said blandly, "Jenny—"

"Miss Copeland, thank you."

Corrected, he took another shot at it. "Miss Copeland, I can see how at first blush this might strike you as—well, a little exotic—"

"Exotic?" It was the ceiling she asked. "Mr. Redding, this isn't a trip to the South Seas you're talking about; it's a crazy plan to steal something from an underworld figure that could possibly be just a wee bit dangerous."

"Yes, I suppose I'd have to admit that's true. As a matter of fact, and I think it's only fair I should tell you this, it has been tried before. A girl named Patsy Stanley took a stab at it but it—er—didn't work out."

She asked him coldly, "What happened?"

Redding tried to be casual about it. "Devine killed her."

There was a long period of iron silence, then Jennifer Copeland, her head shaking in wonder, said, "Why didn't you say so? I mean, that makes all the difference. I was beginning to think there wouldn't be any laughs in this."

Tolerantly he said, "I understand how you feel, and it's true there could be a small element of risk involved but—"

The girl exploded. "Oh, for God's sake!" She marched to the door and held it open. "Would you both kindly leave now."

"Okay," Redding said, "we'll go." He started to put the projector back into its case. "But you know what you're giving up, don't you? The chance to be the highest-paid actress in the world."

"What are you talking about?"

"One of the big insurance companies paid off on that necklace, down to the last penny. I've been in touch with them, anonymously, of course. They'll pay 50 percent of its value for its recovery." Redding was telling the truth for a change. "With you along we're a cinch to get that necklace and I'd be willing to pay you seventy-five thousand dollars from the proceeds of the sale. For six or seven days' work. And no actress has ever been paid that much for a one-week run."

When she didn't come back at him immediately, he pressed on.

"And as for the moral angle, you can feel good about it. We wouldn't be stealing from Devine; that necklace doesn't belong to him. It belongs to Ben Kull's wife. So we'd merely be returning it to its rightful owner."

The girl remained silent. Marsha thought that Redding was getting to her but apparently she was only holding her-

self in check. She said very quietly and distinctly, "Mr. Redding, Miss Williams, good-bye."

There was no arguing with that tone of voice and Redding led the way past her through the living room to the front door. The girl reached it before he did and pulled it wide.

Redding held out a card. "Look, here's my number. If you change your mind call me at home."

The girl left it in his hand. She closed her eyes, opened them, and said carefully, "Mr. Redding. There is something you don't seem to be able to grasp. I am not saying just no to your proposition; I am saying absolutely, incontestably, unconditionally no to your proposition. I have never, in all my born days, heard an idea that was so brainless, so absurd, so reckless, and I can assure you that I could never, not for the remotest moment, give one single thought to ever lending myself to such a venture, or in any way be associated with such an obvious nut case as your good self. What I'm trying to tell you, Mr. Redding, is that the answer is no, non, nein, nyet, and whatever no is in Swahili, the Morse code, and semaphore. I trust I have succeeded in making myself clear. Good day."

The door slammed after them.

Redding bent down and slipped the card under the door and from inside came a stifled scream.

Marsha hurried him away. At the car she said glumly, "So that's that. What are you going to do now?"

He looked at her, surprised by the question; it was crystal clear to him. "Go home and wait for her call."

Chapter Five

But she didn't call.

She came in person two days later.

Coincidentally, Marsha arrived a few minutes before. "Hi, Marsha," Redding said, opening the door. "Come on in."

Marsha didn't move. "How are you, Henry? Okay?"

"Fine."

"You're not rushing out to the office? You don't have to see your bank manager this morning or anything important?"

"No, just relaxing. Why?"

"Because I have a little present for you," Marsha said. She transferred her pocketbook to her left hand, took a fast step forward, and punched him in the eye. It was a good blow and it snapped his head back.

"Sorry it isn't something bigger," she said, walking by him.

Redding, his hand still on the doorknob, held his head back.

"Ugh!" Redding said. Slowly he brought his head down, one eye blinking fast.

"It's the thought that counts," he said. He closed the door and turned to her.

"Would you kindly tell me what in God's name that was for?"

Redding had a studio apartment and except for two canvas director's chairs the sofa bed was the only place to sit. Marsha chose the sofa bed. "I got to thinking yesterday, Henry. You offered Jennifer Copeland seventy-five thousand dollars and you only offered me twenty-five thousand

dollars. And in front of me, too. I don't think that was very nice."

"And for that—" He raised his hands, bewildered. "For that you take a shot at me? I had to offer her more. She lives on five acres in Pound Ridge. Twenty-five grand wouldn't have impressed her that much."

"But it was good enough to impress me, huh?"

"Well, hell, different amounts of money mean different things to different people."

Marsha didn't buy it. "It's still the same job, Henry. Same role, same risks, and same fat reward for you if it comes off. So I figured I owed you a lump."

"Well, you sure know how to pay off, lady. Look at that!" He examined his eye in a wall mirror. "It's swelling already. Goddamn it, I'm going to have a shiner."

The doorbell rang.

He growled loudly, "Who is it?"

"Jennifer Copeland."

Redding's mood changed instantly. He shot Marsha a triumphant look and reached for the doorknob.

"Miss Copeland, how nice to see you."

"Good morning." She looked at his eye. "What happened, you run into a door?"

"No," he said, "but it rhymes." He ushered her in. "You know Miss Williams, of course."

"Hi," Marsha said.

The English girl stopped. "I'm sorry if I'm interrupting-"

"No, no. Miss Williams just dropped by to slug me in the face but I think she's finished now."

"All through," Marsha confirmed.

"Please sit down, Miss Copeland. You get into town often?"

She sat in one of the director's chairs and started talking. It was a moment before Redding really heard what she was saying, he was so busy getting an eyeful of her. She looked

smashing, as cool and fresh as if it were May outside and not soggy July. She wore an orange and yellow shirtdress that followed her shape like a second skin and a lot of the shape was on display, seated as she was with her legs crossed high.

"I've been thinking about your proposition, Mr. Redding, and I think you were right. I may have been a little too hasty in turning it down without thinking it through first."

Redding smiled at her, she smiled at him. They were getting on beautifully.

"As you pointed out, at first the idea did strike me as— er—exotic I think was the word you used, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw that you made some pretty good points. You're right on the moral angle; it wouldn't be stealing seeing that we'd only be returning the necklace, if we were successful, to its rightful owner."

"Exactly," Redding said.

"As for the practical part, I wondered how on earth I could ever get into the role of this woman—Laura Pink, is it?"

"Lois Pink."

"Lois Pink. But then, of course"—she glanced at Marsha—"I realized that Miss Williams could help me out there."

Marsha opened her hands. "At your service."

"So that took care of the practical problem. I must admit that what still made me hesitate was the fact that it could be potentially dangerous."

Redding shrugged that one away as if she were talking about putting on roller skates for the first time.

"But then I realized," she went on, "that making a lot of money always involves a certain amount of risk—the stock market or commodity investments, say."

"True, true," Redding agreed.

"But, naturally, it's the money that finally swayed me. I don't know anybody who doesn't need all they can get to-

day. So," she said, "I've decided to accept your proposition."

Redding slapped a hand down onto his knee. "Great!"

But she hadn't finished yet.

"With one small change in the arrangements."

"You want top billing," Redding said, and forced a little laugh. "Name it," he said. "Anything you want."

"I want two hundred thousand dollars."

Big silence.

"You what?" Small voice.

She went on just as pleasantly as before. "I called the Daily News —your own newspaper, I believe—and asked the information service to check on that story of the theft, which they kindly did. That necklace is really fabulous, it was insured for eight hundred thousand dollars and, by your own admission, Mr. Redding, the insurance company is willing to pay half for its return. That's four hundred thousand dollars. I think it only fair and proper that we should share the proceeds."

Wherever Redding's voice had gone it came roaring back in a hurry.

"Two hundred grand. You want two hundred grand?"

"As you intimated, I'm the star of the show. I think I should be paid accordingly."

Over on the bed Marsha was following the exchange like a tennis rally; she was loving it. But Redding wasn't; he was still partly in shock.

"Two hundred—I could get Barbra Streisand for two hundred grand."

The girl looked interested. "Oh? Is that what she wanted?"

Redding's mouth did the opening and closing trick. This girl was clobbering him; he decided to clinch and rest for a while.

"Hold up, now. Wait just a mother-grabbin' second. I'm bankrolling this whole thing and I've got big expenses.

Hell, I'm paying Marsha a hundred a day and cutting her in for a piece of the action as well. And there will be other people to pay, lots of things we'll need, and I'm the one taking all the financial risk. When I offered you seventy-five, that was tops."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, it still comes down to seventy-five thousand for me, three hundred and twenty-five to you, and that's just a touch inequitable. I'm surprised you haven't heard, Mr. Redding, these days the women play for the same prize money as the men."

Marsha couldn't help it, she clapped her hands. Redding could have killed her. He spun on his heel and took a turn around the room.

"You're making me sound like a schlock promoter who's just hiring the hall. I set this whole thing up, I dug out the facts, I came up with the idea. It's my baby from start to finish. All I need's a little help for which I'm willing to pay handsomely. Seventy-five thousand's not only a bloody good offer, Miss Copeland, it's the only one you're going to get."

She gathered up her pocketbook, slid out of the chair, and started toward the door.

"You don't have to give me your answer now, Mr. Redding. Think it over."

He stalked after her, his voice up a few quavers. "I don't have to think it over. What's to think over? Jesus, you walk in here looking like a peach sundae and pull a pay or don't play on me ... I mean, what am I supposed to do, roll over like an Airedale? You're not the only actress with a toffee accent, there are hundreds around and I'm going to find one who knows a generous offer when she sees one and doesn't try to hit the management for a ridiculous salary hike before she's even been to bat."

She opened the door and turned to face him. "I take it then that your answer is no."

"It's not only no, Miss Copeland, it's the biggest no you ever heard. A marching band couldn't spell it out."

She pressed a piece of paper into his hand and moved off down the corridor. "If you change your mind," she said, "call me at home."

He knew what he'd find on that piece of paper but he had to look. He was right. It was her phone number.

He slammed the door shut. "My God, the hide of that woman."

He opened the door and slammed it shut again, symbolically throwing her out twice.

Over on the bed Marsha was biting her lip against the laughter in her mouth. "You know what she's going to do, don't you?" she said. She began to giggle.

"I don't give a rat's what she does. Let her hold up a bank, not me." He glared at the door, glared at Marsha. "All right," he demanded. "What's she going to do?"

The giggle became a fat laugh. "She's going to go home—she's going to go home and wait for your call."

The truth of her words transfixed him.

He brought the piece of paper up to his face and scrunched it up in front of his nose. Two women in five minutes and they'd both beaten him.

Chapter Six

He called her the next day and accepted her terms. The alternative was just about unthinkable: trips to some more colleges, sifting through yearbooks, and the really hard bit, trying to find somebody who was right for the part. Redding knew that even if they did find a girl she could never be as right as Jennifer Copeland. And the better the actress, the better the chances of the whole thing working. When he thought about it from that angle, the prospect of splitting the take down the middle didn't appear so horrendous; half of four hundred thousand dollars was a lot better than the lion's share of nothing. Besides, he couldn't spend money if he wound up dead and that was a definite possibility if somebody screwed up, so it wasn't such a tough decision to make.

It was a long phone conversation he had with her.

He first established that she could get away almost immediately; she said that was no problem. Then he told her a lot of what he planned, concentrating on what he wanted her to do. Again she said there'd be no problem. He gave her a number of instructions and made her repeat them, they arranged when and where to meet, and said good-bye.

That was first thing Tuesday morning. He spent the day running an errand upstate and when he got back that evening went out to La Guardia and caught a plane.

Wednesday night he arrived back with more luggage than he'd left with.

Thursday he spent the day looking at short-term sublets, found one that suited, and paid three months in advance in lieu of signing a lease.

Friday he met Jenny at Grand Central and carried her suitcase up the stairs to the line of cabs.

She asked where they were going.

"I've rented an apartment for us."

"Us?"

"I'm Henry Elliot from Atlanta. You're Jenny Steiner from Atlanta. We're together."

She gave him a hard look. "You didn't tell me that."

"There are a couple of things I didn't tell you. I don't want to give you everything at once, you've got quite a lot to learn."

"When do I get the full rundown?"

"Later. Right now, all you have to do is remember your name and where you're from. And if you have to speak to anybody, try to sound American."

She didn't comment on that and they sat in silence. She looked different with blond'hair—Redding had got her to color it—but she still looked great; she would have looked great with candy-striped hair.

The address Redding had given the driver wasn't far from the station, an apartment building on Thirty-Eighth just off Lexington. It had been built in the early sixties and designed with a few delusions of grandeur. There was the inevitable awning over the entrance, a little windblown now, and a uniformed doorman, also a little windblown. The rest of it was standard New York rabbit warren.

Redding paid the driver and turned to the doorman, whose job didn't seem to include opening doors. Or, taking bags. "This is Miss Steiner. She's moving into 6G."

The doorman made a sad try at touching his cap. "Miss Steiner."

"Look after her, okay?" He handed the man some money.

"Yes, sir\" He took the bag. "Anything you want, Miss Steiner, you just ask for Max."

Jenny gave him a quick smile and the man carried the suitcase all of ten feet to the door and handed it back to Redding.

"The super around?" Redding asked.

"Sure thing. 2B."

There were two elevators, one out of order. They rode up

to the second floor where Redding pushed a bell and an elderly man answered the door.

"Mr. Neuman, this is Miss Steiner. Moving into 6G."

The man hovered at the half-open door, clearly impatient to get back to the TV they could hear inside.

Redding said, "She'd like to know about the laundry."

"Machines in the basement." He had a Scandinavian accent. "I lock 'em up at ten."

"Fine. Oh, and incidentally, some stuff will be coming in a day or two. I'd appreciate it if you'd send it right up."

The man grunted something, refused the money Redding offered him, and went back to his TV show.

As they walked back to the elevator Jenny said, "Is that one of the things you didn't tell me? I have to wash your socks?"

"That was just to get you established, for when somebody checks."

On the sixth floor they walked down the corridor to the end door on the right. Redding fumbled for keys. "I'm afraid this place isn't exactly what you're used to, but it was the only thing I could find that was available now."

He let her in to see for herself. The apartment was clean enough but it had been furnished on a tight budget and without any love: no floor covering, lopsided rattan blinds on the windows, metal hook-in shelving with a few plants in heavy ugly pots, and nothing else on the walls. The table and four chairs in the L-shaped dining area were actually garden furniture. And the beds, on opposite walls, were day sofas, in a bright green fabric over foam rubber. The two lamps that stood on round straw tables were the kind banks give away as premiums.

He apologized again for it. "Pound Ridge, it ain't."

"Look, I am aware that the whole world isn't quite like Pound Ridge, so please stop treating me like the rich kid who has to take a cab because the Rolls has a flat."

He put her suitcase down and acknowledged the reprimand with a little bow, then went to a wall closet and brought out three dresses on hangers.

"Think these will fit you?"

She examined the clothes. "I was wondering why you asked my size. Why do I need these? What's wrong with my own stuff?"

"Because of the label."

She looked. The labels bore store names that weren't familiar.

"I bought them in Atlanta," he said.

That raised her eyebrows. "You went all the way to Atlanta to buy me dresses?"

"And a few other odds and ends." There was some shelving inside the closet and he took some sweaters from it. "This is your stuff, too. There are some skirts there and some shoes and boots in the back."

"You really went on a spree."

"Kind of. The hardest part was buying used clothes that still looked good."

He opened the other half of the closet. "My stuff." He turned to her suitcase on the floor. "You didn't bring anything from Bergdorf's, did you?"

He got a stiff look for that one. "I did exactly as you told me. To the letter. Check the bag if you don't believe me."

"I believe you," he said. "It's just that I want Devine to believe you, too."

"How can you be sure he'll come here?"

"Because. He's going to want to check on you so the first thing he'll do is check your belongings. And you've got to look as though you're from Atlanta." He crouched over the suitcase, a handsome piece, pigskin with red plush inserts, and examined things: the shoes, the underwear, the jeans, and shirts. He held up a top.

"The label, is that a national brand?"

"You can buy it anywhere in the country."

"You sure about that?"

"Would you like me to call Women's Wear Daily and ask?"

"You're a great one for calling newspapers, aren't you?"

They hadn't quite forgiven each other for what they'd

done to each other. Even though the girl had come out way ahead on the deal, she'd still had to swallow her pride when she'd come back, and he'd had to swallow a lot more than that when he'd called her. So the attitude on both sides was polite, businesslike, and a little chilly.

Still rummaging in the suitcase, he brought out a framed photograph.

"Will that do?" she asked.

"It's perfect. You were a pretty girl then."

She caught the inference but it didn't bother her; she knew what she looked like now.

He stood the photograph on a shelf. "I've tried to cover everything but there may be something I've missed. Does anything bother you here?"

She looked around the closet and at the clothes, then picked up some boots. She put her hand inside them and pulled out some rolled-up newspaper.

"Did you block these?"

"Yeah, I figured a woman might do that and it helps our cause."

"In which way?"

"Take a look at the paper."

She unrolled it. It was a double page from the Atlanta Journal and dated four months back.

"Thorough, aren't you?" she said as if he were being bor-ingly bright, but she was impressed.

"I have to be thorough," he said. "You can bet Devine's going to be."

She closed the closet door and looked at him, down to brass tacks now. "I think I should know more about Devine. I think I should know more about everybody in this production. If you want a good performance out of me I have to know the other players inside out."

That suited Redding. They moved down the room to the table in the dining alcove, from which they had an unobstructed view of the building opposite, its apartments looking like rows of fish tanks stacked one on top of the other.

The apartment had another window near the closet, a small one that looked down on Lexington Avenue. At least the room had light.

''You want coffee before I start? I bought a few groceries."

She shook her head, sat down. "Start with the dead man."

Redding pulled out a chair for himself. "Frank Kurtz. He started out repairing watches in a jewelry store in Chicago. He graduated from the repair shop to the counter and learned the trade. He must have learned pretty well because not long after that he opened up on his own and began buying and selling. Some of the stuff was stolen but that was all right with Frank and he started to get a name for himself as a man who didn't ask questions and paid top prices. You with me so far?"

"Goon."

"He got caught with some one day—this is years ago now—and went up for it. He came out of the pen sadder but wiser and he was never caught with hot stuff again. Anyway, he went back to fencing jewelry and got bigger and better at it. Based as he was in Chicago, he was in a good position to handle stuff from the East Coast cities as well as from the West and he became the top man in the country. If you had a really good hot stone, no matter how hot it was, you went to Frank Kurtz. The police figured that about 90 percent of anything worth over a hundred grand passed through his hands."

She reacted to that, frowning. "If they knew that, how did he stay out of jail?"

"For one thing, he was smart. For another, there was unofficial pressure from the insurance companies."

"You're going to have to explain that."

Redding rocked back in his chair. "It's not hard. Practically all high-priced jewelry is insured and if it's stolen the companies take the loss, but what'll often happen is that the fence who's handling the stuff will sell it back to the insurance boys; that way they cut their losses. They're not crazy about doing business like that but they're practical people.

They cheer when a thief gets caught but they'd rather see a fence stay in circulation."

"All right, I'm with you."

"So when somebody lifted that necklace from Ben Kull's wife it was dead cert that a great piece like that would end up with Kurtz. But the insurance boys couldn't call him and make him an offer, they had to wait for him to approach them. It's all very hush-hush, as you can understand. Only thing was, he never did contact them. He held on to it."

"Maybe he had another buyer."

"He could have. Or, he could have been planning to auction it. A fence will do that sometimes if he's got hold of something really big. Who knows? It might have been just timing. Kurtz had a bad heart and he must have known he was on borrowed time. He'd met Lois Pink and gone bananas over her; maybe he figured the money he'd make selling the necklace wouldn't do him any good and he preferred to leave it to her."

She was silent, thinking about it, and Redding watched her. Like all good-looking women, whether she smiled or frowned or looked neutral her expression never detracted from the striking quality of her face; that was sculpted in.

He said, "It's wild, isn't it? A guy leaving a fortune to a girl off the street. Funny thing was Kurtz was rich enough to buy a stage full of showgirls every night but he got his jollies with street corner hustlers, although there must have been something special about Lois."

She nodded at that. "I don't suppose too many girls on the streets of Chicago spoke with an English accent."

"Neither did she, on the job. According to what we know, she made out she was American, although it's certain Kurtz knew she was English."

"Exactly what do you know about her? Any details you haven't told me?" She was paying a lot of attention to his answer.

"One or two, maybe. She got friendly with another hooker and told her a little about herself, that she'd been born

and had grown up rich in England, come to this country to go to college, and had a busted marriage somewhere along the way. But she never mentioned anything about the number one puzzle, why she was peddling her hips. It's certainly not the first time a girl from a good family has gone on the street but it's always a little surprising."

"Anything else?"

"Just one thing. She'd sometimes ask a hundred dollars, just from ordinary guys. The going price then was about ten bucks so it would appear she'd purposely price herself out of the market. I hate to play psychiatrist but it doesn't sound like she was doing it for the money."

"And you're sure Devine never got a look at her."

"Positive. He hired some very expensive detective agencies to track her down and the only description he could give them was a print of the same photograph we have. It's certain he never met her, nor did the bodyguard. It seems that when Kurtz went wenching he went solo."

Redding got up, moved into the tiny kitchen behind them and filled a kettle with water, rattled around in cupboards, and went on talking.

"Devine and Kurtz seem to have been more than just business partners; they were close friends as well. Devine went to work for Kurtz way back and Kurtz taught him everything and made him a rich man, and I suppose Devine never forgot it. Anyway, they must have trusted each other; certainly Kurtz trusted Devine, the way he gave him the necklace to pass on. Of course, a lot of people feel that Devine killed the girl to keep that necklace, which would certainly explain her disappearance."

"But you don't think so?"

"It doesn't hold water. For a start he wouldn't have to kill her if he wanted to keep it; it's doubtful she even knew about the necklace. And Devine certainly wasn't kidding about looking for her, he spent a fortune."

"But after a dozen years? What chance has he got?"

"People turn up after twenty years. She could be dead,

she could have changed her name or taken her old one back or left the country. But, whatever, Devine's still trying to keep his word to Kurtz."

"Honor among thieves," she said.

"Loyalty's probably closer, he made a promise and he intends to keep it. It's funny, you think of people like Devine, killers, as being devoid of human values but that's rarely true."

He let her think about it while he brought coffee to the table. She asked him if Devine had moved to New York now and he confirmed it.

"About four months back. He's been hanging around Eighth Avenue off and on since then checking out the talent. Maybe he's given up looking for Lois but come to like trying because he seems to have adopted his ex-partner's hobby."

Jenny stirred her coffee but left it untouched, mechanically watching the tiny whirlpool swirl in the cup. It was hard for Redding to guess what she was thinking, but she was thinking.

"And the bodyguard," she said a moment later, "what's his story?"

"Harry Tobler joined Kurtz about the same time Devine joined him, when Kurtz hit the big time and needed some muscle around."

"I don't get the connection."

He sipped at his coffee before fielding that one. "An important fence has to carry ready cash, maybe a hundred grand sometimes, and that can be dangerous so they take out insurance in the form of somebody like Tobler. He used to be a prison guard down south somewhere but he killed more than his quota of inmates and they had to get rid of him . . . quietly." Redding looked a bit uncomfortable. "That guy, he's something else."

"And Devine inherited him. . . ."

"I'm afraid so."

She'd had the coffee cup on the way to her mouth as she'd

asked that last question but now she put it down again; she looked as though she'd lost her appetite for it.

"Charming company I'm going to be keeping."

"Yep, you're really going to be slumming on this one." He pointed to the projector case he'd left in a corner. "Every chance you get, study the faces. Get to know them so you could recognize them in your sleep. You'd never mistake Tobler, but Devine, it's possible." From his jacket he brought out a long envelope that he tossed onto the table. "I've jotted down some facts and figures about your life in Atlanta. There's a map of the area there, too. When you've learned them, destroy that list like the spies do. And don't let me forget to take that projector away."

Somebody knocked on the door and they heard Marsha's voice.

When Redding let her in she took a fast look at the apartment and a longer one at Jenny's hair.

"So, is it true?" she asked. "Do blondes have more fun?"

The girl turned her mouth down. "So far, no. But from what I've just been told I think things are going to pick up."

Redding got coffee for Marsha, sat her down, and went through the whole deal again, spelling out the arrangements they'd made and how everything was supposed to play. Then he recapped the main points.

"The important thing to remember, both of you, is that there is no Jenny Copeland. Forget her. There's only one Jenny in this room and that's Jenny Steiner. From Atlanta. That's your story, Jenny, and you stick to it hell or high water. If things go right Devine will end up believing you're Lois Pink, but you never ever try to tell him you are. The best way of getting somebody to believe something is to deny it at the top of your voice, so we'll let him convince himself."

Redding helped hammer that point in by pausing before going on.

"But before he does that he's got to meet Jenny Steiner and before we allow that to happen you need a few more

things. I've got a friend, a prop buyer, working on that and he should have them in a few days."

"I've thought of a hangup," Marsha said.

"Let's have it."

"I have to take Jenny out and learn her the street, right? You're going to have to clear it with Benny because it'll be on his turf, a lot of it, anyway, and he's not crazy about freelancers."

"Oh-oh." Redding pursed his lips, tapped his fist against them. "You are dead right. That little fact of life hadn't occurred to me."

Jenny asked whom they were talking about and Marsha told her. "Benny's the guy who runs me."

The answer surprised the girl and Redding saw it. He had a pretty fair idea what she was thinking: that while there was no doubt about Marsha's profession it still seemed unreal to think of her handing money over to some pimp.

"I'm going to have to talk to him," Redding said. "Where's he hang out?"

"The golf course, mainly."

"I mean his business office."

"Cirro's bar, Eighth and Fifty-First. Try him around midnight. He'll either be in there or parked outside in his rocket ship."

"How do I recognize him?"

Marsha snorted. "You won't have any trouble; he's black, about seven feet high, built like a beanpole, and wears silver suits. He looks like a giant roll of Reynolds Wrap." Then she added, "I wouldn't let him in on this. He's not what you'd call the trustworthy type."

"Hell, no! Nobody finds out about this except us three. I'm just going to have to persuade him to go along."

Marsha's face got serious suddenly. "I wouldn't try pushing him around, Henry. Benny's had people killed."

Redding ran a hand through his hair and it flopped back on his forehead like straw. It was only something to do so he wouldn't have to look at Jenny; things were bad enough

with them having to get mixed up with Devine and Tobler, but now they had Marsha's man to contend with, too, and that made three killers. As she'd said herself, he'd involved her with some pretty charming company.

Redding said, "Don't worry, I never get physical unless the other guy's been drugged. I'll have to think of something."

"Pay him," Jenny suggested. "You're good at that."

He gave her a tight smile that was almost suitable for framing. "Thank you, but I already have a payroll like General Motors."

It was Marsha who came up with the idea.

"How about one of your cop buddies? He could give Benny the word that Jenny's off limits for some reason. I don't know what."

"Marsha," Redding said, "that's not bad. That is not bad. All I need is a friendly cop."

"Do you know one?" She'd never met one herself and she looked doubtful.

But Redding didn't. "As a matter of fact," he said, his face turning into a sunny day, "I do. I know just the guy."

Redding arrived at the precinct house a little before midnight and greeted the desk sergeant, a plump, middle-aged cop with an egg-smooth head, who was perched up high like a priest in a pulpit.

"Howdy, Sam, what do you see from up there?"

"A hack reporter," the sergeant told him. "Jesus, when are you going to get a haircut?"

"When are you going to get some hair?"

The sergeant gave him the finger and a thanks a lot smile and Redding went on into the squad room. It was a room he'd been in during the depth of winter and the height of summer, on zippy, bud-bursting spring days and crisp, wind-whipped autumn ones, and it was always, always exactly the same.

