THE TRIPLE SHOT BOX: 3 GRITTY CRIME NOVELS

GOODEY’S LAST STAND, NOT SLEEPING JUST DEAD, & FIGHTING BACK

CHARLES ALVERSON

CONTENTS

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Goodey’s Last Stand

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Not Sleeping, Just Dead

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Fighting Back

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

The Word: An Excerpt

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

About the Author

Copyright © 1975 - 2014 Charles Alverson. All rights reserved.

Published by Watchfire Press.

This book is a work of fiction. Similarities to actual events, places, persons or other entities is coincidental.

Watchfire Press

www.watchfirepress.com

www.watchfirepress.com/alverson

Cover design by Kit Foster

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The Triple Shot Box/Charles Alverson. – 1st ed.

Also by Charles Alverson

Caleb

The Word

Goodey’s Last Stand (A Joe Goodey Mystery)

Not Sleeping, Just Dead (A Joe Goodey Mystery)

Fighting Back

Mad Dog Brewster

Apache Dreaming

Imagine Me

Hooligans

The Triple Shot Box (3 Crime Novels)

The Coming of Age Box (3 YA Novels)

For a current list of titles and further information, please visit watchfirepress.com/alverson.

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Goodey’s Last Stand

Joe Goodey Mysteries (Book 1)

After the San Francisco PD dismisses Joe Goodey from the force and runs him out of town for shooting the mayor’s cousin, the ex-detective's career prospects look bleak. But then a local exotic dancer turns up murdered—and more importantly, her secret journal of clients goes missing. The mayor himself extends Joe Goodey the offer: save the city's esteemed politicians from public embarrassment by retrieving the dancer's black book and Joe gets his badge back.

But fail to deliver, and there are far worse fates than death for a down-and-out former cop.

1

I stiff-armed my way through a darkened side exit of San Francisco General Hospital. Outside, the post-midnight sky was rare. It was a night to bring joy to the hearts of lovers, astronomers, and insomniacs, but all I could see was a narrow strip in front of me down the pocked concrete steps where I was supposed to put my feet. Behind me in a private room a nearly dead bank vice president lay draining pus and keeping his own counsel despite my forty-three hours of sleepless investigation. Ahead of me was the parking lot, my car and, I hoped, a large chunk of unbroken sleep in my own lumpy bed.

With my eyes more closed than open, I let gravity pull me down the short flight of steps. But just as my right foot touched the bottom step, a sharp explosion like a small-caliber gunshot went off in one of the dark recesses of the big, dirty-brick hospital. Automatically I dropped the remaining step into a crouch behind the thick concrete railpost. My .38 service revolver was in my hand.

“Hey!” I said, too tired to think of anything original. “Police. Drop it and come out slowly.”

Whoever it was didn’t say anything, but I could see him, dimly, against a black wall. And then the glint of a high parking-lot light bounced off something brightly metallic moving about where his hands had to be.

I pulled the trigger just once, and an elderly night watchman with an unlit, aluminum flashlight in his hand fell to the dirty blacktop bleeding profusely. In tiny shards all around him were the remains of the light bulb he’d dropped.

2

“It’s no fucking good, Joe.” Ralph Lehman, the chief of detectives and my boss, a great tackle of a man ground down by nearly thirty years of nit-picking detail, looked across his desk at me. His big, football-shaped head with its sparse hair rested at an acute angle on the back of a massive leather chair.

“I know,” I said. I still hadn’t been to bed, although it was now late morning, and I felt like a bagful of carpet fuzz. “I know.” I sat across from Lehman on a rickety wooden chair, trying not to slump.

“It’s bad enough,” he went on wearily, “you’ve got to shoot a poor, defenseless Polish immigrant working nights to put his son through dental college. An old duffer who can’t even speak English, who’s hardly been off the boat fifteen minutes. Who doesn’t need the second belly button you gave him.”

I opened my mouth but couldn’t even get out another “I know.”

“That’s bad enough,” Lehman said, “but I suppose you know who that old Polack was.”

“Is,” I said. “No was. Is. He’s still alive. Hell, he’s not even hurt very badly. He probably feels better right now than I do.”

“Is, then,” Ralphie said. “I repeat: I suppose you know who that poor, miserable, suffering old bastard is?”

“Yes,” I sighed. “I know. Whiteside told me, Brennan told me, Hokanson told me. Even that hot-pants secretary of yours told me as I came in here this morning. The mayor’s uncle.”

“No, his cousin. His thirteenth, twice-removed, once-canonized cousin. Distant, I will grant you, but nonetheless Sanford F. Kolchik’s mother-loving cousin. And do you know who vouched for the old fart to come to this great land of opportunity and violence?”

“Sanford F. Kolchik?” I hazarded a guess.

“Correct,” Lehman said. “The very same gentleman of proud Polish extraction who’s been on that telephone there no less than four times already this morning, demanding your head on a coal shovel. And that was between calls coming down from Rabbit Ears’ office. At one time I had Sanford F. and Rabbit Ears on the phone at the same time. And they both wanted the same thing.”

“Blood?”

“Right again. And not just anybody’s.” Lehman picked up a mucous-colored file folder from the near corner of his desk top. I recognized it as a police personnel file and didn’t have to guess whose. I think I must be psychic. Especially after fifty hours without sleep.

“The full treatment, eh?” I said.

“Fuller than you think, Joe-boy,” Lehman said. “Hizzoner wants you hit with the overloaded boat: attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, malicious wounding, drunk on duty, lurking with intent to mope and maybe even dirty pocket handkerchief.”

“Is that all?”

“Probably not. He and his high-ranking brother are together right now trying to figure out some way to get you crucified with dull and rusty nails.”

“What have they got against me?” I asked. “All right, I used to bump heads with The Brother when he was still human. But I hardly know Sanford F.”

“What did you have against their cousin?”

“I get your point. But what’s the upshot of all this? I see you’ve got my personnel jacket there. I’m not up for promotion, am I?”

“Not exactly, Joe,” Ralph said. “I get the feeling that you don’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. The brothers Kolchik think you’re down in the cells right now with last night’s crop of drunks. If they knew you were sitting there mocking the afflictions of their punctured relation, you wouldn’t be the only one who’s through. And I want that pension next year. I’ve earned it.”

“Through? Did you say through?”

“Through,” he said with depressing finality as he opened the long folder. “Positively thuh-roo.” Lehman rifled through the loose papers like a gambler trying to plant the ace of diamonds. He looked up at me. “You know, Joe,” he said, “you’re not exactly Mr. SFPD.”

“What about the citations?” I countered.

He ignored my question. “It’s thirteen years now, isn’t it, Joe?”

“You’ve got the date right in front of you,” I said. “It’ll be fifteen years on October thirteenth—my birthday.”

Lehman let that pass. “This thing with Mrs. Stanfield was a real winner,” he said, singling out a modest sheaf of papers.

“Mrs. Stanfield,” I said, “is a malicious, petty, small-minded, overweening, foul-mouthed drunk.”

“You’re right. But she’s also the wife of Superior Court Justice Moses Stanfield, a deplorably powerful man in this city.”

“That’s where I made my mistake,” I admitted.

“That’s where you made your mistake,” he agreed. “A mistake that would have gotten anybody else slammed back into uniform on the coldest beat on the piers.” He looked at me compassionately. “Joe, do you know why you were made a plainclothes detective after only three years on the force?”

“My citations,” I said proudly. “It says right there—”

Ralph cut me off with a hand like a first-baseman’s glove.

“Joe, they’re very nice citations. They’re wonderful citations. Stopping that break at the County Courthouse was the best day’s work you did in your life. But the reason—the main reason—you got yanked out of that baggy serge uniform, Joe, is that you don’t look like a policeman.”

Lehman’s eyes flicked up to see how I was taking this supreme insult. When it looked as though I wouldn’t crumble, he went on. “You don’t even look like a rent-a-cop. If only you knew the number of calls we used to get from citizens complaining about somebody impersonating a policeman. And it usually turned out to be you.”

“All right,” I said, “so I’m not the Nordic ideal. I never asked to pose for recruiting posters. I’ve gotten along okay for almost fifteen years. My citations…”

“Your citations,” Lehman said, taking half a dozen sheets of paper from my file. “I’m going to take your precious citations upstairs and beat Kolchik and The Brother over the head with them and pray that they don’t disintegrate. But first you’ve got to sign this.” He flipped a sheet of paper around with his forefinger and flicked it across his desk at me.

“Sign what?” I asked, bending low to catch the gliding sheet of stationery through a mist of fatigue. I read the first typed line aloud: “I, Jonah Webster Goodey, do hereby tender my resignation as…” I looked up at Lehman. “Resignation? Ralph—”

“Sign it, Joe,” he said, almost pleading. “Use your head. It’s the only way to save yourself and maybe me too. Kolchik doesn’t want your resignation. He wants your balls. Both of them. Your only out is to sign that piece of paper and quietly disappear.”

“Disappear?” I asked. “And do what? Chief, I’ve been a cop since I came out of the army, since I was twenty-one lousy years old. I may not be much of a cop, but it’s all I know.” And I meant it. Even seen through my fond eyes, Joe Goodey was not a clever, versatile man.

“Take up a new career,” said Lehman. “Thirty-five’s not old. You went to San Francisco State, didn’t you?”

“For two and a half years,” I said. “Ten years ago. At night. All I learned you could stuff inside The Brother’s ear and have room left for his brain. I’ve got maybe forty-seven credits to my name, and most of them are in anti-insomnia sessions like ‘You and Your Society.’ Ralph, I’m not an educated man. I’ll starve to death. Kolchik will see to that.”

Lehman grunted as he leaned over his broad desk and took a black plastic pen from a flat holder. He extended it toward me like a cyanide pill. “Joe,” he said mildly, “you’ve never fucked me up personally, and you’re not a bad guy, so I’m going to give you an incredible break.”

“What’s that?” I asked. “An ex-copper’s funeral after they find my withered body in some fleabag down on Mission Street? Thanks.” Ralph looked at me sadly. Or maybe it was just tiredly.

“Joe,” he said, “I’m a bit hurt. I really am. We go back a long way, you and I. I mean, both on the force and outside it. I’m trying to help you.” I believed him. I didn’t want to, but I did. We did go back a long way. More than ten years before, I’d come fairly close to becoming his son-in-law until his daughter Mary got smart and married a chemical engineer. And through the years it had been Lehman who’d gotten me out of more jackpots than I liked to think about. His support had gotten me through the Stanfield incident. Maybe he was trying to help me again. I was too tired to know.

“Okay, Ralph,” I said. “You’re right. I’m an ungrateful bastard. What’s the deal?”

“Joe,” he said, “if you sign this resignation and leave San Francisco—today—for at least six months, I’ll see that you get a private operative’s license if—when—you come back. Then you can make a living anyway. There’s always work for a private op in this town.”

“A private operative?” I sneered. “I hate those bastards. If they’re not gigolos, they’re stoolies. Or both. And the best ones are crooks. I respect even political cops like Kolchik’s brother more than a lousy private detective.”

“Joe,” said Lehman, “I hate to say this, but you look like a private dick. It’s a natural. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it before.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you going to sign?”

“What’s the alternative?”

“For sure, a departmental trial,” he said. “At least a bust to probationary patrolman and more likely a total boot. Then quite likely a criminal trial, a civil suit, an award against you of several thousand dollars and a ride out of town on a splintery rail. Then there’s the dark side of the picture. If you stick around…”

“Spare me the dark side,” I said. I took the pen which Lehman had been rhythmically thrusting at me. I know when I’m licked if not much else. But just before starting to sign, I looked up at Lehman and asked, “A private buzzer for sure?”

“For sure,” he said. “Sign.”

“Leave town for six months—today?”

“Today,” Lehman said. “What time do you have?”

“Nearly noon,” I said, peeking at the cracked crystal of my Executive Timex.

“Sign that thing and get out of the building within five minutes. Don’t worry about your locker. I’ll hold your stuff. And be across the city limits by two o’clock at the latest. After that, I can’t guarantee you a thing.”

“What about sleep?” I asked. “I’ve been up since the year one. Behind the wheel of a car I’m a menace to the public welfare.”

“You’ll sleep better out of San Francisco. Believe me.”

“My apartment,” I said. I really had a very nice apartment.

“Your balls,” said Lehman, a bit crudely, I thought.

I know when to give in, and I quickly scrawled my best go-to-hell signature and threw the paper at him.

“You’re smarter than I thought you were,” said Lehman, grabbing the resignation. He held out a big hand. “Good luck, Joe,” he said, “although I’m the one who needs it. You’ve got five minutes to clear the building.” He started toward the half-glass door.

“But, Ralph,” I said, “where will I go?” I really wanted to know. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

“They say that Mexico is very nice this time of year.” The door closed behind him.

“Yeah,” I said, too tired to get up, “hot as hell.”

3

I walked quickly out of the big, loaf-of-bread police building, expecting at any moment a cry of “Stop that former detective!” The aging traffic lieutenant who gave me a friendly, disinterested nod obviously hadn’t yet heard a thing. I’d have made a hell of a good aging traffic lieutenant someday, but I wasn’t going to get the chance. I fished my dirty gray Morris convertible from between two Detroit monsters, and joined the midmorning traffic.

It was just a few minutes’ drive across Market Street to the small blind alley a couple of blocks off Broadway where I lived. The colorless line of late Victorian houses looked down at me drably. From force of habit I leaned the Morris against a “No Parking” sign and walked into the small grocery store on the street floor.

It was so long since I’d slept that I’d stopped being sleepy. I felt curiously alert and quite detached for a man being run out of town on two hours’ notice.

“Lum here?” I asked the latest of a series of boyishly thin Chinese girls to work in the shop.

“Back room,” she said, still stuffing small cans of Chinese vegetables into a string bag.

The passage to the back of the shop was so crowded with boxes and crates that I had to crab-walk into the tiny office where Lum Kee, my landlord, sat at a wobbly card table writing in Chinese characters in a big account book. He didn’t look up. From the top he looked like a fat and glossy otter just rising from a pool of rubbish. “Lum,” I said.

“I know,” said Lum, still not looking up from his ledger, “you’ve shot the mayor’s father and you’re on the run. It was on the radio this morning. Jon Thatcher’s show. You’d better get out of here. I can’t afford to harbor a criminal.”

Lum Kee stretched an ink-stained, hairless hand out toward the telephone on the card table. I put a hand and about sixty pounds of pressure on the telephone receiver. “Don’t be in such a rush to stand by me, Kee,” I said. “It gets me all choked up. You’re wrong on at least two counts. It wasn’t his father, and I’m not on the run. So don’t get your hopes up. I haven’t got any time to waste, but I’m going out of town for about six months, and—”

“You’ll be giving up the apartment?” said Lum Kee brightly. “You’ll have to lose your month’s deposit, of course, but—”

“No,” I said firmly, “I’m not giving up the place. You know that.” Five years before, in a time of unexplained panic, Lum Kee had wanted a cop on the premises. He let me have the apartment at a ridiculously low rent and had been regretting it ever since. It had been a false panic, but the apartment was still a great bargain.

“You’ll get your rent. But I want you to keep an eye on things, keep the mail for me, that sort of thing. And don’t try any fast ones while I’m gone. I’ll be back.”

I turned and started to leave the tiny room overhung with cardboard boxes, when Lum Kee said: “Six months’ rent is a lot of money to pay for a place you won’t even be living in. It seems a shame.” His voice conveyed not sympathy for me but sorrow at the pure waste of it all.

“You got a better idea?” I asked, half turning back.

“I have a nephew,” he said. “A fine boy. From Honolulu. He’s over here taking a course at the San Francisco Bible College. Twenty-six weeks. He might be interested in subletting your place. Pay the same rent and everything, so it wouldn’t cost you a thing. I’ll write up the contract myself. Just as a favor to you.”

“Nephew?” I asked suspiciously.

“My sister Pansy’s youngest boy,” he said. “He’s going to be a missionary. A fine profession.”

I didn’t care at all for the idea of some Hawaiian religious fanatic using my apartment. But the thought of several hundred dollars flowing from my malnourished bank account into Lum Kee’s fat pockets was even more distasteful.

“Where is the Bible banger now?” I asked.

Lum Kee shrugged. “You needn’t worry about that. I’ll take care of everything. Trust me.”

I stiffened my defenses. “I’d rather trust Kolchik,” I said. “I’m not subletting to anybody without meeting him first.”

“I’ll have him up at your apartment in twenty minutes,” said Kee, “with the contract.”

“That’s better,” I said, looking at my watch. Twenty minutes of my two hours had already been eaten away. “See that you do.” Once again I turned to leave the office. As I got to the passage and turned sideways, I heard Lum Kee say, “The fat one is up at your place waiting.”

I kept walking. I knew what he was talking about. But I was thinking of other things as I climbed the three flights of stairs over Lum Kee’s shop to my apartment. In my weakened state, the rich cooking odors from the apartment on the first floor made my legs go momentarily wobbly. But when I reached the top of the stairs I was faced with a familiar sight—a small, plump man sitting on the hall carpet with his back to my door. I reached out a hand and helped him to his feet.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” I said, opening the door.

“Oh, it hasn’t been too bad,” he said. “I while away the hours thinking about how much I’m being paid to haunt you.” He was plump in a pork-sausage way: sleek, tight, seemingly stretched near the bursting point. He wore a smooth sharkskin suit just a fraction too small in every dimension, and his black hair was not so much thin as uniformly and widely spaced. He was panting slightly from the exertion of getting to his feet.

I pushed past my visitor through the rectangular living room into my long, thin bedroom and began pulling a couple of suitcases from under the bed.

“Do you want to put some coffee on?” I called. “Make lots of it—and strong.”

“Okay,” he called. After a short silence, I heard the cupboard door creak open and the coffee jar land on the Formica sink. The cold water tap rattled into action.

My apartment wasn’t big. It had just one fairly good-sized bedroom and another small room, in theory a bedroom, but actually the graveyard of anything broken or not currently in use. But each of the rooms, even the closet-sized bathroom, offered a mildly spectacular view of San Francisco and the bay, for which a richer person than I would have paid much more rent. That is, if Lum Kee could have gotten me out. I looked down into a half-empty drawer of underwear and socks, wondering which to take. Finally I dumped the whole drawer into my worn canvas suitcase on the bed. Reaching into the big closet I grabbed hangered clothes at random and stuck them into the other case. With a wardrobe like mine, the choice wasn’t difficult.

“Coffee’s ready.”

I came out of the bedroom and found my fat friend sitting on the long couch in front of the bay window, pouring coffee. He handed me a big, brown mug.

“Thanks,” I said, letting myself fall to one end of the couch and leaning back with my feet straight out on a cushion. I closed my eyes and took a drink of the hot, bitter coffee.

“I understand you’re in a bit of trouble,” he said.

“How do you understand that?”

“The late edition of the Chronicle and—”

“—the Jon Thatcher Show,” I finished for him.

“—and the Thatcher Show. He’s making you into a regular feature: The Adventures of Goodey Two-Shoes: Crime Buster.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “I’m deeply flattered. Have you got the Chronicle?”

“Here.” He offered me a neatly folded copy of the paper.

“Forget it,” I said, pushing the paper away. “I don’t think I could take it in my condition.”

“Why don’t you just give her the divorce, Joe?” he asked with a new, apparently sincere warmth in his voice. “With this latest trouble, you don’t need me around your neck. You’ve got enough problems.”

I couldn’t help agreeing. For the last three months, the little man—a lawyer’s investigator from New York—had been plaguing me to give Pat a divorce. His name was Seymour Kroll, but I had preferred to call him Fatso, Fattie, Lard Ass and finally Chub, as I’d become used to him, and even fond of the little investigator in the way that a hunchback might come to accept the growth between his shoulders. He was better than no company at all.

I wasn’t sure myself why I wouldn’t give Pat a divorce. She’d been back in New York with her family for almost a year now. I’d long ago packed everything that was hers, including the wedding photographs and an ashtray full of her cigarette butts, and shipped it—collect—to her. That was last winter, right after my flying trip to New York had been such a disaster. After I’d harangued her for days, Pat had gone into hiding. Her father, the very rich Solomon Berkowitz—who for reasons I can’t fathom likes to be called Sonny—had seen that I was put on the plane back here by two polite but very determined plainclothes cops. They didn’t want to believe that I, too, was a detective. Once I’d convinced them, they’d been very sympathetic. But they’d still put me on the plane.

“I can’t do it, Chub,” I told him. “I’ve got too much on my mind right now to deal with such small matters. It looks as though I’m going to have a lot of time to do some heavy thinking. Maybe I’ll come to the conclusion that Pat can have her divorce and marry that jerk.” On going back to New York, Pat, who was calling herself Pat Berkowitz again, had taken a job with a big advertising agency. Now it seemed that she wanted to marry some up-and-coming vice president of the agency. The one I’d tried to punch in the mouth last January.

“Where are you going, Joe?”

“I don’t know exactly. South. Somebody I know recommends Mexico highly. I’ll lie on the beach and get tan.”

“That sounds expensive,” he said. “How are you going to manage it? You’re not exactly flush these days.”

“No,” I agreed. “How much have I got in the bank, exactly?” Chub peeked into a small black-leather notebook. “$142.76 in the checking and $760.09 in the savings account. That’s not very much to go on, and I assume you’re not going to have your police salary anymore.”

“I’ve got a week and a half’s pay coming,” I said.

“Okay, but that’s still only a little over a thousand dollars altogether. Look Joe, I’m sure that Mr. Berkowitz would authorize a loan—a substantial loan—if…”

“If is right,” I said, finishing my second cup of coffee. “Sonny Berkowitz would be glad to lend me a finger if he was sure of getting an arm back. No deal. No divorce. I’ll get along somehow.” I wished I could believe that myself. “Look, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

“Do you mind if I make a telephone call?” Kroll asked.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be packing.”

As I walked toward the bedroom, I heard him begin: “Hello, Operator, I want to make a credit-card call to New York City…”

I was barely back in the bedroom when the doorbell gave two raspy bleats. Chub was still murmuring into the mouthpiece when I opened the door and found myself looking at a spot just over the head of a neatly dressed Chinese in his early twenties. The blue wool suit was sincere, and the white shirt front and collar were practically blinding. A black knit tie was transfixed by a tiny gold crucifix. His smooth, oval face was pleasant, even if the mouth hinted of primness.

“You’re the nephew.”

“That’s right, Mr. Goodey,” he said, holding out a short-fingered hand. “My name is Gabriel Fong. May I come in?”

I gave him what I hoped passed for a welcoming handshake and stepped backward into the living room.

“Sure. Have a look around.”

I had a look around myself and suddenly realized just how bare and anonymous the place was without Pat’s things. It could have been a rather shabby hotel room.

Just then Kroll stopped talking and put his hand over the receiver. “Joe,” he said, “could you spare a moment? Mr. Berkowitz would like to speak to you.”

“No,” I said, feeling surly, “I’ve got to get packed and out of the city”—I looked at my watch—“in less than an hour. Tell Sonny I’ll write him a letter—with a bomb in it.”

Kroll held the receiver up in front of him in an imploring gesture. His small, close-set eyes begged me to be reasonable, be kind, be human.

“All right,” I said, “what the hell.” Walking toward the telephone, I told the nephew, “Have a good look around. I won’t be long.” Taking the receiver, slightly damp, slightly warm, I put on my most bored voice, and it didn’t take much acting.

“Hello Sonny. Did you hear the good news?”

“Now, Joe,” said his Lower Second Avenue voice overlaid with Harvard and thirty years of good living, “you know better than that. I wish you no ill. I’ve got nothing against you. I only want Patricia to be happy, and the only thing I know that can make her happy is for you to give her a divorce. Joe, you must understand. Pat’s in love. She wants to marry Ernest.”

“I’m touched,” I said, “deeply touched. But the answer’s the same. If Pat wants a divorce, she’ll either have to come back here or wait out the divorce laws there. I’m not going to make it any easier. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t been to sleep for so long that I forget what it’s like, and I’ve got some fast moving to do. Goodbye, Sonny, give—”

“Joe,” said my practically ex-father-in-law in a voice so sincere that I felt like the rat I really was, “Seymour said there was no point in mentioning it, but I know that with no paycheck coming in things are going to be a bit tight for you. Listen, with no strings attached, I could let you have a small loan, hell, a medium loan, just to keep you going until you connect with something else. No strings, Joe, no strings at all.”

“I believe it, Sonny,” I told him, “but no thanks. I’m loaded with money, no matter what Seymour tells you. Now, I’ve got to go. I’m giving you back to Seymour.” I handed the still-talking receiver to a sorrowful Seymour and turned my attention to the Bible student, who was standing at the bay window looking out past Coit Tower at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge sticking out of the haze. I joined him.

“What do you think?”

“It looks just fine to me, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “Here’s the contract my uncle drew up. I hope everything is satisfactory.”

He handed me a long sheet of accounting paper half covered with tiny writing. I skimmed it quickly. I knew that if Lum Kee wanted to hide some joker clauses I’d never find them anyway. It all seemed fairly straightforward.

“It looks okay,” I said, “but I don’t really like the idea of leaving my apartment to anybody.” I peered closely at Fong, bringing out my I’m-a-keen-copper-so-don’t-try-to-bullshit-me look. “I only hope you’re nowhere near as big a crook as Lum Kee. I couldn’t stand it.”

“I’m not,” he said, apparently neither knocked over by my look nor offended. “One of the things my mother asked me to do while I am here is to try to put my uncle’s feet back on the path of righteousness.”

“You’ve got a big job,” I told him. “I don’t think Lum’s feet were ever within taxi distance of it. But I’m wasting time. The place is yours for six months—no more. If you or your uncle double-cross me, I’ll come back and get you both. I’m a hard man. Ask Mayor Kolchik.” Having failed to impress Fong, I turned to Chub, who was just hanging up the telephone.