He crossed to a detective seated behind a desk who was

trying to keep a cigarette and a typewriter going at the same time.

"Hi, Brownie," Redding said. "You got anything for me?"

"Only contempt," the cop said. Comedians, why were so many cops comedians?

Redding tried to steal a look at the report and the detective stopped typing and looked up warily. "I thought you were on days."

"Ryan's sick."

"What, did he get a bad ice cube?"

The typewriter started clicking again and Redding scanned the rest of the room. It looked fairly standard: detectives, patrolmen, complaining citizens, captured felons. Handcuffed to one of the school-type desks, a scared-looking young man, well dressed and neatly groomed, sat moving his Adam's apple up and down and looking very worried. Redding knocked on the typewriter, jerked a thumb in his direction.

"Anything in that?"

"Oh, sure. Hold the front page."

"What did he do?"

The detective stopped hunting for the R key, the one he could never find, and gave Redding his full weary attention. "He mugged Henry Kissinger's cat. All right?"

Redding smiled. "Brownie," he said, "success hasn't changed you. You're still a schmuck."

He moved away, made a circuit of the room and, having established his presence for what looked like legitimate business, drifted out of the door and back into the hall.

There was a telephone booth on one side. He took a quick peek around him, slipped inside, fed coins into the slot, dialed, and waited.

Twenty feet away from him the desk sergeant answered a call. "Midtown North ..."

Redding babbled into the phone. "Get around here quick! You betta get around here quick!''

The sergeant had been riding the desk for a good many

years. He picked up a pen and in a patient voice asked the caller's name.

"Webster. You gotta get around here now!"

"What is the nature of the emergency, Mr. Webster?"

"Gunshots, screams, the whole bit!"

"Where is this, please?"

"Eighth and Fifty-First. West side, top floor, hurry!"

Redding hung up, stepped out of the phone booth, and casually strolled up the hall past the desk. "Night, Sam," he called out.

The sergeant was busy talking into the intercom.

Out on the sidewalk he stood in front of the empty police cruiser that was parked there. He didn't have long to wait. The doors of the precinct house burst open and two detectives, struggling into jackets, ran for the car.

"What's up?" Redding asked.

Both men ignored him as they piled into the front seat.

Redding opened the rear door and hopped in himself a second before the car rocketed away. It had traveled half a block before the two men in front realized they had a passenger.

"Redding! For crissakes, what are you doing here? The lieutenant sees you, it'll be our ass."

"I'll walk back, honest. What's up?"

"Just stay out of our way, that's all."

Siren wailing, the cruiser cleaved a path through traffic, ran a red light and a couple of green ones, and skidded the last twenty feet into the curb at Fifty-First. The two policemen were out and running for the corner building while the car was still rocking on its springs.

At the window of the bar next to the building, two faces appeared.

Redding opened his door and got out onto the sidewalk, sauntered over to the bar, pushed through the doors, and stood there. He'd been around cops for so long it wasn't hard to act like one. He let his gaze sweep the interior like a building contractor come to give an estimate and, at the

same time, worked his tongue in a tooth as if he were trying for a morsel left over from his free steak dinner.

The bartender had a big fake smile on his face. He'd never seen Redding before but he'd seen him get out of the cruiser. Sergeant? Detective sergeant? What the hell, it never hurt to promote a cop.

"Hi, Lieutenant. Where's the fire?"

Redding ignored him correctly and checked the customers. There were about half a dozen men at the bar, all of them not looking his way. It wasn't hard to spot Benny. He ambled over to him.

"Hi, Benny." Nice and friendly.

The man gave not the slightest sign he'd heard, just kept looking into the mirror behind the bar like any drinker does.

Redding moved fast. He lashed out and slapped the glass away from the man's mouth. It crashed to the floor, and shattered.

"I'm taking to you!"

Benny didn't flare. Instead he turned on his stool, his mouth lifting in a half-smile, and he raised a long black first finger as if he were cautioning somebody. It looked like a stick he was balancing on his fist. He said very carefully, with a hint of southern accent, "You ain't got one single thing on me."

"Oh?" Redding was back to playing Mr. Nice."How about that half-kilo in your pocket?"

Benny's smile stayed neatly in place; good glue.

"Now jes' what half-kilo would that be . . . ?"

"The one I could put there."

The glue melted. "I got witnesses." He flung an arm to indicate the rest of the bar.

Redding snickered, shook his head. "Benny, Benny, Benny. Where you been? Witnesses get involved. People don't like to get involved."

The man held his gaze for a second, then jerked his head around. The barman was very busy polishing glasses and the other drinkers were all drinking.

Redding moved a quarter-step closer. "Let's you and me talk. In the John."

It took an age but the alternative just wasn't there and Benny swung off his stool and moved ahead of Redding into the tiny foul-smelling toilet at the end of the bar.

When Marsha had described Benny as being about seven feet tall, she'd only been about six inches off. He towered over Redding and seemed to fill the room vertically, with legs like stilts and arms that looked as though they could stick a knife in you from four feet away. Marsha had been right about the clothes, too; his suit was made of a heavy raised silver thread and even in the dim light of the toilet it flashed and glowed. The shirt was black silk, striking against the silver, and as if he needed to accent his height, he wore rainbow platform shoes and a tiny black fedora perched on his head. He also wore a small display counter of rings and bracelets and neck jewelry and he stank of French perfume.

A Broadway pimp and then some.

Redding, still playing the smiling cobra, said, "But where are my manners? I haven't introduced myself. The name's Carlson. Narco squad."

"Uh-uh." the black man said. "Wrong boy, Ace. I don't use it, I don't push it. Nothin'."

"Sure you don't, Benny. You just drive the Caddy and play golf, right?"

"Right."

"Thing is, Benny"—Redding worked at his tooth again, put two fingers into his mouth, extracted something, examined it, and flicked it away—"thing is, somebody around here's pushing it like it was Macy's white sale. Good stuff, too, 50 percent pure, which means the big shipments are on again. There's a lot of pressure we do something, you know what I mean?"

Benny hadn't the vaguest idea.

"So what we're going to do is this. We're going to put another man on the street here undercover. Only thing is,

this man's a woman." Redding paused; cops never spoke more than a couple of sentences at a time.

When Benny shrugged, his shoulders elevated a full twelve inches.

"So?"

"How many girls you got on your string, Benny?"

"What string?"

"Three, isn't it? Now you got four."

Like a flesh flood the realization broke over the man's face.

"What ?l ain't having no goddamn—"

He was very effectively cut off. "Marsha Williams, she's one of yours, right? Nice kid, cooperative. She's going to play buddy-buddies with our girl."

"Marsha?"

"She wanted to know if it was okay with you and I told her it was okay with you."

"Well, it ain't fuckin' okay with me."

Redding looked pained; if there was anything cops hated it was being misunderstood. "Benny, you're not hearing me. Downtown there, they want an arrest. If I give them an arrest they'll get off my back. How'd you like to volunteer?"

The man grabbed a breath to power a barrage of protest, saw that there was nothing to say, and settled for a single expletive. "Shit!"

Redding turned, waved at a stall. "In there."

He went out into the bar and moved toward the door. Eyes slid over him in the mirror as he passed. The bartender, always happier to see cops on the way out than on the way in, gave him a genuine smile this time.

"One for the road, Lieutenant?"

Redding withered him with a look that said he was long past the days when he could be bought with a couple of belts, and left the premises.

His exit was happily timed; he reached the cruiser as the two detectives did. Redding asked them what they'd found.

They looked disgusted. "Aw, some bastard being cute.

Christ, they say cops are never around when you need 'em. You know why? 'Cause we're all the time out running down false alarms."

They started to get into the car.

Turning slightly, Redding saw the bartender peering at him through the window. He got a hand on the rear door, and a moment before the cruiser took off, slipped inside.

They'd only made fifty feet, but they were out of sight of the bar when the brakes slammed on.

"Redding! Good God Almighty! We're not running a tour service, get out!"

"Oh," he said. "Sure."

The cop in the passenger seat helped him on his way. It was a new sight for the locals; while they'd often seen guys pulled into a squad car, this was the first time they'd seen anybody thrown out.

But Redding didn't feel slighted. Just the reverse. The problem of Benny had been neatly patted into shape, rolled up, and filed under Finished Business.

When he got back to the apartment he let himself into darkness. The red glow that hung permanently over the summer city came feebly through the windows but not much farther.

He heard her voice. "Is that you?"

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

"No, I was reading, I just put the light out. Put it on if you want."

He clicked on the hall light.

She was lying on one of the sofa beds against the wall, thin sleeveless pajama top showing above a single sheet that silhouetted the rest of her body. She asked how it had gone with Benny and he gave her a capsule description. She seemed mildly impressed.

"That was pretty smart of you."

"It was Marsha's idea," he said. He left a large gap after it so she could say something like "Maybe so, but you put it

over" but she disappointed him by saying nothing. He had to fill in the gap himself. "Anyway, now you're all set. Tomorrow you start school."

"Fine," she said. She turned around to face the wall, pulled the sheet over her shoulder. "Good night."

It was then that he noticed that she'd made up the other bed and put his pajamas out.

"Hey," he said. "My stuff, you put it out." He took in the line of her body under the sheet; it looked just as good in reverse. He lowered his voice and said softly, "Why did you do that?"

She sighed and turned around again. "Because I didn't think you'd sleep in your clothes. Now would you mind? I have to go to school tomorrow." She plumped her pillow and turned to the wall.

"I see," Redding said, his voice back to normal. He picked up his pajamas and went into the bathroom, washed up, came out, switched the hall light off, and eased himself onto the sofa bed she'd turned down. The thin mattress compressed under his weight and held him a bare quarter-inch off the wooden frame and his feet hung over the end as if due to be guillotined at dawn.

"Jenny ..."

"What?"

"I'm sorry about the arrangements here, us having to sleep in the same room and all that."

"Does it bother you?"

"Me? No."

"Me neither. Good night."

There was a pause. "Because," Redding said, "I wouldn't want you to feel nervous or anything."

"I'm not nervous. Good night."

There was another pause.

"Or worried ..."

A longer pause.

"Or nervous ..."

"Mis-ter Redding!" She sat up and switched on the lamp above her. She didn't get any further, he didn't let her.

"My God," he said. "Here we are living together, practically sleeping together and you're still calling me mister. Doesn't that English reserve of yours ever break down?"

"Not if I keep it in good running order."

He started a reply but she hadn't finished.

"Why is it that American men always pussyfoot around when it comes to sex?"

"Sex?"

"I assume that all this concern for my mental health is your shy, boyish way of saying that you'd like to come over and get into my bed."

"Why, I never said that." He sounded shocked and hurt. "I never said anything like that."

"It was the furthest thing from your mind, was it?"

"Well"—he wanted to be fair—"maybe not the furthest thing. In fact, now that you've introduced the thought—"

"Now that I have, you're inclined to look tolerantly upon the idea."

"Well ..." He searched for a word. He found one. "Yes."

"Fine," she said. "I'm glad we got that out of the way." She turned out the light and he heard the sheet rustle. With a broad smile on his face he swung his legs to the floor and sat up, then stopped. It was a curious answer now that he thought about it.

"So?" he said, checking. "Is it all right?"

"Is what all right?"

"Can I come over and get into your bed?"

"Certainly not!"

"Gee, thanks a lot, lady. Here I am tired out and ready to hit the sack, you start talking about having a little tumble, I get all excited and then you turn me down."

With a weary patience she said, "The only thing I was talking about is going to sleep. I'm still talking about it.

What I'd like to do is do it. If you have anything further to say to me, I suggest you write it down and I'll read it in the morning."

There was a message pad on a shelf above Redding's head; he grabbed it, scribbled something in the dark, tossed it back onto the shelf, then lay back feeling better.

He may have lost on the exchange but at least he'd had the last word.

ACT II

The Street

Chapter Seven

As far as Redding was concerned, about the only advantage of the apartment was that it was close to his office at the News, and when Jenny woke late the next morning he'd already left for it. There was no point in not going to his job. There was nothing he could do to help Jenny, anyway; it was Marsha's turn now.

Jenny spent most of the morning running around the stores buying the things she needed, things that wouldn't matter if they looked too new. She spent a good part of the afternoon learning the notes Redding had given her and running the slides through the projector, memorizing the faces, then around six Marsha arrived. The first thing she spotted was something Jenny had missed: the message Redding had written the night before.

"O-fray/" she read out. "Good nightl" She looked up at Jenny. "You two squabbling already?"

Jenny read the message and bit down on a smile. "No, just a point of difference. I wanted to sleep, Henry wanted to talk."

"Talk," Marsha said. "Uh-huh."

Jenny said, "I hope this doesn't bother you, Henry and I being together like this."

It was a moment before Marsha caught on. "You thought that Henry and me . . . ? Oh, no! He's a nice-looking guy but we're strictly labor and management. And anyway, I'm on vacation." Then she added, "So feel free."

"Thanks, but I don't think he's my type."

"You like short dark men?"

"I didn't mean physically. He's handsome enough, I suppose, in an unrugged American way, but I think a man

should have a few more values than he's shown so far. I think about the only things he holds dear are himself and money."

"Don't knock it," Marsha said. "It's a combination that'll take you a long way in this world."

Jenny switched the subject by asking Marsha what the schedule was.

"Just a walk-through today. We'll go over the West Side and give you a look at the ground."

"What'll I wear?" Marsha herself was tamely dressed in a plain skirt and blouse that were a far cry from her work duds.

"Stay in the dress you've got on. We'll suit you up tomorrow maybe."

They left the apartment, got a cab across town to Eighth Avenue and paid off the driver at Fifty-Fifth. With her first step Jenny almost collided with a hag of a woman who was wearing three topcoats, despite the warm weather, and pushing a baby pram that was stuffed with old shopping bags. She wheeled it to a garbage can and began picking through it. It was a suitable introduction to the avenue, most of which looked picked over and discarded, as if the entire street had been dumped on a trash pile and left to rust in the rain and rot in the sun.

Many of the buildings were four-story tenements, with a lot of their windows broken or boarded up; even some of the ones in better condition looked abandoned. Fire escapes zigzagged down their facades and stopped above storefronts: printers, florists, bars, crummy cafeterias, all of them looking as if the lease was up and the wreckers were coming. Still, the avenue bustled with people and cars and trucks and gave absolutely no sign that it was giving up yet.

Marsha waved her arm to encompass it all. "So here it is, the Street of Dreams. I guess you don't know the West Side that well."

"Only the theater district," Jenny answered.

That meant she didn't know the West Side at all. Marsha

had a pretty good idea that for Jenny, as for a lot of New Yorkers, Manhattan was a one-sided town. People could find everything they needed, wanted, or used on the East Side; excursions to the West Side would probably come down to maybe Lincoln Center, the Garden, the business offices on Sixth, the Thirty-Fourth Street stores, and a handful of museums, hotels, and restaurants that were only marginally west, anyway. The days of sailing over to the great little French bistros and the bars and the clubs were long gone for most because the trip through the jungle just wasn't worth it. Manhattan had become almost as divided a city as Berlin. Marsha took her elbow and turned her downtown.

"Come on, I'll be your charming, informative guide. I'm going to talk your ear off and you'd better listen because there's a lot to learn." They started walking slowly. "First fact," Marsha said. "From about here on down to around, say, Forty-Eighth is where the action is. The avenue is the main drag and most of the hooker hotels are either on it or just off it."

Jenny asked if the area had a name.

"Your first question and you stumped me," Marsha said. "I don't really know. Some people call it the Minnesota Strip, but we just call it the Street. The cops call it Midtown North after the precinct. The Street here's their main headache, supposed to be the number one district in the country for reported crime. I don't know if that's true or not but if it isn't I'd hate to see the place that is."

Jenny said, "It looks safe enough now."

"Wait till you see it around eleven at night; that's rush hour." Marsha picked up the tour again. "Further on down in the mid-forties, the Times Square area, you've got your peep shows, massage parlors, porn stores, so all in all you've got about a twelve-block area that peddles flesh in one form or another."

"Who runs it all, the Mafia?"

"They handle a lot, but not the hookers. Pimps run hook-

ers and just about all the pimps are black and as you've maybe heard, the Mafia is not an equal opportunity employer." She pointed to a high-rise apartment house across the street. 'That's where a lot of them live; the pimps, I mean. Something like a hundred of them in there. They like to live close to the action."

Jenny glanced at the building, swung back to Marsha. 'This is going to sound naive but I've never understood about pimps. What do they do besides take your money?"

Marsha had a hard time starting. "Good question. I guess it depends on what kind of pimp you got; they come in a wide range, all rotten but some worse than others. The main thing they give you is protection. If you're on a guy's string, another pimp can't give you a hard time without answering to him."

Jenny nodded at that. "So you have to have one . . ."

"You don't have to, there are indies who get along on their own but it's a tough row to hoe. I hate to be fair to a pimp but it's not all one-sided. Sure, you give him your money but he sets you up, gets you an apartment, pays the rent, buys you anything you need. You want a winter coat or a stereo or something, most of them just hand you the money."

"Which you've handed over in the first place," Jenny said.

"Yeah, they're kind of like a bank except you never get a look at your balance."

They stopped at a cross street, the light against them, and found themselves sharing the wait with an old wino who was drinking from a paper bag. When the light changed and they moved forward he stayed there, happy with that side of the street.

"They call it pluck," Marsha said, "what they drink. Half sherry, half port and maybe it's delicious."

Jenny didn't doubt it.

"But what I was saying before, about pimps . . . giving

you money to spend is the good part, giving you lumps is the bad part. This guy I'm with now, Benny, as pimps go he's not bad. He doesn't beat up on me, maybe the other girls but not me, and there are pimps who'll mark a girl, really cut her. There are some who'll kill, too."

"Kill their own girls?"

"You better believe it. Usually what happens is the city has a crackdown, like now, so it gets harder to make money. A pimp knows that but he still expects you to make your quota, which for most girls is something like two fifty a day. But money gets tight because the boys in blue are hauling girls in like tuna fish and you can't make money riding the pros van. So a girl shorts on her quota and her man starts in with the blows. Finally, she's had it up to here and turns him in, assault or rape, something like that. Now, that's one thing no pimp will stand still for and that's when girls start ending up dead in alleys."

Jenny didn't comment on what Marsha had told her; it was just one more charming example of the way of the world.

Walking in a downtown direction as they were, getting closer to the center of things, they were starting to pass a few girls who were standing singly or in twosomes. They wore a variety of outfits, most of them extreme in one way or another and with lots of legs and breasts on show, although the better-looking girls wore ordinary sweaters and skirts, not having to put out the extra effort to make a sale. One of the girls recognized Marsha and called to her.

"Marsha . . ." She was a thin girl, flat-chested, and it could have been she'd chosen her companion so she'd look better by comparison; the woman she was with looked as if she'd been fished out of the sea, dried off, and propped against the building.

"Where you been, Marsha?"

"Hey, Karen. Karen, this is Jenny Steiner, just in from Atlanta."

Jenny got a fast nod and then the girl was talking to Marsha again. "You ain't been around. I thought you might've got sick, something like that."

"No, I been over the East Side. Thought I'd try it over there awhile, but you know how it is, you can't tell the cops without a scorecard. I'm better off here where I know the faces."

Jenny had noticed something about Marsha: The farther they got down the Street, the more she slipped into the argot.

"How thing's been?" Marsha asked. "Quiet?"

The thin girl solemnly shook her head. "Jack's back. Two girls last week. Same description."

"Beautiful," Marsha said.

"I'll see you, huh?" The thin girl drifted back to her companion and Marsha and Jenny started walking again. Jenny wanted to know what the conversation had been about.

"Bad trick, a rape artist. He was around last summer and he's back again."

"Perfect," Jenny said. "If I have any luck I'll run into him."

"You don't have to worry, he doesn't like blondes, only us brunettes."

It was cold comfort but Jenny didn't pursue it; something else was bothering her.

"The woman who was with the one you spoke to, she looked half dead."

"Yeah, you'll see a few like that. Mainly in the small hours, though. They start off snorting coke, then start in skin popping, and end up mainlining. When they get on that, on the big H, it's all over. They make twenty bucks, they spend it on the stuff; they make two hundred, they spend it on the stuff. They live on root beer and Tootsie Rolls and sleep in an alley and spend everything on the tragic-magic. No pimp will ever touch them because there's never anything left."

"A lot of women on drugs?"

A man came weaving out of a bar and they stopped to let him pass; he muttered something at them and went off up the street, unsteady on his legs.

"Not all that many," Marsha said. "It's a myth all hookers are junkies. Sure, some of them are tricking to hold up a habit but most of them are out here because they don't know another way to earn thirty or forty thousand a year."

She touched Jenny's arm quickly. "See the girl there, the one in the blue? What do you think of her?"

Jenny looked at a tall, pretty girl talking to a man who was jingling change in his pockets and rocking on his heels.

"Nice-looking girl," Jenny said.

"Isn't she? She's a man."

Jenny swiveled for a second look. "A knobber?"

"Uh-huh. A wig, a dress, a course of silicone, and it's Miss America."

"But the men they pick up, they must find out—"

"Nope. The John gets a hand or a mouth job and goes back to his buddies and brags about the great-looking chic he had."

The light was against them at the next block so they crossed the avenue to the other side, which was almost an exact duplicate of the side they'd just come from. A little farther on, it was Marsha's turn to ask Jenny a question.

"How come you knew they're called knobbers, nice girl like you?"

It seemed to surprise the girl. "I don't know, I must have read it somewhere. Pound Ridge isn't the North Pole."

"You read about lumpers, too?"

"What are they?"

"Another thing you should know. They're women who rent themselves out as punching bags. You'll see them around, always got cuts and bruises and broken noses. They don't work very much for obvious reasons but they get paid big."

Jenny's mouth shrank in distaste. "A woman would have to be desperate."

'They're usually older women and their looks are gone, anyway. And it's a way of staying in the Life."

They'd stopped for a moment, talking about it, and two men had stopped behind them. They wore hard hats and big grins on their faces and it was no secret which two girls they were looking at.

"Oh-oh," Jenny said—she was facing them—"there are two men staring at us and I think they like what they see."

Marsha turned to check. "Yep. I would say you're about to meet your first John."

Jenny looked worried. "This is a fine time to think of it but it's just struck me ... if I'm supposed to be a prostitute what do I do when a man expects me to be a prostitute?"

"You turn him down. A couple of days with me on the Street and you'll learn how."

One of the men was on his way over, apparently elected to do the talking. The smile on his face had become a smirk.

"Hi, girls. Nice night for it, huh?"

"Yeah," Marsha said.

"So? How much?"

"You mean the two of us for the two of you?"

"Right."

Marsha hesitated, then turned to Jenny. She looked hopeful. "How about it, Jenny? The doc said not till Thursday but, hell, that's only five days away."

"Forget it!" the man said. He left with his friend immediately.

Jenny covered a smile. "Are they all that easy to get rid of?"

"They range from dead simple to damn near impossible, but you can always get out of it."

They started walking again, Marsha continuing with her tour.

"That bar over there"—she pointed across the avenue— "that's a real big hustler pimp bar. The pimps parade their strings in there and the Johns come in for a drink and a look-

see; that's around six o'clock although there's action as early as noon. They're the dabblers, guys who come over in their lunch hour for a little matinee."

A big man passed them; he looked as though he could have stepped out of one of the trucks that were rumbling up the avenue. Marsha gave him a wave.

"Hi, Pete. How they hangin'?"

"Never better, kiddo."

"Pete Finley," Marsha explained. "He's a cop although he doesn't work at it that hard."

"On duty?"

"For all the good it'll do him. Everybody knows him. Midtown just doesn't have enough men to change the faces on you unless they borrow from another precinct."

Jenny said, "A man like that, can he just walk up to a girl and arrest her?"

"Not in plainclothes. You either have to approach them direct or if they hear you trying a John they can make a collar then, too. A cop in uniform, he can only grab you for loitering for the purpose and they'll do that now and then, specially if they're hungry for overtime. They'll haul in a couple of girls late at night so they have to go back to court with them in the morning and get paid for an extra eight hours."

Jenny's smile was a sympathetic one. "Then the police make money on you, too."

"If they want it that bad. Most of them don't. The main thing they've got against us is the related crime, the junkies, the pushers, the muggers. And you get some girls giving them a headache, too, wild ones who'll roll their Johns or even other hookers."

On Marsha's last word a noise like a referee's whistle sounded up ahead of them: two short blasts.

"Watch this," Marsha said. "In front of the Kingsbury."

On the other side of the avenue a group of girls were scurrying into the door of a seedy-looking hotel.

"That whistle you heard was the spotter on the second floor."

"What's he spotted?"

"A cruiser or a pros van." Marsha squinted down the avenue. "Sure, there it is, a squad car."

Jenny saw it too, a green and white cruiser that pulled out from behind a car and made a sudden dart toward the hotel, but the sidewalk was empty; it was like little fish fleeing into a cave as the grouper pounced. The car continued on its way and turned at the next corner, the whistle shrilled again, and the girls spilled out onto the sidewalk.

"There you have it," Marsha said. "Just one big game of tag and the cops are It."

They'd stopped walking to watch and she turned back to Jenny, eyeing her speculatively. "Okay, you've seen a little bit, and heard a little of the theory. I think you should see how it works in practice. How a girl handles her John."

Jenny didn't look crazy about the idea. She said, uncertain, "Couldn't I just stick with the theory?"

"Uh-uh. Henry's paying me to turn you into a hooker you couldn't tell from the real thing and in the end that's going to be your best protection against Devine. You strike a false note with a guy like that, a guy who's been around hookers all his life, he's going to know it. I can show you the moves on the street but you've also got to know what happens when you get upstairs."

"I have a pretty good idea what happens. I'm a big girl now and I don't need lessons in that. Besides, it doesn't apply. I'm not going to bed with Devine."

Marsha raised an eyebrow; she wasn't so sure about that. "You may have to; you can't tell how it's going to play. You're supposed to be a hooker and that's what hookers do."

Jenny was forced to consider it; the point was hard to argue against. She looked back at the girls strung out in front of the hotel. "I'll worry about that when the time comes, but you're right, I'll need the dialogue. You could teach me that."

"It's better if you hear it for real. Come on, we'll see what

we can do." They crossed to the other sidewalk and approached the group of women and Marsha traded greetings with a lot of them.

"Hey, everybody, this is Jenny Steiner. Just off the boat from Atlanta. Jenny, this is everybody."

A couple of girls said hello but most of them ignored her; she was one more piece of competition. Marsha got into conversation with a girl she seemed to know pretty well, a frizzy-haired girl whose bare midriff was bounded by a shirt rolled and knotted above her navel and skintight short shorts. There was another expanse of flesh ended by black knee-boots with open crisscross lacing running from top to toe. She looked a little like a pirate. Marsha talked to her awhile, then moved back to Jenny.

"I fixed it with Ann. Next trick we'll go up with her and listen in."

It wasn't a long wait; the pirate lady picked up a commuter type and signaled to the spotter overhead, who released the door. Marsha and Jenny followed them into a dim hall littered like a school playground with Popsicle sticks and gum wrappers. The hall opened up into a small lobby, where an elderly clerk sat behind a glass-topped hotel desk, keys dangling from pigeonholes behind him, and signs festooned above him disclaiming responsibility for just about everything. He rose creakily and pushed a register toward the girl, which was something Jenny commented on in a murmured whisper.

"It's the law," Marsha whispered back. "You still have to check in. Most of the girls outside sign that book maybe ten times a day. You can get writer's cramp in this business."

The transaction was completely open; there was no pretense at it being anything but what it was. The girl turned to her customer, who pulled a wallet from his jacket and put down money for the room. He handed more money to the girl, who passed it to the clerk; he put it in an envelope and locked it in a drawer.

"Safekeeping," Marsha whispered. "If the girl doesn't

know the John she'll bank the money with the clerk. No arguments about money back that way." The clerk handed the girl a towel and the man followed her up the uncarpeted stairs. Marsha went over and spoke to the clerk.

"Sandy, give me number 14, huh?"

She put money down, signed the register, and took a key from the clerk. Then she and Jenny started up the stairs.

"He didn't seem surprised," Jenny said, "you going upstairs with another girl."

"You could go upstairs with an orangutan just as long as you paid."

The stairs opened into a small hall as dim as the one below and Jenny took in the stained and peeling walls and the flakes of ceiling paster underfoot.

Marsha saw her looking. "Elegant, isn't it? But a place like this is a gold mine. Something like seventy girls hop in and out every day and the hotel gets twelve bucks a time, so if you figure a hundred bucks per day per girl, that's a minimum of seven thousand a day this place takes in. But paint it? Never."

The room Marsha let them into was a repetition of the hall, grubby and dark, the window giving out to an airshaft that was plastered with grime. There was a chest of drawers, a chair, a rug with the fibers parted at the center like the warped strings of a tennis racket and, flung over the bed, a rumpled chenille spread peppered with cigarette burns. It was the kind of room that looked as if it had sprung into being already rotten and old.

Marsha opened the closet at the side of the bed. A smell of mice and dust wafted out. The wall at the back of the closet was paper thin and the sounds from the next room came through clearly.

They heard the girl ask a question.

"What'd you have in mind, a little of both?"

"Okay."

There was a pause. "Aren't you going to—" The man stopped and cleared his throat; his voice was nervous.

"Aren't you going to get undressed?"

"Let's get you undressed first, honey. You shouldn't wear your belt so tight. Give yourself a bellyache."

There was no sound for a moment, then the girl spoke again. "Hey, that the best you can do? What's the matter, you don't like me?"

"You wouldn't have a shot of anything, would you? I'd be okay if I had a shot."

"No booze here, sweetie. I think you already had a few belts, right? Let's see what we can do here. . . ."

They heard a soft moan from the man, then the woman's voice again. "There you go."

"Oh, Jesus . . ."

A ten-second pause.

"Okay, you want to do the other now?"

"Just a little more . . ."

"All right, but you're going to blow, mister, and that ain't half and half. Better give me another ten."

"I don't have it."

"Then we'd better fuck."

There was the sound of zippers, then the creak of a bed sagging.

"You're not getting undressed?"

"Twenty-five don't buy the full strip, honey."

"But your boots—"

"Takes me ten minutes to get 'em off. C'mon, come to mama."

The bed started to creak in steady cadence.

"Hey!"—the voice sounded muffled—"No kissing on the mouth. I ain't your girl friend."

The man's voice sounded in a whimper and some half-uttered words.

The creaking changed to a sharp pounding of springs. There came a choked-off cry, then silence.

"Okay?" The woman's voice was quick with impatience. "Okay?"

Springs sagged and boots hit the floor.

"Wait! I got money."

"Cost you another thirty-five."

"Thirty-five? Why?"

" 'Cause you'll take forever the second time."

A pause. Footsteps going across the room. "Tell you what, you go home to the wife now and come back and see me tomorrow. All right?" A door opened. "And, listen, don't take too long getting out of here, there's girls waiting."

The door slammed.

Marsha and Jenny left the room, walked downstairs, and out of the hotel to the sidewalk. The air was thick on the street, hanging heavy, but they were happy to be out in it.

"So there you are," Marsha said. "That's about the way it usually goes. Short and sweet and so romantic."

They started walking uptown. "Could you use a drink?" Marsha asked.

"Several."

Marsha led her into a bar on the next block. The bartender spotted them.

"Hey, Marsha, you been away, kid."

"Yeah, but I'm back now. I missed the water in your Scotch."

"Yeah, you're back," the bartender said.

"This is Jenny Steiner. From Atlanta. She drinks gin and tonics, too."

The bartender was glad to hear it.

They chose a booth at the rear and Marsha gestured around her. "Meet the Union Bar and Grill. It's just as crummy as the rest but the management and I get along so I come here often as not." She craned her head, peered down the bar. "If you want to see what a pimp looks like, there's a couple of mean street brothers at the end there."

Jenny sneaked a look. Seated at the turn of the bar were two blacks, one thin-mouthed with small, darting eyes, the other sleepy and stupid-looking. There were half a dozen other men at the bar, a couple of them in work clothes, the

others in T-shirts and slacks except for a man wearing a suit and a corny matching tie and pocket handkerchief. A girl in a Carmen Miranda wig was trying to drum up some trade among them but getting no takers.

The bar itself was interchangeable with a thousand others in New York; it had the same bar-and-booth layout, same electric beer signs on the shelf above the mirror, same oversized TV mounted high up in a corner, same sour smell of old beer that had been washed into the woodwork.

When Jenny finished her appraisal she found Marsha watching her, something different in her face.

"I've got to hand it to you, Jenny, a girl like you with your kind of background, suddenly coming into all this. If you're shocked, you sure wouldn't know it."

"I'm not so much shocked as saddened. I think the whole scene is very depressing."

"Yep, I guess that's the word for it. I don't even think about it anymore. I don't let it touch me. If I did, if I stopped to think about the people and the places I'm spending my time around, I suppose I'd slash my wrists."

The barman arrived, banged their drinks down, said something to Marsha, and went back.

Both women took long swallows, then Marsha spoke again. She had a little smile on her mouth.

"You asked me a lot of questions, Jenny, except the one you're too polite to ask."

"Which one's that?" Jenny sipped her drink; she knew which one.

"Why I do what I do."

"It's no business of mine, Marsha."

"I'll tell you, anyway. Henry said he wanted you to talk like me, walk like me, be like me." She took in the girl sitting opposite her and laughed. "It's going to be a tight fit. But I think it'll help if you know why I'm a hooker instead of a housewife."

"All right."

"Independence. Pure and simple. I can be me. I don't

have to go through the motions for anybody. If I wasn't in the Life, if I was straight, what would I be doing? Earning a fast five grand a year and tips serving toasted cheese at Woolworth's. If I was married, there'd be kids hanging on my sleeve and a husband who'd bitch if I went two dollars over at Gristede's. And I'd have to screw the guy every night, anyway. Doing this, tricking, okay, there's a lot more flatbacking but you don't have to give anything. You can go home your own woman every night."

"You don't think it's possible to be married and still be that?"

"I don't see how. You can't be married and single at the same time. How about it, you ever been there?"

"Married? Yes, I was married. It didn't work out for me because there were basic problems."

"Marriage is a basic problem. It's tough enough to live with any man but it's murder if he's a husband."

Marsha got the ice moving in her glass and drank from it and Jenny watched her. She had such soft looks for such a hard view of the world.

"You say you have independence but aren't you still dependent on Benny?"

"Not really. Whether he pays the rent or I do, it works out the same. Sure, I give him more money than I'll ever see again, a whole lot more, but when I want something there's no hassle and he doesn't own rights to me. The other girls, yes. He's got two, young kids, good-looking. They're big earners so he can afford to give me a low quota. He knows if he doesn't I won't be around long."

Jenny didn't make a reply to that and Marsha took her silence as a comment in itself.

She said, "You don't understand any of this, do you?"

Jenny moved one shoulder in a polite shrug. "I understand the words, but not the thinking."

"Not surprising," Marsha said. "Look at us"—she laughed, waved a finger between them—"East Side, West Side."

They were getting ready to go when one of the men from the bar came over. It was the one with the suit and the matching accessories. He also had a forties hair style, his hair slicked back in a wave, and a voice he pitched lower than natural. He was about to speak to Jenny, saw the cold look in her eye, and switched to Marsha.

"I like the way you look, baby." His smile dripped down his face. "When I saw you come in, I said to myself, Stu, I'm going to buy me a piece of that."

Marsha, in her flat midwestern drawl, asked him exactly which piece he had in mind.

The man winked, actually winked. "I think you know, baby."

"Oh," Marsha said. "Yeah, well, you see, it's closed for alterations right now."

There was a laugh from the bar.

The man's smile faltered but didn't go away. Nor did the man. "Then we'll have to take the sign down, right?"

"Can't do that, but I'll tell you what I can do," Marsha answered, anxious to help out. "I'll make a muscle and you can hump my elbow for five bucks."

There was more laughter; the barman even slapped the bar.

The man who'd been bent over Marsha straightened as if she'd belted him, swore at her fairly competently, and marched out of the place.

A few minutes later, Marsha and Jenny left as well.

The barman saw them go and said, "So long," and one of the other men at the bar watched them leave, too. Although he was watching only Marsha.

He wasn't interested in the other one.

She had blond hair.

They'd split up outside the bar, Marsha going back to her apartment on West End Avenue, Jenny taking a cab down to Thirty-Eighth. It was dark now, the night coming on in a hurry.

There was nobody in the elevator when Jenny rode up, nobody in the corridor, no light showing under the apartment door.

When she let herself in and reached for the light switch she was aware, even in her bursting fright, of three distinct and separate things: the arm that grabbed her, the huge face of Harry Tobler, and the hard voice in her ear.

"Who are you?"

Shock shot through her, a million bright icicles of fear, and the gasp of air she sucked in never emerged, choked off by the hand that clamped down on her mouth.

Then, amazingly, miraculously, the hard body behind her was gone.

She was wildly clawing for the door handle when a lamp clicked on.

She slumped against the door frame.

"Oh, God . . . Oh, my God, Henry ..."

He came toward her, let her melt against him, hold him.

"Never," she said, "never, never do that to me again."

He spoke into her hair. "When I asked you who you were, what name did you think of? Which came first?"

A thin edge of disappointment showed in her voice. "Jenny Copeland."

"There is no Jenny Copeland," he said. "There is only Jenny Steiner. You are Jenny Steiner."

She pushed herself away from him and took a long shud-dery breath. "I know. Marsha did her best to get that through to me tonight. She went out of her way to introduce me three times. I guess I'm just not into the part yet."

"It'll come, you still have an adjustment to make. When you're in a play, even though you take on the name of a character your own's still on the program, but this production doesn't have a program; you are the character."

She nodded that she understood and got her breathing under control.

"You okay now? Sorry I had to do that to you."

She said she was fine but she was looking at Tobler's pic-

ture projected against the wall as if she still feared it. The goggle eyes stared back at her as if she had reason to.

"Hey," Redding said softly, "a photograph can't hurt you." He took her arm.

"How about making us some coffee?"

He led her into the kitchen wanting to give her something to do; she'd had a worse fright than he'd counted on.

Chapter Eight

In terms of time actually spent earning his salary, Harry Tobler had one of the most leisurely jobs in New York. He worked only for Devine and only when Devine needed him, which wasn't that often. A high-priced jewel fence like De-vine did business only now and then, so Tobler had a lot of free days. He had to be in his apartment every evening at six, in case Devine called; before and after that, his time was his own.

He lived by himself in a one-bedroom apartment west of Amsterdam Avenue. It was only a ten-minute walk to De-vine's apartment, a lavish eight-room spread in a building on Central Park West.

Like a lot of people who don't have to work regular nine-to-five hours, Tobler had structured his day to suit himself. He had breakfast when most people were having lunch and by two p.m. he was dressed and ready to indulge his hobby, his passion, his reason for being.

It was a strange pursuit for a man like Tobler. He was a stamp collector.

Every weekday he'd ride the subway down to Fourth Avenue and spend hours in the little stores, peering at the stamps displayed on cardboard sheets, his eyes, hugely magnified behind the thick lenses, moving slowly over the tiny squares of color.

He'd make his selections, then ride the subway back to his apartment, touching his jacket from time to time to make sure his prizes were still there. Before going upstairs he'd drop into a cafeteria for a meal in much the same way you picked up laundry, quickly and without interest, then hurry

s

home and wait for Devine's call. When it didn't come, which was usual, he'd sit down at a desk and start.

He'd wipe the already immaculately clean Formica top, bring out a large rectangular magnifying glass, adjust the high-beam lamp and, with one eye closed, the glass a bare half-inch from his face, examine each stamp like a nearsighted cyclops, studying the tiny detail, hunting for printing dates and designers' initials. Then he'd check his catalogs and reference books and hunt each stamp down, and when he'd done this with all the stamps, replace the books and take out a beautifully made wooden box from a lower drawer. Inside the box, resting on beds of green baize, were tweezers, a perforation gauge, and a watermark detector. From another drawer came a flat shallow dish, a new sheet of white blotting paper, a box of transparent plastic corners, and a thick loose-leaf album, the pages crossed with a grid of fine lines.

He'd fill the dish with water, choose a stamp that still had a remnant of paper sticking to it, pick it up with the tweezers, and launch it gently onto the water, floating it on top.

Harry Tobler had hands that looked as though they'd been made of pastry, stuffed a chock-a-block with big hunks of meat and baked in an oven. They were insanely large, the fingers all of a size, small black tornadoes of hair at their backs, the nails, even and trimmed and square-shaped. It was a curious sight to see those hands, the tweezers all but lost in the lumpy fingers, delicately nudging stamps around a saucer-sized pool of water.

He'd stay at the desk until midnight or later, patiently drying the stamps and slipping them into the tiny pockets gummed to the album pages. Then he'd put everything away, each in its own special place, put on his jacket, and go out for a drink.

He'd walk to the bar, a ten-minute walk, oblivious of any trouble he might meet on the late night streets. He didn't expect too much trouble. He'd only run into it once, coming

back to his apartment in the small hours of a hot September morning; three kids had ringed him suddenly, knives flashing, spitting obscenities, hissing for his money. He had no fear, no anger; Tobler never experienced either emotion. He'd handled the muggers with a minimum of effort and without having to think about it. Those immense hands of his had moved way faster than anybody had a right to expect; the left one had grabbed one kid's wrist, the right one his elbow, and with a single quick surge of downward pressure, they'd snapped the arm like a dry stick. The kid had dropped in agony, the others ran, and Tobler had continued on his way as if he'd been stopped by a shoelace that needed retying.

He always went to the same bar; the clientele were mainly night people like himself, a few off-duty cops who were through enforcing the law for the day, printers just come off a shift, some cleaners due to start one, and the standard assortment of hookers and Johns and passing trade. Tobler liked to sit at the end of the bar where he had a good view; he liked to look at the women. He never spoke to any of them, and they left him strictly alone; he was spooky. He was content to sit and watch the way they moved among the men, talked to each other, tossed their heads, and hiked their skirts getting on and off the stools.

He never spoke to any of the men either. Except for his size, there was a man like him in every bar in the city, a silent solitary drinker who hardly ever touched his drink but sat like a statue staring expressionlessly out over the bar.

Around two in the morning he'd get up and walk out and go home to bed, sleep till noon, and begin his day all over again.

That was Harry Tobler's week. And the only time it changed was when Devine called.

Devine wouldn't say much, just murmur a time and hang up. Tobler would work on his stamps until he had to leave, then go to the closet and get his gun. Tobler wasn't crazy about the gun, any gun; his weapon was his hands. But if

the other fella had a gun you had to have one, too. He'd gone to an expert for it. The man hadn't asked him why he needed it, only how he needed to use it; then he'd been able to sell Tobler the right thing.

It was a short automatic, a Spanish Astra chambered for the .380 slug.

The expert had chosen it because of its high stock-to-barrel angle, which meant it would fire where it was pointed. In Tobler's line of work, there was rarely time for aiming.

The holster had been an easy choice: a Bianchi Gun-Quick. It was actually a leather-covered spring clamp hung from a double shoulder strap that positioned the gun under the arm, level and pointing rearward. At the speed that Tobler's hands could move, he could whip that pistol out like a magician changing cards.

When it was time to leave, Tobler would walk to Devine's apartment and arrive there about fifteen minutes before the seller was expected.

Then he'd earn his money.

He'd admit the seller and frisk him, and frisk his bodyguard if the man had brought one. This was always a delicate operation; professional gunmen usually objected to that kind of thing. On one occasion a hired man had been incensed when Tobler had taken his gun away and he'd tried a foolish thing: he'd swung a haymaker at Tobler's jaw. He was a big man, thick and heavy like Tobler and almost his weight; it would have been a good contest if it had been any contest at all. Tobler had thrown his arm up and, like a ballplayer backhanding a line drive, had caught the man's fist in his open palm, closed his fingers around it, and forced the man's arm back to his side. The gunman had practically cried in frustration.

But nine out of ten times things went smoothly and the seller would be ushered in to meet Devine.

First time visitors to the apartment were surprised when they were shown, not into the living room, but into the kitchen. That was where the transaction took place, and for

a very good reason. Devine's only problem, the only risk he ran vis-a-vis the police, was being caught in possession. After a big jewel theft the police would stake out his apartment house and watch the new arrivals. The seller was usually very identifiable being either already known to the police or looking as though he should be. The plan then was to give the man time to get to Devine's apartment, burst in and catch Devine with his jeweler's glass in his eye and the stuff in his hands. But it never worked out that way.

Devine had easily been able to slow them up by having his wooden front door replaced with a steel one, frame and all. That gave him an extra couple of minutes, all the time he needed to make the jewels disappear. On the two occasions the police had broken in anyway, they'd found nothing. And they'd looked. With a search warrant in their hands they'd gone through the place like termites, looking for diamonds both times. They knew he'd only had a minute to stash them so they weren't going to be behind any wall panels or plastered into the ceiling; they had to be someplace handy. The police had gone over every corner of every room, every closet, drawer, cupboard; looked under things, into things, above things.

And still found nothing.

They never for a moment suspected, nor would they probably have believed, what he'd done with the diamonds.

Devine had fed them to his dog.

When he knew a seller was coming, he didn't feed the dog the day before so that it'd be ravenous when the seller got there. Before the seller arrived, Devine would put a pound of hamburger into the dog's dish, first taking care to lock the dog in a spare room off the kitchen. The seller would arrive and show the stones. They were always loose because Devine had a strict rule about that: Anything he handled had to be free of any mounting.

If the police chose that moment to storm the door, Devine had ample time to pick up the dog's dish and, before the

astonished eyes of the seller, press the stones into the hamburger.

Then he'd open the door to the spare room.

The dog, a very large German shepherd, wolfed the meat down long before the police even got inside.

The recovery, made next day from a dog tray on the terrace, was distasteful, certainly, but not as distasteful as going to jail for six or seven years.

But the police always had another chance left them: to grab Devine when he took the merchandise out for resale. In one instance the diamond bracelet of the wife of a prominent Tammany Hall politician had been stolen and a lot of pressure had been brought to bear for its recovery. However, it had been lost in curious circumstances and it wasn't reported for twenty-four hours, by which time Devine had bought the piece. The police were certain he had it and had a real try at getting it back.

They staked out the apartment with a nine-man team and searched everybody who even went near his floor: delivery men, florists, dry cleaners, maids, everybody. But the stones from the bracelet still turned up in Phoenix a week later and they were dead sure that they'd been in Devine's apartment before that. He'd got them out some way but how he'd done it—well, that was the kind of thing that drove a cop to an early retirement.

Devine's method was something else he'd learned from Frank Kurtz, like the trick with the dog. As far as the police knew, the only person on Devine's payroll was Harry To-bler. But they were wrong. A man named Bessemer worked for him, too. He lived in the same apartment block, two floors below Devine and at the other end of the building. They'd been able to keep their association a secret by the simple method of never seeing each other. Like Tobler, Bessemer had to be in his apartment every night at six to take a call if it came, and if it did it was just as short as Tobler's, just a stated time, like 11:33. It meant that later, at 11:33, De-

vine would be padding down the corridor taking out the garbage. Nothing suspicious in that; in their twenty-four hour report the detectives in the apartment two doors down from Devine had seen him and noted it down: 11:31, took out garbage.

They'd checked the garbage as a matter of routine, not expecting to find anything left there for a pickup—that was amateur stuff—and they were right. But, being thorough, they'd checked the other end of the garbage chute, the incinerator, on the theory that he might be paying the maintenance man to rake through the ashes next day. But there was nothing in the ashes so they ruled out his trip to the garbage chute.

And they shouldn't have.

What they sould have done was check the middle of the garbage chute.

At exactly the moment Devine was opening the garbage chute and balancing the garbage bag on it, Bessemer, thirty feet below, had the chute on his floor open, too, and a metal tray in his hand. A second after Devine's garbage bag bumped by on its way down, he'd push the tray into the chute and catch the bag that was descending. He'd take it back to his apartment, remove what he wanted, put it in his wall safe, and a few days later, when Devine had contacted a buyer, Bessemer would get another short phone call, just a name and address that he'd copy faithfully onto a little brown paper package that he'd take to the post office and send by registered mail.

The system had worked beautifully for Frank Kurtz. And now it was working beautifully for George Devine.

And Tobler's part was simply to see that the sellers minded their manners, a small part but a very important'one, but nothing that helped the police any.

Still, they kept a file on him that made it easy for Redding to find him. The night after he'd scared Jenny with the man's photograph, Redding stationed himself across from

the brownstone where Tobler lived. Around twelve the man had come down the stoop right on schedule and Redding got his first actual look at him.

Christ, he was huge.

He trailed him to the bar and spent two nervous hours in a doorway opposite; it wasn't an area he wanted to loiter in but he had to keep tabs on Harry Tobler; he was going to use him to get to Devine.

He stayed there until he saw the big man leave, then hunted for a cab. Redding disliked riding in cabs at the best of times. Sitting sunk in that rear seat with the steel mesh between him and the driver, he always felt he'd been arrested, but anything to get out of that area alive.

In the apartment the bathroom light was on, the door left ajar so that a thin beam illuminated the hall and, just barely, the sleeping girl against the wall. Redding was surprised to find her asleep. He knew that Marsha had taken her on a tour of the hustler bars and they were enough to keep anybody awake; Jenny certainly seemed to be taking the whole thing in her stride.

He was dying to get to sleep himself, but before he did that there was something he had to do.

The picture in her head was nothing but mouths; no faces, just the mouths. Singing something. She couldn't tell what, but the tune was a familiar one. "Toddlin' Town?" Or, was that part of the lyric? The mouths melded together, became one, not singing now but saying something. A single voice, insistent.

Asking her something.

Her name.

She came out of the dream into that terrible half-second of limbo before time and place establish themselves.

Dark. The apartment. The questioning voice at her ear.

She answered it.

"Jenny Steiner."

"Good girl. What was Lois's last name?"

She tried to blink the sleep away but her mind felt drugged with tiredness.

She tried to protest, mumbled the words, "Don't need to . . . Henry . . ."

"What was Lois's last name?"

"Don't know any Lois."

"Where are you from?"

"Atlanta."

"Address?"

"Coldstream Court. Five three five."

"What was the name of your local market?"

"Big Star."

"How did you get downtown?"

"Bus. Five Points express."

"Name a disc jockey."

"Coyote McCloud."

"Which station?"

"WQXI."

"Movie house?"

"Rialto."

"Where did you work?"

"Peachtree."

"Who's Jenny Copeland?"

"Don't know."

The rapid-fire questions stopped and Redding said in a less urgent voice, "Now, relax. This is me speaking. Who else haven't you heard of, besides Pink and Copeland?"

"George Devine."

"Who else?"

"Harry Tobler."

"Who else?"

"Ziggy Kurtz."

"Nice going. Now get some sleep."

Redding went back across the room and slipped into his bed. He heard the covers rustle and a minute later her steady, measured breathing. He knew she hadn't been really

awake but she'd still done beautifully, not a single slip-up. If she was that good half-asleep, he didn't have to worry when she was wide awake. Feeling good about it, he closed his eyes and felt the heaviness bear down on them, working its way into his head.

But a minute later it fled, chased by a sudden thought, her last answer. She'd said Ziggy Kurtz. Not Frank Kurtz, Zig-gy. His nickname. He hadn't included that in the notes he'd given her; he'd meant to but forgot. And he knew he hadn't told her. Marsha? Maybe she'd told her. God! He shook the debate away. What a dopey thing to be thinking about at three in the morning.

He rolled over and closed his eyes and a few minutes later wasn't thinking about anything at all.

Chapter Nine

If the Guinness Book of Records had a category for the person who drove the shortest distance to work every day, Benny would have got his name in print. From his five rooms in the Eden Apartments to his "office" in Cirro's bar was exactly two blocks. His long legs could have covered the distance faster than he could drive through rush-hour traffic, but he drove because of the car he owned. It was a Cadillac Eldorado—embellished. It had come with everything, anyway, a dozen luxury extras as standard equipment, but they hadn't been enough for Benny. He'd put in a radio phone in the front, a television set in the rear, a brass marine compass on the floor, and a cartridge deck with speakers all around. He'd had a special rack made that held his shaver, a snap-up concave mirror, a row of lotion bottles, and a Japanese gadget that dispensed heated perfumed towels. Finally, he'd had the seats recovered in genuine bearskin, which had cost him half the price of the car again.

As for the exterior he hadn't been happy with the color choice offered so he'd had the body sprayed a metallic lime green and the hardtop completely recovered in a floral pattern. He'd ended up with the kind of car he'd always promised himself, the kind that made the hicks in the Fords and the Chevies practically drive off the road swiveling for a look.

But Benny parked the car more than he drove it; he'd park it outside Cirro's and spend half his time on a vinyl-covered stool inside the bar and the other half on a bearskin-covered seat inside the Cadillac. He used the car like a lot of other West Siders used their front stoop, for sitting and cooling off and watching the world go by. Only with the windows

rolled up tight and the air conditioner purring and the lush seats cradling his body, it was a lot cooler and more comfortable and private than any stoop.

He used the cartridge deck only now and then, and the compass never. But the radio telephone he used every night when he called the Flying Chicken. The van would deliver his order and set it down on the hook-on tray that he'd stolen from a drive-in and he'd sit there eating off his car door as if Eighth Avenue was suddenly Hollywood Boulevard.

That particular night he'd just finished his dinner and was wiping his mouth on a scented towel when he spotted somebody he wanted to talk to. He jabbed a button and the window disappeared into the door.

"Hey,Whitey!"

The man stopped and turned, recognized the car, and came over. He was stocky and big-muscled with a shaven bullet head and very black skin and he was dressed in white slacks, a white long-sleeved turtleneck shirt, white socks and shoes. His nickname reflected more than the clothes he always wore; a lot of people wondered about a guy who wore white like it was a second skin.

"You got a minute?" Benny asked.

"Sure, open up. I could use a little of that cool you got inside there."

"Uh-uh. You got little white bags in your pockets."

Whitey understood; in Benny's place he would've done the same thing. He looked around the car interior; the TV was tuned to the ball game and its muted commentary accompanied their conversation.

He said, "Everythin' but the waterfall. So what's up?"

"You run into a narc name of Carlson?"

"Carlson? Don' mean shit."

"Couple of days back he gimme a hard time."

The man in white reacted to that. "You dealin'?"

"Not that. You know Marsha? You seen her around with me."

"Tall trick? Dark hair?"

"Yeah. There's a blond cunt runnin' around with her. Don' offer her nothin' but your dick."

"Sheajondarm?"

"You got it. Carlson stuck me with her."

The man leaned back and spat so that it cleared the side of the car. "Okay, I owe you."

"Uh-uh. I done me the favor, not you. One of your dudes gets hooked, I didn't want no little present from you."

"Check," the man said and walked away.

Benny pressed the window button again and settled back in his refrigerated isolation. He watched the ball game, his mind only half on it.

He was glad he'd squared things with Whitey; one more pinch and he'd go up forever and that made him a dangerous man. You didn't fool around when you were looking at something like that; if somebody even came near to tipping you in, they got awfully dead awfully fast. Funny, though, him not knowing Carlson.

On the screen the batter was caught looking at a third strike.