“Chub, come here and witness this legal document.”

We all three signed the contract, and Fong left, agreeing to pick up the key to my apartment at his uncle’s store. I jumped back into the bedroom and locked my packed cases. Bringing them out into the living room, I put the cases down by the door and turned to Seymour. “Well, Chub—” I held out my hand.

His jaw dropped. On that round face the fall couldn’t have been fatal.

“You’re not going to try to lose me, are you, Joe,” he asked. “Mr. Berkowitz’s instructions are to stick with you wherever you go. It’s my job. Besides, he’s authorized me to lend you any reasonable amount if you need it. That might come in handy, Joe. Think about it.”

I thought for five seconds. “All right, but I’m not waiting for you a single minute. Your hotel is not far from my bank. I’ve got to draw some money, and if you’re there in exactly thirty minutes, you can come with me. It’ll save Sonny the cost of renting a car.”

“You promise, Joe?”

“I promise.” I tried to look sincere and probably succeeded only in looking sinister.

“All right then,” he said still a bit doubtfully, “I’ll get going. I’ll meet you on the corner of Market and Montgomery, right in front of the Bank of America.”

“Okay, Chub, but don’t be late or you’ll get left. I’m supposed to be out of this town by two o’clock.”

Kroll left wearing an expression torn between hopeful trust and wistful misgiving, and I took a last look around.

Feeling like a vagrant, I picked up my bags, went out into the hall, kicking the door shut behind me, and started down the steep stairs. On the street I threw the cases into the back of the Morris— triumphantly unticketed—and walked into Lum Kee’s.

“He’s out,” said the skinny girl behind the counter coldly.

“I don’t care,” I said to show that I didn’t. I separated the door key from my malnourished key ring and dropped it into the girl’s uneager hand.

“Give this extremely valuable key to Lum Kee,” I said, “and tell him that if he crosses me I’ll cut his heart out and make him eat it.”

This didn’t get a rise out of her either, but she took the key.

I climbed into the battered convertible and made an illegal turn. In less than a minute, I was on Broadway heading west, almost directly away from the corner of Market and Montgomery.

“Sorry, Chub, old buddy,” I murmured hypocritically as the car entered the Broadway tunnel.

4

The houses flanking Broadway were pale, cool, and slightly aloof, with just enough patchy color to ward off anonymity. At Van Ness Avenue I snaked across onto Lombard as if I were going to head north on Route 101 into Marin County. That’s what we police call misleading and evasive tactics. After a few blocks I pulled into a Shell station.

“Fill it up and check everything,” I told a teenaged desperado who slunk out to the pumps, jamming a rolled-up underground newspaper into his hip pocket. At a telephone booth near the sidewalk, I put a dime in the slot and dialed a number in Sausalito. Three rings later, a high-pitched voice said, “Hello?”

“Hello, Ramsey,” I said. ‘This is Joe. Let me speak to your mother.”

“Hi, Joe, when are you coming to see us?”

“Soon,” I lied, looking at my watch. It was twenty after one. “Is your mother there?”

“Gee, Joe—” I could hear a slight scuffle on the other end of the line, and Rachel Schute’s husky voice came on. “Hello, Joe,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes,” I said flatly, unwilling to start meaningless explanations. “Look, Rachel, I haven’t got much time. I called mostly to say that a bit of a situation has come up, and I’ve got to go away for a while. Last night—”

“I heard,” she said. “How’s the old man?”

“Okay, I think. Last report from the hospital said he wasn’t particularly cheerful but would pull through. I’m not so sure Cousin Sanford will. How did you hear? The Chronicle? Thatcher?”

“Neither. People have been calling all day.”

“Yeah, and I can imagine who they were, too. But I haven’t much time. I’m just on my way out of town.”

“I thought you’d be just on your way to jail if I know Kolchik at all.” She sounded really concerned. And I felt even more guilty.

“Naw,” I said, “Lehman claims he can work a deal for me. I handed in my badge and agreed to disappear for six months while Kolchik cools off and gets himself re-elected.”

“Six months is a long time, Joe,” she said in that grave, even voice I knew so well. “Where do you plan to go?”

“No plans at all,” I admitted. “But Mexico looks like a strong contender.”

“Why Mexico?”

“Why not Mexico?”

“Are you going alone?” There was no complaint, no plea in her voice, but the words were heavy with what I knew they left unsaid.

“Yes,” I said shortly. How do you stretch out a one-word answer? But I added: “As soon as I know where I’m going to be, I’ll let you know. I’ll send you an address.”

“You do that, Joe,” she said. “I’ll be glad to hear. We all will. Thanks for calling. But, Joe, one thing—”

“Yeah?” I said wearily, expecting the worst.

“Don’t try to go too far today. You sound like you’re going to sleep on your feet. You’re tripping over your words.”

“You’re right,” I said, feeling the fuzziness heavy upon me again. “I won’t. Take care, Rachel, and give my love to the boys.”

“I will,” she said and hung up the telephone.

The pump jockey was waiting impatiently. Two cars were lined up behind the Morris.

“That’ll be a buck ninety-five,” he said, holding out a small hand.

“Did you check the battery water?”

“I forgot,” said the attendant. “That’ll be a buck ninety-five.”

“Do it now,” I said, wondering why I was wasting valuable time.

“Look—” the boy said, turning his eyes toward the line-up of customers.

“The line will only get longer,” I said like a kindly uncle.

Mouthing a nice, if limited, line of curses, the boy threw himself toward the station office, came lurching back with the distilled water bottle, and wrenched up the hood of my Morris. His enraged fingers twisted off the battery caps and spilled half the water on the concrete. He put the caps on, slammed the hood down, and turned back to me.

“That okay?” he said savagely.

“Just fine,” I said approvingly, handing him two dollars.

The boy didn’t even see the money. He was concentrating on me, willing me to disappear.

“My change,” I said. “Five cents. Or make it a nickel.”

The attendant clawed into his tight pocket and came up with a handful of keys and small change which he thrust toward my face like a knockout punch. I looked it over, took a nickel and climbed back into my car. You’re a bastard, Goodey, I told myself.

Continuing west on Lombard, I ignored the turn north to the Golden Gate Bridge and went on through the Presidio, heading for the beach and the road south. I was thinking about Rachel Schute.

She was the closest thing I’d had to a steady woman since Pat had left. But not that steady. Rachel was a remarkable woman—pretty in a delicate-skinned, red-haired, high-strung way, intelligent, affectionate, and easy to be with. Her three boys liked me as much as she obviously did. For me, Rachel had only two drawbacks, but they were big ones. She was forty-four years old and a millionairess several times over. Not that I have anything against money. Though there’s something about rich women—even Rachel—that makes me nervous. But the biggest problem for me was her age. I couldn’t see any way around that. I’m the kind of stupid jerk who likes them young and firm—like Pat—and moldable. In a slightly drunken moment Rachel had once said that real women scared me. Maybe she was right.

Soon I was rounding Sutro Heights and heading down the familiar road running along Ocean Beach. On the left, Playland lay sprawled like a gypsy camp. The orange and yellow canvas had a desolate gaiety. The sea was calm, with just a scattering of whitecaps. I’d walked this beat for over a year when I was a rookie. I could still feel the biting cold and hear the ragged music from the old merry-go-round at Playland.

Continuing south, hugging the coastline, I pushed the old Morris past Lake Merced until I came to the familiar San Francisco City Limits sign. I looked at my watch. It was ten of two. Ten minutes’ grace. I had made it. But I felt fatigue hit me like a sandbag behind the left ear. My eyes closed involuntarily, and it seemed to take ages to wrench one of them open and stay on the road. I knew I had to sleep.

A little farther along I caught a sign on the right side of the road: Seavue Lodge—Vacancy. Driving over a grass-cracked sidewalk, I pulled the car up slightly askew against a whitewashed timber railing and let the engine die of its own accord. With great effort, I reached up and switched off the ignition, but my hand fell back before I could pinch enough to remove the key. Moving as I imagine zombies—tired zombies—do, I eased myself out of the car and pushed toward a screen door at the front of a big old house with a pink stucco addition tacked on at the side.

“A room,” I said to a pleasant-faced old body with gray hair sitting behind a short desk, knitting something orange. I could read her mind as she sniffed at me and then decided I wasn’t drunk. She opened a faded black registration book on the desk.

“Is seven dollars okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said with effort. I scrawled something in the book and held out my hand. “The key.”

She reached up to a peg board behind her, took down a large brass key with a wooden tag marked “8,” and handed it to me. I nearly dropped it.

“Luggage?” she said.

“In the car,” I managed to squeeze out. “Later.” I stood in front of the counter, knowing that there was something I wanted to ask but unable to think what it was.

“Through that side door,” the woman said, pointing, “and turn right. It’s the third door on the left.”

I cleverly followed her instructions and found myself facing a door carrying the number “8” painted in shiny black. With profound relief I saw that the door was open a crack and pushed through it. I scarcely saw a big, sagging iron bed covered with what looked like cotton candy before I hit it with all my weight.

5

It was broad, broad daylight again when I woke up with a faceful of fuzzy bed cover. I rolled over on my back on the swaybacked bed and saw Ralph Lehman sitting in a chair in front of the window, looking at me with the eyes of a 225-pound Jesus Christ. One of his big feet was resting on one of my suitcases.

I closed my eyes again, hoping that he’d go away. But he remained—fat, tired, getting old, but still there. A glance down told me I was still fully clothed, but some kind soul had removed my shoes. I knew I’d been asleep for a long time because I felt queerly rested and very hungry.

“What day is it?” I asked, once I could get a little saliva flowing again. Someone had been blotting up mud with my tongue. “Friday,” Ralph said. “One o’clock. Joe—”

“Don’t Joe me, you son of a bitch.”

“Joe,” he said.

“You lying bastard. You promised. Just leave town, Joe, you said, give up a brilliant police career and disappear, and everything will be all right. I’ll fix it. I’ll dazzle Sanford and The Brother with my faultless footwork, and there’ll be no sweat. That’s what you said. You, Chief of Detectives Ralph C. Lehman, said that. Tired as I was, I heard you. And now this, you prick.”

“Joe,” he said, “are you finished?”

“No, but I’m taking a breather. What do you have to say?”

“You promise you’ll listen? Really listen?”

“I’ll listen, but I don’t promise to like it.”

“You’ll like it,” he said. “Joe, I meant every word I said yesterday morning. And things went very smoothly. The mayor and his high-ranking brother weren’t very happy about your escaping alive, but I sweet-talked them. I told them how it was. And they bought it, Joe. They bought it.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“You said you’d listen. Now, shut up.”

“I’m shut up.”

“Okay. That was yesterday. But things have changed since then, Joe.”

I opened my mouth again, but Ralph pointed a thick finger toward it, so I shut up.

“Things have changed,” he said, “because at about three o’clock this morning Tina D’Oro was found murdered in her apartment over The Jungle.”

I didn’t have to hide astonishment, because I didn’t feel any. Or any emotion other than a vague feeling you might get when you heard that a public landmark you didn’t feel much for had been pulled down. More of a feeling that I should feel something.

“And you think I did it, Ralph? You’re more senile than the boys in the squad room think. If you—”

“No, no, no,” Ralph said with the consummate weariness of a man whose last year before retirement looks as if it’s going to last forever. “I don’t think you did it. Now, just listen, for Christ’s sake.” He looked at his watch. “We haven’t got much time. Bruno Kolchik expects us in his office by three o’clock.”

I let that pass. “Go on,” I said, sitting down on the bed.

“When Tina was found, she had been dead for close to twenty-four hours. At that time, we know where you were. You were busy shooting the mayor’s cousin. That’s a damned fine alibi. But it’s also beside the point. In plain, simple language Tina D’Oro’s diary was found in her apartment, and featured prominently in that diary was the name of a man we all know and love.”

“Ralph Lehman,” I said, just for the hell of it.

“Sanford F. Kolchik,” Ralph said.

Then I was surprised, and I didn’t try to hide it. “Sandy Kolchik, our revered mayor and maybe prospective governor, messing around with the queen of the go-go girls? You’re kidding. Even Sanford’s not that stupid.”

“I’m not. And he is. But fortunately, a young detective with a brilliant police career ahead of him stumbled on the diary and stashed it before the press arrived.”

“Which is a contravention of every law I can think of and could get that brilliant detective, you and Sanford many years if it comes out.”

“If it comes out,” Lehman agreed. “But in the meantime it’s got Johnny Maher promoted to detective sergeant, and—”

“Not the Johnny Maher who’s such an opportunistic and sucking-up little bastard?”

“The very same,” Lehman said. “But, more important, it gives you a little time, a very little time, to find out who killed Tina.”

“Me? Why do I want to do that?”

“Well, partly, as you may have heard, because Kolchik would sort of like to be re-elected.”

I laughed, not a very nice laugh. “I wish him a whole lot of luck.”

“He’s wishing you the same. Because his future is very much tied in with yours. If you don’t come back to San Francisco and find out who killed Tina, he’s going to do all those things I promised you he’d do. Remember?”

“I remember,” I said, and I did. All too well. “But why me, Ralph? Yesterday morning Kolchik didn’t seem to think I had much promise as a detective…as I remember.”

“He still doesn’t. He thinks you’re a fuck-up. But you’ve got two things going for you. You’re off the force, so you can operate in a private capacity. And you knew Tina. That makes you the man for the job.”

He was right on both counts. I certainly was off the police, and I knew Tina, if only casually. A couple of years before, I’d had to fill in for a couple of weeks on the North Beach squad, and somebody was shot to death at The Jungle, the nightclub she was supposed to own a hunk of. While I was brushing away the flies and waiting for the homicide bunch to take over, Tina came over and sat on a bar stool near me. She was in costume—that is, she had almost nothing on—but she’d thrown an old chenille bathrobe over her shoulders. She was sitting at the bar, sipping on a tall drink and peering at a paperback book through thick, horn-rimmed glasses that definitely were not part of her act. She looked up with a puzzled expression and, since no one else was very close, asked me a question.

“Which is the one where you throw up,” she wanted to know, “resuscitation or regurgitation?”

I took a wild guess and told her the second one. The book turned out to be Thirty Days to a Vocabulary Like a High-School Graduate, and we started talking about long and funny words—a highbrow conversation which was soon broken up by the murder boys, and I disappeared.

But sometime later, after I’d gone back to the commercial squad, I was eating alone one night at Fettucini’s, and somebody sat down at the table with me. Tina. “How’s your vocabulary?” I said for lack of anything more intelligent, and we talked for a while. After that, every so many weeks I’d run into her, and we’d talk. Me about the trouble I was having with Pat. Her about her search for an improved word power. Both sad stories.

It wasn’t what you’d call a long and close relationship. But behind those spectacular tits and the brassy blond hair and the flat, dumb little face, there seemed to be a person. Not the brightest, maybe too ambitious, but a person who had nothing much to do with swinging boobs and loud music.

“All right, Ralph,” I said, “I’ll give you that. I knew Tina—slightly. But that doesn’t mean I can tell you who killed her. Are you sure Kolchik didn’t do it?”

“He says he didn’t,” Lehman said, “and I sort of give him the benefit of the doubt. But I’m not worried. You’ll find out who did it, and you’ll find out pretty soon. Without the sacred name of Kolchik coming into the case.”

“Or what?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Joe, I don’t have to tell you that. Don’t make me go through it again. I feel crappy enough doing Sanford’s dirty work as it is. Can’t you look on this as an opportunity, Joe? It gets you out from behind the eight ball. It gets you back on the payroll. The mayor’s apparently got a little fund for such delicate matters. Every week, your old salary will go into your bank account.”

“And expenses, Ralph,” I said. “Those lousy private operatives always get expenses. Don’t forget that.”

“And expenses,” Lehman said, looking more cheerful. “Thank God you’re beginning to make sense. Look on the bright side, Joe. You get your private buzzer right away, and if all goes well, you get a good shot at getting back your old job.”

“You’re a real sport, Ralph,” I said, but I knew I had no other real choice.

“Let’s get cracking,” he said. “We’re going to have to move if we’re going to make that appointment with Bruno.”

I showered vigorously, brushed my teeth, shaved, dressed again, and followed Lehman out of the room. He carried my suitcases just as he’d brought them in from my car.

The woman with the orange knitting was behind the desk again, and she looked at me as if I were Public Enemy Number One. She glanced down at my wrists, and I knew she was looking for handcuffs.

I didn’t want to disappoint her entirely, so I scowled and jerked a thumb at Lehman. “This guy will pay the bill,” I said. I pushed through the screen door into the soft, midday sunshine. Lehman’s big Mercury stood next to my small convertible, and a young patrolman leaned on it and looked at me with curious eyes.

“Get in with me, Goodey,” Ralph said, coming out of the motel office. “This nice young man will be happy to drive your wreck into town for you.” The rookie scuttled out of our way toward the Morris, and I flipped him the keys.

“He’d better be a careful driver,” I said as I settled into the Mercury’s big, soft seats, “or the mayor will be buying me another car.”

“Find out who murdered Tina,” Ralph said, starting the engine, “without splashing shit on Kolchik, and he’ll buy you a new Cadillac.”

6

Lehman reluctantly stopped at a roadside restaurant and balefully stared at me while I ripped through a city-paid-for steak. The city got robbed, but I felt like a better man. As we got back into Ralph’s Mercury, I looked longingly at the highway south. Mexico was going to have to wait.

Our second stop was the coroner’s meat room down in the bottom of the Hall of Justice. It felt funny to be walking into a building I thought I’d said goodbye to just yesterday. It hadn’t changed a lot. We went down a set of outside steps at the back, because I wasn’t supposed to be there.

Smokey Sefton, the assistant ghoul, pulled out what looked like a filing cabinet drawer, flipped back a rubber blanket, and there was Tina, lying on her back with those fantastic tits sticking up like howitzer shells. Her skin was the color of old, weatherworn marble, gray-white, and with a vague coarseness. The famous body was unmarked except for a nasty appendix scar and a rather triangular wound just above and slightly to the right of her left breast, made by the blade that had nicked an artery and spilled her life’s blood. The interns had done a good job of cleaning her up, but they didn’t know much about the latest hair styles.

“Fucking amazing,” said Ralph, exaggeratedly bug-eyeing Tina’s body. “Bet you’ve been having a good time for yourself down here, eh, Smokey? I’d hate to have that body dusted for prints. Put you away for life.”

Smokey, a little man with the mouth of a deacon’s wife, gave him a shadow of a smile. “You through with her?” he asked.

“Not really,” said Lehman. “I was going to ask if I could take her home for the weekend. I promise to have her back first thing Monday morning.”

“Yeah,” I said, “put her away.” I’d seen enough. Tina hadn’t changed much below the neck, but above she was nearly unrecognizable. The mask of make-up and animation had been ripped away, leaving a face that was a little hard, a little dumb, a little vacant—nothing you’d pay two fifty a drink to see. They say some stiffs look like they’re sleeping. Tina’s face looked like she was waiting for a very late bus on a cold, wet night, and her feet hurt. They should have put her on the stage of The Jungle just like that. It would have set the topless go-go business back a century.

“Come on,” I told Lehman, “you can sneak back later after Smokey goes home. I suppose all the paperwork is upstairs?”

“Yeah,” said Lehman when we’d left Sefton and Tina behind and gotten into the thin, green-doored elevator that would take us to the top of the building—once again the discreet, back-door way. “Everything is in The Brother’s office. He wants to see you.”

“I can’t say the same. But what about Smokey? Isn’t he going to think it’s peculiar that I resigned yesterday and came down to cop a peek at Tina today?”

“Smokey can’t afford to think anything’s peculiar,” Ralph said. “He likes his job. Besides, he’s been down in the morgue so long I think he’s lost contact with reality.”

“Lucky him.”

The elevator banged to a stop, and we stepped out, across a wide hall and through a door marked “Bruno D. Kolchik, Deputy Chief.” His secretary, a skinny blonde with an I-dare-you-to-kiss-me mouth and dangling jade earrings, looked up from the novel she was reading.

“Oh, hello,” she said graciously, marking her place with a long finger. “The chief has been expecting you, but he’s out for a few moments. If you’ll take a seat…” She waved her free hand toward a pair of forbidding courtroom chairs against the wall.

Feeling nasty, I looked even more blank than usual. “The chief?” I said. “But we’re here to see Bruno Kolchik, formerly Sergeant Kolchik of the Parks Division—you know, a big, beefy guy with hairy red ears and a face like a broken knee. If we’ve come to the wrong office…”

“Shut up, Joe,” said Lehman.

She was working her mouth like a poisoned pike, but nothing was coming out. Just as she was about to start pinching herself to see if she was having a nightmare, her boss shouldered the door aside like a tent flap and nearly trampled us. Except that people the size of Ralph Lehman don’t get trampled. People my size do. The Brother didn’t look happy.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said to Lehman. He didn’t even look at me, but charged through the space I’d been occupying and disappeared into his office. I assumed we were supposed to follow. Lehman did, but I lingered to have a word with the blonde.

“Remember,” I said, “snitchers never prosper. Besides, he might be a sergeant again someday.” But she’d forgotten I existed and was trying to find her place in her book.

“What the hell kept you?” Bruno yelled at me when I came through the door into his big office. He had a cut-glass decanter in one hand and a tall glassful of ice cubes in the other. Lehman had settled into the most comfortable chair in the room and was staring patiently out the vast windows.

“She wouldn’t let me go without a goodbye kiss,” I said. “You know how some broads are.”

He didn’t like that, and his ears deepened three shades of red. One thing about The Brother: he not only had the title of Deputy Chief, he thought he was Deputy Chief. Some guys who’d been a sergeant for fifteen years until their brother was elected mayor and then suddenly found themselves number two man of the whole force would be sheepish about it. Not Bruno. The way he acted, you’d think he’d passed a civil service test for the job. The trouble was that he’d have made a swell lost-property clerk, and that’s probably what he’d be if and when his brother wasn’t mayor anymore. So long to the three stars on the shoulder and the cut-glass decanter.

“Watch it, Goodey,” he said, pointing the decanter at me as if he wished it were a gun. He splashed a little Scotch on the Persian carpet. “I don’t like you, and you’re only out of the clink as long as you make yourself useful and watch your smart mouth.”

“I don’t like you, either,” I said, reaching out and taking the decanter. There was no glass at hand, so I took a polite swig from the decanter. “And you’re only in this office as long as your brother is mayor. That won’t be long if it gets out that he killed Tina D’Oro.” Even The Brother wasn’t too dense to realize that what I said was true. So, instead of exploding, he took a long, ice-cube-tinkling gulp of his drink and came out of the experience a much calmer man.

“But the mayor didn’t kill her,” he said. “We know that. Your job is to find out who did. And to do it fast. We’re sitting on a time bomb, and if it goes off before the killer is safely behind bars, we’re all going down with the ship.” His direct gaze took in Lehman as well as me. “And I mean all.”

“What I want to know,” I said, “is why you think you need me. You’ve got a fistful of aces here. Why the hell do you want a busted detective cluttering things up? Let homicide earn its money.”

“Don’t think they won’t,” he said. “Maher is handling that end of the operation. And he’s got the word that he can go down as fast as he came up. He’ll be doing his best. But the mayor thought it might be useful to have someone else on the job. Someone with maybe more flexibility than the homicide crew and a personal interest in finding the killer.”

“Like his own survival?” I asked.

His eyes nodded, if eyes can do that sort of thing.

“And maybe somebody who’d be tempted to bend the law just a little bit in the interest of the same. Somebody ripe for a fall if things get too sticky,” I added.

This time his eyes shrugged. “You do anything illegal,” he said, “you do it on your own hook. As far as the world knows, you’re just an ex-copper out to make a living behind a private buzzer. If you want to look into who spiked Tina D’Oro, nobody can tell you no.”

“Speaking of that buzzer,” I said, “I assume you’ve got it for me.”

Bruno walked over behind his big desk and picked up a thin file folder. “It’s in here,” he said, holding the folder out toward me, “along with the coroner’s report on Tina and a copy of Maher’s report from the scene of the crime. Take it.”

I let him hold it for a while. He had strong arms.

“And Tina’s diary?” I asked.

“The diary has been destroyed,” he said too quickly. “It doesn’t exist anymore.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, still not taking the folder, “because if that diary doesn’t exist, neither do I.” I stuck out both wrists. “Put the cuffs on me, Ralph. I’m ready to stand the rap for Cousin Stanislaus. I’d rather do that than go after Tina’s killer blindfolded with both hands tied behind my back. Besides, maybe I’ll cop a self-defense plea.”

The Brother looked disgustedly at me, then at Lehman. He threw the folder down on his desk and whirled to look out the window at traffic on the Oakland Bay Bridge.

“Joe,” said Ralph, “be reasonable. You’re talking about a document which, if it still exists, is deeply embarrassing to the mayor and his family. You can’t expect—”

“I do expect, Ralph,” I said. “And I’m doing nothing without a look at that diary. I don’t expect you to give it to me to take home, but I’ve got to have a good, hard look at it, or I don’t budge. Either give me the diary or take me down to the cells.”

Lehman didn’t say anything, but The Brother turned around and without looking at me walked over to a big Red Period Picasso print and lifted it down from the wall. He twiddled around with a combination knob and opened a round metal door. Fishing out a small book with a red plastic cover, he threw it down on his desk with a loud slap.

“All right,” he said to Lehman, “let him look at it. Here. He can take notes, but the diary doesn’t leave this office. You understand?” He tried to drill holes in Lehman with his eyes. That’s been tried before, and Ralph silently returned the favor. The Brother wheeled and headed for the door.