Chapter Ten

It was hotter after the rain had stopped, a brief summer shower that hadn't done anything except leave pools of water around for cars to squish through and splash against your legs, although maybe it had made the garbage smell a little riper, too. Redding watched the bar's neon floating on the shiny sidewalk and wished for a second night in a row that Tobler had chosen to do his drinking at The Plaza. It would have been just as boring waiting around outside there, but at least he would have felt safer. But the safety angle, he found, wasn't the main problem of what he was doing; it was the actual waiting itself. It gave him far too much time to think, and the more he thought the more he wondered whether Jenny could play the part.

Lately he'd been admitting something to himself: The only time he'd seen her act was in the role of a twenties flapper, and that was one hell of a long way from playing a seventies hooker. Another thing: What if she did get the part down but had an off night, went up in her lines? It happened to the best of actresses and they had months to prepare; Jenny would be going on with less than a week studying the part, no rehearsals, no out-of-town tryouts, nothing.

And there was a worse part, the critics. There'd be no waiting around for reviews. The way he had it planned, she'd have to get past Tobler first. Then Devine. It was going to be a tough audience. And if it didn't like the show, they'd be dead—Jenny literally.

He checked his watch, checked the bar. It was pointless hanging around any longer, he was just inviting some mugger to come up and admire his wallet; Tobler would be in there for another two hours, anyway. Even given his dark

mood he had to admit it was a break, Tobler using a bar like that one; it was going to make Jenny's meeting him a lot less suspect.

Jenny.

He'd spoken briefly with Marsha about her that afternoon; she hadn't said anything about her progress and he hadn't asked, just that there'd been no hitches, whatever that meant. She'd also told him they were going on the bar crawl again. He wasn't worried about Jenny when she was with Marsha, Marsha was Street-smart and knew the score, but pretty soon now Jenny would be on her own and ... He suddenly needed to see the girl, check with her, say hello. Eleven-thirty, she'd probably be back in that bar by now, the one they'd been using as headquarters. What was its name, The Onion? The Union, that was it! Eighth around Forty-Ninth somewhere.

He stepped out of the doorway. If he walked quickly he could be there in five minutes.

The man had come back to the bar the next night but he'd got there either too early or too late because she didn't show. So, okay, he was a patient guy, he could wait another twenty-four hours. She was bound to come back the next night; whores always did. Then she'd get what was coming to her. He wasn't disappointed. She came in around eleven, her and that blond bit she'd been with before. She was the same as she'd been the other night, kidding the barman, tossing off the lines, proud of what she was. Would you believe? She should've hung her fuckin' head. Funny he hadn't seen her make a pickup though, her or her girl friend. Probably been screwin' her whore head off since noon and taking a break now. Well, a break was one thing she wasn't going to get.

He settled up his tab so he'd be ready and sat moving a glass in his hands, conscious of her in the booth behind him, and half an hour later when they got up to go he was right behind them.

They stopped on the sidewalk, waved at a cab, and had an

argument over who should take it but the dark-haired bitch made the blonde get into it. Must live apart. Good. The cab took off and the brunette started walking, looking for another one.

The man reached into his back pocket, caught up with Marsha, and standing very close to her, pressed the knife into her side.

Redding came into the bar but if she was there she was hiding. Goddamnit, he'd missed them. He checked with the barman.

"You see Jenny Steiner around tonight? Blond, good-looking?"

"The new kid? Hangs around with Marsha?"

"That's her. She been in tonight?"

"Just walked out a minute ago."

Redding hurried into the street, looked up and down and across the avenue. No sign of them, probably heading home in a cab. He started walking toward the oncoming traffic, looking for one himself. As he passed the alley at the side of the bar he heard something or somebody knock over a garbage can, then a sound like a gasp.

He was never able to figure out exactly why he did what he did; it was the kind of thing only a cop with a drawn gun should ever try. He knew he'd only missed Jenny by a few minutes and maybe his imagination was working overtime but he had a terrible sense of something being wrong, so he walked into that dark little alley.

It opened up into a small courtyard, lit faintly by some room lights from the tenement next door. Crates of empty beer bottles were stacked high, and short, squat aluminum beer barrels and trash cans lined the wall. For a moment he didn't see the twin figures, as still as statues. Then he heard the soft thud and a man grunting, and the picture leaped at him like a zoom lens shot! Marsha, her shoulder bag on the ground, one hand pushing at the face of the man who had his arms locked around her, forcing her back.

Redding didn't remember what he said, something ordi-

nary like "Hey!" or maybe he called her name. All he could remember was that he didn't move.

But the guy did.

He released her and spun around, his hand flying to his back pocket. There was a click and a knife was there; it was that fast.

He growled at Redding. 'Take off, buddy. This is a private party."

He was a big man, with a florid meaty face and a belly on him, but he didn't move like a fat man, the way he'd spun on his heel like that.

Redding took a half-step forward and the man dropped into a crouch, head up, his free hand extended like a range finder in front of him. He clapped his hands and transferred the knife faster than Redding could follow it.

A knife fighter; he didn't have to wear a label.

As often happens in a sudden confrontation, comprehension lagged behind the actual event and it wasn't until the man switched hands that Redding saw his situation and a gut-snapping fear grabbed at his insides. But at the sight of the blade pointing at his groin his instincts took over: He snatched up a garbage-can lid and held it in front of him.

The man snickered. "I see the shield, but I don't see no spear." He took a lightning glance at Marsha pressed against the wall, then, still in his crouch, came forward.

By rights Redding, as an amateur armed with a trash-can lid matched against an alley fighter with a four-inch blade, should have ended up bleeding to death. It was sheer crazy luck that he didn't. What happened was the kind of thing that happens to Chaplin when he gets into a fight; something ludicrous occurs to give him the upper hand.

In Redding's case it was the choice of a particular beer bottle.

When he realized, as the man himself had pointed out, that he had no weapon he snatched up a bottle from a crate and brought it down hard on the metal edge of a garbage can. He'd never done it before and maybe he didn't do it

right or more likely there was a fault in the bottle, but whichever, the result was the same. Instead of breaking off near the base and leaving him with six inches of jagged, razor-sharp glass, the bottle snapped neatly and cleanly at the neck and left him with a weapon no more dangerous than a Popsicle stick. The main part of the bottle bumped to the ground intact and rolled away.

The man didn't laugh or jeer, just grunted with the derision a pro reserves for the bumbling amateur, and came on.

Redding did the only thing he could do: He grabbed the rim of the garbage can lid and flung it at the man like a fris-bee.

It was the last thing the man expected and it caught him flush on the forehead. As he staggered back he stepped onto the neckless bottle that had rolled behind him and went down in a perfect pratfall.

It took a half-second for Redding to get over his surprise and he almost lost his advantage; the man wasn't stunned, just hurting and mad, already scrambling to his feet. But Redding wasn't about to trust another empty bottle; instead he grabbed up a whole crate of them, took a fast step forward, swung the crate, and let it go.

It struck the man in the chest and sent him down again.

Then Marsha jumped in.

She was standing next to a whole stack of crates but couldn't lift one by herself so she did a much more effective thing: She pushed against the pile, lifted and shoved with her body, and toppled the stack over. The crates fell right on the man, the bottles cascading down on him bouncing off his head and shoulders and shattering on the ground, half-burying him in glass and plastic crates. But it wasn't a knock-out blow. The man was still very much in it, cursing and struggling, the knife clutched in his hand.

Redding went for the heaviest thing he could see, an aluminum beer barrel. It was too heavy; he couldn't lift it.

And then Marsha was there. She got one end, he got the other, and together they lifted it off the ground, staggered

with it a few steps, swung it back in a small arc and launched it.

It did the trick.

The man was clawing his way out from under the bottles and crates with the heavy movements of a Frankenstein monster and as he got himself clear the barrel hit him. It caught him squarely in his midriff, flattening him again, the air whooshing out of his body as he went down, and he lay there like a huge beached fish, vainly trying to suck in air, the knife gone from his limp fingers.

Redding and Marsha leaned on each other, having trouble with their own breathing. Suddenly a side door opened and the barman stood there, a thick billy club in his hand. He took in the girl's ripped blouse, Redding holding her, the big man spread-eagled on the ground.

The result of the fight, as they say, gave no indication of the contest.

To the bartender it looked as though Redding, possibly with a superb one-two combination—ramrod left to the stomach, short, tremendously powerful right hook to the jaw—had sent the big guy crashing back into the stack of empties and down for the count. He looked at Redding with respect. "Sheez!" he said. Redding understood and couldn't resist the moment. He let go of Marsha, shrugged his jacket to a better fit, and said, trying to keep his voice steady, ''I'm going in to call the cops."

He went into the bar and did just that.

Redding brought Marsha and a bottle of brandy back to the apartment and they described the scene for Jenny.

The police had been no trouble: Redding had called a sergeant he knew on the A&R squad and told him if he got over there quickly he'd find a rapist in the alley. They hadn't stayed to press charges. There were half a dozen girls who'd identify the man; he was going to jail.

While Jenny listened to the story she tried to fuss over

Marsha, but Marsha wasn't the type that took kindly to a lot of looking after, as Redding found out.

Jenny, looking more shaken than Marsha, said, "I can't get over it. You told me this man was around but said I wouldn't have to worry because of my blond hair, but it never occurred to me that you qualified."

Marsha shrugged. "I didn't give it much thought myself. If Henry hadn't come charging in on his white horse, that guy would have got something for nothing."

She sipped at her brandy and looked at Redding. "Henry, I thank you for that but I want you to promise me something . . ."

"What?"

"Never ever do a stupid thing like that again."

His face reddened. "You're kidding . . ."

"Henry, believe me, I'm grateful for what you did but you were crazy to do it. You should still be in that alley. You know that, don't you? You could see that guy had been around and he could see that you hadn't."

Uncomfortable, Redding flicked his eyes at Jenny; they hadn't gone into much detail of the fight, and he was sure Jenny had been left with the same kind of impression as the barman. He hated to see it disturbed.

"What was I supposed to do?" he asked Marsha. "Hold his jacket?"

"You should never have gone in there in the first place, but once in you should've walked out again. That guy wasn't going to cut me, or beat me up; he was only after a freebee. It wouldn't have been nice but it would've been quick."

"Oh," Redding said. "Pardon me."

"Don't get me wrong, Henry, what you did was a gutsy thing, but it was also a dopey thing."

"She's right, Henry," Jenny said.

Redding wasn't sure who the goddess of injustice was but it seemed to him that he'd really offended her. "Wow!

How's a guy supposed to score any points around here? What are you, Marsha? A libber? Are you sore just because a man rescued you?"

She laid a consoling hand on his arm and gave him the news. "Think about it for a moment. I rescued you."

That was too much, too cruel a blow. She was right and Redding saw it; without her help that guy would've handled him. She was right about the other thing, too, he'd stepped out of his league and been lucky. But realizing the truth didn't make it any easier to face and he felt like a flat tire. He picked up the brandy bottle—thank God there was always drink—and waved it at Marsha. "You want another shot or shall we wrap up the victory party?"

Marsha declined the drink and Jenny's offer to come down with her while she got a cab. She arranged to meet her the next night and when Redding took her to the door she did a surprising thing, leaned up to him and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

"Dopey but gutsy," she said, and left.

Later, when finally he was lying in the darkness across the room from Jenny, she said two words, "Good night, Henry," just those two words; but the way she said them, the soft tilt she gave to them, made him wonder if he hadn't scored some points after all.

Chapter Eleven

The next twenty-four hours were a repeat of the day before minus the encounter in the alley; Redding kept tabs on Tobler and the two women toured the street. Redding grilled Jenny again that night and again got all the right answers. She had the theory. The only question in his mind was the one that nagged him like an aching tooth: Could she pass the practical? He had a hunch they were going to find out very soon; things seemed to be building up and although Jenny didn't show it he suspected that the pressure might be getting to her, so he did what any good manager would do: He threw in a little relaxation.

The following night he asked her to have dinner with him before she met Marsha. He wasn't absolutely sure she'd say yes—certainly a few days back she would have turned him down flat—but it seemed to him that their relationship had changed somewhat, and she proved him right by accepting.

He took her to a French restaurant in the fifties, quiet and very expensive, with a wine list that went on forever. It was a pretty room, softly lit, enhanced by Regency striped silk and bergere chairs, white damask and crystal stemware—in short, elegant. He let her order for them both, which she did in excellent French, watched the way she handled the maitre d' as she politely turned aside his menu suggestions in a manner that left no doubt that he was there to serve them and not the other way around. She was wearing a chocolate-colored dress with Mexican pleats down the front; it looked marvelous with her blond hair, which she'd swept back off her face, the hair style accenting the almond shape of her eyes. Seeing her there as she expertly worked a hot

garlicky snail from its shell, listening to her talk in that perfectly rounded English accent, he knew he had to be crazy. Did he honestly expect to pass her off as an Eighth Avenue whore?

Crazy.

But he avoided any mention of that or Tobler or Devine or the plan; this was supposed to be forget-all-about-it time.

They skipped through a couple of subjects, then found to their happy surprise that they were both movie bugs. They launched into that subject and were still on it when the main course arrived, and while they ate they took all the important directors apart and put them back together again. Then somehow they got into the Marx Brothers and found themselves laughing way too much and too loudly for so soigne a place. It wasn't only the first normal conversation they'd had together; it was also the first time they'd laughed together. They both realized it at the same moment and grew quieter.

They passed up dessert in favor of coffee and a liqueur and sat, not saying much, until Jenny started talking again. She sugared her coffee, stirred it for a long while, then raised her eyes to him.

"Henry, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having a good time, but I know why you're doing it."

He tried to bluff it out. "I thought you could use a break from the hamburgers."

"It's because it's coming up soon now, isn't it?"

"That depends on what Marsha says. I can't—"

"A lot of producers do what you're doing, did you know that?"

"Did I know what?"

"When a performer's been working hard at a role they often make them take a break so they'll come back to it fresh. That's what tonight's all about, isn't it?"

He got the start of a denial all ready to go but never used it. He gave her a weak smile instead and a little movement of his hands.

''I'm not nervous, you know, I feel pretty confident; so don't worry about opening night."

Redding sipped his liqueur without tasting it and fumbled something around in his mind. The thought had been there for some time, nebulous and shadowy, and for some reason, probably an obvious one, it chose that particular moment to emerge.

"Jenny, I have a small bombshell for you. I'm not sure we should open at all."

"I don't understand. . . ."

"Forget it. Wrap it up now."

Her eyes played over his face, trying to get a jump on what he was saying but there was nothing there she could read; he looked as if he had lost something precious that he'd owned for years.

"Has the situation changed? Is there something you haven't told me?"

"Nope. Far as I know, it's still the same. It's just that I got to thinking about what we're doing and that the only reason we're doing it is for money and I'm not sure anymore if that's a good enough reason."

"That certainly doesn't sound like the Henry Redding I know. I was under the impression that money was your favorite fruit."

"It's still pretty high on the list. I'm just not sure it's worth the risk anymore, that's all."

She asked him to explain and he tried.

"On paper it looked fine: Find somebody willing to take a chance in return for a lot of money."

"What's different now?"

Redding had another try at the liqueur; it didn't have any more taste than the last sip. He put it down in front of him, then moved it an inch to the left.

"Because you're the somebody," he said.

Outside of a soft "Oh," she didn't reply to that and he didn't have anything more to add. They were both staring at their glasses now.

She said, 'That's a nice thought, Henry, but it doesn't make the risk any bigger."

"Maybe not, but it makes me wonder whether we should run it at all."

"You don't think I can do it, do you?"

"Frankly, no, since you ask. I mean, look at you, when you walked in here tonight the maitre d' took one peek at you and straightaway gave us a good table. You look like what you are, Jenny. It's my fault, I asked too much, a 180 degree turn."

Immediately she said, "Let's do this. I'm meeting Marsha in about an hour; let's make tonight my last night at school. Tomorrow night you come over to the Street and we'll have a tryout. I'll audition for you. If you don't think I'll do, then we'll wrap it up. Agreed?"

"Okay," he said, "fair enough."

She picked up her liqueur and sipped it; there was a trace of a smile about her lips. "You never know, Henry," she said, "I may surprise you."

Redding got a call from Marsha the next day. It was simple and direct.

"Henry, your hooker is ready."

"Honest, you really think she'll do?"

Marsha wasn't going to commit herself. "You're the boss, Henry, it's up to you to decide."

"Sure, but what do you think?"

"I'll show you what I think at ten tonight. The Union Bar." And those were her last words on the subject until he walked into the place right on time and found her in a booth by herself.

"Hi," he said. "Where's Jenny?"

"She'll be along." She raised her empty glass. "How about getting me a refill?"

He took her glass to the bar and ordered one for himself, too, and while he was waiting, checked over the inhabitants. Business was brisk and the place was nicely crowded;

a steady burble of noise rose, like the start of an office party. There were couples in booths, assorted guys doing their drinking standing up, as well as several hookers, some of them taking time out, others trying to drum up a little trade. One of them, two stools down, was giving a patron a really good sales pitch.

"Come on," she said to the man, a bookkeeper type, "what's forty bucks to a guy like you? Nothing."

She had a flat nasal voice that put her birthplace somewhere around the center of the country but she was dressed very New York: a crochet knit sweater and no bra, her nipples almost poking through the knit, a sixties miniskirt with yards of legs on show, and high ankle-strap platform shoes. She might have been a good-looking girl if not for the ridiculous red wig she wore and the glitter makeup on her eyes.

"But forty bucks," the man whined.

"C'mon, you can't take it with you and it won't be worth the climb to come back and get it."

"Nobody else asks forty—"

"Nobody else is worth forty."

"What do I get for it?"

"Paradise."

"I could die and go there cheaper. And, anyway"—he indicated the other girls—"I can get paradise for twenty-five."

The girl sniffed. "That ain't paradise, that's Palisades Park."

The man swigged at his drink. "Thirty. I'll go thirty and that's it."

"Mister, I'm really disappointed in you, you looked like such a sport. Listen, you take any of the scrubbers round here and pay 'em twenty-five you'll have more fun with your hand and a grocer's calendar. For thirty it's better but you'll still be in and out like a sewing-machine needle. But you pay me forty and, brother, you'll still be smiling next Columbus Day."

She swung her long legs and recrossed them, turning a simple action into an engraved invitation. It wasn't lost on

the man; if his eyes had fallen out right then, they would have bounced off her thighs and rolled around the floor. He quickly tossed off his drink.

"Okay," he said hoarsely, "okay. Forty bucks."

"Fine," the girl answered. "But that doesn't include my ten-dollar tip."

"Tip?" The man looked horrified. "What ten-dollar tip?"

The barman handed Redding his drinks and he took them back to Marsha.

"Boy," he said, "you should hear that redhead working that guy over there. She's got a spiel like a rug dealer."

"Some of them are pretty cute," Marsha allowed.

Redding checked his watch. "You told Jenny ten, didn't you?"

"She should be here any minute."

Marsha was correct. The redhead at the bar spun on her stool, came over, and slid in beside Redding.

"Hi, big fella. Anyone ever tell you you look nothing like Paul Newman?"

"Hey, somebody else, huh? I'm waiting for—" The words died in his throat and his mouth opened in exact proportion to his eyes. "Jesus Christ!"

"He left a message for you. He'll be late."

He was flabbergasted, floored. She was so right: that expression on her face, a promise of untold delights; the way she held her body, hunched forward slightly so that her breasts jutted and hung; and that thigh moving slowly against his beneath the table. He looked across at Marsha, who was trying to have the grace not to laugh, then back to Jenny again. "I see it, but I don't believe it."

His disbelief was cut into by the man she'd been spieling at the bar. He'd come to an agonizing decision.

"Okay," he said to Jenny, ignoring the other two. "Forty bucks. And your goddamn ten-dollar tip."

"And my cab fare home to Brooklyn."

The man's mouth worked but no words arrived. He turned and walked out of her life forever.

In her own voice, quietly, Jenny asked Redding if he'd seen enough, slid out of the seat, and moved toward the door. The barman saw her going.

"Hey, Jenny, already? You just got here."

"I gotta go home and roll socks," she called back.

Marsha asked Redding a superfluous question. "So, what do you think?"

"I'll tell you what I think. I think's she's got to be the best actress in the whole entire country."

ACT III

Devine

Chapter Twelve

"Scotch," Redding ordered. "Best you got." He flung an arm around. "And whatever everybody else wants."

The bartender regarded him with suspicion. He'd seen sports do that, order up big and then try to wiggle out of the tab. He didn't like guys coming in and buying drinks for the bar; it upset the rhythm.

"You sure now, buddy, 'fore I start pouring?"

"Bet your ass I'm sure." Redding pulled a wad of money from his pocket and tossed it onto the bar. "I really hit it today. Man, did I hit it!" He looked it, too, the way he was grinning.

The barman pushed the wad back at him. He didn't look happy. He was, anyway, a waspish-looking person with iron-gray hair parted in the middle and curling back.

"Put it away. You start flashing a roll around here, you might not get to keep it."

Redding looked at the customers; they were the same people he'd seen coming and going the nights he'd spent in the doorway opposite.

"Naw," he said, "looks like a good group."

The bartender made a sound in his mouth, thumped down a bottle and glass, and went away to make drinks. Redding knocked a quick one back and beamed his smile at the man on his right. "They say you can't beat the ponies. Lemme tell you I waxed them today. Re-ally creamed them."

The man, who was wearing a security guard's uniform, nodded blandly.

"Pammy's Boy in the fourth," Redding said, burbling on. "That nag owed me. I backed it three other starts this sea-

son, finished out every time. But not today, not today." He moved his hand like an airplane. "Zinnnngo! Paid twenty-four dollars and I had fifty bucks sitting on its cute little black button-nose."

The security man went back to his drink; there was nothing like hearing about some other bastard's success to make you feel good.

The bartender, working his way to Redding's side, put down a fresh drink in front of the man sitting at the curve of the bar.

"Drink up," Redding said to the man. "Plenty more where that came from. You ever get out to the track?"

His answer was a silent glassy stare.

Redding turned to his original audience, but the man was idly picking his nose.

Out loud, to nobody in particular, Redding said, "Real fun place."

Then a woman came in the door.

"New blood," Redding said loudly. "Hey, baby. Over here."

The girl came down the bar, slid onto the stool next to him.

"What are you drinking?" he asked. "They got it all."

She tapped the bottle in front of him. "That'll do."

"Innkeeper!" Redding slapped his hand down. "A glass for the lovely lady."

He looked at her long legs crossed under the miniskirt. "The very lovely lady," he added, and dropped a hand to her knee.

She slapped his hand away and flared at him. "Don't touch the fruit, Jack!"

"Sorry, sorry. Just getting neighborly, that's all."

"You're buying me a drink," the woman said, still ruffled. "So far that's all you're buying."

"I said I'm sorry, didn't I?"

The sour-faced barman put down a glass in front of the

girl and Redding filled it. She didn't touch the drink but turned away from him and ran a professional check of the men in the bar.

Redding drank his drink, wiped his mouth, and let his eyes linger on the crochet knit sweater she wore. He said, "Say, I did want to buy a little more. What would it set me back?"

She looked at him and dismissed him. "You couldn't afford it."

He snorted with laughter. "Baby, you're so wrong. Come on, how much?"

"A hundred and fifty."

"You're kidding . . ."

"That's the price on the tag."

"A hundred and fifty in a place like this? That's Waldorf prices."

"It's Waldorf service," the girl said.

Redding chuckled; he seemed amused. "Yeah, what's it include?"

"Things you never had done to you before."

He smirked at her. "I doubt it. I was stationed in Japan two years."

"I done business with a lot of guys been abroad. Nobody ever asked for their money back."

"Lady, I think you're bluffing."

She began to swivel off the stool. "You'll never know," she said.

"Wait!" Redding pulled out the wad of money, peeled off a big piece of it, and put it down in front of her. "I'm calling you," he said, a superior grin on his mouth.

The girl didn't act surprised, merely fanned the money expertly, checked it, and tucked it into her shoulder bag. "Okay, come on."

To the security man Redding said, "Here goes nothing," and followed the girl out of the bar.

He was back forty minutes later but he was a different person. His ebullient mood had been replaced by one of astonished wonder; he looked like a man who'd been allowed a peek at a secret of life. He moved slowly to the same stool he'd left, poured himself a drink, but appeared too shaken up to touch it.

The change wasn't lost on the security man. A guy who'd won a bundle was one thing; but to pay a yard and a half for a hooker in Charlie's, and to look like that afterward, that was worth finding out about.

"So?" he said. "Was it good value?"

Redding turned a glazed face to him, said in an awed voice, "I only went for it to see the look on her face, but I tell you . . ." His sentence trailed off; what good were words?

"Really good?" the security man wanted to know. "Really worth all that glue?"

"Mister, that was a bargain. She did things that . . ." Once again he gave up the attempt as memory overwhelmed him. He picked up his shot glass, put it down again; liquor wasn't going to do anything for him now. He put some money on the bar and walked out as slowly as he'd walked in.

The barman came down to the security man. "He really pay her what she asked?"

"Yep. Saw him do it."

The man looked for some place to spit. "Sports," he said. "Today the big spender. Tomorrow night he'll be in here wanting a drink on the slate."

"You know that guy?"

The bartender was surprised; it was King Kong who'd spoken. It was the first time he'd ever heard him open his mouth except to order a drink.

"Never seen him before."

"How about the girl?"

"She's a newy on me, too."

Tobler didn't acknowledge the information, just stopped

talking as if he'd never begun and stared toward the door that Redding had just walked through.

The doorman on duty was snatching a quick sandwich lunch, one eye on the lobby and the other on the street. The breeze that usually blew across from the park had gone away somewhere and left a hot day behind, too hot for the damn itchy uniform he had to wear. He was thinking about maybe taking a little nip when he spotted somebody down the block. Even that far away he recognized the shape: De-vine's goon. Freddie Rawson said that Devine was a big-time fence, and when you saw the man who worked for him you could believe it. The guy always reminded him of something you'd see on the late-late movie; they had one of on the other night, this scientist, crazy he was, trained his gorilla to go around killing people, stuffing them up chimneys. That's what Tobler reminded him of; the guy gave him the creeps.

He brushed crumbs from his mouth, waited for him, then swung the door open.

"Go right up, Mr. Tobler. I'll announce you."

Tobler rode the elevator to Devine's apartment and buzzed the bell. Devine opened the door, leaving it for Tobler to close as he went back into the bathroom where he was shaving. He arched his jaw, thumbed a button razor, and began to move the razor over an already smooth throat.

"What's up?"

Tobler stood outside the bathroom door, watching De-vine's face in the mirror.

"Maybe something, maybe nothing." His voice was a deep one but he spoke his words clearly. "In the bar last night, Charlie's, a guy came in and started throwing money around. Little while later this hooker came in. He priced her out, she said a hundred and fifty."

The whir of the razor cut off and Devine's eyes darted to the big man's reflection as if he were accusing him of some-

thing. It was a way he had of looking at people and it was one of the things that made him a successful trader; people dealing with him often felt that he knew they were coming in high and would take less. Suspicion, or a show of it, was an integral part of Devine's makeup.

He pulled the razor from its socket, picked up a shell-backed brush, and with careful strokes began to run it through his thinning hair.

"What did she look like?"

"Tall. Good body on her. Pretty face."

"Really noticed her, huh?" He'd never heard Tobler describe a woman in that manner; he must have been impressed by this one.

"How about the hair?" The brush worked at his own.

"Wearing a wig."

"Any accent?"

"Flat American, not New York. But there was something she said . . ."

"What?"

"She was telling him she'd done business with guys that'd been overseas, only she didn't say overseas. She said abroad."

"What about the guy? He go for the pitch?"

"Yeah. Came back in later like he'd been through a wringer. But I think he was shilling for her."

"Why do you say that?"

Tobler replied to the back of his boss's well-groomed neck. "He was laying it on too thick. He was a lousy actor."

Devine replaced the brush, picked up a crystal decanter, and dumped after-shave into his hands, rubbed them together, and began to pat his face.

"You check 'em out?"

"Charlie didn't know either of them."

Devine emerged from the bathroom toweling his hands. He dried each of his fingers separately, carefully; they were precision tools to be kept in immaculate condition. He

looked at Tobler, who stood head and shoulders above him.

'Til tell you what you do. Go back to the bar tonight. If they're working the Street they'll probably turn up again. Ask the guy what he knows about her and if it looks like something I'll check her out."

That was all Devine had to say, so Tobler left. Devine locked the door behind him and studied his face in the hall mirror; there was something not right with the left side of his mustache. He went back into the bathroom and spent five minutes fixing it.

When Redding left the bar that night, he stood on the sidewalk as if uncertain about which direction to take. He finally opted for downtown, put his hands in his pockets, and slouched along looking very unhappy.

His appearance hadn't changed half a block farther when something that felt like a metal clamp clutched his arm and he was half-carried, half-propelled into the dark hall of a tenement.

"Wrong guy, Mac," he gabbled. "I'm tapped."

It was all he could do to speak; Tobler had him squashed against the wall, his immense body pinning him down like a bug on a board.

"I don't want money. I want answers." The bottle lenses were six inches from Redding's face. "The girl. What do you know about her?"

"I know a lot of girls. Which—"

It was an openhanded slap, much as a woman might use, but with that ham-sized hand and the charging power behind it the slap landed harder than most men could punch. It rocked Redding off his feet, sent him bouncing sideways along the wall and down to the tile floor.

As if he were lifting a sack of corks, Tobler hauled him to his feet and set him back against the wall. Dimly, through the ringing in his head that was shimmering like a beaten gong, Redding heard Tobler talking to him quietly and pa-

tiently, like a good instructor explaining something to a dull pupil. And he illustrated his words by placing a thick finger on different parts of Redding's face.

"I'm going to ask you that question again. You lie to me, I'll break your nose. And I'll break your cheekbones. And I'll break your jaw so bad you won't speak right. You understand me?"

Redding gulped, blinked, tried to focus. "Yeah."

"You shilling for that girl?"

"Yeah."

"What's her name?"

"Jenny Steiner."

"Where's she from?"

"Midwest someplace. She never said."

"Where'd you meet her?"

"Atlanta."

"How?"

Redding swallowed. His eye felt like a hot light was flashing on and off inside it. "She was working the bars. I figured she could do better here, so I put it to her and she came with me."

Tobler was silent, the magnified eyes locked onto Red-ding's face.

"Okay," he said at last. "This time tomorrow you have that girl in the Bickford's at Fifty-Fifth. I got a friend likes expensive girls so it's worth your while to be there." He leaned fractionally closer. "It won't be worth it if you're not."

He turned and walked out of the tenement.

Redding, his legs made rubbery by sudden fear and an equally sudden release from it, slumped against the wall and slid down to his haunches. It was a long time before he went out and looked for a cab.

"Hello," he said as she opened the door. "Oh, my God." She helped him inside and onto the sofa bed, went quickly into the bathroom, then the kitchen and

returned with a face cloth full of ice. She knelt beside him and gingerly placed it on his eye, which was completely closed, swollen, purpling black folds on either side.

"What happened?"

"What I figured. Tobler and I had a little chat."

"But why did he beat you up?"

"Jenny, if Tobler had beaten me up I'd look like strawberry yogurt. This was just a pay-attention rap."

She lifted the face cloth and winced. "It really needs a steak."

"I'll settle for some aspirin and a shot of brandy."

She brought both things to him.

"You sure you should have alcohol?"

"It's either that or shake to death," he said. "Jesus, I was scared."

He propped himself up on one elbow and took the pills with the liquor. She sat down on the sofa, lowered his head into her lap, and ministered to his eye again.

"You have a date with Devine," he said. "Tomorrow night."

"Okay."

"I think you should stand him up."

"Henry, don't start that again. We're too close to quit now. I'm not worried, why should you be?"

"Because I don't want to be holding your head tomorrow night."

"Devine won't hurt me, nor will Tobler. Not unless I really flop and I don't intend to do that."

Redding's mouth stiffened and he clenched his teeth. "Jenny, I'm no killer. I think killing people's bad manners but if that ape hurts you I'll get a gun and shoot him."

She moved the ice in the cloth, sponged his eye, spoke to him gently. "Nobody's going to shoot anybody. We're going to be great, everything's going beautifully apart from this Technicolor orb here."

"So far, but there's another thing. When you get upstairs with Devine, what if he wants his money's worth? I don't

want him laying his hands on you any more than I want To-bler slapping you around. If he touches you I'll shoot him, too."

"Henry, come on now, I'll handle it. Although," she said, slowing, "that does raise a point . . ."

With her face upside down to him, and with only one eye to see through, anyway, it was hard for him to read her expression. But was that a smile at the corners of her mouth? What the hell had she found to smile about?

"Henry, I've always admired Strasberg and his application of the Method to the modern theater."

God, his eye was killing him and she was talking about the theater.

"Remember when Brando was doing The Men? He spent weeks in a wheelchair."

Wheelchairs yet.

"Henry, to get into the part I'm playing I think I should do the same."

"You want to sit around in a wheelchair?"

"No, silly. What I'm saying is I've got the theoretical side of the part down pat but I haven't done anything about the practical side. I mean"—she put her hands on his shirt— "you've tested me on everything else but you've never tested me on that."

She began to unbutton his shirt.

"If you did and you gave me a good score"—she was still unbuttoning—"then I'd be completely confident in the role."

In a slow glide she began to move her lips over his chest.

"And you'd want me ... to be completely . . . confident . . . wouldn't you?"

What Redding meant to say was something like "Well, sure I do" or "Naturally," but all that came out was a long low moan.

The sound of the late-night traffic on Lexington Avenue came through the open window but not so loud as to be unbearable, not very loud at all; but even if it had been a ticker-

tape parade down there, it still wouldn't have been the reason why Redding was still awake.

Her words came back to him—"if you gave me a good score"—and he shook his head there in the dark; to rate her performance he'd have to invent a whole new scoring system. She had been, in a word, incredible. In fact, he realized, he was now in the state he'd pretended to be back in Charlie's bar: dazzled, bewildered, brain-numbed. That Jenny, Jenny, an upper-class English girl from Pound Ridge, could have done the things she'd done . . . He'd been to bed with a lot of women and some of them had been surprising and some had been disappointing, but none of them had been wildly out of character.

Charity galas, Twenty-One, tailgate lunches at polo games, Lincoln Center, and small private gallery openings, that was Jenny. And if that was Jenny, who was this girl, the one dozing in his arms, with the butterfly tongue that had darted and fluttered into everything he owned? And that thing she'd done with her teeth, the exquisite thrilling fear of that! And who'd taught her to use her breasts, use them almost like an extra pair of hands half-shivering him to death? He'd thought it couldn't get any better, thought it impossible to sustain so much pleasure, but when she'd mounted him and her grainy silkiness had swallowed him a little more and a little faster each time, the final rapture/agony had jackknifed his body and he thought he was going to lose his soul.

He looked down at the firm roundness of her curled in against him, the curve and jut of her hip, the long white legs twined into his, her soft, warm woman smell rising into his nostrils.

"Jenny . . ."

"Mmm?"

He stopped, not sure, then went ahead with the question. "Where did you learn all that?"

Her voice was sleepy, not too much attention in it. "All what?"

"All those—tricks."

He felt her mouth smile against his chest.

"In the Campfire Girls."

"I'm serious."

She raised her head to check and saw that he was. "Dope," she said. "If a woman wants to please a man she doesn't have to take a correspondence course."

She snuggled into him again. "How's the eye?"

"It doesn't bother me." It wasn't true; the whole left side of his face had settled down to a steady nagging.

She moved against him, yawned. After a minute her breathing deepened and she drifted off.

Not Redding.

It's possible to sleep through a nagging pain, but a nagging thought will keep you awake for hours.

Chapter Thirteen

Redding woke around eleven and Jenny about thirty seconds later on account of what he was doing to her. Their lovemaking this time was softer and slower and more satisfying for both of them in different ways.

Redding untangled himself long enough to call his newspaper and tell them he wouldn't be in, he wasn't about to take a shiner like he had into the office and, besides, he had better things to do. He got back into bed with the girl and did some of them for a long time. They got up eventually, showered together, dressed together, and went out and did all the other corny things new lovers do together: They had brunch around two—daiquiris and eggs Benedict—went to an afternoon movie, window-shopped on Fifth, had a drink at the St. Moritz, then got a cab down to Chinatown for dinner.

For Redding it was one of the best days he could remember and he wasn't even bothered by all the people who stared at his eye, which now looked like a sunset in a thunderstorm. Let them look; a guy with a shiner and a beautiful girl was the classic double.

But he still had to keep reminding himself that this date they were on wasn't going to have a traditional ending: coffee and kisses and bed with the beautiful girl. Instead the girl was going to get dressed up like a hooker and go out and meet a man who'd killed people.

When they got back to the apartment they talked about Devine for the first time that day and went over everything, then Jenny changed and they left for the West Side.

The coffee shop was crowded but they found a table by the window and sat watching the avenue with its constant surge of people and noise and never-ending traffic, and

when the car pulled up outside Redding knew it had to belong to Devine even before he saw Tobler behind the wheel. It was a long white Mercedes with hand-painted initials on the door and the hood emblem replaced by a prancing silver horse.

Tobler stayed in the car, double-parked, his fisheyes fixed on the coffee shop. Devine walked in through the revolving door and stood there looking around. There was no mistaking him; Redding knew only his face, but the rest of him looked exactly as he'd imagined. He was impeccably groomed, expensively dressed: a beautifully cut summer suit, pale silk shirt, paler silk tie caught by a stickpin that flashed in the light, hundred-dollar shoes. He spotted Jenny quickly but stayed where he was, watching her.

She gave no sign of his presence, merely ran her eyes over him as she would any newcomer, then looked back at the traffic. They weren't alone at the table; two men had jammed in next to them and were talking in loud voices.

Devine came over and put a ten-dollar bill down in front of the men. He said, making an order of it, "Maybe you could find someplace else." It stopped their conversation cold. They looked at the bill, looked at Devine, and without a word got up and moved.

Devine hitched at the knees of his pants and sat down next to Redding. He hadn't looked at him yet; since he'd seen Jenny his eyes hadn't left her.

A kid in jeans and jacket went to grab the empty seat next to the girl but Devine's voice stopped him. "Somebody's sitting there."

"I don't see nobody," the kid said.

"You will if you sit down."

The kid checked Devine, trying to decide if he could back up the threat, figured he shouldn't chance it, and went away.

"You the guy?" Redding asked.

Devine ignored him. He said to Jenny, "What's your name?"

"Jenny."

"Jenny what?"

"Hey," Redding broke in, "the price is a hundred and a half. If you like what you see, fine. If you don't, piss off."

Devine placed both hands flat on the table. He had the jeweler's penchant for ornament and wore three gold rings, a small clear stone in each, a gold-banded watch, and onyx cuff links with an inlaid silver design.

"Listen, pimpo," he said, "the guy that gave you that eye last night is right outside. Your mind your manners when you speak to me."

Redding touched a hand to the bruise and shifted uneasily. His tone got a lot less forceful. "Okay, it's just that this here's a business proposition."

"That's why I came." Devine was regarding Jenny again. He let his eyes travel over her face and shoulders and breasts; it was a long, slow trip.

"Nice," he said. He slipped an alligator billfold from his pocket, snapped out three fifties and passed them to her. "I've got my car. We'll go to my place."

"Uh-uh. I don't do that." Her accent echoed the flat drawn-out vowels of the Midwest. "I don't leave the Street."

"Where then?"

"I work out of The Kingsbury."

Devine's short laugh was just a sound in his nose. "A bill and a half and you want to go to The Kingsbury? Let's go to The Plaza."

"Look, we're not going to a hotel for the room service, right?"

Devine conceded the point, pleased with her answer. "Okay, The Kingsbury."

With a quick movement Jenny slid out of the seat and started toward the door. Devine followed, and Redding was left sitting in the booth. There was nothing he could do; it was supposed to happen this way. But now that it was he felt like jumping up, grabbing Jenny, and getting her the hell out of there. He didn't do any of that. Stunned by the

speed of what had happened, he just sat there and watched her get into the big white car, watched as it moved away, skipped into the traffic and vanished.

The audience had arrived, the curtain was up, and it was show time, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do to stop it.

The same tired-looking clerk she'd seen on her earlier visit with Marsha was standing behind the desk. When Devine paid him the money he showed no surprise at his elegant clothes—rich men, poor men, you get 'em all.

They went up to the second floor and into a room that faced the street but apart from that it was the exact double of the one she'd been in before, same crummy furniture, same rumpled spread on the bed.

She sat down on it and began unbuckling her shoes. "What'llitbe?"

Devine stood just inside the door. "Whatever you're good at."

"I'm good at everything. For a hundred and a half I'll smear you with cranberry sauce if you want."

"What's your name, kid?"

She was having trouble with the zipper at the side of her sweater. "I already told you that."

"You didn't tell me the last half."

"Steiner."

"Jenny Steiner. Okay. Where are you from, Jenny?"

"Atlanta. Why don't you get out of your clothes?"

"Atlanta, huh? You sound more like Ohio, Illinois, someplace like that."

She stood up. "Mister, did you come up here to fuck or talk about the weather?"

He went on as if he hadn't heard her. "I had a buddy in the air force in Atlanta, stationed at that big base down there. What's the name of it again? I always forget."

That jarred her; Redding hadn't prepared her for a question like that and it was such an obvious one. Any prostitute in any city would know a local military base. A one-ques-

tion test and she was going to fail it. And then it came; miraculously, it came: the map she'd studied leaped into her head and she saw the name clearly.

"Dobbins."

"Oh yeah, Dobbins." Then he said, "You ever work Chicago?"

"No." It came right on top of his question.

"You're pretty sure of that."

She looked a little annoyed. "I should know where I worked, shouldn't I?" She gave up on the zipper and struggled out of the sweater, pulling it over her head. She wore a see-thru bra underneath and he dropped his eyes from her face.

"You're a nice-looking kid, Jenny." He came across to her, put his hands on her shoulders. "Nice skin."

With a quick movement he slipped a hand behind her head, jerked it forward, and parted the hair on her scalp.

She shook her head free and stepped back, alarm in her eyes. "What the hell are you doing?"

His manner stayed exactly the same, as imperturbable as a rock. "You color it, huh?"

"Yeah, I color it. Mister, I'm not sure I like you."

"That's too bad," he said as his hand whipped up and slapped across her mouth.

She stumbled back, caught her balance, blazed at him. "You bastard] Take your money and get out of here!"

She'd yelled the words at him and she'd yelled them in her natural voice.

"Well, well. Now, I'd say that accent wasn't even Ohio."

She looked confused for a moment, then came back strongly, not bothering to sound American. "I'm no lumper." She fumbled the money out of her shoulder bag and flung it onto the bed. "I'm not getting beaten up for a lousy hundred and fifty."

"English. You're English, aren't you?"

"There's no law against it." She began to work the sweater over her head.

He said very softly, but very clearly, "Lois Pink."

For the smallest part of a second the sweater paused around her arms, a tiny hitch but he caught it.

'That name ring a bell?"

She straightened her sweater, slipped on her shoes, reached for her bag.

"You're a spooky trick, mister." She turned for the door but he was too fast for her and grabbed her arm.

She spun and shoved violently against him to send him off balance and snatched at the first thing she could use as a weapon. It was a broken bentwood chair, the cane bottom half out of it, little more than a frame left, but it was something and she swung it as he came at her again. It glanced off his shoulder and tumbled him sideways and the fall shocked the breath out of him. She flew out of the room. De-vine, holding his side, struggled to the window and tried to yell down to Tobler, who was standing by the parked car. "Tobler'.Tobler!"

He got some volume into it as the girl burst out of the hotel door and started running down the block. The big man started after her but when she flagged a cab down he turned, trotted back to the Mercedes, and jumped in.

He was a good wheel-man and he followed the cab effortlessly through the traffic, letting a gap open and staying three cars behind. They went east across town and turned south on Lexington. When he made the turn into Thirty-Eighth the cab was pulling away empty from an apartment house. He cruised by, noted the address, then speeded up, and hurried back to his boss.

Redding jerked open the door and hugged her into his arms. "You all right, you okay?"

"Fine. I'm fine."

"Lady"—he let out a lot of breath—"we're never going to do that again. I've never felt so bloody helpless in all my life."

He held her away to look at her and saw the cut mouth.

"The son of a bitch!"

"He didn't hurt me, and it gave me a perfect excuse."

'The bastardV Redding said.

"That's what I called him, but with a long A."

He took her into the bathroom, ran water over a face cloth and dabbed at her mouth.

"We're getting pretty good at this," she said.

He asked her how it had gone and she gave him a rundown, including her flying exit.

"A chair?" he said. "Well, that should give him the message. He follow you here okay?"

"Tobler did. He can really handle that big car. It wasn't any problem."

Redding tossed the cloth down and they caught sight of themselves in the mirror, Redding with his swollen eye, Jenny with the lump at the corner of her mouth.

"Look at us," Redding said. "We look like we're married and living in the Bronx."

She came into his arms and rested her head on his shoulder.She had a clouded look on her face. "Do you think he'll come tonight?"

"It's hard to say. He may come first and check later or the other way around. We're just going to have to expect him."

They were pretty uncomfortable words to go to bed on. They slept together but didn't make love, just held each other close. She'd been really scared, he could tell that from the fine trembling that moved through her body, a late reaction.

Although neither said as much, they lay there in the dark listening for the rasp of a pick in the lock. Sleep was a long time coming.

But they needn't have worried; Devine didn't come that night. He came the next night.

Chapter Fourteen

The John looked ordinary enough, standard stuff, not much different from the other five she'd done business with since coming on. About the only thing she noticed about a John, anyway, was his breath; boy, some of them were like the losers in the toothpaste ads.

He hadn't argued about the money; he was there to get laid, all right, a quiet enough guy, a little overweight, Robert Hall suit, wife and two kids in Elmhurst type. There hadn't been any problem in the room until she'd started unzipping; that was when he'd grabbed her pocketbook. She had tried to grab it back but he'd held her off easily and shoved her back onto the bed.

"You're wasting your time, fella. The money's with the desk clerk."

He poked around, brought out a small clear paper package. Almost nonchalantly he said, "This is what I was after."

"Take it," the woman said. "It's all yours." A junkie. Sometimes you could never tell. Thank God she had something for him; they could go ape wild.

He opened the little package and sniffed at the powder. "Whether I take it or not depends."

"On what?"

"On you." He came over to her, a hand fishing into his jacket; it came out holding a badge.

The woman swore under her breath. "Okay," she said tiredly and started to get out of her clothes again.

"I didn't mean that."

"Then what did you mean?" She knew the answer and it

was something she didn't want to hear but she had to say something.

"You ever done time?"

"Who hasn't?"

"You'll do a lot more this go-round."

The woman brushed her hair away from her eyes and studied him, wondering. "Look, that ain't duji, just a little coke. I don't go crazy, roll Johns, or anything. I just take a little snort now and then. You ain't going to bust me for that?"

"You got a kid?"

She knew what was coming for sure now.

"Yeah, I got a kid."

"Boy or a girl?"

"Girl."

"How would you like not to go home to her the next four years?"

She tailored each word before she let it out of her mouth. "If I tell you what you want to know, I am dead. You know it and I know it. So don't ask."

"We could give you protection."

"Oh sure."

"You remember Marcia Brennan?"

"I sure do. That's what I'm talking about."

"Marcia's okay, we moved her to another part of the country. That's why she hasn't been around. We guaranteed her protection and she got it."

"Expect me to believe that?"

"Did you know her at all?"

"Pretty well."

The cop said, "I can't tell you where she lives but you come with me right now and I'll call her long distance. You can talk to her yourself."

The woman hesitated.

"Come on, what've you got to lose?" He went to the door and opened it. "We're paying for the call."

"You offering me the same deal?"

"Depends on who the dealer was."

"How come?"

He closed the door. "If he's Mafia we can't do much for you; they'd catch up with you. But if he's an indie then you're okay because those guys don't have the organization." He pressed on. "Was he black or white?"

"Black."

"Then it looks good for you."

"What if I tell you and he's Mafia?"

"Then we try our best."

"What if I don't tell you?"

"Then I bust you. Either way I get an arrest. I'd rather it be the pusher."

The choices were plain enough: three or four years of living like an animal or dead forever. Or maybe a chance at a new life somewhere.

"Tell me his name," the cop said reasonably, "and I'll tell you your chances."

She said nothing but the man saw that he was very close. He put his thumb on the scales.

"How old's your kid?"

The woman's shoulders sagged. In a dulled voice she said to the floor, "I bought from Munroe."

"Munroe. Then you're in the clear."

She looked up sharply. "That the truth?"

"That is," he said. He scratched his nose. "What I told you about Marcia, we moved her to Woodlawn Cemetery. She bought from the wrong guy."

"You cop asshole."

"You don't have to worry; Munroe works for an indie. You don't believe that, check around."

"I'm going to. What's his name, his boss?"

"You know him," the cop answered. "Whitey Haines."

Chapter Fifteen

Before they'd left, Redding had taken a pencil and marked a thin line on a drawer where it was half overlapped by the one above; that way he could tell if Devine had been in while they'd been out. Then they went downstairs at their usual time, sticking to their pattern, and got into a cab. There was still no way of knowing when Devine would come, or even if he'd come at all, but that was one of the things they had to assume, and if they'd taken a close look at the dark doorway opposite they would have known that their assumption was correct.

As their cab swung around the corner Tobler moved down the block to a pay phone. Twenty minutes later the Mercedes arrived.

'The super in?" Devine asked the doorman.

"2B." The doorman watched them walk inside and didn't like what he saw.

Neither did the superintendent when he answered their ring.

"You got trouble in the house," Devine said.

In his thick Norwegian accent the super asked what kind of trouble.

'The Steiner girl. Did you know she was a hooker?"

"I seen her once or twice; I figured maybe she is. But she's got a boyfriend and she comes home alone. What anybody does outside the building doesn't bother me."

"I'd like to look at her apartment."

The superintendent frowned. He didn't like these two. What kind of a man wore rings like that, clothes like that? And the other, an ape, his strength betrayed by those weak

eyes. "You got identification?" In case there was trouble he wanted to be able to say he'd asked.

"Sure." Devine produced his billfold and held out a twenty-dollar bill. "Here's my picture."

The super took the easiest way out; he was an old man and didn't need a broken arm. He accepted the money. "I got to come with you. Inside, I mean."

"You're invited."

He got his keys and led them to the elevator. They rode up in silence. When he let them in and flicked on the lights, Devine walked to the center of the room and stood there, not touching anything, just swiveling his eyes around and turning his head slowly as if he were hearing a noise he couldn't locate. He looked with his whole body, testing the atmosphere, getting the feel of the room on his skin.

He asked over his shoulder, "She lives here with a guy, right?"

"That's right."

"They move in together?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"About a week back."

"Where did they come from?"

"Some stuff arrived from Atlanta."

Devine started with the closet; he ignored Redding's clothes but went through all of Jenny's, her shoes, her dresses, the shirts and sweaters in the drawers. He spent a long time with her things on the dressing table, working carefully, making sure he didn't have to check something twice by checking it right the first time. He was particularly interested in her jewelry and took an eye-piece from his pocket and examined all of it under a lamp. He touched and peered and poked, took apart anything that came apart, slid out, undid, and opened things. He was very, very thorough.

He checked the kitchen and the bathroom, then came back to the room again, cocked his head on one side, and worried his lower lip.

Something was wrong.

But he couldn't see what it was.

Maybe that was it; maybe it was wrong because he couldn't see it. Was there something he couldn't see that he should be seeing? Something missing? He pivoted slowly all the way around, checking again. He went back to the closet, peered inside it, closed it. From the small open window on his right, street noises came in. He looked down on the avenue below: cars, trucks, cabs, a few motorbikes, an airline bus.

An airline bus.

Airline, travel, bags, something missing.

It was as simple as that. There were no suitcases in the apartment.

He said to the super, "You got a storage room for bags?"

They rode the elevator to the basement and went into a room that was really a walled-off section of the garage; it was stuffed full of strollers, skis, spare furniture, and a sea of suitcases, trunks, and bags. They were all loosely arranged in sections that were marked off according to floor and apartment. The superintendent seemed to know who owned what. He picked his way around and then pointed. "These three here."

"Nothing else?"

"That's what they gave me."

"Let's see them."

The super handed them to Tobler, who took them across to Devine, who had moved underneath the light. He bent to them and started.

The first was a big, cheap case of dark tartan cloth with black vinyl handles and a zipper running around three sides; the second, an old Samsonite two-suiter, the corners scuffed and worn, a torn sticker from a Baltimore hotel on the brown canvas top. They were both empty save for a plastic shoehorn in one and a rolled-up nylon clothesline in the other.

He turned his attention to the third case.

Like the other two, it had a new Eastern Airlines claim check dangling from the handle but apart from that it was totally different. It was an expensive bag, real pigskin with red plush inserts down the sides, brass catches, and a wide buckled center strap. There were a couple of hairpins caught in the lining of a side pouch but there was nothing else inside. It was an old bag but it had been treated well and bore few signs of travel; it was a bag that had spent a lot of time stored in a closet somewhere.

Devine picked it up, cradled it in his arms to get it closer to the light, and looked very intently at the leather strip underneath the handle.

"You got any chalk down here, something like that?"

"Not down here."

"What's through there?"

"Laundry room."

Still carrying the suitcase, Devine went through the door.

There were four machines, one of them thumping on a dry cycle, the owner of the clothes nowhere in sight. Devine found what he thought he'd find in a waste bin, a discarded detergent box. He retrieved it, tapped out the half-handul of white powder left in the bottom, and bent to the suitcase. His expert eye had spotted something on that leather strip beneath the handle: There had been some initials stamped there once; a few flecks of gold leaf were still visible. They'd either been worn off or somebody had taken them off.

He flipped the handle on its side and dumped the detergent onto the spot, rubbed it in with the flat of his hand, then made an O of his mouth and began to blow the powder off. He did it carefully and with the immense patience of a man restoring a valuable painting. He took a silk handkerchief from his top pocket, twisted one corner and used it as a pick. He scraped at the powder, then blew; scraped then blew. He seemed to spend ages at it. The other two men watched him. He wet his finger and blotted at the powder, tapping gently, pressing. Then he straightened with the suitcase in his arms to bring it closer to the ceiling lights.

Almost inaudibly he said, "Well, lookee here."

There was only a tiny amount of powder left on the bag but what there was rested in grooves so shallow they were barely there, the faint indentations of initials.

J.A.C.

The white powder showed three letters, clearly.

The big white car made mincemeat out of the trip, eating up the miles at effortless speed. He turned off the highway and rolled into the town. He soon found the store without any trouble.

The manager wasn't much help.

"About ten years back?" He whistled softly. "I strongly doubt it. In fact, I'd have to say right now, forget it. We just don't keep receipts that long." He thought about it. "Nothing else, just the initials and the store tag?"

"That's right," Devine said. "My wife found it. I noticed your label in it, and seeing I was coming up this way, I thought I'd give it a try."

"It's definitely a ladies' bag?"

"Yeah."

"Tell you what you might try. You might try checking the electoral rolls to see if there are any J.A.C.s there. Of course, you don't know if the owner's from Poughkeepsie. She might have bought it just passing through."

Devine took his advice, even though he thought it was a long shot; long shots sometimes paid off.