“Thanks, Bro,” I said to his disappearing back.

I picked up the thin diary, sat down in Bruno’s big leather chair and put my feet on his desk blotter. Ralph wearily went back to memorizing the area south of Market Street.

Tina D’Oro was no Samuel Pepys. You could pick up more gossip on a bus ticket. If you went by her diary, life as a topless go-go dancer was about as exciting as learning to spotweld. And she didn’t even keep it every day. January 1 started out with one big resolution: “I will learn ten new words every week.” Nothing more lofty or aspiring than that. The handwriting was junior high school gothic with the cute touch of making the dots over the i’s into circles.

Tina tended to keep her diary mostly as a reminder of appointments rather than as a repository of deep, dark secrets. The name that appeared most often was someone called Irma. “Lunch with Irma.” “Irma’s for a hairdo.” “Meet Irma at four.” I’d have to meet this Irma. But the most intriguing thing was a series of initials: O.G., F.I. (“Check up with F.I.,” the diary said), H.C., J.M.

But then, on March 5, Tina began to throw discretion out the window. “Dinner with the mayor,” the diary said. That old dog. Thereafter a certain Mr. Kolchik began to get a lot of space. She spelled his name three different ways, but the inference was clear. Mr. K. was riding high, if that’s not too bald for you. Then it became Sandy…Sandy this and Sandy that. Poor Kolchik. If he’d been less important, he’d have been a mere S.K., and the diary could have been found—for the record. The last entry was ten days before: “Movie with Irma.”

I took a few notes, but, to tell the truth, Tina’s diary wasn’t a gold mine for clues. I mean, I had no immediate need for an arrest warrant. Maybe if I’d studied the diary for twenty years I’d have discovered that Tina was really a Russian spy using an elaborate code.

I didn’t have twenty years. I flipped through the diary one last time and threw it over to Ralph Lehman.

“There you are, Ralph,” I said. “Stick it back in The Brother’s safe or eat it, for all I care. I’ll have the villain in the pokey by a week Tuesday, or my name’s not Sherlock Holmes.”

“Your name’s not Sherlock Holmes,” said Ralph, looking depressed. “You’re not even a very good detective.”

“Thanks, old truthteller,” I said. “I’ll see you around.” I slouched toward the door, pretending that I was a man who had someplace to go.

“Tell me something, Joe,” said Lehman as I put my hand on the doorknob. I looked around at him. “Do you think I’m a terrible shit for going along with the brothers K. this way?” He looked as if he really wanted to know.

So I told him. “Yeah, Ralph, I think you’re a terrible shit. But don’t look hurt. We’re all terrible shits in this business, and you ought to be happy that next year you won’t have to be one anymore.”

“Thanks,” he said, pushing the word out as if it were a two-ton boulder on his chest.

“I suppose you’re my contact,” I said, “and you’ll be hearing from me. But now you tell me something, Ralph. Do you think I’m going to find out who killed Tina?”

He shook his big head. “Not a chance, Joe,” he said. “Not a chance in the world.”

“I’ll try to live up to your faith in me,” I said and walked out through Bruno’s door. The skinny blonde wasn’t there; neither was The Brother. They must have been off someplace holding each other’s hands and worrying about the fact that sergeants don’t have secretaries. Neither do convicts.

I went out of the police building as I’d come in—the back way. I never liked back doors. They rob you of that comfortable feeling of belonging. Now that feeling was long gone, and with only a thin folder of papers under my arm I felt naked and alone. I’d even have been glad to see Chub just then, but God knows where he was.

The young cop had left my car in the parking lot, but I cut through a tall, thin alley toward Sam’s Cafe. Then I remembered that Sam’s was a cop hangout, and I was no longer a cop. I took a random right and after about a block was in front of something called Ricardo’s Place. The windows looked as if they’d been used for the bottom of a racing pigeon cage.

There was nobody behind the bar. That didn’t bother me, and I slipped into a booth in front of the least-dirty window and slid the contents of the file folder out on the slightly sticky table. I was admiring the private operative’s license when a voice came out over the bar like a rusty laser beam. “The public library is three blocks over, mate.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking up at a knobbly, bald Scandinavian head stuck to a long, thin body in a worn-out T-shirt. Tattoos which were vivid on the arms blurred as they disappeared into the T-shirt “If you’re Ricardo, you can bring me a double Margarita, easy on the salt.”

“We’ve got only three drinks in this joint,” the man said. “Whiskey, whiskey, and beer. In that order.”

“That suits me,” I said. “In that order. Do you have table service, or is the waitress on strike?”

He brought me a double whiskey and a beer chaser. I paid him, and he did a disappearing trick into the shadows near the bar.

Tucking away my ticket to romance, adventure and poverty, I turned to two of the last documents which would concern themselves with Tina D’Oro. The autopsy report was straightforward in the extreme. The subject had expired due to an excessive loss of blood, which in turn was caused by an undisclosed pointed but not-very-sharp instrument. She’d been dead about twenty-four hours when she was found. She was likely to be dead for a long time. The autopsy report didn’t actually say that, but I like to interpret whenever I can.

Johnny Maher’s report was a little more convoluted. Leaving out the professional jargon that passes for erudition in the police force, Maher’s version was that Tina hadn’t turned up for her gig on Thursday night. This was greeted with a certain amount of dismay, the culture lovers being lined up three deep in front of the bar. Somehow a substitute was found to take Tina’s place in the show if not in the hearts of the suckers.

Meanwhile, somebody went upstairs and did the doorknob-shaking routine at Tina’s apartment. But no answer. The matter was dropped until after the last tourist had been pried from the bar, and The Jungle slammed its doors. Then somebody named Miss Irma Springler—that must be my Irma, I thought—came in looking for Tina. Seems they had a date of some kind. The club manager, Mr. Sherman Bums, told her that Tina hadn’t come in for work that evening. Hadn’t been seen at all that day, in fact.

Miss Springler got a bit upset. So much so that she went upstairs and started belting Tina’s door. Still no answer. Then Miss Springler insisted that somebody find a key for Tina’s door and open it. She had a premonition, she said, that something terrible had happened to Tina. A key was found, the door was opened, and there was Tina, still in what was supposed to be a costume, lying in the middle of her living room on an expensive orange rug which had soaked up a whole lot of blood.

The coppers were called, who tugged on Johnny Maher’s chain. In his professional opinion there’d been little struggle. Whoever had done it had been known to the victim and hadn’t been in her apartment long. Clues to date: none.

This was not exactly the kind of detection likely to get a man promoted, but then Johnny didn’t mention the little red diary he’d found, flicked through, and pocketed. Johnny may not have been the best detective in the world, but he had an eye for the main chance. And he’d be going all out to make sure he wound this one up the right way. With His Honor nowhere in sight. There were higher rungs on Maher’s ladder than sergeant.

I closed the file, tipped back the rest of the whiskey, and washed it down with the beer. When I left, Ricardo didn’t come out to say goodbye, but that was okay by me. I can’t take sentimental scenes, and my suit couldn’t stand any tear stains. We both knew what we meant to each other.

Walking back to the police parking lot, I decided to go home. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a home. I decided to go there anyway. Pulling my car out of the lot, I headed for North Beach.

7

Retrieving the extra key from a crack under a ledge on the front porch, I climbed the stairs to my front door and opened it. Somehow it never occurred to me to knock. The living room was empty. I figured that the Bible banger was out saving souls, and I was heading for the bathroom when something in the bedroom caught my eye. Not to sound too much like one of the three bears, but someone was sleeping in my bed. And it wasn’t Goldilocks.

But it was a girl. Automatically tiptoeing, I moved through the bedroom doorway and stood looking down at the sleeper. She was Chinese, with skin like polished silk. A shiny black rope of hair lay coiled over her left shoulder. In my big bed she looked about nine years old, but her face was infinitely older and worn. She had black pouches like bruises under her eyes, and the skin over the minuscule bridge of her turtle nose was drawn so tight it was the non-color of old ivory. One arm like a not particularly sturdy stick of rigatoni lay palm up on top of the covers. An ugly blue-black swollen vein in the crook of her arm told me something about the way she got her kicks. It was like seeing a two-year-old kid with a fifth of gin.

Just as I was waxing moralistic and wondering what the hell my subtenant was up to, something small but compact attached itself to my back, and a pair of hard little hands began trying to put a crimp in my windpipe. I’m easygoing and slow to anger, but this was getting annoying. So I put an elbow where it would do the most good and heard a rewarding “oomph” from the jockey on my back. The hands let loose, and my friend hit the floor behind me with a crash. I turned around and was about to step on the face of a midget in a flashy silk jacket when Gabriel Fong came through the door with both arms full of groceries and an alarmed expression on his face.

“Mickey!” he shouted. This wasn’t me, so it must have been the kid crab-walking backward to get out from under my foot. It seemed impolite to stomp him in front of company, so I backed off and let Mickey get to his feet. He wasn’t a midget after all, just a Chinese kid of maybe sixteen. The jacket indicated that he belonged to some sort of gang.

Fong found a place to unload the groceries and came back from the kitchen. But it wasn’t the same Fong I’d met yesterday. The woolly blue suit and knitted tie were gone. In their place was a pair of beautifully faded Levis, a matching jacket and a bright yellow T-shirt.

Even his hair was different. The missionary cut had been replaced by something spiky and random, as if he’d combed his hair with a Turkish towel. He was still too clean-cut to look scruffy, but he looked like a Bible student’s version of hip, and you had to give him credit for trying. The only sign of his calling was a small silver cross dangling on a chain outside his T-shirt.

Fong opened his mouth to say something, but the kid beat him to it: “He broke in, Gabe,” Mickey said. “He was after Fsui-tang. I had to jump him. He—”

“It’s okay, Mickey,” Fong said soothingly. “This is Mr. Goodey. He’s a friend of mine. In fact, this is his apartment. Why don’t you go in and sit with Fsui-tang for a while? Mr. Goodey and I want to have a talk.”

Mickey slunk toward the bedroom, giving me unclean looks, and closed the door firmly behind him. He knew who belonged in my apartment.

Fong walked into the kitchen—my kitchen—and put the percolator over a gas burner. “You’ll have some coffee?” he called over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” I said, sitting down on my couch and picking up a Chinese magazine from the old coffee table some nut had made by encrusting a door with seashells, buttons, bits of glass, and other rubbish.

Fong came out of the kitchen with two cups of coffee. “It’s quite a surprise to see you back so soon, Mr. Goodey.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “You’re a bit of a surprise yourself.” He laughed shyly and looked down at his clothes.

“Oh,” he said, “these are my work clothes.”

“I thought you were a theology student, not a cowboy,” I said, but he didn’t look like a cowboy, either, despite the high-heeled, tooled leather boots he was wearing.

“I am, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “I am. But the biggest part of my ministry is here in the streets of North Beach.” He hunched himself a little closer to me and took a tight grip on his coffee cup. I was in for a lecture. So I took a deep swig of coffee and leaned back.

“You see, Mr. Goodey,” he started, “I—”

“Call me Joe,” I said. “It’s a lot less syllables.”

“All right, Joe,” he said. “And you call me Gabe.” I promised with my eyes, and he went on. “You see, for the first time the Chinese population of San Francisco is faced with a serious problem—what you might call a generation gap. Chinese families have traditionally been very close, very patriarchal. And the children have, quite happily, I think, remained subordinate to their parents until they were old enough to start their own families. Chinese juvenile delinquents were almost unheard of.”

What he said made sense. In fifteen years on the force I’d seen very few Chinese lads in trouble, and I’d never arrested one myself. “But,” I said, to get him started again.

“But recently,” he said, “the youth of Chinatown seem to have changed. They seem to have lost respect for their parents and the old ways. They’re breaking away from the family, going out on their own, and getting into all kinds of trouble: crime, drugs, exploitation by adults.”

“Just like white kids, eh?” I said.

He grinned shyly. “Yes, just like white kids. But my mission, Mr.—Joe, is to see if I can help the ones who will let me.”

“Like little Lotus Bud there in my bed?” I asked.

“Yes. Fsui-tang. That’s all I know about her—her name. But it’s obvious that somebody’s been using her very badly. Mickey brought her to me last night. I met him down on Grant Avenue last week, but he told me what to do with myself in no uncertain terms. I didn’t want to push it too hard, so I left him alone. But last night the bell rang, and there he was—with Fsui-tang. He brought her in only after I promised that there’d be no police, no doctor, no anybody. I’d appreciate it, Joe, if you’d promise not to tell anybody that you saw her here.”

“That’s easy,” I said. “I’m rarely asked if I’ve seen a teenaged Chinese dope fiend. What’s wrong with her, anyway? I mean, besides the bad habit of sticking needles in her arm?”

“Nothing, so far as I can tell,” Fong said. “I’m no doctor, but I think she’s just exhausted. She’s been asleep most of the time since Mickey brought her here. We’ll have to see after she wakes up.”

“How do you know he’s not her pimp?” I asked, “and has just brought her around here for a nice rest?”

“I don’t,” he said, but I could see that the idea hurt him. “Even if that’s so, it’s what I’m here for—to help girls like her and boys like Mickey.”

“Good luck,” I said. “But if you turn your back, don’t be surprised to find a knife in it.”

Fong didn’t say anything, just looked sad at my cynicism. “And,” I said, “there’s another small problem. As you may have noticed, I seem to be back. My plans for the next six months have changed somewhat. But, in spite of this, I do remember signing Lum Kee’s subletting contract, which I am positive is watertight, not to say hermetically sealed. Nonetheless—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of holding you to that, Joe,” Fong said with a big smile. “It wouldn’t be a Christian thing to do.” I could have argued with that statement, but I was too relieved not to find myself homeless.

“However,” Fong went on, “you can understand that I need a place to stay too.” He looked hopeful. “Do you think it’s possible, Joe, that we could share the apartment while I’m at the Bible College?”

“You mean you, me and these underaged bandits you drag off the street?” I asked.

“Sometimes, maybe,” he said. “But I don’t plan to turn this into a boarding house for delinquents as a regular thing. When Fsui-tang is stronger, I’ll have to find someplace for her to live.”

“Where? And how soon?”

“I haven’t any idea,” he said. He gave me that hopeful smile again. “But in the meantime, do you think you could use the smaller bedroom? I noticed that there’s an old single bed in there. Mickey and Lee could help me set it up, and—”

“Lee? Who the hell is Lee?”

“A friend of Mickey’s from Grant Avenue,” Fong said. “He helps Mickey take care of Fsui-tang.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The small room will be fine for me. I expect to be pretty busy for a while and might not be using it all that much anyway.”

“That’s great,” he said with relief. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll split the rent fifty-fifty. I was a bit worried about paying the whole $225 myself anyway.”

“Two twenty-five,” I said. “Do you mean that old bastard is trying to charge you two hundred and twenty-five bucks a month for this joint? His own nephew?”

“That’s what he said. Why?”

“Because the rent of this apartment is $130 a month. That’s why. No more. That makes your share $65, plus gas and electricity. And phone. You just give me the $65, and I’ll take care of your revered uncle.”

“That’ll be just fine with me,” said Fong. “It really was deplorable of Uncle Lum to raise the rent on me.”

“Deplorable is not the word I would have used. But you just leave Shylock to me. I’ll sort him out.”

Time was passing, and I wasn’t any closer to starting to find out who had punctured Tina D’Oro. I didn’t think I’d find out in this nest of tiny Chinese delinquents, so I told Fong I’d see him around and left the apartment. There was somebody named Irma—Miss Irma Springler—who, I thought, might be interesting to have a talk with.

I came down the front steps, intending to walk over to Broadway and Columbus. I pointed my nose in that direction, but as I was passing Lum Kee’s shop, I heard a loud hissing noise. I knew it wasn’t me, so I looked in through the doorway. There was the old crook himself lurking in the shadows and sounding like a leaking gas main.

“Sssssss, Mr. Goodey,” he said, making a beckoning motion. “One moment, please. Come in, come in.”

He hadn’t called me Mr. Goodey since he’d decided I wasn’t needed anymore, and I’d decided I still liked the apartment. “What do you want, you old bandit?” I asked, walking into the shop. Lum Kee was standing behind the counter, wringing his hands like the mother in East Lynne. He was obviously suffering great mental pain, I was pleased to see.

“Mr. Goodey, Mr. Goodey,” he moaned, “I’m so glad to see you back. You must help me. That nephew of mine.”

“What about him?” I asked, prolonging the torture.

“He’s trying to ruin me,” the old fraud crooned, “filling my lovely apartment with the dregs of Grant Avenue. Drug addicts, prostitutes, gangsters. You must help me get him out. I’ll do anything you say. I’ll even reduce your rent if only you’ll help me.”

“How much will you cut my rent if I give Fong the bum’s rush?” I wanted to find out just how anxious Lum was.

His bright little eyes clouded over with cunning. I could almost hear the figures brushing past one another as they tumbled through his head.

“If it will help,” I said, “I’ll wait while you go get your abacus.” He didn’t even hear me. The magic subject of money had wafted him to a different, higher plane. But he was coming back again, and he fixed me with an eager look.

“Ten dollars a month,” he said as if he were offering me the Kohinoor diamond, gift wrapped. “I’ll cut your rent to $120 a month if you persuade my nephew to move somewhere else. That’s a very good deal, Mr. Goodey. An apartment like that—those marvelous views—is worth at least—”

“Two twenty-five?” I asked. “Do you think that would be a fair rent to charge, say, someone from out of town, someone from across the sea who didn’t know what a rotten little fleabag like that was worth? Let’s say a not-so-distant relative who’d come to San Francisco to become a man of God.”

Lum Kee’s mouth went hard. He knew I had tumbled his little con. He didn’t say anything, just crossed his flabby old arms across his ink-stained black vest and stared at me.

“Honestly, Lum Kee,” I said, “I could understand you trying to cheat me, not only an infidel dog but a copper. But to try to do your own sister Pansy’s youngest boy, that really shocks me.”

“One fifteen,” he said, cutting through my bullshit in the only language he trusted, “and I’ll paint the whole apartment for you. That’s my bottom offer.”

“Don’t tempt me to tell you what to do with your bottom offer, Lum Kee,” I said. “The kid stays, and you get the same old $130 a month. If he wants to raise turkeys up there, it’s okay by me. I’ll take that extra ninety-five bucks you charged him out of next month’s rent, and if you think you can get any place waving that phony contract around, go ahead and try it.”

I left him leaning against his counter, making a mouth like a broken piggy bank, and started walking downhill toward Broadway. I didn’t expect Lum to accept defeat gracefully, but he’d be quiet for a while, thinking up a counterattack. God knows what he’d come up with next. Maybe a typhoid epidemic.

8

It was getting well on toward evening as I reached Broadway and turned toward the hub of North Beach. At that hour the whores and other starlets were having breakfast; the pimps, who’d been up and hustling for at least three hours, were having lunch; and the honest citizens, who’d just closed their shops, were having dinner. Ranked in doorways in side streets, the Tokay Brigade was augmenting its liquid diet with more liquid.

At The Jungle, a retired hubcap thief in an oversized doorman’s coat was shooing black kids away from the display pictures out front. Tina’s name was still on the marquee in eighteen-inch letters with the word tonight! There was a lot of sentiment on North Beach. A lot of heart.

“Business as usual, eh?” I asked the doorman.

“Huh?” he said, aiming a last sharp-toed kick at one of the dodging kids.

“Is Fat Phil around?”

The doorman, a man of few words, jerked a dirty thumb toward the interior of The Jungle and went back to examining his life for the exact moment he’d gone wrong.

I started to push open the door but then paused.

“Too bad about Tina,” I said.

“Huh?” he said.

“If you can perfect that routine,” I told him, “you’ll be up on the stage inside instead of bruising your insteps out here.” I went in and closed the double door behind me before he could get off his famous rejoinder. He could wear out that act if he didn’t watch it.

The inside of The Jungle looked like a bad interior for Tarzan Goes on the Bottle. But then I suppose darkness and seven or eight watered drinks would lend a certain amount of verisimilitude to the tired plastic foliage and stuffed animals. Up over the bar was the tiny jungle clearing where Tina had done most of her shaking. But she’d swung on her last vine.

In front of the bar, taking up two stools and part of a third was Fat Phil Franks, front man for The Jungle and Tina’s former manager. It had made big headlines in San Francisco late last year when Tina and Phil had split the managerial blanket. It doesn’t take much to make headlines in San Francisco. But she’d stayed on at The Jungle. Phil had lost his fifteen percent, and now he’d lost his headliner.

I walked up to the back of his neck—a flabby tree trunk with a five-dollar haircut—and said: “It’s kind of you, Phil, to keep Tina’s name up in lights. She’d have been all choked up at that kind of sentiment.”

Instead of waiting for him to turn around—that could have taken all evening at the rate he moved his three hundred and seventy-five pounds—I moved up to the bar to his right where he could swivel his neck at me without doing any serious damage to his system. I allowed him three or four bar stools for overflow and took a seat.

“Oh, hi,” he said. “Yeah, I thought it was the least I could do for poor Tina. I’m leaving her up there until after the funeral—as a mark of respect.”

“When’s that?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“You going?”

“If I can,” he said sadly. “But you know how hard it is for me to get around. I’d really like to. I wasn’t even able to go up to her place when they found her.” With his weight and overworked heart, Phil hadn’t been above the ground floor of any building since he’d topped three hundred pounds. “But I’m sending a blanket of three thousand gardenias to the funeral. From me and The Jungle.”

“Touching,” I said. “But tell me something. How can you leave Tina’s name on the marquee and not give the suckers any Tina? Don’t they get irate when they’re getting some second stringer instead?”

Fat Phil parted his face in a smile that would have been terrifying on a man half his size. “Movies,” he said. “The best of Tina D’Oro in sixteen-millimeter living color. Wide screen.”

“You’re a genius, Phil,” I said. “How long do you think you can get away with that?”

“Long enough,” he said, taking a long slurp of something vile and sickly from a tall glass, “for me to get my replacement for Tina ready to go on stage. God forbid I should speak ill of the dead, Joe,” he said, “but this girl is going to make Tina look like a cub scout.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “You’re going to be the fattest millionaire in the world. But I didn’t come here to watch you turn Tina’s death into your next fortune. I’m trying to locate someone called Irma Springler. A friend of Tina’s. Do you know where I can find her?”

“You working on this case?” he asked, his dark-chocolate eyes growing wise. “I would have thought that after zapping Kolchik’s cousin you’d be low man on the sewers squad.”

“You’ll think a lot of things before you’re done, Phil,” I said. I leaned over toward him and got confidential. “Don’t tell a soul, but I’m up for promotion. The mayor never did like his cousin. He thanked me personally for perforating the old geezer. If I’d been just a little better shot, I’d be a captain right this minute.”

“Sure,” Phil said. “Right after I win the Kentucky Derby. On foot. What were we talking about?”

“Irma Springler.”

“I’ve seen her around,” Phil said. “What do you want to talk to her about?”

“Things, Phil,” I said. “Just things. I’m enjoying this chat an awful lot, but unless you can be just a bit more helpful, I’m going to have to go outside and talk with a lamppost. Do you know one that might know where Irma Springler lives?”

“Well,” he said, “she lives over on Union—the 400 block—but I don’t think she’s home now.”

“Let me take the risk. I can handle it. But the 400 block of Union is quite long, Phil. Do you think you could narrow it down a little?”

“It’s either 416 or 461,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time going over there.”

“I can afford it,” I said. “Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.” I left him working hard over that tall glass. Just before I opened the door, I stopped and leaned toward his massive back. “By the way, Phil,” I said, “you don’t have any idea who killed Tina, do you?”

If he answered, I didn’t hear it.

Phil was right. Number 461 turned out to be a Victorian shambles with a slight lean toward Russian Hill, and a postbox name plate said “I. Springler, 4B.” He was right on another count. After I puffed up four steep flights and leaned on the bell of 4B, nobody answered. I clouted the door a couple of times in case I. Springler was a little deaf. But all that got me was a sour look from her neighbor in 4C, a stringy old lady with the long lower lip and sparse beard of a nanny goat, who leaned out of her door and gave me a high, hard one out of her good eye.

“You looking for someone?” she quavered.

“Just Irma Springler,” I said. “Have you seen her today?” “No.”

“Have you seen her this week?”

“No.”

I was going to try for this month, but I knew the answer I’d get and I wasn’t ready to go to a year.

“Thanks very much,” I said. “If you do see Miss Springler, would you…” The door shut with an emphatic crunch.

It was easier going down, and by the time I got downstairs it was dark. It was a nice night for walking home. Broadway was kicking into life as I passed through. Club-door barkers were trying out their lines of lapel-grabbing innuendo, and dudes from Cotati, Burlingame, and El Cerrito sidled down the street, avoiding the doormen’s blandishments and looking for that mythical club where the drinks weren’t watered and they were taking it all off right there in front of your face.

Back on my block, all was peaceful. The door to Lum Kee’s shop was shut, locked, barred, and probably booby-trapped.

A glance up at my apartment’s lighted windows told me that somebody was home to welcome me. It had been quite a while since there’d been a light on for me, and the idea was cheering. I flipped on the stairway lamp and started climbing.

I usually climb stairs looking at my feet, but something up ahead on the second landing caught my eye. It was Chub, my old buddy, sitting on the top step, fat hands piled in his lap, like an Occidental Buddha. His round eyes were peacefully closed, and I thought Chub had dozed off waiting for me until I saw the thin line of blood running from the left side of his mouth down over those well-fed chops onto the front of his mohair suit.