He drove to the city hall and got a look at the rolls but the only J.A.C. was a man. He explained his problem to the clerk, who told him to check in another section; they'd taken a census a few years back and that was the nearest thing they had to a complete listing. When that drew a blank, he went back to the clerk for any other ideas.

"You might try the library; that's the only other place I can think of."

It wasn't far. The librarian looked like librarians are supposed to look, thin, spinsterish, fussy. She took a quick flip

through her membership listing but it didn't help. She tapped her ball-point nervously up and down on her desk.

"Well," she said, "if I was trying to trace a woman in Poughkeepsie, I'd definitely try the college."

"What college is that?"

"Why, Vassar, of course."

"Vassar College is in Poughkeepsie?" He said it quietly, without emphasis.

"I thought everybody knew that. If you're driving you can be there in ten minutes."

He made it in eight.

Somebody directed him to the registrar's office, where he explained his problem and ran into some stiff opposition. The woman in charge of records didn't like this man with his flashy clothes and his slick manner, a cheap product in expensive wrapping. It bothered her the way he didn't move his upper lip when he spoke, as if he were afraid of unsettling that too-perfect mustache. She didn't trust him.

"I'm afraid our records are confidential. They're not open to the public."

"Well, sure, I can understand that but, like I told you, I'm only asking so I can give somebody back their bag." Devine did his best to smile; it was something he wasn't very good at. "A mission of mercy, you might say."

The woman remained unmoved. "I understand and I'd like to help but it would be against college policy." She stood up. "I'm sorry."

Devine didn't stay to argue; there was one more source he could try.

"You've got kind of a tough boss," he told the secretary in the reception room. She was about nineteen with an eager athletic prettiness about her.

"Not really. She's nice once you get to know her."

"She won't give me a look at the records."

"Well, they are confidential. If you had a letter from somebody, or if you were known to somebody on the faculty, it'd be a lot easier."

'That's too bad," Devine said. "You see, I'm trying to trace a girl who has my wife's suitcase. My wife met her flying back from Florida and they got to talking, and when they got to the baggage claim it turned out they had the same kind of suitcase, one of those freaky things. They had a cup of coffee together, said so long and, wouldn't you know it, my wife walked off with the wrong bag."

"No name in the suitcase?" the girl asked.

"Just initials. J.A.C. My wife says her first name was Jenny, and she remembers her saying she went to this college once. That's why I'm here."

The secretary glanced at the closed office door. "Did you explain all that?"

"Yeah, but she threw the rule book at me. It's a shame," Devine said, gauging his progress, "it's a valuable suitcase. I'm pretty sure she'd be offering a reward. Maybe a hundred dollars. She had some jewelry inside."

"A hundred dollars," the girl repeated.

Devine moved toward the front door, then stopped and turned; he looked as though he'd just had a sudden thought. "You know," he said, "if you checked out those initials for me and you came up with a Jenny, that'd probably be her. I could give you the hundred and get it back from her when I give her the bag." He had his wallet in his hand and was sliding a crisp new hundred-dollar bill out of it. "My wife says she was about thirty-five. What would that make her graduation class?"

The girl's eyes were on the money. "Anywhere between '60 and'65."

"How about taking a look for me? Nobody's going to know and, like I say, you'd be helping somebody out."

He snapped his fingers on the bill as if to make sure there weren't two stuck together. It made up the girl's mind.

"I could get fired if she found out. I'd better see you outside."

"Right. J.A.C. Jenny something."

A few minutes later the girl came hurrying out of the

building with a piece of paper in her hand. "I got one. I think I've found her."

Devine took the paper and held it in front of him the way a hungry man holds a sandwich.

"You think it's her?" the girl asked.

His head moved up and down; there was an address, too.

She gave him a gentle reminder. "I'm glad I was able to help."

"Huh? Oh, sure." He looked around him, took a bill from his pocket, and moved his hands quickly as he folded it into a small square. "Put this away. Somebody might not understand about the reward."

The girl tucked it into her belt. "I'm glad I could help," she said again as Devine left her and walked toward his car.

Back in her office, she excitedly fumbled out the bill under cover of her desk, unfolded it, and found that she was exactly one dollar richer.

Chapter Sixteen

Joe the Cook had an urgent message for his boss.

"Whitey! Wait up!"

The man named for the color of his clothes stopped walking and Joe told him the reason why he'd chased him two blocks. He had a heavy West Indian accent and coupled with his shortage of breath it didn't make him easy to understand. But bad news is always communicated.

"Munroe. They got him. Pulled him in."

"When?"

"An hour back."

"He been to Thirteenth Street?"

The West Indian gave him the worst part. "No. He had it on him."

The man in white snapped his teeth together and spun away, his entire body reacting to the news. He simmered for a moment, a fist clenched tight by his side.

"Who pinched him?"

"Selnick. The word is a hooker helped him out."

"A hooker? You get her name?"

Joe the Cook hadn't the faintest idea who it had been but because he liked his boss to think that he knew the Street backwards he made a quick and obvious choice. "That new one, the blond. The one that's a cop."

Whitey was incredulous. "Munroe tried to sell to her?"

"Yeah, right," the West Indian said, then realized he'd talked himself into trouble.

"You didn't warn him about her, did you?" The dealer's voice was a stunned whisper. "You didn't tell him a thing."

Joe was a terrible liar; he nodded his head vigorously. "Sure I told him, sure."

"Stupid-dumb-prick-nigger."

"C'mon, Whitey. Wasn't me tipped him in."

"Get away from me. Get away or I'll kill ya!" Whitey wheeled and strode off down the sidewalk, walking fast, trying to burn up the rage flaring through him. Ten thousand bucks, ten thousand, pissed away. And a good man gone. Joe the Cook, that fuckin' dummy! But he was right, it wasn't him gave 'em Munroe, it was that sassy-assed woman cop. Okay. He wasn't rolling over for that. You got hit, you hit back. He didn't have to change direction; maybe he'd known where he was going as soon as he'd started, to see Dave.

The General Store, they called him. He was broker, middleman, agent for whatever you had to sell, whatever you wanted to buy. He arranged, fixed, placed, borrowed, and bought and sold two hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods and services a year and he worked out of the smallest office in New York, a corner phone booth.

He was in it, talking, when Whitey got there; Dave was always in it. It gave Whitey time to figure what it would cost him: a lot. Dave wasn't cheap but his product was good; the car he got you hadn't been hot for more than an hour and the gun was fresh from the factory, no bad history. Dave was the best and the best always came high.

He came out of the box but they didn't greet each other. Who had that kind of time?

"I need a coupla things," Whitey said.

Dave was built flat and wide, like the gingerbread man, except his skin was the wrong color. "C and G?" he asked. When a man comes back to see you, it's usually for the same again.

"C and G, yeah."

"What's your pleasure?"

"A compact. Any make."

"And the other?"

"Big barrel thirty-eight. How long will it take?"

The phone rang and the man stepped inside the box, leav-

ing the door open. He wasn't afraid of being overheard because he didn't say anything, just listened for a moment, grunted, and hung up. He came out again. "Call me in a couple of days," he said. The phone rang again.

ACT IV

Broadway

Chapter Seventeen

When the doorbell sounded Marsha said into the phone, "Listen, Henry, I have to go."

It was the third day he'd called since Devine had been to the apartment. Redding knew he'd been there because the drawer with the pencil mark had been shifted slightly. He'd expected something to happen since then but nothing had, and Marsha had kept telling him to be patient.

"And don't worry," she said, "it'll happen. Check with you later."

She hung up and went to the door.

"Who?" she said it loudly.

Benny's voice answered and Marsha unbolted the door.

"You alone?" His hat just missed the lintel as he came in.

"Alone and loving it," Marsha answered.

Benny shut the door himself and bolted it, too. Then, moving without apparent speed, he turned and brought his long right arm up in a vicious driving punch. His fist sank into her stomach, staggering her back and off her feet. With no heat, no sound of anger in his voice, Benny said, "Jive-ass bitch," stepped over her collapsed body, and went into the kitchen. He brought back a bottle and a glass, sat in an armchair, and poured himself a drink while he watched Marsha on the floor. She lay in a half-moon, her eyes wide with pain, her mouth loose and open, gasping for breath.

He took his time finishing his drink, then climbed a long way to his feet, fetched a ladder-back chair from against a wall, picked up Marsha, and slumped her into it. He pulled at the belt of the kimono she was wearing, bent her arms behind the chair, and used the belt to tie her hands. He sat

down opposite her, splashed some more bourbon into his glass, and sipped at it, waiting.

A little while later he said, "Marsha, you was always hus-tlin'. I liked that. But you ain't supposed to hustle The Man."

Her voice, when it came, wasn't much more than a thin gasping.

"What're you talking about?"

"Carlson, the cop, is payin' you to drag the lady fuzz around." He leaned forward. "I didn't want no sparks from Whitey Haines so I give him the word on your girl friend. He said he didn't know a narc name of Carlson and that set me thinkin'. Whitey knows 'em all. He's dead if he don't. So I check with a brother." He swigged at his drink setting up a pause; Benny had a sense of the dramatic. 'There ain't no narc that name. Nor any cop looks like him."

"He said he was a cop." She sucked against her teeth as the pain surged up from her stomach. "You believed him. I believed him."

"I believed you, too, baby. But not now."

"You don't make sense."

Benny tapped a finger heavily on her knee. "I had a guy trail you two, you and the blond twat. He said all you done was hang around. He said they was dealin' right under your girl friend's nose but she didn't wanna know."

Marsha, hunched against another spasm, said, "She said she was waiting on something big."

"Hey. I eat chocolate, not shit. What's up?"

"I already told you. They said they were cops. I didn't ask to see a badge."

"No, ma'am." He shook his head evenly from side to side, making a long slow movement out of it. "You three got something on. And you gonna tell me."

Marsha tried her best but nothing was good enough now.

Benny quit asking questions, fished out a gold cigarette case, chose a black-leaf Sobranie and lit it. He took the bottle back to the kitchen and returned with a folded dishcloth,

stood in front of her, then dug fingers and thumb into her cheeks, forcing her mouth open. He jammed the cloth between her teeth, grabbed a handful of her kimono and tore it down to the waist, and said, "When you got somethin' to say, you just nod your head, all right?"

He drew on the cigarette, examined the ash, and very softly began to blow on it.

Benny left Marsha's apartment around six. He'd gagged her again and tied her legs to the chair as well, tipped it on its side, and left her like that, unconscious in the middle of the floor. It took him one quick phone call to get Devine's address, then he needed only one more thing.

Marsha couldn't tell him what she didn't know, when, or even if, Devine was going to give Jenny the necklace, so all Benny could do was wait for him to make a move and be ready when he did.

And for that he needed his gun.

Benny had had it handmade for him by a man in Staten Island, a shotgun. Somebody had told him that the best shotguns were made in England; you could have it fitted, actually fitted, just like when your tailor made you a suit, but it took two years before they could deliver and Benny didn't want to wait that long.

But there was another reason for going to the man on Staten Island: He could make you a gun they didn't even know about in England, and wouldn't want to know about.

He understood Benny's problem, that he couldn't hold a permit, so he understood that he needed a gun that could easily be hidden. And as Benny didn't have any other problems, like money, there was no reason he couldn't give him exactly what he wanted.

He started with an English shotgun, anyway; he'd bought a beautiful Savage three-thirty over-and-under with a handsomely checkered French walnut stock and very carefully ruined it. He'd removed the twenty-six-inch chrome-lined barrels and shortened them by twenty-three inches. He'd

taken off the superbly engraved fore-end, the hand grip, and thrown it away, then taken a band saw to that beautiful stock and lopped it off at the throat just behind the trigger guard, which he'd also removed. Into the end of the sawn throat he cut a thread, machined a hinge pin, included a double wing nut, and the business end of the gun was finished.

But it still had to be fired.

He found an old shock absorber, the spring long gone, cut the rings off either end, and replaced them with half-inch grooved bolts. He got a thick round rubber buffing pad and sunk a thread into its middle. And finally he fashioned a length of quarter-inch steel wire into an oblong about the size and shape of a frying pan handle, and formed a double circular bulge at one end. What Benny finally collected, and paid a fortune for, was presented to him in a lunch pail, but when all seven pieces of whatever it was inside were assembled, it could fire two twelve-gauge Remington Express Magnum loads with enough force to blow a door off its hinges.

When Benny pulled up outside his apartment block, he went around to the trunk and collected the shock absorber, the rubber pad, and the steel wire piece that lay there in plain view; the last two items were attached to the jack. Then he hesitated, thinking about something: If he took the gun in the lunch pail it'd be ten to one he'd walk into Kap-pel; the mother had been hassling the hell out of him lately. Why take a chance? He walked into the corner deli and was out in five minutes carrying a paper sack of groceries.

Upstairs, he rummaged in his closets and found some denims, some old sneakers, and a bowling jacket, and changed out of his suit. Then he collected the only two pieces of the gun that had to be hidden, went into the kitchen and spent some time there with the groceries, quit the apartment, and went back downstairs.

As he got to his car door, Kappel came out of nowhere.

"Well, if it ain't Superdinge," the man said. "You don't

look so sharp as usual, Benny. What happened to the fag suit?" He was a large rumpled man who belonged to that generation of cops that still wore hats and double-breasted suits.

"It's at the fag cleaner's."

The policeman opened the Cadillac's door and poked around the glove box, the sun visor, the cartridge tray, under the seats. "You got anything in here that'd fascinate me? A habit-forming drug, a thirty-two? Or your old lady's dil-do?"

Benny didn't react. He'd learned how you played it: You said little and did less and never gave them anything to hit off. You just waited them out until they got tired and went away.

"A corkscrew," the cop said. "I'll settle for a corkscrew." He got out and frisked Benny roughly, then peered into the grocery bag Benny held. "What's all this? You cooking for your big-titted whores these days?" He brought out a McCormick spice jar and read off the label. "Marj-oram. You're a regular little gourmet, ain't you, Benny."

"C'mon, Kappel, bust me or trust me."

The man ignored the invitation. "I had some of that soul food once in one of them spook joints. It tasted like fried crap." He tossed the spice jar back into the bag and made a big gesture out of wiping his hands on his jacket. His face shriveled in distaste. "Get outa here," he said.

A block later, behind the wheel of the Eldorado, Benny unclenched a little. Whoeee! Kappel had come close.

He parked at the side of Devine's apartment house just back of the garage exit. His contact had told him that Devine drove a big white Mercedes with a silver race horse on the radiator, an easy car to spot.

There was nothing he could do now but wait to spot it.

For Whitey Haines the waiting time was over. Dave had chosen a good spot for the pickup: West Street, underneath the elevated highway. Once upon a time he couldn't have

chosen a busier place, but now that section of the street was just a ghost of itself. Old shipping terminals and rotting wooden wharves, a few bars and warehouses, not much else. There were still the trailer trucks, though, parked in lines beside the river; it would be simple to hide a car behind them.

Whitey crossed from the corner and walked over the cobblestones to the semi-trailers resting on their tiny front wheels. The Dodge Dart was exactly where it was supposed to be, the engine still warm. He got the keys from where they'd been tucked inside the tailpipe and let himself in. It was a nice car, clean. He put a hand under the seat and the revolver felt like a cold hard rock lying there. He brought it out and checked it, a Dan Wesson Model Nine, an enormous gun that weighed over two pounds and was nearly a foot long, the kind of piece you used for a one-off job when you didn't have to lug it around afterward.

He thumbed the release button, flipped open the heavy cylinder. It was fully loaded, another nice little extra that was part of Dave's service. He tapped a slug into his hand, a thirty-eight special round nose, a fat lead slug that would literally punch a hole right through a man. Or a woman.

He replaced the bullet, closed the cylinder, put the gun back where he'd found it, and drove across town.

Finding out where she lived hadn't been hard; he'd got Joe the Cook to ask around The Union, where she hung out a lot; at least he could do that without screwing up. They'd told him Murray Hill somewhere, Lex or Third in the high thirties. A check of the doormen in the area had located her; no problem. At first he'd thought it was funny that an undercover fuzz would broadcast where she lived, but then he figured it was all part of the con: If somebody decided to check her out, they'd find her living like a lot of hookers lived, in a not-bad East Side apartment. It was a break her living on the East Side, anyway; too many people knew him on the West Side. He turned into her block and cruised by her address, circled around, and came back, looking the

street over. There was a car just pulling out up the block a little way. Perfect.

He slipped into the space and killed the engine. If she headed west when she came out she'd walk right into him; if she went the other way he'd simply roll the car after her and get her as he drew opposite. Either way it was going to be candy.

He looked at his watch; just past seven-thirty. The doorman had said she usually left around eight. Not long to wait. He pulled the gun out and rested it under his thigh, then stiffened and closed a hand on it as he saw the doors opening.

A fat man came out with a fat dog on a lead. He relaxed. It was too early yet; there were going to be other people in and out before the girl appeared. Two guys were going in now, he'd noticed them drive up in a big white Mercedes. No point in getting tense.

When you were on a job you had to stay loose.

Chapter Eighteen

Jenny was brushing her hair in the bathroom, and Redding shrugging into a jacket by the closet. They both stopped what they were doing when somebody rapped on the door.

"Who is it?" Redding called.

The answering voice was indistinct.

Redding unlocked the door, letting it open an inch on its chain, which was instantly torn out of the door frame as To-bler crashed in.

Redding was hurled violently back across the little foyer. He recovered, darted a hand into the bathroom, grabbed up his straight razor from the ledge, whipped it open, and barred the way to the shocked girl behind him. Tobler didn't even look at the steel. "On the floor," he said in his dead voice.

Redding kept it exactly where it was and Tobler spoke again. "If I have to take it away from you I'll break your arm."

Then Devine walked into the room. As if he were a mere spectator with no connection with the big man, he said, "Better do as he says."

Redding didn't have to put on much of an act. Henry Redding, the reporter, would have done exactly the same as Henry Elliot, the pimp. He let the razor drop.

Devine tried to shut the door but it was warped on its top hinge and wouldn't close properly; when Tobler used force nothing was ever quite the same again.

"You got your money back, we're square," Redding said. "You hit her, she hit you. We're square there, too."

Devine talked past him to the girl with the brush in her

hand. "Come out of there." He caught the flick of her eyes to the bathroom door. "Won't do you any good," he said.

She seemed to realize that and to understand she had no alternative; her back straightened and her face tightened. She didn't walk, she strode out of the bathroom, and began putting things in her shoulder bag, speaking to him firmly and in her normal voice.

"I told you before, I don't like you. If you've come up here to do business you can forget it. I don't do business unless I want to."

"Wait on, Jenny," Redding said. He turned to Devine. "If that's what you're here for, and you keep your fists off her, maybe that'd be different."

With no change in his voice the other man said, "Shut up, pimpo." He was still watching Jenny like a man who'd got a tantalizing look at something and wanted a much longer and closer one.

He moved into the room, and Tobler remained back near the door. He was watching the girl, too, but a lot differently. His face was incapable of expression, yet there was something recognizable in the way he was looking at her.

Devine said, "You told me your name was Jenny Steiner."

She looked exasperated. "Not this again. Look, whatever your name is, why don't you understand something? I have nothing for you. I've told you I'm not doing business with you but you seem to want something else and whatever it is I don't have it to sell."

"You were lying."

"Have it your way, sir. If you want to believe different, go ahead, it doesn't matter to me." She slung the strap of her bag from her shoulder. "I have to go to work now. You mind?"

"You'll go when I say."

She put her bag down again and stood there resigned to wait him out.

"This is the second time I've been up here," Devine said. "I took a look around a few days back when you were out."

Redding looked puzzled. "Nobody broke in here."

"I didn't say broke in. I took a look at your things." De-vine was speaking only to Jenny.

She said. "You can get arrested for things like that."

"Your name's Jenny Steiner now, maybe, but it wasn't five years ago. Your jewelry told me that." He moved across the room a few steps, then pointed to the dressing table. "You've got a lot of things here with your name or your initials engraved, but you haven't got one single thing that's more than five or six years old. It's like Jenny Steiner was born around 1970, and I think that's pretty close to the truth, huh?"

She shook her head, then shook it again. "You're wrong, I have things older than that." She thrust out her wrist. "This watch."

"Ah, yes, that watch. You don't wear it every day, do you? You weren't wearing it the day I was here. I got a look at it then."

"Then you've seen the date on it, '65."

"Sure, that's there. Only nobody gave it to you. You bought that watch in a hock shop just like it is. Must have taken you some time finding one with Jenny already engraved on it, but you were smart not to try a new engraving with a fake date; you can always tell."

If Devine had looked away from the girl just then, he would have seen the alarm on Redding's face. Maybe he caught it in his voice.

"How do you know it isn't hers?"

"Because I took a close look at the band. It's a good one, suede. They last. Only thing is, you're wearing it on the fifth notch and there's an old crease you can still see on the seventh. The first Jenny who owned that watch was a lot plumper than you."

"That's ridiculous," She was flustered and it was hard to disguise. "I used to wear it loose, now I wear it tight, that's all. Besides, I told you I have other things . . ."She stabbed a finger at the dressing table. "That photograph. You going to say that's not me?"

It had been taken when she'd been about twenty-one. She was standing in a garden, a gray-haired woman next to her, and written across one corner was "All my love, Jenny. Aunt Kate."

"No, that's you," Devine admitted. "And the ink's as old as the photo, that's how I knew your first name really was Jenny. And I wouldn't have got much further if you hadn't made a mistake."

Redding, sounding baffled, asked him what he was talking about.

"The suitcase you left in the storage room. You should have got rid of that. I found it and brought the initials up again." Devine had an audience of only two but he held it in the palm of his hand. "The bag had been bought in Pough-keepsie and I traced you from there. Your name isn't Jenny Steiner," he said to the girl. "It's Jenny Copeland."

It was very quiet in the room, just the low steady hum of the avenue traffic coming through the open side window. The apartment didn't have an air conditioner and the air that blew in was hot and grubby. It's hard to live in the city without air conditioners and most people don't try, but they're an expensive item; they eat up the power, gulp it down, and the rates are murderous.

Con Edison really makes a fortune in the summer.

For a minute Whitey thought that the man walking up to the doorman was Benny; there weren't too many guys around with a stringbean figure like that. But when he saw the old jeans and the bowling jacket and the grocery bag he changed his mind. A take-out boy from a local deli. He had no way of knowing that he was dead right in his first assumption and close in his second.

"Order for Steiner," Benny said.

"6G," the doorman replied. "You from O'Hurley's?"

"Yeah."

"Johno quit?"

"His ol'lady's sick."

Benny moved by him into the hall and walked to the ele-

vator. On six he went the length of the corridor, stopped briefly outside apartment G, then eased open the stairway door, and went through onto the landing.

It was an ideal spot for what Benny had to do; nobody ever used the stairs. He put the bag of groceries down onto the floor and began to unpack them. In order he took out a large carton of orange juice, a box of spaghetti, a box of cookies, the spice jar and a twin, and a family-size tub of ice cream. Or, he would have if any of those things had been inside the packages; none of them contained what their labels claimed.

From the orange juice carton he lifted out the business part of the gun, the receiver/breech with its inch of wooden throat. The spaghetti box yielded the shock absorber, and the cookie box the three-inch twin barrels and the shaped steel wire. The hinge pin and the double wing nut were in the ice cream tub with the rubber pad.

He laid them down on the cement floor and began the assembly. He slotted the barrels into the receiver, slid the hinge pin through the frame, and spun the double wing nut onto the end of the pin. He tightened the first nut as far as it would go, then the second, bearing down on it hard. He broke the barrels a few times to check the positioning at the breech; everything snapped together in a firm straight line. He laid that half of the gun down, picked up the shock absorber, and screwed the rubber pad onto one end, which completed the other half, the stock.

Then he screwed the two halves together.

He burrowed back into the grocery bag and produced the two spice jars, unscrewed their tops, and shook out the shotgun shells inside. He broke open the breech and inserted them into the barrels, one above the other, then snapped the gun closed. Finally he picked up the steel wire and slid the shaped end over the barrels; it fitted perfectly, hugged them tight, and the wire piece became a rigid vertical handhold.

He tried the gun in firing position: the rubber pad nestled

against his shoulder, his left hand gripped the wire piece, and the first finger of his right hand curled round the exposed trigger. It was a frightening weapon, designed solely to launch two hundred pea-sized lead pellets in an awesome one-two blast of power. He felt good behind it. The gun had cost him a bundle but it was going to win him a bundle; that's if Devine had brought the thing with him. If he hadn't he'd make him show him where he had it stashed. Either way he was going to be worth four hundred thousand American dollars; stinkin' rich, baby.

He gripped the shotgun tighter, took a fast look through the window in the door, and ducked back quickly.

Somebody was coming down the corridor.

Inside the apartment the silence that had followed De-vine's bombshell had lasted maybe three seconds until De-vine broke it himself.

"I went to see your mother, up there in Pound Ridge. Very nice lady, always glad to meet a friend of yours. I checked into your history, like where you spent the summer in '64. Your mother had to rake her memory but she came up with it, all right."

Things seemed to be moving too fast for Redding; bewildered, he looked from one to the other as if they were communicating in a foreign language. He might have spoken if the doorbell hadn't sounded.

Tobler answered it and turned to Devine. "He's here."

"Tell him to wait," Devine said over his shoulder.

Tobler mumbled something to whoever was outside and closed the door again.

"That's a friend of yours," Devine said to Jenny.

"My name is Jenny Steiner. It was my name in '64 and '54 and all the way back to the day I was born. I don't know what you're talking about or who you're talking about, and my mother's been dead for years."

"No." Devine blinked his eyes. "Jenny Steiner now, maybe, but in '64 you called yourself Lois Pink."

In a bare whisper Redding said, "What?"

Devine heard him. "Pimpo, you don't know what a meal ticket you latched on to. When Jenny was working Chicago she met a guy named Frank Kurtz who was my partner. Everybody called him Ziggy. He fell for Jenny, or Lois, as she called herself, and when he died he left her a little something to remember him by."

As he spoke he pulled a black leather box from his jacket. "He asked me to give it to her."

He opened the box and held it out. Inside, resting on a bed of velvet, were eight walnut-sized emeralds formed into a necklace. It looked like the treasure in a kid's coloring book, the stones glowing and smoldering as if held over a fire.

'Take it," Devine said.

The girl brought her eyes up and leveled them. "Your partner gave you this to just give away?"

"You must have heard; that's what beats me. Why didn't you ever claim it?"

She closed her eyes, looked almost in pain. "I don't know how to get through to you. I don't know what else I can say. That thing must be worth—I don't know what it must be worth—and you want to give it to me?"

"Ziggy wanted to give it to you. I'm just delivering."

"No," she said, her head shaking from side to side. "You're a nut case, mister. The minute I reach for that you're going to land on me like a ton of bricks."

"Now I'm trying to get through to you," he said. "It's yours. It is your necklace."

"This is crazy." She tried a half-laugh. "You're crazy. But if you want me to have it, I'll have it. But don't ever accuse me of stealing because that's what I'd be doing."

He started to laugh then, a kind of grunting through his nose. "Boy, you stick to a story, don't you, Lois?"

"Look, I've said I'll have it." She reached for the case and took it but held it as if she expected him to take it right back

again. "But it's going to the wrong girl. I have never ever called myself Lois anybody."

He didn't come back at that right away, just watched her. "Okay, you sound so sure, maybe you're right. Why don't we see if we can prove it? Remember Milt Stroud?"

He got a blank look for an answer.

"Sure, you do. Used to run errands for Ziggy. He picked you up in Ziggy's car a couple of times. I had him fly in from Chicago; that's him outside."

Devine signaled to Tobler, who opened the door for the man standing in the corridor. He was about Devine's age but shorter, built like a fireplug, and had a nose that had been pressed in at the middle. He hesitated as he came through the door and checked the people in the room, then he gave all his attention to the girl.

His eyes went over her face, her body, and back to her face. For a moment there was no reaction at all but then his mouth moved in a slow smile and he spoke.

"Hi, Lois. Long time, no see."

She was like a block of ice looking back at him, a block of ice that stayed frozen for a long second, then melted suddenly. Her body sagged and all the fight drained out of her.

"Hello, Milt."

Only one of the four men in the room registered any kind of shock, and it was of the jolting, staggering, gaping kind that slams into a person with a force that can render you dumb.

Chapter Nineteen

Devine said, "Why wouldn't you admit it? What were you so afraid of?"

She spoke to the floor in a thin, defeated voice; her gaze had that half-focused look of somebody looking back in time. "Ziggy used to talk to me about you, about how you were his right arm, that you'd do anything for him. When he died like that, the heart attack, it was while he'd been seeing me. I thought you might blame me for his death so I got out, left Chicago, and went back home. I didn't find out about the necklace till—recently." She raised her head to Redding. "I'm sorry Henry. I should have told you."

Redding stared at her; he didn't have anything to say.

"His death?" Devine said. "I never held that against you; he'd had a bad ticker for years. It was going to go on him one day, leading the kind of life he did. He knew it and I knew it." He stopped and breathed once, deeply, then flicked a finger at the bracelet she still held in her hand. "If you want to sell that I'll give you a name. I don't want to handle it, I've had it too long. It's been like a millstone." He started to add something, canceled it, and turned toward the door.

He didn't make it.

The door flew open and Benny came in hard, the shotgun cradled into his chest. He didn't have to tell them to freeze; his sudden entry was such an unexpected thing, and he presented such a wild sight, that nobody moved an inch. Benny complimented them on it. "Fine. Nice. We keep it like it is."

With his left foot he closed the door behind him and

swept his eyes over them. They were scattered around the room; Tobler was on his left about ten feet away, his hands hanging by his sides, his glassy stare fixed on Benny. Benny pegged him as dumb muscle.

Devine was ahead and to the right of Benny, the other man near him. And over near the window on the left stood Redding and the girl.

He saw the bracelet in her hand and smiled at that, then spoke to Redding in his high, soft voice. "Hi, Lieutenant. You off duty now?"

The gun barrels were steady on Redding's face; the last thing Benny was, was nervous. Redding wasn't nervous either; he was still numb from the double shock: the girl and now this, right on top of it.

But Devine had only the one surprise to contend with and he was fast overhauling that. It wasn't the first time somebody had pointed a gun at him, even a godawful weapon like the black was holding, and he wasn't afraid, not with Tobler there. This guy would make a mistake and then Tobler would move. Then it struck him: The black had called the pimp "Lieutenant."

"Man," Benny said, "you really a caution, you know that? You come into Cirro's like you was the whole PBA and you got me smilin' and shufflin' like a down-home darkie. You dump all over me, sweetie, in front of people, too. Then I find out it's all a big, fat, mother-assed con."

"Hold it!" Devine said. "This guy's a cop?"

"He ain't even a fireman. He's a re-porter with big eyes for rocks. They doin' a double; one of my girls with 'em, too."

The minute he'd burst into the room she'd known who he was and, knowing that, how he'd got there. She knew Marsha well enough by now to know she'd never have sold them out unless she'd been forced to. She said tightly, "Where's Marsha?"

"Her place. Game girl, that one. Had to singe her a little."

"You son of a bitch," Redding said.

"That ain't smart, Lieutenant, bad-namin' a man's got a sawn-off on you. Why don't you shut up and bring those greenies over here?"

Devine's eyes were riveted on them and comprehension slowed his words to a crawl. He looked back and forth between Redding and the girl. "You conned me, you two." It started to fall into place for him. "My God!"

The shotgun moved. "Over here. Now."

With a quiet acceptance that surprised him, Redding saw his own death. If he'd cut Benny, or beaten him up, that would have been one thing, but he'd done something far worse, made a fool of him. He could see the rage that boiled beneath the man's face. Benny was going to kill him.

He had about two seconds to do something about it and for once he did exactly the right thing. He lifted the necklace from the box the girl was holding and, almost lazily, took a step to his right and held the necklace out of the window.

"Emeralds aren't like diamonds, Benny; they're brittle, they'll smash." He hadn't the vaguest idea if that was true. "You shoot me and they go." Benny stiffened and Redding's whole body winced inside him, but the roaring red blackness stayed packed down in the shotgun shells. The black swore at him, the hatred very clear now. "Listen, ace, I'm gonna tell you one time. You hold out on me and you're in two pieces. Toss it over here."

It was a lousy choice but not a hard one to make. By keeping the necklace dangling over the street he might be inviting death; but if he did what Benny wanted he'd be guaranteeing it. He swallowed and got some words going. "I'll make a deal with you. There are eight stones in this thing, that's about fifty grand apiece. You back off, go down into the alley below, and I'll throw two of them down to you. That's a hundred grand your way."

"What d'you—I go down there you won' throw shit down."

"Sure, I will. I don't want you gunning for me later. It's

your best bet anyway. You use one of those barrels on me, you've only got one left for Devine and his two friends. One of them will kill you."

Devine hadn't been paying much attention to the exchange; he was still backtracking in his mind, seeing in a reverse sequence how everything had come together. It was the disbelief that floored him, almost an unwillingness to accept the idea that he'd been taken like a hick at a county fair. But his anger, slow in building, was directed not at Redding but at the girl, as if she'd not only fooled him but betrayed him too. The well-barbered pinkness had gone from his face and his voice wavered as he began to speak. It was like two separate plays taking place on the same stage simultaneously: the tense, frozen action between Redding and Benny, the drama between himself and the girl.

"All your stuff, everything in this apartment, you bought it all. You left me little things to find, like the watch. You knew a jeweler would notice a thing like that. And the bag in the basement, that was a plant to lead me to the college and your mother. She's in on it, too. She knew what to say if somebody came around asking." He tore his eyes away from her and turned to the man with the squashed nose. "But that doesn't explain you, Milt. You said she was Lois."

The man did his best. "I thought she was. Honest, George. She—she looks like Lois. Hell, it's been a long time—maybe I—"

"You're a damned liar. You knew she wasn't Lois the minute you walked in here. You knew it was somebody trying it on and you figured to cut yourself in on the action later."

The man made a bad job of denying it but Devine had already forgotten him. He was back to Jenny, still trying to get his mind around it.

"All that talk about Ziggy, telling me how he felt about me, about you feeling guilty when he died, I believed you. I honestly believed that after ten years of looking I'd found Lois Pink. I thought I'd finally done what Ziggy asked me.

And you were lying. You didn't know Ziggy. Ziggy wouldn't have given you the time of day."

He said the last sentence from the back of his throat, the anger rocketing up inside him. He took a fast stride toward her but that was as close as he got. Benny, stopped by the dilemma Redding had handed him, was confused by Devine's monologue and the way he was ignoring him. He had the gun but it wasn't doing him any good—he'd lost control— and when the man suddenly lunged forward like that he reacted to the movement, whipped the gun around, and fired.

But his action was way too fast, too wild, and the shell from the top barrel blasted across the room, missed Devine's back, and smashed into a heavy brass plant pot. It demolished the pot, lifted it off its shelf, and belted it back against the wall; but the shot pellets, broken open by the impact, ricocheted off, raked Devine, and dropped him.

The gun had made a tremendous noise, unbelievably loud in the enclosed space, and it seemed to be prolonged by a smaller explosion that followed it immediately.

Tobler had been waiting his chance and when the gunman had swung to his right he'd grabbed it. With phenomenal speed his hands had gone from lumpy dead thickness to a blur of motion. His left hand had pulled at the bottom of his jacket while his right, in a single smooth unbroken movement, had snaked in, snatched the pistol from its holster, brought it out, and fired it. The heavy slug smashed into Benny's side, pitching him over. The shotgun tumbled from his hands and he crumpled against a bookshelf, clutching at it, then knocking it over as he slid to the floor.

Tobler reached his boss in three strides, bent over him, and didn't see Redding grab Jenny and run for the door until they were jerking it open and dashing through it. They ran into the corridor, through the door to the stairs, and pounded down them.

It had all been sheer reaction but the stairway had been a smart move; they'd never have made it to the elevator but

they knew Tobler would, just as they knew that if the elevator wasn't on the street floor but was above them somewhere, Tobler would beat them down.

They took the stairs two at a time, swinging around the bends of the hand rail; but five flights still took a hell of a long time, and when they belted out of the stairway door at street level, they half-expected to run straight into a burst of gunfire. And they did. But it wasn't from the gun they were worried about.

They rushed by the elevator bank—the indicator light was descending and had just flicked out at two—through the small lobby, and banged out of the front door.

It dissolved around them in a cyclone of flying glass.

Whitey had been ready for her but he'd been ready for her walking, not running. And she was still running.

He screeched the car away from the curb, slammed it to a stop fifty feet farther on, and charged out into the street.

They got a fast impression of a man in white running toward them with a gun in his hand, and dodged behind a parked car. Neither of them wondered who he was: He was black and he was trying to kill them; he had to be Benny's back-up man.

It was the same conclusion Tobler reached as he ran out of the shattered front door.

Whitey never saw the man who killed him; he was bringing that enormous revolver into line on the woman's back when Tobler snapped off two shots so fast they sounded together. Whitey was spun off his feet, bounced off a car fender, and flattened on the sidewalk.

Redding and Jenny ran for the only thing that even looked like escape, the open door of Whitey's car. Jenny dived into and across the driver's seat and Redding jumpedO in behind her, and took the car away in a shriek of tires as something cracked by his cheek and starred the windshield.

He didn't give Tobler another try. He shot the car across Third and swung it heeling over into a narrow one-way street, one of the exit streets from the midtown tunnel, but

he couldn't see much of it; the streetlights prismed through the cracked windshield and distorted his vision. He had to slow down. The rear-view mirror reflected the big white Mercedes making the turn. He stopped for traffic at a cross street and pressed down on the gas pedal frantically, barreled blindly ahead and wondered what the hell he was going to do. The familiarity of the next street, Fortieth, resolved his dilemma. He skewed the car to a stop and jerked the wheel so that the car blocked the road. Across from them, diagonally opposite, was his newspaper office. They leaped from the car and ran toward it.

The rear of the building faced them, a busy place with a number of delivery vans backed up to its loading dock. They raced into the open yard and were almost hit by a van on its way out. The driver braked hard and started to bawl Redding out but then recognized him.

Redding gabbled at him. "Quick, give us a ride. My car quit."

"Get a cab. I got a run to get out," the driver told them.

"Around the corner, that's all," Redding pleaded. He pushed Jenny into the open van, jumped in behind her.

It wasn't the first time the driver had given a reporter with a good-looking chick in tow a ride.

"That your car over there, the Dodge with the busted windshield?"

"C'mon, c'mon, we'll miss the story."

The driver chunked the van into gear. "Looks like that big fella's going to move it."

Redding knew it. The Mercedes had skidded up behind the Dodge and Tobler was getting into it. He also knew something else: He'd left the keys in that car. God, what was he using for brains? He hadn't stopped Tobler, just delayed him a minute.

"Let's go! Let's go!"

The driver took them away in a hurry, and made the turn into Second. "Uptown, downtown, where?"

Uptown, Redding figured, meant turning off the avenue and getting out of sight. "Uptown," he said.

The driver wheeled the van right and sped down to Third. The light was against them.

"Run it," Redding said. "Make the turn."

"Not me, buddy. You can get shot doing that."

The driver's excuse was too close to home. They could get shot if they didn't do it. Redding thumped the side of the van and looked back behind him; he was certain Tobler had seen them getting in.

Obstinately the light stayed red.

"Come on," Jenny begged.

Just as he expected, Redding saw the white car roll by on Second, checking. Suddenly it stopped, roared into reverse, then spun into the cross street after them. At the same time the light flashed green, Redding yelled at the driver, and the van rocketed away up Third.

The lights were green all the way but Redding knew it wouldn't do them any good; a news van moves about as fast as anything in New York and their drivers are used to needling through traffic, but Tobler was a pro and he had all that power under the hood of his car ; he'd catch them in a couple of blocks.

As they charged across Forty-Second Redding saw a bus coming down from Second Avenue. "Here," he cried. "Right here!"

The driver snaked expertly over to the curb. "You could've walked this far," he said, but he was talking to himself; his passengers were running back to the corner.

A group of people were bunched together; at a bus stop Redding and Jenny rushed to join them. As the news van pulled out and rejoined the flow of traffic, they saw the Mercedes beat the changing light and howl after it.

Redding leaned back against the bus stand. The move had bought them some time but not much; when Tobler saw that the van was empty, he'd double back. They really should

move and get out of there, but they were safe in the group and he was reluctant to leave.

"Your office," Jenny said.

"No," Redding said. They'd have to cross the street and walk a block, they'd be exposed. The bus that was coming was safer; it would get them out of the area.

The bus was approaching one lane out from the curb and the waiting group started shuffling forward, but thirty feet away, mired in the traffic backed up from the light, the bus halted. Another bus right behind it couldn't move either.

A minute went by, then another; the bus inched forward, coming at them on a slant, the driver trying to get room to make the curb. Redding knew it wouldn't open its doors until it did.

They hunched up against the people and kept their eyes low, both of them fighting down the impulse to start running.

The bus crept and crawled and finally made it. The doors hissed open and they surged forward with the crowd, safe in its midst. But then the group had to thin and move in single file toward and up the steps. It seemed to take forever but at last the line moved and they were inside.

Redding shoved a five-dollar bill at the driver, who shook his head.

"I don't make change, Mac."

"That's all I got, honest."

"There's a sign on the side. I don't carry change."

"I don't want change, it's okay."

The driver couldn't be bought. "You gotta pay fifty cents apiece or get off."

"Please. My wife's sick. I got to get her across town."

"This is a bus, not an ambulance. A buck into the hopper or off."

It was insane; they were standing there in plain view of the street, lit up by the interior lights and practically framed by the big bus windows.

Behind them a man with a small boy said, "Hey, buddy!" impatiently.

Redding spun around to him, practically threw him the bill. "Gimme a dollar in change and you can keep it."

The man examined the five, uncertain, decided to take a chance, and slapped the change he had ready into Red-ding's hand. "You got a deal."

Redding threw the coins in the hopper and pushed Jenny ahead of him into the first two empty seats on the curb side. They slumped down into them, heads turned to the street, watching for Tobler and the big white car.

But they didn't see him.

Tobler wasn't in the car.

He was standing outside on the sidewalk. He'd parked the Mercedes and come back on foot.

Redding, Jenny, and Tobler were no more than five feet apart but none of them knew it. And they didn't find out until the doors closed. As the bus began to roll, they spotted one another. Jenny bounced in her seat and clutched at Redding. They remained fixed like that, the three of them, staring at each other as the bus moved forward. It was a macabre moment; it was almost as if he'd come to see them off and was shy about waving.

Had Tobler been any kind of an athlete, it's possible he could have chased the bus, overtaken it in the snarl of traffic, and beaten it to the next stop, Grand Central. It would have taken him too long to go back and get the Mercedes, and there were no vacant cabs in sight. So Tobler followed them in the only manner left to him: He got into the bus that was right behind.

It moved forward a bit, closing the gap between them, and the two buses traveled bumper to bumper up Forty-Second.

They could see Tobler standing behind the driver and peering through the big front windows, and they knew he could see them just as well.

It was a crazy chase, the world's slowest. The buses moved in fits and starts, made ten yards, stopped, made another ten, but they were getting closer to Grand Central.

All they needed was a few feet on the bus behind them— it was so obvious—just a few feet so that the doors of their bus would open ten seconds before those of the other bus and they'd be in the station and gone. And they thought it was going to work out when their driver found a sudden break in the traffic and zipped toward the curb. But the other bus hung on, spurted in their wake, and came right back behind them again.

Their bus pulled up, the doors hissed open, and they were staring at Grand Central: subways, trains, cabs, exits, a full gamut of escape twelve feet away and they couldn't try for any of it. The other bus had its doors open, too; if they stepped out now, Tobler would have them.

It was a stand-off in one way. If they saw Tobler jump out to board their bus, even by the rear door where they were standing, they could have beaten him out of the other one. He knew that and he was staying where he was, trying to entice them to run.

They let the doors close in their faces; the next stop was Madison, maybe they'd get a chance there.

The bus swung out into the traffic again and the vehicle behind continued to stop and start when they did, pick up passengers, put down passengers, like an identical twin to theirs.

When they rolled away from Fifth still in tandem, it was plain that they were running out of chances. Yet, the longer, less crowded stretch down to Sixth was always a faster section; that might help as might the Times Square or Eighth Avenue stops. But after that there'd be no hope; there wouldn't be enough people around to stop Tobler. He'd get them.

As Redding had expected, the ride to Sixth was fast, but it turned out to be faster for the other bus. Just west of Fifth

they had to slow for a car in front and the bus behind pulled out and passed them.

They saw Tobler moving quickly to the rear door as he went by and they thought they had the break they'd been waiting for, but having their hunter in front of them didn't really change things: Both buses arrived at Sixth Avenue at the same time and left at the same time, so nobody got an advantage.

There were only two chances left and Redding didn't like the odds.

"Next one," he said. "Next one's it." Times Square, at least there'd be people.

In their reversed positions the buses ran together to Broadway, crossed it, crossed Seventh, and pulled into the curb.

The drivers released the doors of their buses and they hinged open.

Redding had Jenny's hand. Some people behind them wanted to get out and they moved aside for them. Ahead, the other bus was in exactly the same position and Tobler was standing where they were, at the top of the rear stairs, watching them like a hawk. Redding waited until the last possible moment.

They jumped down the stairs, out onto the sidewalk, and ran. They dashed straight into Seventh; they were right on the corner and that gave them a few steps on Tobler and maybe the crowd they'd jumped into helped, too, because Tobler didn't fire. But he was right behind them, Redding knew without having to look, just as he knew that only the intervening people were keeping the gunman from dropping them both. Tobler wasn't going to fool around; that was clear. With his boss dead or dying back in the apartment, there was nothing left for him now except a necklace worth four hundred thousand dollars. The guy was working on his pension plan.

They ran through a parade of people, turning heads. Redding turned his own to check on Tobler: He was less than thirty feet behind, plowing through the crowds and moving pretty fast. It was then that the first real bolt of fear hit him. Thirty feetl They had to get someplace, hide someplace.

The movie marquee jumped out at him.

He jerked at Jenny's arm, nearly spilling her as he pulled her with him through the flow of bodies, pushed through the glass doors, and ran across the carpeted lobby. The ticket taker called, "Hey!" but Redding brushed him aside and they were through the doors and in.

Tobler had seen them, seen the flash of Jenny's yellow hair as they ducked into the entrance, and he ran through the doors into the popcorn smell of the lobby.

"Man and a woman run in here?"

The ticket taker looked flustered. "Right on by me."

"I'll handle it." Tobler took the man's flashlight and went through the door.

Somebody came out of the manager's office. "Problems, Jake?"

"Couple of crashers, Mr. Richmond. Security man's gone in after them."

In contrast to the glitter and glare of the avenue outside, the movie house was dark and almost totally silent. The icy air broke against Tobler's skin as he waited for his vision to adjust. It was dark on the screen, too, night time. Two men were crawling on their bellies along the ground. They wore black sweaters and knitted caps and their faces were smeared with mud like commandos. There was no dialogue, no music, just the tense, intermittent one-two note of a bass stringed instrument.

Tobler beamed the flashlight along the back aisle, right and left. Nothing.

He moved slowly down the center aisle, looking for movement. Everything was quiet, still, waiting.

On the screen the two crawling men stopped as a searchlight washed against a high wall.

Tobler probed with the flashlight along a row of seats. The audience, caught up in the movie, ignored the beam and stared with taut faces at the screen. The two men started crawling again, inching over the ground, pulling themselves along on their elbows.

Tobler moved farther down, checking the rows on both sides of him, the flashlight dancing over the rapt faces.

The scene cut to a shot of a searchlight high in a tower, just a sliver of light as it began its sweep. A kettledrum sounded softly. The two men only had a few yards to go when the beam caught the crawling bodies and the scene cut instantly to a tight closeup of the searchlight: It flared into the camera, huge, and the screen blazed with light, lit up the audience and the man and woman running across the bottom aisle.

A voice from the tower shouted, "Sie da! Halt! Halt!" There was a fast cut to the two men scrambling to their feet and running, then a machine gun roared in a long continuous blast.

It covered the sound of Tobler's pistol as he fired twice at Redding and Jenny as they dashed in front of the stage. It would have been a flukey hit, for the running screen figures thrgw a broken kaleidoscopic light onto the real figures beneath them and Tobler's shots went high and wide.

He started after them, saw curtains billow under an exit sign, and heard the slap of push-bars against a door. He ran along the bottom aisle, charged through a door into an alley, and caught a glimpse of the girl as she vanished around the corner.

Redding had her hand clutched in his, pulling her along, and she had to sprint to stay with him. He knew it was too fast for her, that she'd never be able to keep the pace, but they had to get away now while they still had some breath left to run. They needed ten more yards on Tobler, then they could hide so that he'd never find them.

The cross street gave them the chance; the light was against them, people crowding the curb, waiting. Redding

didn't stop; he shoved his way through and pulled Jenny into the street. A Chevy braked hard, pitched forward screeching onto its front wheels, and there was a collective "Ugh!" from the sidewalk as the hood banged into Red-ding's fending hand. It almost toppled him but he kept on going, still with the girl in tow, dashing in front of squealing tires and angry horns across to the other curb. The cars started rolling again, really jammed together now, and To-bler was cut off behind them.

Redding kept running, his breath coming hard in his chest, but Jenny was starting to stumble now and he had to grip her arm and propel her along from the side.

They had to find somewhere quick.

Ahead the sidewalk slanted left into the V of Broadway. Redding rejected the cross streets; there were far more people on Broadway, more bodies to hide them.

People, someplace full of people.

He heard it at the same time as he spotted it, a penny arcade crowded with people and noise and machines.

There was an automatic photo booth just inside the entrance. Redding pulled Jenny into it, whipped the black curtain across, and collapsed onto the stool. She slumped into his lap and sagged against him, gulping for breath. But they weren't to be allowed much rest; the curtain was ripped aside and a man in a beach shirt, a cigar stub in his mouth, and a big leather change purse around his neck glared at them. The way they'd run in like that, they were worth checking on; you got 'em all on Broadway, he'd caught a couple taking dirty shots of themselves once. This couple here now, they weren't posing, they looked like they were necking.

"You put fifty cents in, buddy?"

Redding dug for a bill. "Waiting for change."

It was a shorter wait than the last time; the man expertly poured coins into Redding's hand, waited while he fed money into the slot, then left and pulled the curtain after him.

They stayed as they were, still recovering. Above the mirror in front of them a red light glowed, then a flashbulb went off. It popped two more times and as the third one died the change man pulled the curtain back again. Beside him was a little girl about nine and her older sister, both of them cute in Jets football shirts and bright red tam-o'-shanters.

'The kids are waiting," the man said, and he meant it. He wanted the neckers out of there.

Redding had a fair idea that if he argued the guy would kick them back out onto Broadway, so he gave up the booth without a word.

Thrown out of their hiding place, they half-expected to see Tobler waiting for them and so they were shocked but not surprised when that's exactly what they saw. He was standing outside the entrance, his back to them, looking uptown.

They stopped and turned, and as unhurriedly as they could manage, moved down to the farthest end of the arcade. It was a long, narrow place, with slot machines jammed against both walls and a third row up the center creating two aisles. It ended in a shooting gallery, where three soldiers were pumping pellets at a parade of tin ducks. The crack and ping of the rifles, the endless ringing of the pinball machines, and a melee of sirens and whistles, electric machine guns and rock music from two blasting juke boxes made it a riot of noise and color and movement, a madhouse.

To the right of the shooting gallery was a long bowling machine and next to it, against the wall, a glass booth that housed a dummy fortune teller, a tarot witch. The witch had a hooked nose and a painted smile and a real bandanna around her plaster head.

Redding pushed Jenny into the space beside the booth and spoke quickly. "If he comes in and comes all the way he'll spot us. But he's not after us, he's after this." He brought his hand out of his pocket, the necklace bunched in it. "I'm going to stash it. If he grabs me he can't kill me be-

cause he won't know where it is." He cut through her attempt to interrupt. "If you get a chance run for a cop. It's all we can do now."

He twisted away from her to the center row of machines, getting ready to simply shove the necklace under one of them; but they either rested on high legs or sat solidly on bases flush with the floor. He'd have to put the jewels on something or in something.

He saw the perfect place.

In front of him, in a vertical glass case, several junk prizes revolved on a flat circular mirror. The metal arm suspended over them could be moved from the outside to maybe sweep a prize off the mirror and into a delivery slot.

Redding checked. The change man was up front somewhere and everybody else was busily playing machines. He undid the finger screw that held the round metal cover in place, hinged it open, dropped the necklace in, and replaced the cover.

Done.

There was a drink dispenser against the wall, opposite Jenny and next to the shooting gallery. He dodged behind it and tried to spot Tobler. Since he was unable to see past all the people, he couldn't know that Tobler hadn't moved from the sidewalk. The big man had lost them at the curb but picked them out again when he'd got across the street, then he'd lost them for a second time. It had been somewhere around where he was standing but there was no sign of them anywhere.

Tobler turned around. A doorway led to a dance palace, a penny arcade, and a novelty store with a man outside it sewing names onto hats.

He wondered about that penny arcade.

He went back to it, looked down the right side aisle, moved across to check the left one. He was turning to leave when he caught a flutter of movement at his side.

A strip of photographic paper had dropped from the slot of a booth and fallen into the little metal collection tray.

There were three photographs on it and there was something about ... He reached for the strip, looked at it, then scanned the arcade.

Redding saw him coming and that was the worst time, the cruelest blow. They had nowhere left to run except past him and Tobler knew it. The big man was moving down the aisle, checking people, making absolutely sure of all the hiding places. He was coming toward them and when he found them, necklace or no necklace—Redding realized it now—he'd kill them.

But then he saw something else, something that took his mind off even Tobler.

The two little girls in the tam-o'-shanters, had become tired of waiting for their photographs and had come down the arcade. They were standing at the tall glass case, their eyes fixed on one of the prizes inside.

Redding didn't have to guess which one.

Like a man watching a bomb being defused, he watched as one little girl fished a coin out of her purse and fed the machine. She grasped the handle that controlled the arm inside and her head moved as she followed the green flashes of the necklace on its circular ride. With a fierce concentration she moved the handle to her right and the metal arm hinged out in slow motion and caught the necklace. But the round mirror top moving underneath it gradually pulled it away from the arm, freed it, and bore it off for another circuit.

The little girl was ready. She caught the necklace again and this time it stayed on the arm, and with infinite care she moved the arm toward the rim of the revolving top. All she had to do was tip the prize off and it was hers, but the machine was cunning; it didn't give up its glass rings and plastic lighters and flashy ball-points without a struggle. The timer cut off and the arm automatically retreated back to its central position.

The little girl dug for another coin, grabbed the handle again.

The arm swung and the necklace coiled around it like an exotic snake and once again the arm began to glide toward the edge. But the necklace liked the ride, didn't want to get off. It slipped under the arm and around it went. But the little girl, with the single-minded purpose of children, went after it once more and caught it. The metal arm, as if in cahoots with her now, firmly bore the green stones toward the abyss. For a heart-stopping moment the necklace hung there, the slick moving mirror unable to bring it back, then it shifted the smallest fraction, gravity took over, and it dropped in flowing sections off the rim.

The little girl gave a delighted cry, reached into the slot, brought out her prize, and excitedly started down the aisle with it.

The sight of the necklace on its way to the streaming tides of Broadway snapped Redding out of his dumb, staring immobility. It made him do something about Tobler. He'd been in danger of just letting the big man find him hiding there.