That is, it had been a stream of blood, but as I got closer I could see that it had dried to a ribbon of rusty red. “Chub,” I said, the way people will talk to a dead man, and I touched his unbloodied shoulder. His plump little body rocked, and I had to stop him from tumbling forward. He’d been precariously balanced in death, and I’d upset that balance. Moving a hand to his back, I started to lay him down on the landing. My hand found a sticky patch of blood between his shoulder blades and came away gory, but I got him laid down. His knees were still slightly bent, and in the harsh light of the landing I half expected Chub to throw a hand up to shield his eyes.

When I opened the door of my apartment, Fong was sitting on the long, green couch going over some printed forms. The door to my bedroom—my former bedroom—was closed, so I assumed that Mickey was in there playing Florence Nightingale to the girl junkie.

“Hello, Joe,” Fong said. “Fsui-tang woke up a while ago and is resting comfortably. I really do think she was just worn out.”

“I hope she’s well enough for company,” I said, washing my hands at the kitchen sink, “because we’re going to have some soon. There’s a dead man lying on the next landing down, and I’ve got to call the police.”

“A dead man?” Fong said right on cue. “But who? Are you sure he’s dead?” He was up off the couch, prepared to do something Christian.

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ve seen one before. Do you remember that little man who was here yesterday when you came up to see the apartment?”

“Yes. You called him—”

“Chub, but his name was Seymour Kroll. Somebody stuck something very much like a knife in Mr. Kroll’s back not too long ago. And from the blood on the stairs, I’d say it happened right outside the door of this apartment. I don’t suppose you heard anything?”

“No. And I’ve been here since you left. I—”

“Save it for homicide,” I said, reaching over to pick up the telephone. “You’d better warn your delinquents in the next room that the police are coming. They may not want to stay.”

I was right. No sooner had I told a very alert and cheerful sergeant about Chub’s accident than the door to the bedroom opened and Mickey came out carrying the girl. He was only a little devil, but she looked as though she weighed about as much as a box of Wheaties. Fong followed them, still trying to talk Mickey into staying. He wasn’t having much luck.

“Thanks, Gabe,” said Mickey, “but we’re not going to be here when the cops come. I’ll get in touch in a few days. We’ll be all right.” The girl wasn’t saying anything. She was conscious, and eyes the color of a moonless night took in the small room. She lay back in Mickey’s arms like a failed channel swimmer.

It occurred to me that I still had the file on Tina D’Oro and that it wouldn’t be a great idea for the police to find me with it. I got an idea.

“Can your boy here be trusted?” I asked Fong.

“Sure,” said Fong. “I think so.”

“Okay.” I pulled out a pen and wrote my name and an address on the envelope the records came in and sealed it. I put a couple of postage stamps in the corner and put the envelope and a five-dollar bill on top of Fsui-tang.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Drop this in the first postbox you come to.”

“Okay,” said Mickey. “We’re off.”

Then they were gone, and I could hear Mickey’s heavy shoes clunk down the thin-carpeted stairs. He slowed right about where Chub’s body would have been, but then picked up speed again. From my front window I saw them leave the building and disappear between two fences across the narrow street.

Their short shadow had hardly disappeared when a prowl car swung in off Jackson and climbed the curb in front of the building. Two uniformed cops sprang out of the car and clanked across the sidewalk into the building. We’d be seeing more of those boys. “What shall we do?” asked Fong.

“Wait. It won’t take them long to get up here.”

“No, I mean about Mickey and Fsui-tang,” he said. “Shall we tell the police they were here but left? Won’t they be angry?”

“Very likely,” I said. “But it’s usually the best policy to tell the police the truth. Unless you have a good reason not to. Do you know where those two kids have gone?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t very well tell the police, can you?” I asked. “So I think we’d better tell it the way it happened. Okay?”

Before he could answer, somebody hit the door with what sounded like a baked ham, and I gestured for Fong to answer the door. When he did, the doorway was full of blue serge, and a cop started to ask if Fong was the guy who reported a dead body. Then he looked over Fong’s shoulder and saw me.

“Goodey!” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?” It was Gerry Anderson, a thick-skulled Swede I’d soldiered with a long time ago in the Parks Division. He hadn’t been too happy when I got into plainclothes.

“I live here,” I said. “And I reported finding the body. This is the Reverend Gabriel Fong. He shares this place with me.”

Anderson looked Fong’s urban guerrilla outfit up and down and wondered whether to call me a liar. But after a lot of soul-searching—he did everything but take off his hat and give himself a Dutch rub—he decided not to chance it. That’s why Anderson was still in uniform and always would be.

“Who’s the dude down on the landing?” Anderson wanted to know.

“His name is Seymour Kroll,” I said. “He’s a lawyer’s investigator from New York. I found him about twelve minutes ago sitting on the landing, leaking a bit of blood. When I touched him, he fell over, and I let him lie.”

“You didn’t disturb—” Anderson began, but then he thought better of it.

“I didn’t anything,” I told him. “So why don’t we just stand around and talk about old times until the experts get here?”

Anderson didn’t like that remark, but, lacking a better one, he stood glowering at me and Fong. Mostly me.

“Say,” he said, “is there anyone else here?”

Fong eyed me as I said no.

There was a half knock on the door as it was shoved open, and Anderson’s partner came into the apartment. He couldn’t have been over twenty-one, and he looked as if he’d taken the oath that afternoon just in time to go on shift. He was a fresh-faced kid who had success written all over him. From the way Anderson looked at him, I knew he could see it too.

“Hey, Andy,” he said, “that guy…”

“I know,” said Anderson. “Go down to the front door and wait for homicide. Tell them I’m up here. And check out anybody who comes in or leaves the building.” He said this last bit to nobody, because the kid had already gone.

Anderson amused himself by opening doors and peering into the other rooms of the apartment while Fong and I exchanged assorted glances.

“Too bad about the old watchman,” Anderson said by way of time-passing conversation. What he meant as a cop was “too bad you pulled a bad one.” As a cop I understood him exactly. “Hope it doesn’t come down too hard on you.” Apparently news of my departure from the force hadn’t sunk to the lowest levels.

“Me too,” I said honestly, not giving away a thing.

This brilliant exchange was interrupted by a thumping of feet up the stairs, and the young cop burst in through the door followed by Johnny Maher. Detective Sergeant Johnny Maher.

Johnny wasn’t that much older than the rookie—maybe five years—but in true age he could have been the boy’s grandfather. There were ages behind those pale-green eyes, ages of deprivation and downgrading that he was in a hurry to make up for. Johnny was a sharp-dressing cop. Not rich, but sharp. You’d never have mistaken him for a bank president.

Or a pimp. If you guessed a pro football quarterback or a local-TV chat-show host, you’d be close to his style. Right then, his style was direct. “What’s going on here, Goodey?” he asked. He used to call me Joe, but that was earlier in the week before he’d made sergeant.

“A little murder, Johnny,” I said, “or so it seems. I was just telling Andy here that the victim was a friend of mine, a lawyer’s investigator out from New York.”

Up until that moment Maher hadn’t given any indication that he’d been aware of Anderson’s existence. He was like that with the troops and was famous as Maher the Patrolman’s Friend. “Anyone else here?” He threw the question at Andy as you’d throw a dog a poisoned bone.

“Not since I been here,” Anderson said through his big, pale-gray teeth.

“Well, take your young friend here out and find out what the neighbors know,” said Johnny. “You won’t get much done holding up the walls here.”

The two men in uniform went out, Anderson seething and the youngster half-admiring Maher but making a mental note to be nicer to patrolmen when he was a detective sergeant. Maher and I stood silently looking at each other.

“Nice going, Johnny,” I said. “You’ve made another good buddy among the peons. Andy will be your pallbearer when some other cop zaps you.”

“I’m not paid to be chummy with the troops, Goodey,” Maher said. “I do my job and I see that they do theirs. And, speaking of jobs, I understand you’ve had a recent change of employment.” The word was trickling out. “Sort of, Johnny,” I said. “I decided to go to work for a living.”

All this time Gabriel Fong had been sitting in my old easy chair, watching us as if we were characters in a lousy play. I hate to say it, but the expression on his face was inscrutable. I liked to think that he didn’t care for Maher because I disliked him. But they might have turned out to be the best of pals. Might have.

But the next thing Johnny did was arch a nearly double-jointed thumb in Fong’s direction and ask, “Who’s that?”

I started to open my mouth, but Fong beat me to it. “That,” he said, “is the cotenant of this apartment you’ve just barged into without invitation.” The voice was tougher than I’d have thought possible. “Who are you? I assume that you’re a police officer, but I’ve seen no proof.”

Maher gave me an eyebrow-lifting look, as if he expected me to intervene just short of throwing Fong out of the window, but I sat still and did nothing.

Like a quick-draw artist, Maher went into his inside coat pocket and came out with his leather badge holder, which he right-jabbed under Fong’s snub nose. To read it, Fong would have had to go cross-eyed.

“That satisfy you?” Maher snarled.

Fong reached up, effortlessly pushed the badge-holding hand out to reading distance, and read it slowly, not missing any of the small print. That’s my boy.

“Thank you, sergeant,” he said mildly. “My name is Gabriel Fong. I’m a theological student at the San Francisco Bible College, and I live here. Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Yeah,” said Maher. But just then heavy feet thumped up the stairs, and Andy came in through the half-open door, trying not to look too excited.

“Sergeant,” he said, puffing a little, “an old lady across the street says just before we got here somebody suspicious left in a hurry. A Chinese kid, and it looked like he was carrying a little girl. She doesn’t know where they went.”

Maher wheeled on me and Fong. “You know anything about this?” he demanded.

“Yes,” I said. “They were here until I found Kroll’s body, but then they remembered they had a date somewhere. So they left.”

Maher wasn’t the exploding type. His face turned to stone. “Goodey,” he said quietly, “are you telling me that you let two potential suspects leave here after you knew a murder had been committed?”

“That’s right,” I said easily. “I had no right to stop them. I’m not a cop anymore.” I didn’t bother going into the unlikelihood of a sick girl and her volunteer nurse sneaking out into the hall and knifing Chub. Anderson was having enough problems with the first bit of information I’d dropped. He kept boggling and looked as though he was wondering who to slug.

Maher took it quite well. Too well, in fact. “Right,” he said smoothly, “you’re not a cop anymore. But you are a suspect, and so are you, Charlie Chan.” He whipped a pair of cuffs out of his back pocket and flipped them to Anderson.

“Tie these monkeys together, Andy,” he said. “Frisk them and take them downtown. Have them put in detention until I get there, and then come right back.”

“You haven’t read us Miranda,” I said, anxious that Maher shouldn’t do anything to imperil his new stripes.

“Fuck Miranda,” he said. “You know it, and you can explain it to your friend in the lockup.”

“You see,” I told Fong, “there’s nothing to worry about. Cops like Maher only skip the finer legal points when they don’t expect an arrest to stick. He’s pissed because we let Mickey and Fsui-tang leave.”

“Cuffs!” snapped Maher.

Relieved to have something to do, Andy did an expert job of cuffing me to Gabriel and then himself to me. He had to be good at something.

“It’s the city’s gasoline,” I told Maher as Anderson started tugging us out the door, “but you’re wasting it. Do you know who Mr. Fong is?”

Maher signaled for Andy to stop. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Who is Mr. Fong?”

“The mayor’s cousin. His other cousin.”

Maher didn’t even bother to respond to that. He just thumbed Andy and us out the door.

Andy didn’t have a lot to say on the way down to headquarters. Neither did Fong and I, but there in the caged-in back seat we got in a few whispers.

“What will happen now, Joe?” Fong asked.

“They’ll lock us up for a little while,” I said. “But don’t worry. I’ll have us out within a couple of hours.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said. So did I.

9

If you think the average law-abiding citizen feels strange finding himself in a cell, imagine how a cop feels. It’s not natural. It’s like a dog being peed on by a lamppost. I’d known Archie Meltzer, the chief turnkey on duty, for over ten years, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way he processed me for the cells.

“Hello, Archie,” I said in a friendly way.

“Empty out all your pockets,” said Archie. “Put your money, car keys, other valuables on the table.”

“Sure, Archie,” I said, turning out my pockets. “How’s your kid brother? He still racing those pigeons?”

“Remove your belt, tie, if any, and shoelaces,” Archie said, “and place them on the table next to the long, brown envelope.” Another turnkey I didn’t know was busy counting the money we’d put on the table and making an itemized list of the other things.

“Right,” I said. “You know best. But, Archie, there is one thing. I’d kind of like to make that telephone call. You know, the one everybody talks about. It’s important.”

“Plenty of time for that later,” said Archie, “Read the itemized list, initial each entry and sign your accustomed signature and the date at the bottom.” We’d done all this like good boys, and Archie was telling his helper where to stash us. “Okay,” he said, deadpan, “this way.”

“Archie,” I said, “I don’t want to be a nag, but I’d really like to make that phone call. And my friend, Mr. Fong, would probably like to make one, too. It is the law, you know.”

“I know the law, Joe,” Archie said, using my name for the first time, “and you’ll get your phone call. Now, do as the man says.” I did as the man said, leading Fong through the green, metal door and down the corridor that leads to the dozen or so cells where drunks and other master criminals were kept. There were also a couple of high-security cells, and I wondered if I had enough status to get one of those.

The turnkey stopped us in front of a cell with a guy already in it and opened the door. “Not you,” he said as I started to go in. “You.” He motioned to Fong.

“Don’t despair, Gabe,” I said. “I’ll have us out of here in no time.”

“Sure, Joe,” he said, but he didn’t sound too sure. I didn’t feel too sure. As the turnkey was locking Fong in, his new roommate, a little whey-faced guy with a dirty-blond pompadour and the eyes of a child molester, came to the front bars and stared at me.

“What did you do?” I asked him just to pass the time.

“I got caught,” he said.

The turnkey prodded me on down the line to an empty cell and opened the door. As I stepped in, he clanged the door shut behind me.

“Hey,” I said, turning, “tell Archie that unless…” But he was already halfway down the row and gaining speed. “You’ll be sorry,” I said, but I couldn’t think how.

It wasn’t much of a cell. Two steel cots bolted to the floor, a chemical toilet in the corner. On each cot was a thin, striped mattress and a folded war-surplus blanket. Mine had been in the Navy. The walls of the cell were solid concrete with close-set bars starting about six feet up and going to the ceiling on each side. High at the back was a barred ventilator grate.

I sat down and wondered how long it would take Archie to get around to letting me make my phone call. I also wondered who had knifed Chub and whether it had anything to do with the little job I was supposed to be doing for Kolchik. Suppose Kolchik murdered Chub. These heavy thoughts were interrupted by a sound from overhead.

“Sssssssssss!”

I looked up and saw a small, black face looking down at me from just where the bars began above the concrete wall. On either side of the face were two, thin-fingered hands, pink on one side, black on the other.

“Ssssssss!” the face repeated.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Shhhhhhh!” my sibilant neighbor said. “Shhhhhh! Come up here for a minute, but keep your voice down.”

I didn’t have much else to do, so I stood up on the other bunk. “What do you want?” I whispered.

“What are you in for?” He looked like a teenager.

“Suspicion of murder,” I said. I tried to be matter-of-fact, but it wasn’t easy.

“Wow! You don’t look like a murderer.”

“I’m not,” I admitted. “It’s a bum rap. I’ll be out of here in a little while.” I said that to encourage myself as much as anything.

“You look like a pretty good guy,” my neighbor said. “Will you do me a favor?”

“I’ll try. What is it?”

“I want you to tell the jailer something for me. I’ve tried, but he won’t listen to me.”

“He’s not doing an awful lot of listening to me, either. But I’ll give it a try. What is it?”

He pushed his pointed little face up until his nose was between the bars and glanced nervously behind him at the other bunk in the cell.

“I’m a girl,” my neighbor whispered. “I shouldn’t be in this part of the jail. I got picked up for vagrancy, and I wasn’t going to tell them ’cause I thought they’d put me in a cell by myself and I’d get out in the morning. But they put me in here with him—” We both looked at the bunk on the far wall. Beneath a gently rising and falling blanket was what looked like an escaped gorilla. A cruel face was relaxed in dreamless sleep. I’m positive the slack lips covered long fangs.

“I’m afraid that, once he wakes up, he’ll find out I’m a girl and…”

I’d have been afraid to have been in that cell when it woke up too.

“I’ll do what I can,” I whispered. “But what are you doing dressed up like a boy?”

She shrugged and gave me a sharp-toothed little smile. “It happens,” she said. “You just tell that jailer to get me out of here and do it quick and quiet. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it just as soon as I can, but—”

Behind her, Mighty Joe Young stirred noisily, threw out a hand the size of a seven-dollar sirloin and brought it back to shield its eyes from the light in the corridor. “Humph,” it growled. “Too fuckin’ noisy in here.”

My neighbor dropped like a hanged man—woman—and I heard the bedsprings squeaking as she burrowed underneath the bedding.

I dropped down on my side and sat down again. If I couldn’t get Archie to listen to my story, how could I tell him about my lady neighbor? I didn’t even have a tin cup to rattle on the bars. That problem was solved when the turnkey came padding along the corridor and stopped in front of my cell. He unlocked the door.

“Come on,” he said. “Archie says you can make that telephone call now.”

I jumped up and walked out of the cell. As I walked past the next cell, I heard a tiny whisper: “Don’t forget.” King Kong was snoring once again.

When I came into the turnkey’s office, Archie gestured gracefully toward the telephone on his desk. “There you go, Joe,” he said. “One call.”

“Thanks loads. You’re a credit to law enforcement.”

I considered calling the mayor, just to make Archie and his flunky drop their teeth. But I didn’t know his number and thought maybe it wouldn’t be such a cool thing to do. So I dialed a certain number in Mill Valley.

“Lehman,” said a voice full of mashed potatoes.

“Goodey,” I said, pausing slightly, “speaking from the city jail, where at present I’m an unwilling guest.”

“Joe,” Ralph asked, “what the hell are you up to? I’m eating dinner right now, and we’ve got guests.”

“I’ve got guests, too,” I said. “Two lovely jailers standing here listening to every word I say. And I haven’t had any dinner at all.” I turned my head toward Archie. “What’s for dinner tonight, Arch?”

“Too late, Joe,” he said. “You’ve missed it.”

“The man says I’ve missed dinner,” I told Ralph, “so I suggest that you get down here and get me out before I tell everything I know for a ham sandwich.”

“But Joe,” said Lehman, “what are you in jail for? At least tell me that.”

“Suspicion of murder,” I said. “Johnny Maher thinks I killed somebody this evening.”

“Killed somebody?”

“Yeah. And not who you think. Somebody else.”

“Where’s Maher right now?”

“At my place, as far as I know, pinning everything on me. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find him paying me a visit down here in a little while.”

“Just hold tight, Joe,” Ralph said. “I’ll be right there. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’ve got great faith in you.”

“One thing,” he said. “Do those jailers know who you’re calling?”

“I’ll ask.” I put my hand over the speaker. “Say, do you lads have any idea who I’m talking to?”

They shook their heads.

“Nope,” I said. “For all they know, you could be the Pope.”

“Good,” he said. “I’ll be down to get you out right away, but if you let on that you expect me, I’ll leave you in the cells until you rot.”

“Right,” I said. “See you around.” I hung up.

“Okay,” said Archie. “Back you go.” The other turnkey opened the door of the office.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Archie, I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll tell you something you want to know if your man here will go out and get me a sandwich and a cup of coffee. And a candy bar.”

“What sort of thing I want to know?” Very suspicious.

“Something you’re going to be very embarrassed about if I don’t tell you.”

“What is it?” Archie asked. I knew I had him hooked.

“Oh, no. I want your promise first. Sandwich—make it pastrami and Swiss cheese on an onion roll—black coffee, and a Hershey bar…it’s a good deal, Archie. You better take it.”

He chewed on it a bit and then said: “It’s a deal. Spill it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I know your word is your bond. You know those two guys in the cell next to mine—the one closest to this office?”

“Yes. The two spades. What about them?”

“One of them’s a girl.”

“A girl? In my jail?”

“That’s right. Not the caveman, but the little, pointy-chinned one. She told me just before your man brought me in.”

“Harvey,” Archie said, “get that girl out of there, get her out fast and get her out quietly. Put Joe back in—and then get him something to eat.”

“Don’t forget the mustard on the pastrami, Harv,” I said. “Lots of it.”

I was just licking the melted chocolate from my fingers when Harvey came back to my cell and stuck the key in the lock.

“Just in time, Harvey,” I said. “I always like a little walk after dinner.”

“That’s good,” he said, “but you’re not walking where you think. You’re going upstairs. I don’t think that lawyer of yours got the message.”

“Ah, well,” I said, “he’s only human. Who’m I going to see, then?”

“You’ll find out.”

As we passed through the turnkey’s office, Archie was sitting at his green, metal desk. He still looked worried.

“Did you take care of my girlfriend?” I asked.

“Son of a bitch, Joe,” he said. “In nineteen years I never had such a thing happen. You can’t tell them apart these days. You just can’t tell.”

“Serves you right, Archie, for being so nasty to me when I came in here this evening. Take good care of my man Fong. I’ll be back for him in a little while.”

Archie just looked sicker, and Harvey nudged me to get moving. The fifth floor was dark and empty except for Lehman’s office. Ralph was sitting behind his desk looking half-fed and pissed off. “Thanks, Winston,” he told my guide. “I’ll take over now. You sit down, Goodey.” After Harvey had closed the door behind him, Ralph looked up at me: “Why, Joe, why? I gave you a perfectly simple job, an important job. And what happens?”

“I didn’t ask for the job,” I pointed out.

He ignored me. “Somebody,” he said, “somebody you might have had a reasonably good reason to kill, gets knocked off on your doorstep. And now I’ve got to get you out of jail.”

“Your buddy, Maher, got me put into jail,” I said. “He knows I didn’t kill Seymour Kroll.”

“Who did then?” Lehman asked.

“You got me,” I said. “Maybe the same person who knocked off Tina.”

“But why?”

“Beats me,” I said. “You have any idea what the mayor was doing early this evening?”

Lehman looked too weary even to reply to that and was saved the trouble when there was a bang on the door which might have been mistaken for a knock, and Johnny Maher came charging in, looking less than happy.

“Ralph,” he said, “what the hell—”

“Sit down, Johnny,” Lehman said, gesturing toward a chair across from mine.

“But, Ralph—”

“SIT DOWN!” Ralph shouted, all but blowing Johnny toward the chair, where he settled unhappily but quietly.

“Now, listen to me, Maher,” Ralph said evenly but menacingly enough. “As of right now you’ve got nothing to do with that murder at Goodey’s place.”

“Outside Goodey’s place,” I insisted.

“Shut up, Goodey,” Ralph said. Maher liked that, but he wasn’t so cheerful when Ralph swiveled toward him and continued, “I don’t know how you got the job in the first place.”

“Nobody else was there to handle it,” said Maher sullenly.

“Well, there will be, starting right now, if I have to do it myself. As for you, haven’t you got enough to do with the D’Oro stabbing? I think you’re aware that the mayor would like that little matter settled—and soon.”

Maher looked like a kid caught with unfinished homework.

“By the way,” Lehman plunged on, “how are you doing on the D’Oro case? Have you anything to report?”

“Not yet,” said Maher, casting a sideways look at me. “I haven’t been able to locate the Springler woman yet, but I will. There’s not too much to work on, but I’ll come up with the answer. Don’t worry.”

“I do worry,” said Lehman sharply. “I worry about retiring next year on two thirds of my lousy pay. I worry about you keeping those three stripes you so cleverly won. I hope you haven’t bothered to sew them on, because if you don’t settle this D’Oro case and do it soon, you won’t have them long. Now, get out of here and accomplish something. And stay away from Goodey. He’s bad luck.” Maher fled without a glance at me.

“Thanks, Ralph,” I said.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I didn’t do anything for you. I was giving it to Maher straight. I want results, and I want them yesterday. But first, how does this latest murder fit in?”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” I said, “but it certainly makes life more interesting. What time is it? Those guys downstairs have my watch, and I’ve got to call someone in New York and tell him about the demise of Seymour Kroll.”

“It’s nine-thirty. Who are you going to call?”

“My father-in-law. But it’s after midnight there. I might wait until morning. Kroll won’t be any deader then.”

“Well, then,” Lehman said, “if it’s not too much trouble, can we talk about the D’Oro case for a minute?”

“Yeah,” I said. “After all, I’ve been on the damned thing a whole six hours, including the time I’ve been in your jail. I ought to have it wrapped up by now.” I put a hand toward the inside pocket of my coat. “I have the name of the murderer in this sealed envelope…”

“Okay, okay,” said Ralph. “But can’t we talk?”

“Sure,” I said. “But first get on that phone and tell them to let Gabriel Fong go.”

“Gabriel Fong?”

“That’s right. F-O-N-G. Rhymes with gong. He’s the guy I sublet my apartment to when you ran me out of town. He’s a Bible student, and we’ll be sharing the place while he takes a course here and mops up all the delinquents in Chinatown. He was with me this evening when Maher…”

“Say no more.” Lehman reached for the telephone and dialed. “Archie,” he said, “Chief Lehman. Have you got a guy down there called Fong? Well, let him go. Never mind what Maher says. Send him home and tell him we’ll be in touch.”

“And tell Archie to send my stuff up here,” I said. “They have all my money.”

“Oh, yes,” Ralph said. “Joe Goodey will be coming back down for his effects. Don’t throw him back in the cells. Okay?” He put down the receiver and swiveled back to me. “Give,” he said.

“There’s not much to give,” I told him. But, starting from the moment that afternoon when I’d left him in Bruno’s office, I gave him a rundown on my less-than-enlightening inquiries…right up to the time I’d found Chub, and Maher had found me. I even told him about the two Chinese kids.