His logic was simple enough; to stop the little girl he had to stop Tobler, and to stop Tobler he needed a weapon.

And he was standing right next to weapons.

A BB rifle isn't much of a gun, but it was the only gun he was going to get. He moved then, faster than he'd ever moved in his life. He sprang into the aisle, vaulted the counter of the shooting gallery, snatched up a rifle, and tumbled on the floor.

Surprise slowed Tobler's reaction but it was still dangerously quick. He whipped the automatic from its holster and got a shot off like an exclamation mark at the end of the movement. The crack of the pistol blended with the rest of the gunfire in the arcade and the bullet snapped across the counter and tore the head off a metal duck as Redding vanished.

Unlike his two buddies, the soldier at the far side of the gallery had had his rifle to his eye and hadn't seen Redding

land on the wrong side of the counter. He'd fired when To-bler had fired and when he saw the head blow off his target he took the rifle down from his cheek and looked at it thoughtfully.

It was all lost on Redding. He came out of his roll, bobbed up, snapped off a shot, and ducked.

Tobler was only twenty feet away. The BB pellet struck him full on the mouth and his head jerked back as his pistol fired.

Under other circumstances it could have been funny; he wasn't hitting Redding but he was having phenomenal luck in the gallery. The shot accomplished what ninety-nine out of a hundred failed to do: it struck a tiny button buried in the center of a painted wooden bull's-eye. Instantly "The Washington Post March" blared out, a bunch of American flags sprung up, and the bull's-eye started to revolve.

But nobody was laughing. The soldiers were huddled now against the far wall and the man who ran the gallery was down behind the counter.

Redding scooped up a BB from the floor and shoved it into the rifle. He changed his position; he couldn't see that Tobler was doing the same thing. With blood trickling from his swollen lip, the big man moved behind a pinball machine and crouched. He could have rushed the counter but that BB had hurt; he'd get Redding when he bobbed up again.

And Jenny, from her safe position behind the tarot witch, knew it. She called to Redding but his name was drowned in the bedlam of noise. She couldn't signal him, so that left only Tobler.

The bowling machine was right next to her and she closed her hand around one of the balls, a heavy wooden one about the size of a grapefruit. She stepped out quickly and tossed it underhand as hard as she could, throwing it like a woman does, all forearm and no shoulder. There was no power behind it but it didn't matter; Tobler caught sight

of her as soon as she moved and picked up the flight of the ball a split second later. He spun toward it, then batted it away with his left hand, firing at the same time.

Eight inches to the left of Jenny's ear, the head of the tarot witch flew apart and the dummy came to macabre life, jerking around in a semicircle. At the sound of the shot Redding leaped up, spotted Tobler, and aimed at him. Tobler saw him at the same time but Redding was already firing. It was a perfect shot. Designed to sting him again, it worked much better than that: The BB smashed into the man's glasses and cracked the left lens. It moved him a staggering step back and the shot he fired hit the ceiling. There wasn't another one; the action on his gun stayed open, he was out of bullets. Redding scrambled over the counter, clutching the rifle like a club, but Tobler seemed out of it. He had dropped his useless pistol and was holding both hands to his face. Redding flung the rifle from him and ran down the left side aisle.

"Hey, kid!"

Apart from the handful of people at the end of the arcade everybody else, deafened by the din of the arcade, had been oblivious to what had happened, including the little girl and her sister, who were about to step out into the street. And when they looked back and saw a wild-eyed man running after them, it didn't delay them any. They ran out to the sidewalk and took off.

The change man screwed things up by stepping in front of Redding; only rip-off artists ran out of places. "Hold it!" he said. Redding collided with him and they grappled.

Then Jenny was there.

"Those kids," he cried, "they've got it!" He shoved the change man away and ran into the street, Jenny right with him; she knew what he was talking about, she'd watched the little girl win her prize, too.

They caught a glimpse of a red tam-o'-shanter heading for the curb, dashed after it, and saw the kids step out into Broadway and run for the green island of Duffy Square; but

when they tried to do the same they were beaten back by a rush of traffic. The kids were running past the Cohan statue, Redding and Jenny half a block behind. When the traffic broke they dashed across to the island, spotted the girls hurrying across Forty-Seventh, and pounded after them, veering right into Seventh Avenue, as the kids had done, and ran down the short triangular block.

The next block, at Forty-Eighth, was just as short but the kids had found somewhere to hide; the bobbing tam-o'-shanters had vanished. There were only a few places they could be: a bar, which was not very likely, a hot dog stand, one of the discount record stores that were blaring music, a coffee shop, or the office building that fronted the cross street. Sprinting ahead, Redding called to Jenny to check the building and darted into the coffee shop.

She ran through open doors into the marble lobby of an old Victorian building, ten stories high but still squat-looking, monumental. The lobby ran through the center of the building, offices on either side, the Broadway entrance closed and barred. There was a wooden stool on Jenny's right, a newspaper lying on it but nobody in sight. The offices were dark. There was no place to hide there; she was wasting her time.

Then she heard the scuffing sound.

The stairs, exactly the kind of place kids would choose.

Quickly she climbed to the next floor, the scuffing still ahead of her but closer now. Moving faster, she went up another flight and came out on the third floor. A man who had been walking down the corridor stopped outside an office door and let himself in. When he closed it behind him, there were no more sounds.

She turned and hurried down the stairs, sure that Redding had had better luck. As she rounded the last half-flight that emptied into the lobby, she stopped dead. Her eyes stared and her mouth stayed open in a frozen O and something cold and quick jumped inside her body.

The man standing at the bottom of the stairs turned his

face toward her and the light flared on his broken glasses.

The realization was like a physical object buffeting her: He hadn't given up; he'd been behind them all the time, following them as they were following the children.

For the briefest moment neither of them moved; they remained frozen in the pause of recognition between hunter and prey, then Jenny whirled and belted back up the stairs, up to the second floor and then the third. She knew she was running to nowhere. It could only end in her collapsing on the stairs; already her thumping heart was punching her breath out in painful stabs and her legs were turning to jelly. But Tobler was behind her; she could hear him clearly. There was nothing to do but what she was doing.

She made the fourth floor but she was finished. She was going to vomit and she didn't have the breath to do it; she'd choke if she did. She fought against her stomach and kept climbing, but much slower now and weaving with exhaustion and nausea.

On the fifth floor a gift from heaven was waiting: an elevator, its lights glowing like a safe haven in a nightmare storm.

In a half-stagger she ran for it. It was old like the building, a florid iron cage in an open shaft. She flung the floor gate open and the elevator door; Tobler would hear her but she'd beat him down for sure, down and out of that hideous building into the wide-open streets. She slapped the gate across, jerked the door out of its concertina fold, slammed it shut, jabbed at the ground-floor button.

The elevator stayed where it was.

She jabbed the button again, pushing at it savagely. Nothing.

In her near-panic she had slammed the door too hard and it had bounced back a half-inch, canceling the control board. She realized her mistake at the same moment she saw Tobler coming from the stairs, and at the same moment that he saw her.

All she had to do was slide the door gently into the re-

ceiver, but gentle movements are hard to come by when somebody's trying to kill you. She made the same mistake again and Tobler came running for her.

With more luck than skill, she managed to make it click the third time, and she jumped for the control buttons as To-bler's hand slapped against the outer door.

Neither of them got what they wanted.

Tobler was near exhaustion himself and half-blind and for once his great hands failed him. His finger missed the trigger of the door catch and the elevator moved and tripped the safety lock closed.

But it wasn't moving the way Jenny wanted it to. Somebody on another floor had been holding their finger on the call button, and when the girl had got the door closed it obeyed that call.

The elevator was going up.

She sagged back against the side, close to sobbing. If she stopped the elevator and reversed it Tobler could get on simply by pressing the floor button; as long as he was below her he had her trapped.

The elevator kept rising and she let it, all the way to the top floor where a man in overalls pulled back the floor gate. He was surprised to find her there and stood waiting for her to open the inner door, and when she didn't he did it for her. Jenny walked out; it was pointless but so was staying inside.

The man gave her a half-nod and got into the elevator, a small mouse of a man, middle-aged, pot-bellied, what could he have done against Tobler? To ask him for help would have been condemning him to a fast death. He watched her curiously as the elevator started down.

The floor looked like all the others: rows of offices, all of them dark and, without doubt, locked. But there was a small difference, maybe a life-saving one: Ahead of her a flight of stairs went up to what was probably the roof. She ran to the stairs and a flare of hope soared inside her as she looked up at a big fireproof door. It opened all right, sure it opened,

but it bolted from the inside; she could go through it, out onto the roof, but so could Tobler.

Maybe there would be a hiding place that would tack a few more minutes on to her life, maybe not; in either case she felt curiously calm, the panic replaced by a bland acceptance that surprised her. She'd always thought she'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming when her time came, and there was not the slightest doubt in her mind that her time was very close. Tobler had plainly seen that she was alone and he knew that Redding had the necklace, or thought that he did. He knew nothing about the little girl, so it wasn't the jewels he was chasing. She'd known it by the way he'd looked at her at the bottom of the stairs. There had been more to that look than just revenge; if there was such a thing as a murderous yearning, that's how he had looked at her.

She swung the door open and stepped out to the roof.

A warm breeze fanned her face and the night sky arched overhead, sucking up the sound of traffic a hundred and fifty feet below. The roof was a flat expanse of tar, a water tower to her right, the short elevator tower next to it. But dwarfing everything else, bestriding the roof like an ancient colossus, was a sign. Set near the front of the roof, it ran its entire width and was almost half as high as the building again.

Seen from Times Square, it crowned the riot of signs at the top of Broadway. Although standing on different buildings, the signs appeared to be part of the same immense Technicolor column. The Castro furniture sign was the base, then rising above it, the swirl and flash of the Coke sign was topped in turn by Canadian Club in brilliant rippling red script. One towered over them all, outblazed them all with giant white letters that blasted its message into the night: SONY.

The sign faced away from Jenny but the glow that came around the rear of the structure picked her out as if she were standing alone on a night tennis court. She gazed up at it, hypnotized by its immense presence. It hummed and sang

She started toward it, drawn to it. The sign was supported on a crisscross of thick iron girders to which two-by-fours had been bolted and butted together; it reared above her like a boarded-up skyscraper. She stopped as her foot kicked something, a screwdriver. It was lying next to a large metal tool box that was open as if somebody had been using it and she remembered the man in the elevator. Her eyes lifted from the tools and saw what she should have seen right away: a few paces away from her an iron ladder extended to a platform twenty feet above her head, a maintenance platform designed for a man to work on. The ladder was lowered from below by means of a cable attached to a winding box and sent back again by a counterweight. Sticking out of the winding box was a flat four-sided key. She reached for the key and tried it. It moved only a half-turn to the right; if it was in the open position now, the half-turn would have to lock the box. She slipped out the key and looked up at the ladder. It was narrow and vertical and she hated heights but that ladder was going to keep her alive. She put a foot on the bottom rung and began to climb and before she'd even got halfway up heard the roof door thump open.

She didn't rush, didn't frantically claw at the rungs, she just kept climbing, made the platform, turned, went quickly to her knees and grasped the sides of the ladder. As Tobler lumbered across the roof she pulled on the ladder with all the strength she had. It rose stiffly into the air, swung up on its counterweight, and stopped parallel with the roof.

Tobler was too late and stood there panting, looking up at her like an animal whose meal has been caught in a tree. She watched as he swallowed, heaving in air; the blood had dried in an ugly lump on his lip and the eye behind the cracked lens appeared sliced into sections. He stayed where he was, looking around him, saw the cable and the winding arm, grabbed it but couldn't budge the heavy iron ratchet inside the winding box. He needed the key for that and Jenny had it in her right hand, her damp right hand.

As she stood and clutched at the railing it slipped from

209

her fingers, clattered to the bottom of the platform and lay diagonally across the open iron grill a hair away from dropping through.

Tobler saw it happen, and with his head back, waited for the juicy tidbit to fall.

Jenny froze. She knew that as long as she moved carefully without bumping the platform there was no reason why she couldn't bend and pick up that key.

All she had to do was carefully . . .

bend . . .

and . . .

pick . . .

up . . .

that . . .

key\

She straightened with it in her hand, breathing again. Holding it was too risky and there was no pocket in her dress; she cocked her arm, faced the side of the building and flung the key over the parapet into Broadway. Tobler couldn't get to her now, he'd have to give up and go away. She sat down, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes.

But Tobler wasn't going away; he was examining the scaffolding. The rear of the structure could not be climbed, but there was something he could see above the platform, above the girl's head: a fixed ladder that went up to the top of the sign.

He moved around to the front; the white blare of light was like a hot needle in his eye. He squinted up through spread fingers and saw that the crisscross scaffolding went all the way up; no boards here, the iron work rose all the way from the roof to the huge letters at the top.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to wipe his enormous hands.

When he hurried into the building Redding couldn't understand why she wasn't there. He knew he hadn't run by her and he could see that the door on the Broadway side

was locked. On another floor maybe? Somewhere upstairs? Then his heart soared. Fantastic! She'd found the kids; they'd tried to escape by running upstairs and she'd gone after them and was probably walking them down now. Sure, they wouldn't have been so frightened of a woman .. . she would have explained, made up some kind of story, offered them a whole five dollars for the necklace. The kids would have jumped at the deal. He felt the knot in his stomach relax; for a godawful minute he thought he'd lost those kids and four hundred grand with them.

He looked at the stairs, then opted for the elevator. It opened as he moved toward it and a man in overalls got out.

"You see a blond girl up there?" Redding asked. "With a couple of kids?"

"I saw the blonde, no kids though."

"No kids with her? You sure?"

"She was by herself," the man said. "Got out on the top floor looking kind of scared. You got an office up there?"

Redding hopped into the elevator, clicked the doors closed, and punched the top button. Scared? Maybe the kids ... he brushed the thought aside but the knot was back in his stomach and tighter this time. When he found the roof door the brilliant white light hit him like a slap in the face. That sign was incredibly big, but it made it easy to see the roof, easy to see that there was nobody there.

"Henry . . . Watch out\"

Her voice seemed to come from up in the air.

"Tobler ..."

Tobler? His brain spun. They'd left Tobler clutching his ruined face back in the arcade he couldn't be— He spotted her waving arm. She was up there on the back of the sign. My God!

"He's down there . . ."

He jumped away from the door, twisted around, looking. There was only one place he could be: crouching in front of that enormous sign. Christ, Tobler again, and not even a BB rifle now. The sight of the tool box was like the answer to a

prayer. He ran to it, picked up a heavy steel wrench and a screwdriver the size of a bayonet.

"Henry, watch out for him . . ."

She was like a frightened bird in a cage up there. What the hell had happened? He gripped the tools, ran to the end of the sign, and jumped in front of it. He couldn't have had better light, he could have spotted a mouse; but there was no Tobler. The fifty-foot space between the sign and the front parapet was nothing but brilliant white emptiness.

He didn't understand until he heard the noise, a soft grunt and a scraping sound somewhere above him. He squinched his eyes against the blast of light, looked up and for a moment saw only the white dazzle of the huge letters. But then below them he saw something else, saw it plainly and unmistakably and still didn't believe it: Tobler was climbing up the front of the sign. The guy was crazy, he'd gone mad, must have. Climbing toward those massive white-hot letters . . . Why?

He ran around to the rear of the structure and found an incredible answer: Tobler could get to the girl by climbing over the top of the sign. If he could get past the heat of the lights he could reach the ladder that led down to the platform.

Redding ran to the winding handle but it wouldn't move. He saw the empty keyhole and guessed what she'd done.

"Jenny," he yelled. "The key . . ."

"Gone. It'sgonel"

He grabbed screwdrivers out of the tool box, shoved them into the keyhole; they were all the wrong size, wrong shape. He snatched up the heavy wrench again, crashed it down onto the box, but it glanced off in a shower of sparks.

He threw the tools down. Come on, think! He couldn't get to Jenny, he'd have to get to Tobler. How?

He sprinted around to the front again.

Like a mountain climber Tobler had moved across the sign in a traverse, picking his spot for a further ascent. There were three Sony names on the sign, two ran vertically

down the sides but they were dwarfed by the one that ran across the top. The letters of the top name were each thirty feet high; they blinked out every five or six seconds, then sprang blindingly back to life in a white electric storm to spell SONY and blaze four nighttime suns. Tobler had chosen his route, the space between the O and the N. He was moving slowly toward it, hauling his body up the girders, maybe fifteen feet below the huge serif at the bottom of the N.

His eyes watering, Redding had to look away. He had to do something. Climb up after him, grab a foot? The guy was a monster, he'd never yank him free. He needed a gun and all he had was tools. How could he get him off there with tools?

He went racing by the answer and had to back up for it.

Holy Christ, what were those tools doing there, anyway? The man who'd come out of the elevator wore overalls with some sign company's name on them ... He dashed around and grabbed the tool case. Fuse box, fuse box ... he found it bolted to a stanchion at the front, the size and shape of a small refrigerator: a small locked refrigerator. He dug for tools, placed a chisel point on a metal flange, smashed down with a hammer, again and again. The chisel bent the flange, bit into it, tore it off. He threw back the door on a maze of porcelain and plastic, switches and fuses and relays. He snapped down a fat red master switch and the sign blacked out.

He had thought the roof would be plunged into darkness; that Tobler, with his failing eyesight, would be stopped by it but he was wrong on both counts; there was light all around them from the buildings and the billboards and the hotel signs, and the light from the CC sign across the street in front of them washed back and bathed the roof in a reddish glow.

And Tobler was still climbing, getting near those letters and the top of the sign and the ladder and Jenny.

Redding hit the switch and the sign burst on again. He

squinted up and couldn't understand it: the heat had to be belting down into Tobler's face, an inferno, and he shouldn't have been able to see a thing, but he hadn't stopped; he was halfway through the bottom of the gap between the two giant letters.

Redding had to look away, his eyes starred by the white brilliance. When they cleared a second later, they were fixed on the fuse box.

He knew a good bit about electricity; his father had been a builder and in summer vacations Redding had helped him. But that had all been domestic wiring, a lot different from this. But the principle had to be the same. He twisted the screws from a plastic plate exposing a jumble of wires and a calibrated dial, the timer box. He hit the red master switch, again cutting the power and the buzzing died and the nervous trembling of the scaffolding ceased. Then he made a cross-fingered guess and started.

With pliers and scissors he slit tubing, sliced into plastic, cut wires and joined and crossed them, bypassed fuses. He worked fast and efficiently, knowing what he wanted to do but not sure if he could do it. He brushed sweat from his forehead and continued. Finally he clamped the last wire in place and set the needle on the dial as far over as it would go. He hit the master switch and the sign leaped back to life. But it was a different sign now; it no longer shone, blinked, then shone again, the pattern was altogether different.

The last letter, the Y, was completely black but the other three were going crazy, shooting off and on one after the other, zipping across from left to right like rockets being launched.

Tobler was dead smack in the center of the channel between the O and the N and the change in the sign halted him. Redding could see him shaking his head as if trying to shut out the blaze knifing through his shattered glasses.

And then it started.

Somewhere in the massive curving S a filament overheated, thin glass swelled, and a bulb popped.

Nobody heard the first one. Nobody saw it.

Another bulb went just below it, then two more went together, and bulbs started popping in all three of the letters, thousands of them going off one after the other in a continuous string.

From where Redding stood, sixty feet below, the sounds came down as a soft popping, like corks drawn from bottles, but Tobler, right in the middle of them, hanging up there in the sky, was suddenly surrounded by machine-gun fire as if planes were zeroing in on him.

He half-turned, confused, one hand letting go.

The sign went insane, the letters flashing on and off as if keeping time with a drumroll. The fuse box sparked and flashed blue smoke but the fuses held; Redding's changes were rerouting the overload back into the sign itself. It was too much, it couldn't take it. The letters writhed and thrashed in electric agony, flashed faster, and became a steady fire that glowed brilliantly, burningly brighter.

For a searing half-second they held, then a hundred-thousand high-watt light bulbs burst together like a dynamite charge in the side of a cliff.

The roaring explosion of heat and noise and flying glass literally blew Tobler into the night and he fell like a sack, turning once, and landed on his side just short of the parapet. The sound his body made hitting the roof was like that of a paddle thwacked down hard on water.

He lay there, a broken bundle, the pink light from the other signs glittering on the shards of glass that surrounded his body like confetti.

The roof door opened and the maintenance man ran out, looking at the dead and smoking sign in dumb amazement. All he said was'The sign . .." He didn't see Tobler.

As even as he could, Redding said, "My wife's trapped up there. We have to get her down."

The man spotted her, had a hundred questions, but asked none of them when he saw Redding's face. He checked the winding box, said nervously, "The key's gone."

"The key's lost. Get her down."

The man did what Redding hadn't thought to do: got the tool case, lifted out the top part, and reached into the bottom section for a spare key.

The ladder was down in a minute, Jenny with it. She slumped into Redding's arms, trembling against him.

"It's okay," he said. He stroked her hair, held her to him. "It's all over now. Finished."

Chapter Twenty

She hadn't been able to see much of what had happened but she'd known that Tobler had been trying something. She'd noticed the ladder above her and when she'd heard that dreadful sound of something hitting the roof she'd understood. Now, in the safety of the taxi, she was close to breaking down but she held herself in check; there was still Marsha to look after.

When they reached her building they hurried up the stairs to her apartment. The door was closed but not locked and they went through.

In the middle of the floor Marsha lay where Benny had left her five hours earlier, still gagged and tied to a chair, ugly red welts burnt into her breast and shoulder.

Jenny cried her name and ran to her and didn't see the warning in her eyes.

Nor did Redding.

They stopped cold.

In a chair around the corner in the alcove, out of sight of the front door, a man was sitting, Benny's shotgun in his lap.

He smiled at them crookedly. "Surprise," Devine said.

He was an awful sight: his whole right side was soaked a dark red and that half of his face was spotted with dime-sized dots of blood. His breath came in tight little gasps and rasped sparsely in his throat. His eyes were unfocused. But the shotgun his left hand held against his chest was steady and pointing squarely at Jenny.

He took a painful breath and supplied the answer that was stamped on their faces. He spoke in stops and starts. "I told the black ... I'd trade him an ambulance for . . . the address. Got Milt to drive . . . Owed me a favor."

"Let me untie her." Jenny stooped down to Marsha but Devine brought her up again with a dip of the gun.

"No." He coughed over the word and when he spoke again there was blood on his teeth.

The room was dead quiet, just the sound of the shot man fighting for breath. Redding watched the gun muzzle; De-vine was dying but the gun was ready to blast into life.

"Devine, listen to me. I'll make the same deal you made with Benny. Put the gun down. I'll call an ambulance."

The gun didn't move, nor did his gaze; both were trained on the girl.

"Didn't call anything for him."

"I'll call you one right now. You can watch me."

Devine was no longer listening to him; death was taking small bites out of him and they could see his body beginning to close down. He'd completely confused past with present, reality with fantasy. He thought Jenny was Lois and there was something he had to say to Lois, something he had to do to her, too.

He raised the gun and pointed it at her face, his finger moving around the trigger. She could see the crimped end of the red plastic shell poised in the lower barrel.

It was as if every ounce of air had been sucked from the room and they lived, for the smallest piece of a moment, in a thin segment of suspended time. No words, no action, the scene was a photograph of itself.

Then there was movement.

With infinite slowness Devine's eyelids began to lower. They slid down, heavy weights in his gray face, paused for a second, a momentary brightness flaring behind them, then closed all the way.

Jenny stopped Redding with a quick hand, took a step forward, then another one, reached slowly out and, like somebody taking a book from a sleeping person, took the gun away from Devine.

Curtain Call

With the noise of the office settling over him like a net, Redding pulled a piece of paper from his typewriter and read the copy through. He'd been back at his job two weeks now; there had been nothing to stop him. Once he'd got De-vine's body out of Marsha's apartment, there was nothing to connect any of them with anything. He couldn't be tied to the apartment he'd rented and neither could Jenny; all the police had were two fake names and two descriptions that could have been a lot of people. He'd only had to slip back for one thing, the suitcase in the basement, and that had been easy to get.

He began to read the copy over again but the din was terrific. Closing the door never helped but he was getting up to do it, anyway, when she walked in.

"You busy?"

After a long moment he said, "No. Not at all." He moved toward her, then slowed and stayed by his desk; she'd only come in a few steps. It was fantastic to see her again; she wore a cream-colored dress, simple and expensive, and one slim bracelet. Her hair was back to the dark brown color and her makeup was back to normal, too: a little eye pencil, a pale touch of lip coloring, and not much else. He marveled that he could ever have thought she really was Lois Pink. She was Jenny Copeland, 100 per cent, with only the faintest echo of Jenny Steiner.

"I called you. I've been calling you but your mother said—"

"Yes, I know."

He picked up a paperweight from his desk, looked at the tiny flowers imprisoned in the glass. How did they get those things in there?

"Marsha told me you'd been to see her a lot."

"Every day," she said. "She's out now. I think the nurses will miss her."

Redding smiled. "I think they will. I went to see her a couple of times but—" He let the sentence fold on itself and his smile died. "She was never really crazy about the idea, she was scared of what happened to that other girl. I told her not to worry and the same thing happens to her. I feel bad about her," he said. "I dragged her in and she's got nothing to show but scars."

"That's not quite true. She's quitting the Life."

"She told you that?"

"She'll make it."

"She probably will," Redding said, "but I still feel sorry for her."

She looked at him, a curious look. "We're the ones you should feel sorry for."

He was still holding the glass ornament; he weighed it in his hands the same way he was weighing words in his mouth. "Jenny—"

"There are four men dead, Henry. Because of what we did."

"But men like that—"

"I know. I've told myself that over and over; men like that, subhuman killers, the world's better off without them. But I don't want to contribute to their death. Maybe that's a copout; I suppose it is, but I don't want to play executioner."

He'd run the same thought through his head a zillion times and didn't have anything to add to it or subtract from it. He let the silence build to put a gap between the subjects. "What do you think then?"

"About what?" she asked.

"About us."

She looked down at her shoes; it was clearly something else she'd gone over and over. In a small voice she said, "I honestly don't know." He nodded at that, not looking at her,

either. 'Three weeks," he said. "Let me call you in three weeks."

Eventually she said, "All right." She made an exaggerated movement out of looking at her watch. "Look, I have to fly."

"Sure."

She gave him a quick smile, turned, and hurried out of his office.

He watched her go, then walked back to his desk and flipped through the pages of a large diary.

A man's head showed in the door. "Hey, Red, I can't find Billy and they want to ax a hundred off that Chelsea piece. Think it'll be okay?"

Redding didn't look up. He had a pencil in his hand and was drawing long slow circles around a date in the diary.

"Yeah," he said, "I think so." He watched the pencil move around and around and around. "I think it'll be okay."

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

39999 00217 017 1

Boston Public Library

Copley Square General Library

The Date Due Card in the pocket indicates the date on or before which this book should be returned to the Library. Please do not remove cards from this pocket

W

(Continued from front flap)

always inventive caper that never lets Henry Redding, or the reader, pause for breath. Who else but Tony Kenrick could combine edge-of-the-seat suspense with the slowest chase sequence in the history of the novel or think of an ending that takes place on an electric sign dominating Times Square? Or find a way to place an $800,000 necklace in a penny arcade prize machine?

Readers of The Chicago Girl will immediately understand why Newgate Callendar in the New York Times Book Review said: "Tony Kenrick (1) has a sense of humor (2) can write and (3) is an idea man. All of which puts him up in the Donald Westlake class as a writer of the comedy/mystery. Like Westlake, Kenrick dreams up situations that verge on farce and slapstick. But in some respects he has an even wackier mind."

Jacket design by Cheryl Asherman Jacket illustration by Hector Garrido

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

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New York, N.Y. 10016

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Pages

Back Cover