At first Ralph didn’t say anything. He just gave a big, wheezy sigh as if the thumb of God were pressing on his chest in an unfriendly way.

Then he said: “I was right, wasn’t I, Joe? You should have been a private dick all the time. You’re a natural. Here you’ve had a private op’s license a full six hours or so, and you’re working overtime finding dead bodies, disappearing potential murderers and witnesses, bumping heads with detective sergeants all over the place. You’ve got the knack, boy.”

I tried to look modest, but he didn’t give me much of a chance.

“But the one thing you haven’t done,” he went on, “is make much visible or even invisible progress toward finding out what we all want to know—who iced Tina D’Oro. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” I said. “But tell me something. It occurred to me while Mr. Maher was here. By any chance has he read Tina’s diary? I mean beyond the point of learning that our leader was making beautiful music with Tina?”

“He says not. Maher claims that he was just flicking through idly, not reading, when he spotted Sandy’s name. After that, he put it away and didn’t look in it again.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Not necessarily. Johnny’s too smart for his own good. Time will tell. But right now isn’t there something you should be out doing?”

“Yeah,” I said, “there probably is.”

I left him looking like part of the tired office furniture, collected my belongings from the still-shattered Archie, and again found myself standing on the sidewalk outside the police building.

10

I thought about heading right back to North Beach, nosing around, asking some questions, zeroing in on whoever did Tina in. I thought about going around and slapping the crap out of Johnny Maher, just for the fun of it. I thought about picking up one end of the Golden Gate Bridge and throwing it in the bay.

Exhausted, I headed for the friendliest thing in sight—a brightly lit, green telephone booth. I won a little argument with the booth’s folding door and looked at my watch. Just after ten. After one in the morning in New York. Who said Sonny Berkowitz had a right to an undisturbed night’s sleep? I had enough quarters in my pocket to invest in a cheap-rate three-minute call, and I started dialing area code 212.

The telephone on the other end rang with an annoyed rasp about seven times, and then a voice answered. I knew that voice.

“It’s me—Joe,” I said. “But don’t hang up. I’m calling Sonny.”

“Joe,” said my wife in a voice permeated with wariness. “Mom and Dad aren’t here. They’ve gone up to the Connecticut place for the weekend. They still haven’t had a telephone put in up there.” Was this the siren voice that made me rush to New York and go crazy six months before? It was hard to believe. All I could hear was a slightly nasal, vaguely babyish New York voice.

“You’ll have to give Sonny a message then,” I said. “I’ve got some bad news for him. That investigator he sent out to bug me was killed tonight. Somebody stabbed him just outside the door to the apartment.” I almost said “our apartment.”

“Killed?” said Pat. “But why? He was such a nice little man. Why would anybody want to kill him?”

I thought I’d skip the wisecracks. “I haven’t any idea, Pat,” I said. “I found his body only a couple of hours ago, and the police are investigating. They’ll probably find out who did it. As you may have heard somewhere, I’m not a cop anymore.”

There was a small silence on her end. Pat was probably trying to decide how sympathetic she could be without taking a chance of triggering me. It was a valid question.

“Yes,” she said. “Daddy told me. That was bad luck. Is the old man all right?”

“Yeah. He’ll be okay.”

“And you,” she said cautiously, “are you okay, Joe?” She meant to convey that she was concerned but not too much.

“Sure,” I said. “Never better.” Keep up a brave front, Goodey.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Well, yesterday I was thinking about a little vacation in Mexico. But this morning I changed my mind. I think I’ll stick around here and see what happens. It’s a fairly lively place. I might take some sort of job. How about you? How are things at the agency? Still knocking them out, ad-wise?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “It gets pretty hectic at times.” There was a pause. “Joe—”

I knew what was coming. “Yeah?” I said warily.

“I know it seems terrible, what with Mr. Kroll just getting killed— I still can’t believe it—but are you going to let me have a divorce? It’s really the best thing for everybody, you know.”

I heard myself saying something I hadn’t planned. “Yes, Pat,” I said. “I know it is. I know.”

“Well, then?” she said in that logical tone of voice I used to hate. There was a long, long pause. The last five years flickered through my head like a high-speed movie.

“All right,” I said. “You can have it. Send me the papers, and I’ll sign them.”

The line went silent again. I knew I’d surprised her. I’d surprised myself. “Are you sure, Joe?” Pat asked. I suspected that she was trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

“Sure,” I said. “Send me the papers before I change my mind. Tell Sonny that Seymour talked me into it. If there was a Mrs. Kroll, maybe he’ll give her a bonus. But let’s not talk about it right now. I’ve already got too much on my mind.”

“But, Joe…”

At that point the operator came on, demanding more money for more time, and I wasn’t sorry to say that I was out of quarters. So I said a quick goodbye and hung up. I wouldn’t have to think about the divorce again until the papers came.

A telephone booth can be a cozy place, especially when you have no particular place to go. But it’s not a way of life. I fished a dime out of what little change I had left and dialed a Sausalito number. Someone answered the telephone.

“Buenas noches,” I said. “This is the international operator calling from Tijuana, Mexico. Will you accept a collect call from the Tijuana city jail from a Senor Jose Goodey?”

“Joe!” said Rachel Schute. “That was a pretty short trip to Mexico, wasn’t it? Or are you really in Tijuana?”

“Not really.”

“And you’re not in jail?”

“Not just now,” I said truthfully. “I was giving some thought to coming over to see you in a little while.”

“I’d like that,” she said. “I’ve got a houseful of dinner guests, but they won’t be here forever.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Everybody,” she said. “But nobody you’d care to talk to.”

“I’m an antisocial bastard.”

“You are,” she agreed. “Do you think you’ll be here in about an hour?”

“That depends on a couple of things,” I said, “but I’ll try. If you haven’t gotten rid of those bums by then, I’ll throw them off the sun deck.” I’m a tough guy.

“See you, Joe,” she said.

The taxi dropped me at the corner of my street. As I was walking toward Lum Kee’s, I was pleased to see my car still standing there. With my luck it could have been towed away. My suitcases were still in the trunk, and there didn’t seem to be any particular reason for going up to the apartment. It was highly likely that Maher or one of his pals was still somewhere around, although there was no squad car on the block.

As I was passing Lum Kee’s shop on the other side of the street, the shop door opened and Lum Kee came out backward, looking like an overweight beetle in his black coat

“Hello, Lum!” I said, just for the hell of it.

You’d have thought I’d touched him with a high-tension wire. Lum started, jumped back about a foot, and looked as though he was going to run back through the closed door.

Instead, he turned around with the awkward speed of a man who didn’t want to see something but knew he had to get it over with. “Joe Goodey?” he said. “Can it be you?”

“Sure it can,” I said. “The police decided that they didn’t want me after all.”

“What?” he said, and I could tell that he didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. He was still staring at me as if he couldn’t believe what he saw before him. “But the boy said—” he started. Then he stopped, clamped his mouth shut, and just stared some more.

“I’m glad to see that you’re so touched to have me back,” I said. “I never suspected that you cared.”

“Sure, sure,” Lum Kee muttered in a distracted way. “I’ve got to go now. I must go.” He shuffled toward the corner at high speed.

Shrugging, I continued on to my car. I checked the trunk, and my suitcases looked untouched. There was no reason to go upstairs at all.

I started driving toward Sausalito. It was only a twenty-five minute drive, even on a busy Friday night, so I had a bit of time to spare. For thinking. When I got to the Marin County end of the Golden Gate Bridge, it was still only ten minutes to eleven. I didn’t want to get in on the tail end of Rachel’s dinner party, so I cut into the lane leading to the observation area at the end of the bridge.

The night was too hazy to let viewers get much out of the San Francisco skyline, but a parking place was hard to find. As a semipro voyeur, I canvassed the parked cars I passed and was surprised to find so many contained only one person. Maybe a lot of other people had things to think out.

I found a slot between an MGB and a big Buick convertible. Outside, Led Zeppelin and Mozart bumped heads, and I settled down for a few minutes of concentrated thought. It’s times like that when a detective ought to smoke. A cigarette somehow lends credibility to heavy thinking. A man slowly destroying his lungs is hardly open to charges of daydreaming. But I didn’t even have a stick of gum.

What I had was a murder—or maybe two, if I took a professional interest in Chub’s death—to solve. But first, Tina D’Oro. Who had something to gain from Tina’s death? Or, on the other hand, who disliked her enough to kill her whether there was anything to gain from it or not?

I didn’t yet know all the players in the final drama of Tina D’Oro, but any way I looked at it, Mayor Sanford F. Kolchik looked like the odds-on favorite. Who was involved romantically with Tina? S.F.K. Who stood to lose a great deal if that involvement became known? S.F.K. Who was the most likely target for blackmail if that was Tina’s game? Three out of three.

Kolchik had a whole lot of other credentials which qualified him to be my man. Not the least of which was a hard, ruthless brother whose career was as firmly attached to Sandy Kolchik’s as the earth is to the sun. If Sandy took a fall, The Brother was a goner. Perhaps outweighing all this was the fact that Kolchik was the one potential suspect that Johnny Maher wouldn’t touch. He was virgin territory, and he was all mine. I had the additional satisfaction of knowing that if Sandy was had for Tina’s murder, he couldn’t very well get tough with me over his cousin. Or could he? It was worth thinking about.

But not just then. A Sheriff’s Department prowl car had pulled into the parking area and was making the circuit with his spotlight. It was probably just some young punk deputy getting revenge on the parkers for having a better time than he was, but I wasn’t in the mood to find out. There’s something about being a recent ex-cop which encourages paranoia. Mine didn’t need much encouragement. I rapidly started the Morris and got out of there, which was probably what the Sheriff’s boy wanted in the first place.

Sausalito was a small fishing village. About fifty years ago. But now it was a strange mélange of the idle rich, hustling merchants, and descendants of the original fishermen, who hated, scorned, and envied the first two categories. Rachel Schute fell into the first class and lived in a cantilevered, multidecked phantasmagoria high up over the waterfront, with the San Francisco skyline as its private light show.

Rachel was saying goodbye to the last of her departing guests as I pulled into the shallow parking area under the lower deck. I recognized Moses Stanfield’s showy, green Continental. Ho-hum, I thought, it’s old home night. The Stanfields were being shepherded down the steep wooden steps as I came up them with a suitcase in my hand. I could have been the Fuller brush man on a night call.

“Oh, hello, Joe,” Rachel said easily. “You’re just in time to meet Justice and Mrs. Stanfield.”

“A pleasure, Justice,” I said, giving him the old fraternity grip and a winning smile. “Mrs. Stanfield and I are old friends.” I slipped her a half wink. “Not leaving so soon, I hope?” Like hell I did.

Mrs. Stanfield had had just enough to drink to be caught midway between ladylike gaiety and slatternly sullenness. A drink sooner, and she’d have greeted me like an old shipmate. A drink later, and she’d have bitten my head off and spat it in my face. As it was, she paused, one foot in the air, and looked at me as a poker player would at a hand containing two jacks of diamonds. She didn’t miss the suitcase, either.

The justice obviously didn’t remember my name. “A pleasure,” he lied absent-mindedly. “We really must be going, Rachel. Lovely dinner.” And they were gone. The big Lincoln sucked a couple gallons of gas into its carburetors and ate up several hundred yards of street. We were alone.

“Evening,” I said to Rachel. “Are there any leftovers? I didn’t have any real dinner. Let’s go into the kitchen, and I’ll tell you where I didn’t eat it.”

Rachel stood poised on the top step. She was smiling, but as usual she looked as though she couldn’t decide whether to fall into my arms or kick me into the street. It may sound fishy for me to keep insisting on it, but Rachel Schute was a hell of a good-looking woman. Especially all kitted out in a jade-colored dress that cost more than I ever made in a month and with that pale strawberry hair pushed up over her pointy ears like small ostrich plumes. Rachel’s pale-blue eyes were a bit naked and raw-looking, the way redheads’ often are, but she knew how to get the best out of them with make-up. At three in the morning, with a face full of tears and a mouth full of recriminations, she was dead ugly, but right now she’d do just fine.

“Sure, Joe,” she said, weakening as usual. “Let’s go see what’s left.” She held out a warm, freckled left hand to me, and I took it. The strength of the squeeze she gave my hand told me she hadn’t quite given up on me. She should have known better. Hell, I should have known better and married her. But neither of us did.

Rachel’s spade housemaid-cook shot me her usual I-know-you-hustler look, adding, “Good night, Mrs. Schute,” before leaving us really alone. I sat down at the kitchen table and started ravaging what was left of the prime rib and potatoes julienne, while Rachel perched herself across the table and waited for me to bring her up to date.

I didn’t disappoint her. I told her most of what I knew, leaving out only the mayor’s involvement and Tina’s diary. I could tell from the way she was listening that she didn’t necessarily believe that the department brought me back—me, whom they’d just thrown out—just to look into the murder of a go-go girl, even Tina. So she didn’t have to believe me.

I finished off the prime rib and about a pint of chocolate-rum ice cream. Then I put my hand on hers across the table.

“Come on,” I said, partly because I knew it was expected of me, “let’s go to bed.”

“Sometimes, Joe,” Rachel said, “I think you’re just using me.” But the way she turned her hand to meet mine said this wasn’t yet a Federal offense.

“Could be,” I said, tugging her to her feet.

11

It was in the morning that I always wished I could bring myself to marry the Widow Schute. We were sitting on the top deck, blinking in the soft-lemon sunshine, with Sausalito and the bay laid out for us to spit on if we felt like it. Miss Black Power was back dishing out the scrambled eggs, bacon, croissants, and fresh grapefruit juice. I could tell she didn’t like me because she always put my eggs off-center on the plate.

Rachel was sitting there in a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dressing gown, looking well-laid and altogether too content with life to bother settling the guerrilla warfare going on at the end of the table between Ramsey and Donald, the two older boys. And Joey, the baby, was busy mashing his scrambled eggs into his highchair tray. He’d not yet been born when his father, the late, rich Howard Schute had driven his car off a seventy-five-foot cliff above Stinson Beach. I hadn’t known Howard Schute, but he couldn’t have been too bad if Rachel liked him.

My friend, the maid, brought me the Chronicle as if she were giving up one of her kidneys, and it didn’t take me long to find the report of Chub’s untimely end. Not that it carried screaming headlines. The story was all but buried on the back page next to a laxative ad and simply said that a Mr. Seymour F.—for what? I wondered—Kroll of New York City had been found in a North Beach apartment house dead of stab wounds. The police were pursuing their investigations. A one-day non-sensation. I wondered if there was somebody in New York who would care.

On the front page, the Chronicle was still pumping Tina’s death for what it was worth and quoting Johnny Maher’s noncommittal statements about the likelihood of the killer being caught, tried, and executed in time for Sunday brunch. There was a good deal of lip-licking over preparations for the memorial service at midday at St. Timothy’s, the hippest church in North Beach. It promised to be a four-star occasion. It was bound to be open-coffin, but would Tina be topless?

Breakfast can’t last forever, and I had a visit to pay across the way on Belvedere Island. If I turned slightly to the left, I could see Belvedere, but couldn’t pick out the house.

The boys kicked up such a fuss when I said I had to leave that Rachel didn’t have a chance really to get started. Not that she was much of a fuss maker. She could say things with her eyes and a slight lift of her upper lip that you couldn’t get across with forty-five minutes of shouting. I kissed her warmly but noncommittally, wrestled with the boys all the way down the three flights of outside steps, and waved like hell until my car was out of sight. There was a damned fine family for somebody who wanted a family.

It was a pleasant, sunny ride from Sausalito to Belvedere, right around the blunt blade of bay which splits that end of Marin County. When I passed through Mill Valley I gave a thought to Ralph Lehman up there on his little hill, trying to hold everything together for another nine months so that he could retire. He’d be lucky.

Belvedere’s not really an island, but it likes to think it is. Since most of the houses on Belvedere have their backs rudely turned to the narrow road that spirals around it, the casual rubbernecker wouldn’t know how really luxurious the houses are.

About two thirds of the way up, I pulled off the road into a little carport in front of a three-car redwood garage. Even the garage had a good view over Tiburon toward the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. I was just putting a foot on the carefully graveled ground when a voice said, “What do you want here, Goodey?”

I couldn’t see who it belonged to, but I knew the voice. It was Stoney Karras, Sgt. Stoney Karras, late of the Docks Squad, now detached for rather special duty. I hate talking to people I can’t see, so I waited until he appeared from behind a thick, stunted cypress tree next to the garage. Karras didn’t look like much in a cheap Robert Hall special the color of grape pulp and ancient oxblood loafers, but I respected him as a hard man in a hard job.

“I want to see the man, Stoney.”

“What if he don’t want to see you?”

“Try him and see,” I suggested.

Stoney shrugged and went over me with his fat fingers like an amateur pianist. He didn’t find anything because my police special was still in the suitcase. Then he told me not to bother wandering around while he checked out my popularity rating with the squire. I could have told him the answer to that one, but I didn’t think Kolchik would refuse to see me. He was too interested in the job I was supposed to do to play it that cool.

“Okay, come on,” said Stoney when he reappeared from the house, but I could tell from his expression that he thought the mayor was making a mistake. Stoney would have had me thrown into the bay. That’s why Stoney wasn’t the mayor. Maybe he should have been.

Stoney herded me out onto a brick terrace at the front of the house, grunted something, and left me standing there. I was alone. A couple of leather-strapped sun loungers pointed out to sea, and a low, driftwood table held a big, kidney-shaped ceramic ashtray and a Mexican silver cigarette box. On the silver box was a small brass bell.

Somebody cleared his throat theatrically behind me. I turned around to see Mayor Kolchik coming out of the dark recesses of the house.

Kolchik was a short, dark man with a potato nose and the physical stature of a natural clown. But there was nothing clownish about his black, deep-set eyes. They told you that everything you assumed about him at first glance was a mistake, and you’d better know it. They meant business. His outfit was sporty—a three-quarter-sleeved mustard shirt, Balboa-blue slacks with a razor crease, and open-weave sandals. But his heart wasn’t in it. He could have really relaxed in a midnight-blue pinstripe with one-inch cuffs.

Neither of us knew exactly how to start. We knew too much about each other to be strangers. He knew I’d shot his cousin, and I knew about Tina. We couldn’t start with a businesslike handshake.

“You’re Goodey,” he said.

I wanted to say, “You’re Kolchik,” but chickened out and just nodded.

“You wanted to see me?” he said.

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you about Tina D’Oro,” I said, feeling a bit silly and exposed.

Kolchik looked as though someone had given him a tough riddle, and he was working on it. Apparently he hadn’t expected such a call on this sunny Saturday morning. He peered at me as if I were a junior accountant who’d lost a decimal point. He frowned.

“Does my brother know you’re over here?”

“He told me to investigate Tina’s murder,” I said, “but he didn’t tell me how. I’m one of those self-starters you hear about.”

He didn’t like that. It came too close to wise-guyism to suit him, and he frowned again. He was a good frowner.

“So I’m your number-one suspect, eh?” he said. That brought out a small, wrinkled smile, and I began to like him a little. But only a little.

“If you weren’t a possible suspect,” I said, “you wouldn’t have wanted to try to find out who killed Tina and eliminate you as a suspect. When Lehman told me just how it was, I volunteered to come back.”

“You wanted to help me,” he said.

“I wanted to help myself. The way Lehman told it, unless I came back willingly and tried to bail you out, you and The Brother were going to get nasty about me shooting your cousin.”

“If that’s what Lehman said, there must be some truth in it,” Kolchik said. He smiled again. “So that’s what they call Bruno, eh? The Brother.”

“That’s what I call him. I’ve heard him called worse.”

“A lot of people have the wrong slant on Bruno,” he said. “He’s a bit rough, perhaps, but he’s got one great quality that makes up for everything. He’s loyal.”

“Loyal to what?”

“To me, Goodey. To me,” Kolchik said complacently. “What are you loyal to?”

Before I could answer, he moved over to the driftwood table and took up the small bell. He gave it a few brisk shakes, and almost immediately a short, ugly girl with a Little Nemo haircut came out onto the terrace with an expectant look on her face. She was wearing a mauve slack suit with a small apron which seemed to turn it into a uniform. She ignored me and turned her face to Kolchik as if he were the sun.

“Let’s have a drink, Goodey,” he said. “I make some very good beer. Irina, will you please bring us a bottle of the homemade beer from the cellar?”

She moved back into the house with a slightly pigeon-toed walk, and Kolchik gestured toward the deck chairs. “Let’s sit down and enjoy the sun,” he said. “It’s one of God’s great gifts. Now, you were about to tell me what you’re loyal to. Or maybe to whom.” The “to whom” came right out of Business English 1A (night school division), but he got it out without falling flat on his face.

I didn’t have to think very hard. “To me,” I said.

I could see that he thought this was a bit crass. It offended his Polish-American sense of respect for family, nation, and institutions.

“Not to the police force?” he asked with raised eyebrows. He meant, “Not to me?”

“I’m not on the police force anymore,” I said. “You had me kicked off.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, shrugging as if he’d forgotten to pay the milkman or some other small oversight. “But you’ll be back on the police force, won’t you, after you clear up this…other matter?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But about this other matter—”

But he wasn’t listening. He was looking past me at the sliding door into the house, and I turned to follow his eyes. Coming onto the terrace was a woman in a shiny, chromium-plated wheelchair which she was propelling with thin, muscular arms. On a tray over her lap was a pitcher of beer with a thick head of foam and two tall pilsner glasses. She maneuvered the wheelchair with the expertise of long practice.

Everything about the woman was gray, and she fought the somber shade by wearing a vividly flowered red dress and a shocking shade of carmine lipstick. Her tapered nails were drops of fresh blood. But behind this show of color, she was like a vampire’s victim, drained of all but the dregs of life and fighting every inch of the way. Behind her dull silver skin, veins like very minor roads on a map seemed to be fading out before my eyes.

Kolchik was up from the sun lounger and behind her chair with the agility of a man half his age. Reluctantly she stopped propelling the chair and allowed herself to be pushed.

“This is my wife,” Kolchik said proudly, wheeling her between our two loungers. “Dear, this is Joe Goodey. He’s a detective looking into the murder of Tina D’Oro.”

I jumped up feeling faintly guilty. “I could come back at a more convenient time,” I said, “if—”

“No, Mr. Goodey,” she said, giving me a cold, dry hand, “there won’t be a more convenient time. This is fine.” She paused briefly. “Aren’t you the detective who shot Sanford’s cousin? What extremely bad luck!”

I didn’t know if she meant that I or old Stanislaus had had the bad luck, but I nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid I’m the one.”

“Have you been to see him at the hospital yet?”

“No,” I said. “Things have been a little hectic since then, and I haven’t had a chance. I don’t think I’d be very welcome anyway.”

“Of course you would,” she said sternly, looking up at my face with once-indigo eyes glazed with a gray sheen. “Cousin Stanislaus will be wondering what sort of man shot him.”

“I’ll try to get to see him soon,” I promised.

The mayor had poured out two perfect glasses of beer and was holding one out toward me. “Drink this,” he said, “and you’ll never drink commercial beer again. It’s a recipe my grandfather stole from the bishop of Cracow.”

It just tasted like beer to me, but I tried to look like a man drinking the best beer he’d ever experienced. I don’t think I succeeded, but Kolchik swallowed his disappointment and the rest of his glass of beer and immediately poured himself another. Not to be outdone, I chug-a-lugged the rest of mine and held out my glass. Hizzoner brightened considerably, and I could tell that we were well on the way to being best buddies.

But how do you raise such a delicate matter as the late Tina D’Oro with even a best buddy with his crippled wife sitting there admiring his bobbing Adam’s apple as he drank beer?

“Mayor,” I said, “the matter I came to see you about is a rather delicate one. I think we’d better talk privately.”

“That won’t be necessary, Goodey,” he answered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and missing a bit of foam. “Mrs. Kolchik knew all about Tina. I have no secrets from her. So go right ahead.”

I still hesitated. I’m as modem and sophisticated as the next man, but I’m still young enough to think that there’s something unwholesome about swinging geriatric cases. But then, maybe Kolchik didn’t see himself that way.

“That’s right, Officer,” said Mrs. Kolchik, smiling up at me. “I knew about Tina. You see, it’s been many years since my health has been good enough to allow me to be a complete wife to Sanford.” She didn’t have to hit me over the head with a bread board. I knew what she was getting at. “And,” she went on, “Sanford is still a youthful and vigorous man. So we decided years ago that it would be best if he were free to seek the company of younger, stronger women. It was my idea. You see, Mr. Goodey, I am a European woman, really. I hope I am not embarrassing you.”

“Oh, no,” I lied. I’d really have preferred not to be let in on the family secrets, but it looked as if I already was. “But I hope you’ll excuse me if I’m just as frank.”

“Of course,” they said together, all smiles.

“Well, then, Mayor,” I said, “with the number of girls in San Francisco available to a man in your position, how could you have been stupid enough to choose one like Tina in a situation as public, if not more public, than your own?”

I thought that would shake him up. But he didn’t seem to mind a bit, just smiled boyishly, looked fondly at Mrs. K., and said: “Tina reminded me of Maria when she was younger.”

Christ, another complication. Who’s this Maria, and how does she fit in? Then it came to me: Maria was Mrs. Kolchik. I don’t know why it occurred to me, other than the expression on Kolchik’s face. She looked about as much like Tina as I did. Trying not to be too obvious, I searched Mrs. K.’s ravaged face and body for any faint resemblance to Tina’s plastic lushness. I suppose my face showed it.

“I was not always a cripple, Mr. Goodey,” Mrs. Kolchik said softly, and I felt ashamed of myself. “However, I must say that I never looked anything like Tina D’Oro. I fear it was just Sanford’s imagination. But I found it flattering, I admit.”

“You were far more beautiful than Tina, Maria,” said Kolchik with a great deal of enthusiasm. But then he remembered that he was talking of a girl who had only recently and violently died, and he crossed himself.

“You were asking questions, Goodey,” he said, bringing things back into official tracks. “What else do you want to know?”

“When did you last see Tina?” I asked.

“Tuesday afternoon,” he said quickly, “between two thirty-five and four o’clock.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about her? Did she seem depressed or worried about anything? Would she have told you if she had been?”

“No, to the first two questions,” he said. “And I doubt it very much, to the third. Tina didn’t seem any different than usual.”

“And how was that?” I wondered how a bimbo like Tina appeared to a big man like Kolchik.

“Simple, happy, uncomplicated, uncomplaining,” he said. “A very relaxing girl to be with. Of course, she was vain, obsessed with herself, her body, her career. Tina had the idea that wiggling about to loud music was some kind of art form. No, more than that—a power for positive good in the world. I believe she thought she was making a personal contribution to world peace and general enlightenment.”

“Did Tina tell you much about herself?” I asked. “About her past, I mean—where she came from, what she did before she became a big topless star.”

He shook his head. “No, I asked her to tell me about her life, but she was always very vague. She didn’t want to talk about that. She did say once that she came from someplace over in the East Bay, but that’s all. Tina wasn’t interested in the past. The past was dead and buried as far as she was concerned. She knew only one direction—ahead. Upward and onward, that was Tina, and she was in a terrible hurry to get there.”

“To get where?” I asked.

“To the top,” Kolchik said. “The movies, Las Vegas, Broadway. You name it, Tina was going to get there and be bigger and better than any of them. The Jungle was just a phase. She had her foot out for the next rung on the ladder, but I don’t think she knew where or what it was. But she knew the direction she was going.”

“Mr. Kolchik,” I said, “did you know before Tina was killed that she kept a diary and that you were in it?”

“No,” he said, “I had no idea. I do know that she seemed to understand the need for discretion, that it couldn’t be publicly known that we were—friends. I never asked her if she was writing anything down.”

I had more questions I didn’t like to raise with my new buddy, Sandy, but I had to.

“Mayor,” I said, “was Tina or anybody else blackmailing you about your relationship with her?”

“No!” he said positively. “Nobody.”

“Do you know if she told anybody about you and her? Anybody at all?”

He thought deeply for a few moments. “She could have,” he said, “but I don’t know that she did. It may sound odd, but I didn’t know Tina very well. I don’t even know who her friends were or if she had any. Ours was a very—limited friendship, you see.”

I did see, if he was telling the truth. I plunged on. “And your— friendship, Mayor,” I asked, “how had it been going lately? Had you had any arguments, fights, disagreements of any kind?”

He seemed honestly puzzled. “No,” he said, “nothing like that. It really wasn’t that sort of relationship.”

“Well, was the nature of your relationship changing or on the verge of changing? I mean, if I’m not being too personal, were you tired of her? Did her attitude toward you seem any different? Or were things just going along smoothly?”

“To tell the truth, Goodey,” he said, “I was giving some thought to—to seeing Tina less often. After all, with the election coming up—” The rest of the sentence faded in the fresh morning air.

“Did Tina know that? Did she object?”

“She didn’t even know, Goodey,” he said. “I hardly knew it myself. I hadn’t really made up my mind yet.”

If Kolchik was the guilty party, he was going to be a hard man to trap. He seemed too damned honest. “One last question, Mayor,” I said, getting up from the sun lounger. “Can you prove where you were at the time Tina was murdered?”

“No,” he said. “At about three in the morning on Thursday I was asleep here—alone.”

“We have separate bedrooms, Mr. Goodey,” said Mrs. Kolchik, who had been listening closely to our exchange.

“So,” said the mayor, “you can see that I have no ironclad alibi. You’ll just have to go on suspecting me.”

“I’ll do that,” I said and began to make well-I’m-leaving noises. The late-morning sun beating down on this terrace was very pleasant, but it wasn’t getting me any closer to where I wanted to be. Mrs. K. said good-by with a ruined smile, and the mayor walked me to the door, where Stoney Karras waited with a face like a garbage man making a pickup. Kolchik waved him away and offered me the big hand he’d forgotten when I’d arrived.

“Good-by,” he said. “I hope you’re successful in your search—and soon.”

“Me too,” I said, taking back my hand and turning to walk back to my car.

“Goodey,” he said, and I stopped and turned back toward him, “do you really think it’s possible that I killed Tina?”

“It’s possible,” I said. No use letting him get complacent. “I haven’t heard anything yet which rules it out.”

“Good,” he said to my surprise. “You keep on suspecting everybody, and you’ll end up getting the right person. Maybe you’re a better detective than we all thought.”

“Maybe.” I turned again to go.

“Goodey,” he said.

This was getting monotonous. I was beginning to feel like one of those little shooting-gallery rabbits that turns sharply at the end of each row and repeats his path.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t waste any time.”

I answered that one with a meaningless look and walked through the doorway to the back of the house. Stoney was waiting for me. He didn’t look friendly.

“I’ll see you off,” he said.

“Don’t strain yourself.”

“It’s no strain. It’s a pleasure.”

As I got in my car, Stoney said, “I don’t like ex-cops.”

I backed up and got the right slant to the road before I answered. “Neither do I,” I said, driving close enough to make him back up against the white-painted wall. That wouldn’t do his suit any good. In the mirror he didn’t look happy.

12

St. Timothy’s was a tall, crooked, hip little church in the shadow of Coit Tower. It was the kind of church that held rock masses and nudist baptisms. The curate was a weedy little West Point dropout who was on record calling Cardinal McGinty a “tired, old, worn-out, neo-Fascist prick.” It was that kind of church, and the waiting list to get married there was as long as a bookie’s memory.

It was still half an hour before Tina’s memorial service, but the block in front of St. Timothy’s looked like the closing scene of Day of the Locust. You couldn’t have cast that crowd at Twentieth Century Fox. You name it: hippies, Chinese pimps, spade socialites, the dregs of Nob Hill’s rearguard bacchants, the Broadway cognoscenti—they were all there, milling around for the benefit of the television cameras and the nine o’clock news. The tall, oak double doors of St Timothy’s were still closed.

From their windows the natives looked down on the throngers in third-generation Italian wonder and occasionally threw down something that wasn’t too heavy or too valuable. An old buddy of mine, Sgt. Jack Sweet, the uncrowned king of North Beach, was jostling about in the crowd, using a bit of muscle on the more obvious pickpockets, rubbing up against the prettier girls, trying to nip mayhem in the bud, and enjoying every minute of it. Better him than me.

I stashed my car safely around the corner and edged up to the mob gingerly. If Tina’s murderer had been standing in the middle of that crowd with a confession pinned to his chest, I don’t think I’d have gone in after him. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder in an authoritative manner. He didn’t quite knock me down.

Rather than risk another attack, I turned around and found Bert Coney, newspaper columnist, celebrity maker, and claimant to the title of “Mr. San Francisco.” He was looking at me as if he owned me and the square mile I was standing on.

“You’re Joe Goodey,” he told me in a way that made me want to believe him. Coney carried his round little head at about fifteen degrees off vertical, and his very expensive toupee seemed to be holding on for dear life. He had weary little eyes, resting comfortably in nests of wrinkles, and a face that had been introduced to many an expensive bottle of wine.

I didn’t deny the accusation, so he went on: “You knew Tina, didn’t you? Maybe you’ve got an angle for my column tomorrow. They’re crying for my copy down at the office, and all I can get from this crowd of scum is ‘so young, so beautiful’ crap. I can’t use that.”

“I didn’t know her all that well,” I said, still casing the crowd over the top of his head.

“Then what are you doing here?” he asked. “Kolchik didn’t take you back on the force, did he?” An idea seemed to glow at the back of his dull eyes. “Say, you didn’t lay her, did you? I wonder how many guys here today laid Tina D’Oro? That’s an angle.”

I didn’t argue with him. “No, I didn’t lay her,” I said, “but it might not be too late. I understand it’s going to be open coffin.” That took even Coney by surprise. He stopped searching the mob for Tina’s ex-lovers and looked at me with new interest.

“Now, that,” he said, “is really sick.” He wasn’t being critical, just remarking on a new discovery, like peanut-butter yogurt. “You cops are a hard lot. Tina’s body is hardly cold yet, and…”

“Yeah,” I said, “so young, so beautiful. You’ll have to excuse me now.” I pushed past him with my eyes on the horizon as if I were searching for someone, but I just wanted to get away from him and away from that crowd.

* * *

Holy Martyrs Cemetery was a little patch of waste ground on the wrong side of Millbrae. Unlike St. Timothy’s, it wasn’t fashionable. Nobody who was anybody would be caught there dead or alive. But that was where they were going to bury Tina. And I couldn’t find it.

It was an uneventful drive down the Bayshore past the airport. I turned at Millbrae Avenue and pulled off the road at a place called Bruce’s Eatery. I asked a scared-looking little man behind the counter if he knew the way to Holy Martyrs Cemetery.

He couldn’t have been all that scared. I could have crushed him with my thumb, but he answered, “Did you come in here for something to eat or just ask directions?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Yes. If you’re not going to order anything, I can’t remember where Holy Martyrs is. There’s something about a cash-register bell that stirs my memory. Without it, I’m a case of walking amnesia.”

“How big a tab does a guy have to run up to get a straight answer?” I asked, settling onto a counter stool. “I don’t think I can afford total recall.”

“Try a cheeseburger, French fries, and coffee,” he said, peeling the paper separator off a square of frozen something and dropping it on the grease-blackened griddle. “It’s cheaper than wasting gasoline in this end of nowhere.”

That cheeseburger worked miracles. It tasted pretty good, and it jogged his memory to a rosy glow.

The gates to the cemetery were ancient with rust, and the old man who said he was the caretaker refused to open them until the funeral party arrived. There was no use in doing the same job twice, he said, leaning on a rake I knew damned well he never used. I could have bribed my way in, but I figured I might as well wait there, admiring the veins in his nose, as sit next to a freshly dug grave.

We didn’t have much to say to each other, so he just leaned and I just sat while the flies buzzed around us and more dust settled on my Morris. We’d probably be there frozen like a cheap tableau to this day if a beautiful black Cadillac hearse hadn’t swept into the cemetery’s short, rubble-strewn drive and come to rest about an inch from my back bumper. A pebble-grained chauffeur in wraparound sun glasses frowned through his tinted wind screen at the back of my head. The top of the hearse was festooned with sprays and horseshoes of brilliant hothouse flowers, looking waxy enough to melt in the hot sun.

Behind the hearse came another black Caddy and behind that a blue-white Rolls Royce Silver Shadow which shimmered in the heat like something out of Fellini.

That was it—the whole funeral cortege. But it was enough for the old caretaker to creak into action with a big ring of keys. Eventually he got the right one into the keyhole, but then couldn’t get the gate to swing open. I got out and pushed as he pulled, but we still couldn’t do it. I looked over my shoulder at the hearse driver. He couldn’t see me until his partner in the front seat, a smooth character who looked like a beauty queen’s favorite uncle, turned to him and said something short and sharp.

The chauffeur came out, clapped his fawn gloves together with impatient energy, and put his weight onto the gate like the Detroit Lions’ front four. It screeched open with an Inner Sanctum note. With a see-you-sissy look at me, the driver headed back for his hearse. I was glad to see that his pretty gloves and uniform shoulder were stained with rust.

The caretaker waved me vaguely off to the left on a weed- overgrown track. It didn’t take me long to spot the big pile of earth that had been moved to make room for Tina. I drove past it a discreet distance to leave space for the funeral procession. By the time I’d parked and had walked back, the hearse had stopped, and the driver and his boss were rolling Tina’s coffin down a little portable ramp.

The casket was draped with what looked like a million white gardenias sewn together into a blanket. The edges of the flowers scraped along the brown earth, leaving a little trail of petals to the edge of the freshly dug grave. The chauffeur then got busy untying the rest of the floral tributes from the top of the hearse.

Meanwhile, a door of the elongated Cadillac sedan had been eased open silently. Another chauffeur and a tall old gentleman in a tail coat were assisting a woman dressed entirely in black from the back seat. Her face was completely obscured by an opaque black veil, but from the size of her and a flash of a muscular calf, it looked to me as if she could have carried both of them and the casket. But just then she was blubbering too loudly and vividly to pull her own weight, so the old boy and his driver were edging her in the same direction as the casket.

The Rolls Royce had stopped too, and a back door was open. But nobody was getting out. I recognized the driver as one of the monkeys Fat Phil let hang around The Jungle. He was sitting behind the wheel, reading a magazine, with one foot cocked up on a window ledge. It was obvious that he was no mourner, just an honest citizen earning a buck.

I walked over to the open door of the Rolls and peered in.

Sitting square in the middle of the big back seat was Fat Phil, and it looked as though he needed a half-size bigger car. Despite the arctic blast of the air conditioner, sweat was rolling out of his low hairline, and he was moaning softly like a half-crushed puppy.

“Goodey,” he said when he could gather the strength, “I can’t make it. I thought I could, but I can’t.” He took a gasping breath. “And after I rented this car too. The best they had. Costing me a fortune.”

“It’s a business expense, Phil,” I said consolingly. “You can write it off. That is, if you live.”

“If I live,” he echoed. “I don’t know. Hey, did you see the blanket of gardenias? Great, hey? It set me back a packet, but nothing’s too good for Tina.”

I was going to tell him to take it out of Tina’s side of the profits, but then I felt someone tugging genteelly at my sleeve. It was the second chauffeur, an aging black with an old razor scar running down through one nostril.

“Sir,” he said without conscious irony, “the service is about to begin if you would like to join us.”

I thought about trying to help Fat Phil out of the Rolls, but he’d closed his eyes again and had gone back to breathing through his mouth. Turning with the chauffeur, I caught the scene at graveside. The big woman in black had been handed over to the younger undertaker and was rearing and bucking at the edge of the grave. It was all he and the other driver could do to keep her from toppling in after the casket. At the head of the open grave, the old gentleman with the white hair had a large book open, which I took for a Bible, and was looking up over it at me with disapproval. He also sneaked a look at a watch peeping out from his faultless white shirt cuff.

“No priest?” I asked my guide.

“Father Shearer,” he said through motionless lips, “wasn’t able to make it. In the commotion after the church service he was nicked by the fuzz. Mr. McDavitt will do the reading.” If he learned that style of talking any place but San Quentin, I’d misjudged my man.

Just as I was taking my place across the grave from the bereaved lady and her two anchors, a voice cried out: “Hold it!” A San Francisco taxi had come to a stop behind the Rolls, and four men came piling out. I recognized two of them as reporters. The other two had bulky press cameras.

McDavitt looked even more pissed off. One of the photographers ran around to the head of the grave and began badgering him to raise the casket again so that he could get a picture of it going down. McDavitt refused, copping another peek at his watch, and tried to calm everybody for the service, which, unless I was wrong, was going to be short and sweet The photographer settled for a high-angle picture of the casket in the grave, and the two reporters stationed themselves on either side of the lady mourner, ready to pounce as soon as the first shovel of earth hit the casket. The other photographer had fallen back for some long shots of this splendid little scene and was now zeroing in on Fat Phil’s rented Rolls for a bit of color.

Old McDavitt got his pretty white teeth into a text which began: “We gather today to say farewell to this child. For child she was, as are we all in the eyes of God…” It wasn’t a bad start, but I couldn’t hear any of the rest of it for the wailing that commenced from the old party across the grave.

Undeterred, McDavitt plowed on with the text, mouthing the words as eloquently as if he were burying a queen. When he closed the big book there were tears in his watery blue eyes. He dropped a signal, and the black driver lofted a big spadeful of dirt down into the grave.

The dirt hit the box with a muffled thud.

With that sound the wailing and moaning across the way suddenly stopped. A dusty silence fell over our little funeral party, and even the photographers stopped snapping for a moment. Then the lone mourner raised two muscular arms tipped with black gauntlets and lifted her veils revealing thick coils of copper-wire hair and a face like a retired fullback.

She couldn’t have been less than sixty years old, and every one of those years had been a hard one, judging by the souvenirs they’d left on her old mug. One incisor was missing, and she had three chins making inverted stairsteps down to the high ruching at the neck of her black dress.

Her complexion was that of an old wineskin that had been dipped in the flour barrel, and her eyes were hollow and cried out. The two reporters converged on her like freeloaders after the last cocktail sausage.

“Mrs. Barton,” said the big one, an ex-police reporter named Royster I’d often seen sleeping on a sofa at police headquarters, “would you…”

The little one, a lad who looked like a new cub on a high-school paper, tried to sneak under Royster’s arm and get at the old woman. “I’m from the Examiner, Mrs. Barton,” he said, “and I wonder if…”

The woman wheeled on them like a battered old lioness, worn out but still dangerous.

“Piss off the both of you,” she snarled. “I’ve got nothing to say to the press. All you did when my poor girl was alive was hound her and write lies about her. Leave me alone.”

This set the kid from the Examiner back on his heels, but Royster had badgered too many bereaved survivors in his day to let her off that easily. “Hell, Maggie,” he insisted, “all I want—”

My eye was caught by something big and white going away. It was Fat Phil in his rented Rolls. I looked to see if he had taken back his blanket of gardenias, but it was still at graveside. I suppose there’s not much of a market for used gardenia blankets.

The drivers were putting away their equipment while the two undertakers were standing discreetly at a distance, waiting to get a word in with Mrs. Barton. Maybe they wanted to hand her the bill. I couldn’t wait to witness that encounter.

But then I saw something else more interesting. Far across the cemetery, trying to look invisible in the shelter of one of the few large monuments, was yet another funeral guest. But one too shy to mix it up at graveside. It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to interview this retiring mourner. But at that moment he spotted me spotting him and started making toward a late-model sedan parked near the cemetery gate.

I’m no speed merchant, but he must have been way out of training. I beat him by several dozen noses and was leaning against the car door when he came puffing up. He was a little guy in a dapper tan summer suit and dusty perforated brown shoes. He couldn’t have been much over thirty, but his indeterminate brown hair was withering on top like last summer’s rutabaga patch, and he’d soon be bald. His pale, shoe-shaped face was pleasant, but just then it wasn’t helped much by the streams of tears running from his red-rimmed eyes. He was obviously suffering, and I felt like a heel bothering him. But I did anyway.

“Excuse me,” I said, flashing my private buzzer quickly. “I’m a detective. Did you know Tina D’Oro?”

That must have been exactly the wrong question. It doubled him over with sobbing and had him clawing for a big, white handkerchief from an inside pocket. The monogram was “F.I.” That rang a bell from Tina’s diary.

“I can’t talk to you now,” he gasped through the hanky. His free hand dipped into a coat pocket and shoved a small, white card at me. “Please, please,” he said, “come see me this evening. The address…the address…”

He broke down again, and I got out of his way fast. I can’t take too much crying. If he was faking it, he deserved an Oscar, and would be too clever for me to handle anyway. He grabbed blindly for the car-door handle, stumbled behind the wheel, and the car lurched through the gates and disappeared.

Now that the danger of being run down by suicidal mourners had lessened considerably, I took a look at the card he’d given me. “Fletcher Irving, M.D.,” it said in fine capitals. The address was out on Ocean Avenue near City College. Dr. Irving wouldn’t be hard to find if the card was legitimate. If it wasn’t, I was a prize-winning sucker.

Such morbid thoughts were disturbed by an enfilade of gravel against my pants leg from the hearse as it passed at a fair clip through the big gates. Following it was the limousine with old McDavitt sitting erect and composed in the back seat. He didn’t even give me a nod, but I didn’t have much time to nurse my wounded pride. The taxi from San Francisco was hot on the Caddy’s tail, and Royster was hanging out of one back window, shaking his fist and shouting: “Get laid, you old bag! They ought to bury you, too!”

Which I thought was pretty rude, since he was addressing the mother of the deceased.

13

That same old person was coming toward me right then at a pace only slightly slower than a good half-miler on a straight stretch. She had her long, black dress held up around her knees, and she was eating up ground at about two yards a stride. I was between her and the gate. My two choices were either to get out of her way or get run down.

I took the coward’s way out and cut slightly to the left, at the same time saying, “Mrs. Barton?”

She wheeled around at me, causing a small dust storm with her upraised skirts. “You a reporter too?” she demanded.

If I had been, I wouldn’t have admitted it. But I could tell the truth. “No,” I said, bringing out the buzzer again. “I’m a detective.” That didn’t seem to impress her either.

“You sure?” she said. “You don’t look like any cop to me. Those reporters,” she added, “I wouldn’t piss on the best part of them. They ask you a whole lot of stupid questions, and then they go off and leave you at the end of creation. Bastards, they are. Real bastards. And McDavitt’s no better. He demands payment in advance and then claims to have an urgent call to make in Hillsborough. Hillsborough!” she repeated, spitting on the toe of my shoe.

“So you’re stuck,” I said, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“Son,” she countered, “I’m never stuck as long as I’ve got these.” She held up a fair-sized foot in what looked like a badly dyed bowling shoe. The sole was already beginning to curl back at the toe. She’d be barefoot before she got a mile. “And this.” She stuck a thumb like a small baked potato in front of my face. “I’ll be back in West Pittsburg before you could finish eating a banana split.”

“West Pittsburg?” West Pittsburg was a godforsaken little town at least fifty miles away over on the other side of the bay at the mouth of the Sacramento River. Somehow I could imagine her in dusty mourning weeds hitching all that way.

“Close enough to it,” she said. “I’ve got a little place on the Contra Costa Canal.” She fixed me with a narrow gaze. “You wouldn’t be going out in that direction, would you?”

“Not intentionally,” I said, “but I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you a ride home if you’ll tell me a bit about your daughter.”

She gave me a bit more of the deadeye, thought it over, and then looked down at her feet. “You sure you’re a cop?”

“Ex,” I said, giving her a closer look at the buzzer. “And I don’t like reporters any better than you do.” That went down well with her, so she decided to take a chance.

“Where’s your car?”

I pointed to the Morris, and her face dropped a bit. Maybe she’d expected a Cadillac like the one she’d come in. Tough luck. Watching her face, I could see that she was weighing her chances of getting a better ride hitching. Then she shrugged.

“Okay, Goodey,” she said. “But could you put the top up? The sun gives my complexion fits.”

I doubted whether anything short of a flame thrower could do that, but I wrestled the fragile old top up and we set off for the Bayshore Freeway and West Pittsburg via San Francisco. Behind us the caretaker was struggling to shut the gates.

Before I could start asking questions, she undid a couple of buttons, loosened something around her middle, kicked off the bowling shoes, sighed contentedly, and asked me, “Why do you care who killed my daughter?”

She looked tough enough to stand a little truth, so I said: “I don’t really, but the person I’m working for would like to know. He has his reasons.”

“Who’d that be?”

“Nobody you would know,” I said. “I’m supposed to be asking the questions here. Are you sure you’re not a newspaper reporter?”

That tickled her, and after a crackly laugh she said: “I’ll tell you one thing for sure. Her name wasn’t really Tina D’Oro.”

“I figured as much,” I said. “What was it?”

“If you know so damned much,” she said acidly, “figure that out, too.” She didn’t like smart alecks.

“Sorry,” I said.

After a long pause to let me know I was on probation, she sniffed loudly and said: “Olga. Olga Dombrowitz. The Olga was after a dancer I once saw in a show over in Concord. Olga Samovar, it was. Did a little bit from Swan Lake.”

“Funny how your Olga turned out to be a dancer too.”

“You may call standing up on a bar jiggling your tits dancing,” she said sharply, “but I don’t. No, Olga could have been a dancer, but she was too lazy. Bone idle.”

“Where’d the Dombrowitz come from?”

“Mr. Dombrowitz,” she said, “was my first husband but one. He was the headwaiter on a boat that used to go up and down the river between Sacramento and San Francisco. He knew every member of the state legislature by his front name. We lived in Pittsburg then, and I used to take Olga down to the dock so that she could wave at her daddy. The captain would do the old ‘Shave and a haircut—two bits’ on the steam whistle for her.”

“What happened to Mr. Dombrowitz?”

“World War II. He was too old for the army so the damned fool signed on with the merchant marine. Ran into a torpedo someplace out in the Atlantic, and there wasn’t enough left to send home. That was early in 1943.”

As sad as the demise of Mr. Dombrowitz was, I couldn’t help noticing something that didn’t seem to jibe. “Nineteen forty-three?” I said. “How—”

“You’re surprised, aren’t you? How old did you think Olga was?”

“Twenty-five,” I said, “maybe twenty-six.”

“Wrong!” she said triumphantly. “Olga would have been thirty-five come this November. The seventeenth. She fooled everyone, she did. Did you see her laying in that fancy coffin at the church?” I said I’d missed that experience.

“Well, I’m telling you right now she could have passed for a girl of twenty and one. She never looked so good in her life. Whatever that McDavitt did to her, he did the right thing. Downright beautiful. That’s what got me to howling there at the grave. I’m a pretty hard old devil…” She took a sideways look at me to see if I was going to contradict her, then she shrugged. “But when I saw her looking almost as young as she did when she graduated from John C. Fremont Junior High, I just went to pieces.”

She rummaged through a handbag that had cost the lives of at least two alligators and brought out a tattletale-gray man’s handkerchief just in case she had another attack. But it didn’t come.

“Mrs. Barton,” I suggested, “why don’t you just go back to the time Tina—somehow, I can’t get used to calling her Olga—graduated from junior high school and take it right up to the present. I’ll ask you a question or two if some occur to me.”

She wasn’t too happy about me calling the shots, but the old lady wriggled herself into a more comfortable position, took something fuzzy with lint from the bottom of her purse, stuck it in the side of her jaw, and started talking. At the Bay Bridge toll booth she opened the big purse again and dived in for a good rummage until I’d paid the toll, but mostly she just talked. She’d had some practice; I could tell.

Leaving out the more convoluted subplots and tortured rhetoric, the truth seemed to be that Tina was born on the outskirts of Pittsburg a couple of years before the war. After Mr. Dombrowitz was torpedoed, a series of “stepfathers” came and went. Mrs. Barton seemed to remember most of them and recited their names with some relish: Mr. Roper, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Hufnagel, that son of a bitch Charlie Ramond, Mr. Gilliam. But Tina grew up just like other little girls in the East Bay until she graduated from junior high school.

That was the extent of her formal education, and it qualified Tina for a choice spot behind the candy counter at Kress’s in Antioch. P. D. Zimmerman, the manager, gave her in fairly rapid sequence a promotion to lipsticks, a ten-cents-an-hour raise, a baby, and enough money to go to San Francisco for an abortion.

Tina never came back, at least not for any amount of time. Oh, a couple of years later she did come home to stay long enough to have a baby. It seemed that her first experience with an abortionist had put her off that gentle art for life. But then as soon as the stitches were removed and the baby was hooked on the bottle, Tina—she was still calling herself Olga—had gone off again, leaving behind the baby, a hundred and ten dollars in cash, and an expensive pigskin suitcase.

“What happened to the baby?” I asked, as we drove through the tunnel heading for Orinda.

“It didn’t live,” she said, taking a good grip on the hanky again. “The poor little bugger. The winter after Olga went back to San Francisco it took down with gastro—gastro-something-or-other and just wasted away. We had the doctor out, but it just got thin like a little skeleton. One morning I found it dead.” She started snuffing in the big handkerchief. “I haven’t thought about that baby in years.”

“How did Tina take it?” I asked to get her off the morbid reminiscences and back on the story.

Mrs. Barton threw back her head and sniffed deeply. “Just like she took everything else,” she said. “Dead easy. She sent me twenty-five bucks to buy a little gravestone with and didn’t bother to come home for six months.”

She looked at the handkerchief again as if wondering whether to have another go at it, but then stuffed it back into the dead alligator. “You’re certainly a nosy bastard,” she said.

“It’s my job. After that, did you see much of Tina?”

“Olga,” she corrected. “She didn’t take the name of Tina D’Oro until maybe five years ago. No, she didn’t come back much. But every so often there she’d be. She was onto something good in those days. She was always dressed smart and driving a new car.”

“Did she ever tell you his name?” I asked.

“Whose name?”

‘The man who was providing all those smart clothes and new cars. Did she happen to mention who he was?”

She looked across the front seat at me like a turkey hen that’d been run down in a dusty street by a bread van. “She didn’t tell me,” she said, “but I found out. He was crazy about her, he was, and he couldn’t let her be away for even a couple of days without writing to her.”

“And you snooped.”

“Yes, I snooped. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

She had me there. “Are you going to tell me his name?”

“What are you going to do for me?”

“I might find out who stabbed your daughter to death, in case you’re interested. Might even get him punished.”

“How’s that gonna help me?” she demanded. Then she lapsed into a bout of subdued grumbling as we pulled into Walnut Creek.

The old woman hadn’t seen Tina in nearly a year, and it was pretty clear that she hadn’t any more idea who killed her than I did. Still, if she’d give me the name of old Sugar Daddy, it might lead somewhere. Or nowhere. We drove more or less silently through hilly East Bay country until I saw a sign that said Contra Costa Canal.

“You’ll have to direct me from here,” I told her. “I’m a stranger in these parts.”

“Sometimes I wish I was, too,” she said, but she directed me down a dirt and gravel road along the canal bank past a couple of tarpaper shacks. At the sound of my car, occupants of various sizes and sexes emerged into the glaring sunshine to wave Mrs. Barton home like a returning duchess. She acknowledged their greetings with sullen grace.

“Lot of no-account people live along the canal these days,” she muttered, hinting at genteel days long past.

We bumped across a railway line which crossed the road at a right angle, turned sharply to follow the canal perhaps fifty yards, and then came to a dead end at a half-submerged pier jutting out into the canal. There, sitting at the end of the line, was an old, red-brown Southern Pacific caboose which had been converted into a house. A line of limp laundry ran down to a pole from the high poop deck at one end. An old geezer dressed in a railman’s striped overalls looked up at the car from his calabash pipe without hostility but with no great enthusiasm, either.

“You made good time,” he told Mrs. Barton, snapping up the lid on a turnip-sized watch hung on a finely wrought gold chain.

“This fella’s name is Goodey, Jim,” the old woman said in a completely different tone from the one she’d used with me. “He says he’s some kind of detective looking into Olga’s death.” Then she said to me, “This is Mr. Barton,” as if introducing me to the Duke of Earl.

Barton was a fine-faced old man not far off seventy, with a geometrically precise trainman’s mustache. He had a faint gray powder of beard on his weathered cheeks which left him just short of needing a shave. He’d probably figured out just how long a retired railroad man could go between shaves without looking like a bum. When he did shave it would be with a straight razor. Barton looked me over with fathomless gray eyes that gave away nothing.

“Have you got anything in the way of credentials, Mr. Goodey?” he asked politely. I came up with the brand-new private operative’s license, and he looked it over with an eye that could spot a phony cargo manifest at fifty feet. He didn’t hurry, but read it all and then handed the card back to me. “You’re new to the game, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I was on the force in San Francisco for nearly fifteen years.” That didn’t make me a forty or forty-five-year man as he’d obviously been with the railroad. But it gave me a bit more credibility in his eyes.

“I’m Jim Barton,” he said, giving me a tough old hand to shake. “I didn’t know Olga at all. Only met her once just short of a year ago. But what can we do for you out here?”

“I met Mrs. Barton at the funeral,” I said, “and on the way back here she mentioned that she might know the name of a man Olga lived with in the early years when she first left here for San Francisco. I’d find it useful to have that name.”

“That right, Maggie?” Barton asked, turning his eyes on her. She wriggled under them like a schoolgirl. I swear she even blushed.

“I used to know that fella’s name, Jim,” she said, “but it’s been a lot of years since then. If I’ve still got it around, it’ll be in my box.” She didn’t seem to be too eager to produce it.

“Well,” he said, “you just go up and root through that box until you find it. And while you’re at it, make some tea. I’ll entertain Mr. Goodey while you’re gone.”

We watched her climb up the iron steps into the main body of the caboose and disappear from sight. Then Barton gestured to a low bench, and we both sat watching rubbish float downstream in the murky brown canal water.

“You like being a private detective, Mr. Goodey?” Barton asked, relighting his big pipe with a puff of gray smoke.

“It’s hard to say so soon,” I answered, “but I don’t think I will. There’s too much uncertainty in it.”

“Well,” he said, “that may be, but let me give you some advice. No matter how much you don’t like your job, it’s better than being retired. When the time comes that somebody wants to retire you, you take that gun of yours—you’re not wearing one, I see, but you’ve got one, I imagine?”

“Somewhere around,” I said.

“You take that gun of yours and blow your brains out first before you let them retire you. That’s my advice.” He spat into the slow-moving canal.

“That’s how much you like being retired, is it?”

“Yep,” he said. “They gave me a watch, they gave me a fair little pension, and they even gave me this old caboose. But it don’t make up for not having a job. Not half.”

“And you don’t have a gun?” I felt shamed to ask.

“I’ve got a gun, all right, a big, hawg-leg thing of a pistol. But I haven’t got the guts to use it. And that’s a hard thing to live with too.”

“You’ll manage somehow,” I said, “and so will I when the time comes. Let me ask you something, Mr. Barton. What did you think of Olga?”

“Not much. As I say, she came out here maybe a year ago to see her mother. Seemed to me she was all tits and seventy-five-cent words. Tough as day-old hardtack on the surface and not much softer underneath. One thing stuck in my mind about her.”

“What’s that?”

“Ambition. She was maybe a hundred and twenty-five pounds of walking, talking ambition. She had the gimme’s and gotta’s so bad she couldn’t sit still. She wasn’t here any more than three hours before she was up and off. Wasn’t any way at all that hanging around this dump was going to get her where she wanted to go.”

“Where’s that?”

“Somewhere, anywhere. You know, I told you I only met her once, but I’ve seen her since. About six months ago I was in San Francisco, and I found myself down in North Beach. I had some time to kill before I caught the bus, so I went into The Jungle for a drink and a peek at Olga at work. There wasn’t much of a crowd, it being a Tuesday night, so I sat right up at the bar, and some girl with no shirt on took two dollars off of me for a shot of bad rye and a beer chaser. After a while Olga came on.”

“And?”

“It wasn’t worth the buck fifty, not even if I was half my age.”

“Did she see you?”

“I doubt it. As far as I know, all she could see was herself in those big mirrors.”

Just then, Maggie Barton came down the steps of the caboose with two mugs of steaming tea balanced on top of a rosewood writing box. She’d changed to an old pair of blue jeans and a checked cotton shirt and looked more like herself.

Old Barton and I took the mugs and made appreciative noises over the good, strong, milky tea. “Did you find the name?” Barton asked.

“Yes,” she said, but she wasn’t rushing to give it to me. She had her arms wrapped around the box as if it contained atomic secrets.

“Well?” said Barton impatiently. I couldn’t have said it better.

“It does seem to me, Jim,” she said, “that we ought to get something for it. This guy’s probably making a fortune.”

“Give it to the man, woman,” he said in a voice that didn’t take to argument.

“Oh, all right,” she said, opening the box narrowly and throwing a pale-blue envelope in my lap. “This is fifteen years old, and he might not even be alive now.”

That’s logic for you: try to bargain a good price and then when you fail to get it, knock the merchandise. I picked the envelope out of my lap and saw that it was addressed to Miss Olga Dombrowitz at an address in West Pittsburg. I turned it over and in a fine Italic hand faded to a whispery gray was the name Antonio Scarezza.

She was right. I didn’t know if Scarezza was still alive, either. But when I was cutting my teeth on a nightstick, he was the biggest man in the dock rackets. Only then he was called Tony Scar.

14

It was late afternoon by the time I’d driven back to San Francisco. It seemed just about the right time to go see Doc Irving, the weeping physician. His office wasn’t hard to find. It was in the heart of the Ocean Avenue shopping district in an anonymous, chlorine-green building set back from the sidewalk and guarded by two sick-looking palm trees. A small brass plate next to the bell told me his name was still Fletcher Irving, M.D., and that he saw patients By Appointment Only. That’s all.

I gave the bell a discreet push, and after a short interval a woman’s fuzzy voice came out of a small grille at about Adam’s apple level: “Yes? Who is it?”

“The name is Goodey,” I said, stooping slightly. “I have an appointment with Dr. Irving.”

There, was a short, muffled consultation about that, and then a man’s voice said, “This is Dr. Irving, Mr.—?”

“Goodey,” I told the grille, “Joe Goodey. I’m the detective you met earlier today at Holy Martyrs Cemetery. You said to come see you.”

Doc Irving switched off, and I could tell that he was wondering how to get rid of me. He didn’t have a chance.

“Mr., ah, Goodey,” his voice crackled, “couldn’t you—”

“No, I couldn’t, Dr. Irving,” I said in a very loud voice, “and there’s a crowd of people out here on the sidewalk beginning to wonder why I’m yelling at your front door.” There really wasn’t much of a crowd, but I could guarantee to get one in a hurry.

After a short pause for thought, he said, “Very well, come up then.” A buzzer sounded, and the thick, oak-veneer door cracked open.

The staircase going straight up from the front door was carpeted in something like cashmere, and the wallpaper was that nubby stuff rich doctors and society matrons seem to favor. The stairway lamp was a discreet fleur-de-lis shape with a soft light which would be flattering to less-than-perfect complexions.

Standing at the top of the stairs was Dr. Irving. He was wearing a smart, off-white surgical coat and looked considerably improved over the last time I’d seen him. His eyes were only slightly red at the edges, and his homely, youthful face with its cartoon-button nose looked most professional and even suave. He gave me a shy smile. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave it back to him.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said, blocking the door behind him at least semi-intentionally, “what can I do for you?” He put out a hand in a gesture which was half greeting and half stiff-arm. I took his hand, smiled winningly, and, without being too obvious about it, maneuvered it and him through the doorway and into the anteroom of his offices. It looked as plush as the stairs, maybe a little better, and a girl was sitting in it on an expensive leather sofa looking at us.

She was perhaps twenty-seven years old, dark-haired, and well-built in a modest way. She had the face of a girl who’d lived a lot but hadn’t let it get her down. There was something in her eyes—I couldn’t make out the color in the dead light of the anteroom—that said she knew what she wanted. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I, but I filed her away for future reference.

Irving didn’t look too happy to have me cluttering up his place, but he didn’t offer to throw me down the stairs, either. So I quietly stood there waiting for his next opening. Pretty soon the tension got to him.

“What do you want, Mr. Goodey?”

“I want to know what your relationship was with Tina D’Oro and why you were so broken up at her funeral today. And if she meant so much to you, why didn’t you join us at the graveside instead of lurking out there in the bushes?”

That was a lot all at once for him, and he reddened up and looked as though he was going to brim over again. But he swallowed instead, raised up on his toes a little and did his best to look me in the eye. That’s not really a very big job, but the doc wasn’t up to his best form.

“I was Miss D’Oro’s doctor,” he said, making the job sound like a combination of royal physician and grade-A wizard.

“So?” I said in my most obtuse manner. Nothing brings out the blabbermouth in some people like a dumb, uncomprehending cop. I shifted my position slightly so that I could watch both Irving and the girl at the same time. Her face, not conventionally pretty but handsome in a slightly aquiline way, was calm enough, but she wasn’t missing a thing.

The doctor cleared his throat portentously. “Mr. Goodey,” he said, “did you ever see Tina D’Oro dance?”

“Once or twice.”

“What did you think of her body?” He asked the question casually enough, but there was a lot behind it. Any way you look at it, it was a queer question for a doctor to ask. I didn’t want to rush into an answer which might put him off, so I tried to look as if I were carefully phrasing my reply. He couldn’t wait.

“I mean,” Irving said, “do you think she had a beautiful body?”

He couldn’t have given me the answer more plainly without using ventriloquism, so I said: “Of course. She had the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen.” Which was a lie, but a useful one. As far as Dr. Irving was concerned, I’d spoken the magic words. I was in. His face lost a lot of tension and relaxed into what must have been his usual, slightly dopey expression of friendliness. And behind it in his doggy eyes was the gleam of the true believer, the holder of truth. He was going to let me in on something.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said, “I created Tina D’Oro’s body.”

I was working overtime trying to get an expression of amazed incredulity on my face when he followed up with: “Of course, Tina was an early effort, in some ways quite a primitive effort—almost crude—but nonetheless I am proud of my creation. As you may have guessed, I am what is popularly called a plastic surgeon.” I had guessed, actually. “I created Tina’s body just as surely as Michelangelo created ‘La Pietà.’ Surely you can understand how I felt this afternoon when Tina was lowered into her grave.”

I looked understanding, but this was wasted on the mad doctor. He was caught up in his own enthusiasm. He put an urgent hand on my sleeve. “Come,” he said, “would you like me to show you how I made Tina D’Oro what she was?”

Now there was a question that had only one possible answer. “Yes, please,” I said, like a good boy.

But Doc Irving had already taken my answer for granted. He signaled the girl to follow and turned to open the door to the inner sanctum. “Follow me,” he said, “and I will show you something truly remarkable.”

I politely let the girl go first, for which she didn’t show much gratitude, and followed. If I’d been expecting Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory with flashing lights and gurgling test tubes, I’d have been disappointed. Dr. Irving’s wonder factory turned out to be a large, smooth, pastel room like the conference room of a successful advertising agency. It featured a large, round slab-of-marble table surrounded by four bucket chairs on pedestals and a wall lined with brass-handled cabinets and drawers of various sizes. There was no sign of an operating table.

Irving motioned me and the girl, who hadn’t said a word since we’d had that chat over the intercom, into two of the bucket seats and opened a large cabinet door on the slightly curved wall. A sixteen-millimeter projector slid out on a hinged platform, and the doctor rummaged through a low drawer, full of things which clanked metallically. The recessed lights began to dim, and a patch of white light sprang to a flat, beige wall across from where we were sitting. Movies.

Irving expertly threaded a reel of film, pushed a button, and a jumble of numbers flickered on the screen. Then the hand-lettered title: “Miss Tina D’Oro—February 1968.” The doc ought to get together with Fat Phil. They could make a fortune. But the Tina who flashed on the screen, looking nervous in front of a dead-white wall, wasn’t the Tina I’d known or the one they’d buried that day. She didn’t look much younger, perhaps even a little older in a strange way. The eyes weren’t exactly dewy with innocence, but there was something softer in them that had since crystallized. The face was vaguer, less formed, and her mouth hung a little slackly in contrast with the lush tautness we all knew. It might have been another girl entirely, but one thing told me it wasn’t. There was a flickering hunger in the face that was unmistakable.

I was looking at the screen past the girl’s face, and there was enough light for me to see that what she was seeing was hitting her hard. Some of the control had gone out of her face. She was blinking fast, but couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

“This was Tina D’Oro the first day she came to me,” Irving said behind us in a narrator’s voice. The camera zoomed up on Tina until from the waist up she filled the small screen. The color of the image was hard, slightly brighter than reality, and Tina’s crudely applied make-up made her look like a slightly depraved doll. A pointed pink tongue touched the corner of her mouth. There was doubt in her eyes.

Then, obviously responding to an order from behind the camera, Tina reached down with disembodied hands and began to pull a frilly, green blouse up over her head, revealing a black lace brassiere that was in no danger of overflowing. She shook her short, bleached hair as the blouse came off, and the hand carrying the blouse dropped off the screen. Her eyes responded to another command. She reached up behind her with both pale arms. The black brassiere started to fall, retained only by thin shoulder straps.

“Stop!” The voice was a pain-filled shriek, and it came from the girl who’d been sitting at the table with me. But now she had jumped up between table and screen, blocking the beam of light from the projector. The mottled image of Tina dropping her brassiere flickered wildly on her face, neck, and blouse. “Stop it!” she repeated. “Turn it off!”

The image died, the ceiling lights came on, and Doc Irving was revealed standing next to the projector, looking startled and scared.

“Now, my dear,” he said in a shocked voice, “I’m only—”

The girl turned on him. “Can’t you just leave her alone?” she demanded. “She’s dead. Isn’t that enough?” She looked ready to brain Irving with his own projector. I’d expected to see tears, but her eyes were as dry as moon dust, with a dull glint that was more painful than tears.

“Now, Miss Springler,” the doc said, “now—”

Irma Springler. A piece of the puzzle slipped into place.

“No,” she said with finality, raising her arms slightly as if to block further attempts at projection. Some of us were going to have to ask for a refund.

“Leave Tina alone,” she continued. “If you’ve got to show this”—she shot an unloving look at me—“this man your art, show him on me.” She reached up behind her neck, did something to the collar of an apricot-colored, tailored silk blouse, and pulled it smoothly over her head. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere, but the effect wasn’t so much sexy as clinical. She dropped her hands to her sides, wrists turned slightly toward Dr. Irving, and waited passively, looking at nothing.

Irving cleared his throat of something only slightly smaller than the Boulder Dam and generally got a grip on himself. “Perhaps,” he said, as if it had been his own idea, “that would be a better method. After all, the techniques of today bear no resemblance to those of 1968.” Professionalism was flowing back into his voice and manner. He turned the ceiling lamp up bright and stepped toward Irma Springler, moving to her side like a professor of anatomy. She could have been a mannequin for his purposes.

“As you can see, Mr. Goodey,” he began, “there is nothing basically wrong with Miss Springler’s breasts.” He put a small, neat hand under one breast and handled it as a good grocer would a ripe avocado. I was watching Irma’s face, but she didn’t know he was there. “They are well-formed, erect, of a size generally consistent with the rest of her body. Many a girl would consider herself blessed to have such a pair of breasts.”

Or even one. I couldn’t argue with him so far, but I was sure that the nugget was yet to come. It did.

“However,” he continued, “they are hardly adequate for the line of endeavor which Miss Springler now intends to undertake. As you may not know, I have been asked to enable her to carry on where Tina left off as the starring topless dancer of The Jungle Club.”

That I didn’t know. I looked at Irma Springler questioningly, but she was not giving any answers. She was somewhere else.

“And so,” Irving said, “I am going to use my skills as a surgeon to create for her perfect breasts—no, magnificent breasts. As you may have gathered,” he said, his voice going a bit lumpy again, “I was very proud of what I had done for”—he rolled his soft eyes at Irma, but she didn’t flinch—“Tina D’Oro. But that is past history. As beautiful as Tina’s body was, it was achieved with technology which is now as dated as the piston-powered airplane.”

He was off and running now, a stereotypical mad scientist itching to get down to the nitty-gritty of his black art but wary of giving away his holy secrets.

“Of course,” Irving carried on, his left hand still holding Irma’s right breast as if it were a laboratory beaker, “I can’t expect you to understand the fine points of reconstructive surgery. But basically I will begin just as I did on Tina.” He was free and easy with the name now. Irving was the complete pro, as if he were describing past triumphs with a few of the boys at the Surgeons’ Club.

“I shall begin”—his right forefinger became a scalpel—“with an incision here.” He traced a semicircular line along the lower edge of Irma’s nipple. Her face didn’t show a thing, but I could feel the blade bite. “This, of course, will enable me to insert the implant which will result in augmentation of the breast. Not just augmentation, but a result so totally lifelike that the patrons of The Jungle, you, or even Miss Springler will not be conscious that her breasts are not totally her own.”

Doc Irving was really getting into it. He was going to dazzle me with science. “You see, Mr. Goodey,” he continued, confident of my unswerving attention, “the crucial element of such an operation is the character and consistency of the implant used. In the past a number of substances have been used with mixed results, among them silastic sponge, saline solution, gel sacs, microporous sponge. One of the earliest methods was to use excess subcutaneous fat from the patient’s own body.” He smiled winningly. “But I can’t see that Miss Springler has much excess body fat, can you?” I shook my head gravely, trying not to feel too much like a peeping Tom or a cattle inspector.

“A recent trend,” he went on, “has been to use liquid silicone. This has produced some spectacular results, but it is extremely doubtful medically. Silicone in that form has an unfortunate tendency to travel and can be absorbed into certain organs with serious results, including carcinoma.” At that word Irma grimaced involuntarily, and I didn’t feel so well myself.

“I myself have never used silicone,” Irving said. “And in recent months I have perfected a completely new type of implant which I will employ in my work on Miss Springler.” He tried to look wise and secretive. “Of course, I can’t reveal the exact nature of this implant, but I can assure you that the technique and material I will use is far in advance of anything the field has yet seen. Confidentially, I have every hope of getting into the textbooks with this one. I—”

“That’s great,” I interrupted, “but it doesn’t really help me much with what I’ve come to see you about. I’m not a measurable distance closer to finding out who killed Tina D’Oro.”

The mad doctor looked sheepish, but Irma Springler came out of her trance and snapped, “Who asked you to find out who killed Tina?” She was getting back into the tailored blouse, and quite gracefully too.

“That’s none of your business,” I said politely, “but if you’re just about finished here, I’ve got some questions for you about Tina D’Oro.”

We locked eyes for a moment. Then something softened in her hard gaze, and she said, “I’m through here right now, and if you’re driving toward North Beach, we can talk.” She turned to Irving. “Are you all set to begin on Monday morning, Doctor?”

“All set, Miss Springler,” he said, smoothly professional, “if you are. I’ll see you here at ten in the morning.”

“I’ll be here.” She was headed out of the laboratory, and I couldn’t think of any reason not to follow her. The doc tagged along too.

“You’ll be around, Doctor,” I asked him, “in case I can think of any intelligent questions to ask you?”

“I’ll be around, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “I live at the top of this building. I’ll try very hard to think of something to help you in your inquiries, but my relationship with Miss D’Oro was strictly professional.”

“You do that,” I said. “I’d like to come around sometime and see the rest of that film.”

He gave me a warning frown, but Irma Springler was heading out of his office door, and I didn’t have much time to feel gauche. She was quick on the stairs, and outside near the brass plate I caught up with her, looking slightly impatient. The big door closed behind us.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, a bit more friendly. “That place gives me the creeps.”

I walked over to the Morris parked at the curb, and Irma drifted along at my side. She slid quite willingly into the cracked leather passenger seat. I got in behind the steering wheel and waited for an opening in the flow of Saturday evening traffic.

“I’m sorry I was so snappy in there,” she said as I got the car out into the street. “The last few days have been hell for me.”

“Don’t apologize. I have a tendency to wade in, stomping all over people’s sensibilities. I’m cursed with a one-track mind. I should apologize to you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions while we drive, or would you rather wait?”

“Go ahead,” she said, letting her head rest against the seat back and nearly closing her eyes. “I want to help you all I can.”

By then I was past City College, and we joined the early dinner crowd on the freeway headed downtown. I pulled into the slow lane and drifted gently with the big trucks and old crocks like my own. “You were Tina’s best friend?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. “Tina didn’t have many friends. I met her last autumn when a girl friend of mine brought her around, and Tina asked me if I’d do her hair.”

“You’re a hairdresser?”

“Not really. It’s a hobby of mine, and Tina claimed she’d never before found anybody who could do her hair just right. I didn’t believe her at first, but Tina had a way of getting what she wanted.”

“If you’re not a hairdresser, what do you do for a living?”

“Nothing,” she said, “right now, but until the end of May I was teaching at Marin Junior College.”

“Teaching what?”

“Basic English, history, a bit of sociology. Mostly to freshmen.”

“It’s a long way from Basic English to the stage of The Jungle,” I said, trying not to sound too scornful about it.

“Yes,” she said, and I thought she sounded rueful. Irma was silent for about half a dozen of those tall, arc-lighted poles along the James Lick Memorial Freeway. Then she spoke, and the light was so dim that I could barely catch her features out of the corner of my eye. “Look,” she said seriously, “can I trust you?”

Now, there was a good question. Could Irma Springler, teacher turned go-go dancer, trust Joe Goodey, ex-cop and would-be private detective? I hoped I hadn’t waited too long before I said: “I think so. All I want from you is information that might help me find out who murdered Tina.” That sounded altruistic, but it was true.

“That’s good,” she said, “because that’s all I want from you too. If you’re working for Phil Franks, I’m in trouble, because I have no intention of ever dancing for him at The Jungle. I want to find out who killed Tina, and I figure that the best way is from the inside.”

“You’ll even let Doc Irving try his magic formula on you?” I asked. That seemed to me to be going a bit far, even for a best friend.

“If I have to,” she said in a neutral tone. “But I think I can stall Irving for a while. Phil will be harder to handle, so I’ve got to work fast. We both want the same thing, Joe. Do you think we could work together?”

That was the best offer I’d had all day, which gives you an idea of the quality of the offers I’d been getting. Unless Irma killed Tina herself, she probably knew as much about the murder as I did. Which wasn’t very much. But I didn’t have much to lose.

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “I can’t tell you who I’m working for, and other than that I don’t know a hell of a lot more than you do. Probably less. But maybe we can do something together. Why don’t you start by telling me something I don’t know?”

“All right,” she said in a voice full of hidden aces, “I will. I know that Tina was having an affair with Mayor Kolchik.”

This hot tidbit was supposed to make me fall out of the car and swallow my tongue. In order not to disappoint Irma too much, I managed a long, low whistle meant to convey the impression of surprise.

It didn’t.

“You knew that already,” she said accusingly, like a child whose riddle had flopped.

“You’re right,” I said. “But all the same it’s very interesting that you know it. How is that?”

“Tina had no secrets from me,” Irma said positively.

“She must have had at least one,” I said. “And that’s who was mad enough at her to stab her to death.”

“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Irma said, “unless…”

“Unless Tina did have some secrets from you,” I said. “Do you think it’s possible that she could have been running an entirely different game that you knew nothing about? How good an actress was Tina? For instance, could there have been another lover besides Kolchik? One she didn’t tell you about?”

The high beams of an oncoming car illuminated her face enough for me to see that Irma didn’t like the idea. Her face went rigid, and the high cheekbones stood out in relief. Then the car’s light was gone.

“No,” she said in a voice that was calmer than her face had shown. “I’d swear it. The mayor was the only man in Tina’s life. If there’d been another, I’d have had to know.”

“What about Tony Scar?”

“What about who?” She wasn’t faking it.

“Tony Scarezza. He used to be a big man on the docks. He was Tina’s lover some years back. Did you know that she’d had a baby about fifteen years ago? Scarezza’s baby. And it died young over at Tina’s home in the East Bay?”

She was silent for a moment. Then Irma spoke: “You may have known Tina to talk to, Joe,” she said, “but one thing you didn’t know about her was that for Tina there was no yesterday, only today and tomorrow—mostly tomorrow. I didn’t know about the baby or this Tony Scar person because for Tina they didn’t exist. To Tina, yesterday was something you threw away with last night’s paper. She was through with it, and it didn’t matter.”

“What did matter to Tina?” I asked.

“Her career,” Irma answered after thinking carefully, “and her friends.”

“And who were her friends besides you?”

Irma had to think that one over hard. I let her do it in peace as we plowed toward downtown San Francisco. We were just negotiating the link with the Embarcadero when she said: “There weren’t any, really, I guess, unless you count Dr. Irving and maybe Phil Franks. But Dr. Irving was mostly concerned with keeping her body in shape. And Phil—I don’t know exactly what Phil was. Sometimes Tina talked about him fondly; other times he was just a money-grubbing fat man. Tina knew a lot of people at other clubs on the street, but no one I’d really call a friend. Maybe Kolchik was a friend. I don’t know.”

Neither did I, and I wasn’t getting much closer to finding out. It looked as if Kolchik didn’t have any better eye for detectives than for girls. For all I knew, Johnny Maher had Tina’s killer hog-tied in the basement of city hall.

We rolled down the Broadway off ramp.

15

“Are you hungry?” I asked Irma as we crept along in the tentative beginnings of what would later turn into the nightly traffic jam. “We could continue this over dinner.”

She agreed, and a few minutes later we were being seated in a rear booth at Hungry Joe’s by Mario, the headwaiter. Mario made up for being incredibly handsome by oozing an oily hospitality which always made me feel faintly in need of a steam cleaning.

“The veal tonight, m’sieur and m’selle,” he said, “is exquisite. Besides, I’ve been asked by the chef to move it if at all possible.” Save me from honest headwaiters. I told Mario to send us two Kahluas over crushed ice and promised to give the veal every consideration.

The drinks arrived, and I was about to beam back in on Irma with what I hoped would be pertinent questions. She’d gotten her nose stuck into the short, chunky glass of dark-brown coffee liqueur. When she came up for air with a sliver of ice on her lower lip, I was all set with a sure-fire winner. But just then George, the barman, caught my eye with a fancy bit of cocktail bar semaphore. He looked as if he meant it.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing back from the table and standing up. “Somebody seems to need to talk to me.” I shoved my drink across the table toward her. “If you feel dehydration setting in, try this. I’ll make it short.” ‘

George, the younger brother of a big-league baseball star, fancied himself a celebrity by genetic association, like the third son of an earl. Just then he was busy dazzling a motherly type with his way with a gin fizz, so I leaned against the polished oak bar and marveled. But quietly.

The fizz delivered and an unmotherly smile returned, George turned to me. “Hey, Joe,” he said, “is it true that you’re no longer a cop? That you’re going to be a private detective?”

“Am a private detective, George,” I corrected. “Am. And I’ve got the papers to prove it.”

“Gee, that’s too bad,” he said, giving the bar an ellipsoidal sweep with a damp rag.

“How do you mean?”

“Now you won’t be able to put your drinks on the tab. Mario won’t deadhead anybody but the real thing.”

“I’ll try to survive the blow. Is that what you frantically signaled me over here to tell me?” I started to push myself away from the bar.

“Oh, no,” he said. ‘That’s not it. It’s something more important. Marley Phillips wants to see you.”

Marley Phillips. In a B movie, that would have been a great spot for some theme music. Something with kettledrums. Instead, the only noise was the tinkle of ice cubes and the rustle of lies brushing up against broken promises.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“He sent one of his mugs around this afternoon. An old guy running on one lung and strong hair oil. He nearly passed out on the stairs.”

“Did he say what Phillips wanted?”

“The way he was puffing and blowing,” George said, “he was lucky to get that much out. That lad is a candidate for an iron lung. Are you going to see Phillips?”

“Maybe. But thanks for the message anyway.” It doesn’t pay to tell bartenders too much. I went back to the booth where Mario loomed over Irma like a walking lamp.

“I’m sorry,” I told Irma, “but I’ve got to go see someone. It may be important.” Mario turned his back discreetly, but his ears kept twitching. “You have dinner, and we’ll meet later…say, at The Jungle at ten o’clock?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll see you there. In the meantime is there anything I can do”—she flicked her eyes at Mario’s attentive back—“you know?”

“Not really,” I said in a low voice. “Just keep your eyes and ears open and try to remember anything that might help.” Without raising my voice or changing my tone, I said: “Mario, give this nice lady a good dinner. Anything but the veal.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, whirling around as if on ball bearings to gracefully take money from my hand. “I’ll take good care of m’selle.”

I was sure of that.

The car parker at the Mark Hopkins reluctantly accepted the Morris, and the doorman let me pass with no more than a look which said he didn’t think much of my wardrobe, haircut, or career prospects. George had told me Phillips’ suite number, so I gave the ramrod-stiff clerk behind the desk a miss and headed for the bank of elevators. I could feel his eyes on my back.

The elevator was soundless enough, but it stopped with a nasty jerk which brought back painful echoes of an old football injury to my left knee. I wondered whether I had sufficient grounds for a lawsuit. The closing door caught me wondering, and I had to strong-arm my way into the eighteenth-floor corridor.

The Mark Hopkins is a plush hotel. Not tacky-prefab posh like some of the newer high-rise mausoleums in San Francisco, but full of character like a sable coat with a moth-eaten lining. The corridor carpet wasn’t an ankle-grabber, but its well-kept, timeworn veneer hinted that it had been trodden on by some of the quality.

The door to 18D, Phillips’ suite, was slightly ajar. It had the air of a door that had never been anything else. I moved it a bit to see if the hinges were rusty. I edged through the door and stepped right out of the Mark Hopkins Hotel.

At first I didn’t know where I was. I was dazzled by the pure drabness of the decor. Someone had walled off a section of the suite, forming a shallow, dark antechamber. The walls were the color of stale, diluted tobacco. The only decoration on them was a faded, flyblown Goodyear Rubber Company calendar. Some wiseacre had made a clumsy attempt to turn the Goodyear blimp into a tit. The carpet underfoot was thin to the point of near translucence and exuded dust with every footstep. The furniture—a cruel-looking library table, four broken-spirited chairs, and an ashtray on a bayonet stand—said back-alley abortionist.

But a half-glass door across the anteroom dimly lit from within said “M. Phillips, Private Investigations” in peeling bronze letters. “Knock First” warned a footnote on the door, so I did. I almost expected my knuckles to raise dust.

“Come in,” said a heavy voice. “The door’s not locked.” I tried the knob and found that it was. I tried the knob a little harder, and it came off in my hand. “Come in, come in,” said the same voice with distracted impatience. It came from a throat that had been well-cured with cigarette smoke.

“I’d sure like to,” I said through the frosted glass, “but the door is locked, and I seem to have the knob in my hand.”

Silence. Then the springs of a swivel chair squeaked pitifully, and footsteps—slow but not too heavy—came toward me. The door swung inward, and Marley Phillips filled most of the doorway.

It had been nearly five years since I’d seen Phillips, and he’d aged. Not radically, but gently, as if he were a shale boulder gradually being eroded by balmy winds and Pacific waves. He stood just under six feet tall, not slumped or bent but slightly telescoped, as if he’d been pressed down for a long time by a steady but not unbearable load. Phillips must have been close to seventy, and his face had the lines to prove it. But the brown eyes were bright and unclouded. Above them, his still-thick hair had gone gray-white.

When he opened the door, Phillips’ face wore an expression I can only describe as martyred—tough, rude, likely to tell you to go to hell, but a martyr all the same. He was all set to hear about my problem.

Instead, I said, “Hello, I’m Joe Goodey.”

The crown of thorns slipped from Phillips’ brow, and the martyr was transformed into a professional. Old, tired, maybe past it, but a pro all the same. “Come in, Goodey,” he said, turning back into the room. “Come in. Sorry I took so long to answer. I’m having a hell of a struggle with Steinitz. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch.”

As I followed him into the small, rectangular office, I swiveled my neck, trying to locate the son of a bitch. But all I could see was a room which equaled the antechamber in drabness. The only furniture in it was a blocky, heel-marked desk made of something which might have been wood once, a battered, slightly listing file cabinet with one drawer hanging open like a sleeping drunk’s mouth, and an elderly hat rack groaning under the weight of an antique fedora with a turned-down brim. Rolled-down shades the color of dust dully reflected the light from a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling like a hanged man. On the far wall was a door with a frosted window labeled “Gents.” A gooseneck telephone stood on the very edge of the desk as if it were thinking of jumping.

Phillips pointed me toward a chair and retired behind his desk. He instinctively fell into the pose of a man who’d seen everything—twice. Then I noticed that set up in the middle of a pool-table-green desk blotter was a fine ivory chess set on a board which looked like ebony. I don’t know much about chess, but I could tell that somebody was getting the hell knocked out of him.

Phillips reached out and knocked over his sole bishop with a defeated hand. “If Steinitz hadn’t been dead for over sixty years,” he said, “I’d go step on his face.” Then he looked up at me with eyes that might have seen the Crucifixion. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“I’m Joe Goodey,” I reminded him gently. “You said you wanted to see me. George, the bartender at Hungry Joe’s, gave me the message.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Goodey. You’re the cop who quit the force last week to become a private detective. I heard about it and wanted to have a talk with you. But first let’s buy ourselves a drink. I think you’ll find a bottle in the bottom drawer of that file cabinet.” Yeah, he thought I’d find a bottle the way I think I’ll find hands at the end of my arms. I turned, pulled open the drawer, and reached into its depths. My hand encountered and gripped something round, smooth and cool. I pulled out a quart bottle and set it on the blotter next to his busted chess game. The label said “Fine Canadian Rye, 12 Years Old,” but the bottle was as empty as Miss America’s smile.

Phillips had ducked down to a desk drawer and came up with a couple murky glasses. He took in the empty bottle with the expression of a condemned man whose reprieve from the governor turned out to be a singing telegram. He put the glasses down with a muted clunk. He raised his eyebrows wryly and said: “I forgot. They won’t let me drink.” A silence settled, and we sat there, me looking at nothing much and him fixing me with what was either a benevolent gaze or a disgusted stare.

Phillips pulled himself together manfully. “What I really want to know, Goodey,” he said, “is are you going to turn out to be a shit-heel like most of the dicks in San Francisco, or are you trying to be a real private investigator?”

That must have been a rhetorical question, because I hadn’t even opened my mouth to answer him when he was off and running again.

“I expect you know something about me, Goodey,” he said, “but let me fill you in a bit. For nearly thirty years I was a private eye in Los Angeles. I never got rich, but I did all right. I never took a dirty dollar or chased too hard after a clean one. There are some old cops, retired now or maybe dead, who’d have told you I was a sneaky, crooked son of a bitch, but they’d have been wrong. I lied to a few cops in my day, held out on them. But I never sold a client out or betrayed a confidence. I’ve seen the inside of a cell on that account.” All this he said almost to himself, but then Phillips looked up and got my eye in a hammerlock. “You know what I’m talking about, Goodey?” he demanded.

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

“I’m not saying I haven’t done things I shouldn’t have,” he went on. “I’ve killed men I wouldn’t have had to if I’d been better at my job. I’ve slapped a few women around, but only when it was absolutely necessary. You ever hit a woman, Goodey?”

I riffled through my memory for a few moments and then said, “Not many, outside of my wife, that is.”

Phillips didn’t like that much, but he let it pass. “You married, then, Goodey?” he asked disapprovingly.

“I was,” I said, “but the thing seems to have died a natural death. She’s in New York.”

He liked that better. “It’s just as well,” he said, the way surgeons don’t mind talking about taking out your gall bladder. “I never met a married private detective who was worth a damn. Though there was one fellow once working out in the Valley who used to take his wife along on jobs. She’d sit in the car and knit while he worked. You have any idea what she was knitting?”

“You’ve got me.”

“It turned out to be his shroud,” said Phillips, not, I wouldn’t be surprised, for the first time.

We both chewed that one over silently for a while.

Then Phillips started patting the breast pocket of a rumpled but very expensive sharkskin suit as if he were trying to put out a brush fire somewhere in his underwear. He stopped and looked up at me balefully.

“I used to get through forty to fifty Fatimas a day,” he said, “some years back. But the sawbones said it was either cut down or put a down payment on a coffin. But that’s my problem. What about you, Goodey? You pick up any jobs yet?”

“I’ve got a little something to keep me busy,” I said modestly. “Would it by any chance have anything to do with the murder of Tina D’Oro?” he asked.

I put on my best poker face and looked back at him. “I’ve been wondering, Mr. Phillips,” I said, “just what is behind that door with the ‘Gents’ sign.”

“You’re okay, Goodey,” he said with a stiff smile. “You might just do eventually, though I never had much faith in cops turned private detective.”

“I wasn’t much of a cop,” I said. But I was getting a bit sick of this routine, and I was curious. “If you don’t mind me being nosy, Mr. Phillips, what the hell are you doing in this squalid mockup office in the middle of what must be a very nice hotel suite?”

I thought his eyes looked a little sad at the question.

“That’s a very good question, Goodey,” he said. “The truth is that I married a very rich woman. Not exactly just like that, mind you. I didn’t just get up one morning and say: ‘Phillips, you’re getting too old and flabby to keep wearing your butt out on the LA freeways. Why not go out and find yourself a nice millionairess?’”

He paused, and when my look didn’t exactly say, “Oh, yeah?” he went on.

“This woman,” he said, “now Mrs. Marley Phillips, just sort of appeared one day. I hadn’t seen her in over fifteen years, since we’d crossed paths on a job I did involving her family. Something clicked then, but I was relatively young and more than relatively stupid. I went back to knocking my brains out against other people’s problems, and she went on to three or four more husbands. Then one day about ten years ago I looked up and there she was. I’d forgotten to turn on the buzzer in my outer office. Well, eliminating some of the cornier dialogue, we got married and moved up here. She can’t stand the heat and smog.”

“But,” I said.

“Yeah,” he grinned, “but it wasn’t any good. She was happy as two clams, and I wasn’t in any obvious pain. But something was wrong. I felt like a hound dog in a bubble bath. I kept looking at the marvelous views and getting morbid thoughts. So I had some very expensive gentlemen go down to LA and bring back most of my office. I was lucky: they got there just ahead of the wrecker’s ball. And now I sit here working on chess problems, reading a bit, and waiting for a knock on the door. I might still be in Los Angeles.”

I started to ask him if the knock came often, but then the old gooseneck telephone started jangling, and Phillips snatched it with what I took to be just a bit of eagerness.

“Sure,” he said, “in a minute.” And he hung up.

“My wife,” he said. “Dinner’s ready.” He dropped his big feet to the floor and stood up. “Thanks for coming by, Goodey,” he said. “If I can ever do anything for you, you know where to find me.” He turned toward the door with the frosted window.

I got an idea.

“You can help me, maybe,” I said. “I’m trying to find somebody called Tony Scarezza. A guy who used to be a waterfront hood.”

“Tony Scar?”

“That’s right. Have you got any idea where I could find him?”

Phillips stopped with his hand on the open door. Through it I could see part of a rich, colorful suite. “Sure,” he said. “Tony’s out at Laguna Seca. Has been for at least three or four years. What do you want to see him for?”

“Marley, dear,” a fruity old woman’s voice called from the other room, “the soup is getting cold.”

“Your soup’s getting cold, Mr. Phillips,” I said. “Thanks for the information.” I walked out into the antechamber. It still looked crummy, and it was still empty. It always would be.

16

Laguna Seca. As I drove southwest on Market Street toward the old people’s home beyond Twin Peaks, it occurred to me that this job had more old men in it than the Supreme Court.

At the entrance to the home, I found a gatekeeper sitting in an outsized telephone booth with a Zane Grey novel in his shiny lap. He looked like a retired mess sergeant—too young to die, too lazy to do anything.

“Sorry,” he said without looking the least bit sorry, “visiting hours are two to five pee-em. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” That took care of me, he figured, so he let his heavy eyes fall back to the book.

“This isn’t social,” I said. “It’s business.” I gave him a good look at the P.I. card. He must have had a firm grip on his chair because he didn’t fall out of it.

“Visiting hours are still from two to five, stud,” he said. “Try tomorrow. Sunday’s a barrel of laughs around here.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m washing my hair tomorrow. Is there a court of special appeal around here? Can you use that instrument to call someone with a bit more weight?”

I don’t know what surprised him more: the thought that there might be someone more important than he was or the presence of a telephone in his booth. When he’d recovered, he picked up the telephone, dialed, and asked someone if he could speak to Dr. Chapel. There was a half-beat pause.

“Well, Christ on a fucking crutch,” he shouted down the phone, “find him.” He turned his head toward me. “Pardon my French,” he said. “Until last February I was a chief bosun’s mate, and it’s hard to lose the habit.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Tell the operator.”

“That wasn’t the operator. It was the night head nurse. She—” Someone had come back on the telephone, and the chief slid his glass door closed so that they could have a private chat. While the gateman was working his jaws, I took a look around at what I could see in the darkness. Which wasn’t much. Beyond the guard’s booth in a grove of dead-black evergreens, pale towers of what must have been the Laguna Seca buildings stood out in shadowy relief against the moonless night. I felt glad I was going in for just a visit. That is, if I got in.

My friend slid the door open again.

“Can I see that card again, bud?”

I handed it to him, and the door shut again. He read what was on it to the party on the other end. The door opened, and he gave me back my card.

“Okay,” he said, “go on through. Just keep taking bends to the left, and you’ll see the main building on the left. Dr. Chapel will meet you there. Sorry it took so long. He was chewing my ass for being so rude to Mrs. Felony.”

He read my expression.

“Felony. That’s the name,” he said. “Anyway, I’m to be more polite to her in the future, and Dr. Chapel is waiting for you up at the ad building.”

I admired his willingness to reform, thanked him, and got back into the Morris. He was right. A few left turns did find me coming into a half-moon drive in front of a dirty-white Victorian gingerbread mansion. A figure in crisp hospital whites was waiting for me on the bottom step of a short, wide flight of steps going to the main entrance. He came toward me as I got out of the car. He was taller than I, younger, handsomer, and no doubt richer. He walked bouncily as if he were dribbling a basketball.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said, “I’m Dr. Chapel. What can I do for you?” We shook hands in a manly fashion, and I explained that I was there to have a short talk with Mr. Antonio Scarezza, a patient at the home. I started to add that unfortunately I couldn’t divulge the nature of my inquiry, when he cut me off.

“Oh, I quite understand,” he said understandingly. “I know that detective work requires a certain amount of confidentiality. I’m fairly conversant with the—uh—modus operandi.”

Uh-oh. One of those. An amateur detective, or at least a wishful one. I wondered if I’d get to see his diploma from the Ajax College of Scientific Detection. I hoped not. But I know how to play the game, so I adopted a confidential tone of voice and leaned a little toward him.

“I greatly appreciate that, Doctor,” I said man to man. “So often people misunderstand the nature of police work. You weren’t by any chance a detective once yourself?”

“Oh, no,” he said, more pleased than if I’d hung the Nobel Prize for Medicine around his neck. “When I was younger, I—well, I’d hoped—I’d wanted to major in criminology at college, but my father was a doctor, and—”

“Of course, of course,” I said. “But you have kept up a keen interest in the profession, I imagine?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, digging eagerly for his wallet and flapping it open to show me a Sheriff’s Auxiliary shield, one of the toys the SF County Sheriff’s office likes to hand out to law-and-order fans. They carry all the authority of a Chicken Inspector’s badge. “I’ve worked quite closely with Sheriff Hallam. You know him, of course.”

Of course. I’d once stepped on his foot in a City Hall elevator. We were old pals.

I tried to imply that with a look and came right to the matter at hand. Antonio Scarezza. “You’re aware, of course, of Mr. Scarezza’s background?” I said.

“Certainly, Mr. Goodey. We keep a fairly complete dossier on our—uh—residents here. You don’t suspect, do you, that Mr. Scarezza has—er—retained his criminal connections even here at Laguna Seca?”

I put a mental finger alongside my nose and gave him a knowing look. “Let’s just say, Doctor, that I’m pursuing a certain line of investigation. Is it possible for me to see Scarezza now?” I dropped the “Mr.” purposely so that Dr. Chapel and I could enjoy a quiet moment of superiority over our unknowing quarry.

“I’m sure it is,” he said agreeably, snapping a smart look at a gold watch in the dim light of a high, Victorian street lamp over our heads. “It’s now the quiet hour in the wards, and pre-sleep drinks won’t be served for about thirty-five minutes. Will that give you enough time?”

“I’m sure it will, Doctor,” I said, shifting my weight toward the door in an effort to set him in motion, “if we can get to Scarezza pretty quickly.” He must have been a basketball player once, because my feint set him in fluid, long-legged motion, and he was past me and heading for the stairs before I could move.

I caught up with Chapel at the top of the steps, and we went in through the tall doorway in a dead heat. The foyer was all marble, thick Persian carpets, and paintings by obscure nineteenth-century artists with a penchant for seascapes. But I didn’t have time to study them because Chapel cut sharply to his left and headed for a spiraling flight of carpeted marble steps. It was either go with him or foul him.

Midway up the first curve, just as I was beginning to feel the first inklings of oxygen starvation, Chapel resumed his just-between-us-detectives line. “I know Scarezza pretty well, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “If you’d like, I could sit in on your interrogation.” He flicked his eyes over at me shyly. “We could even work together, perhaps. I mean—what you call double-team him.”

Yeah, I knew what he meant. He, the kindly, trusted physician, would be Dr. Nice. And I, the stranger, would be Mr. Nasty. Between us we’d wring the old man out like a bar rag.

“Thanks very much, Doctor,” I said, trying to put a lot of regret in my voice, “but my client…well, you know how clients are.” He knew, all right, just as I know all about old ladies too rich and too stubborn to die. He nodded conspiratorially, and his eyes told me he wasn’t holding it against me personally.

On the elbow of the third upward twist of the stairs, we found ourselves facing a massive set of double doors with a sign over them reading “Norton Ward.” Sitting at a small table to the side of the doors, reading an anatomy textbook, was a thin youth in a University of California letterman’s jacket. We were all jocks around here. As we approached, the boy got up, but he didn’t break his neck.

“Thompson,” said the doctor, “this is Mr. Goodey. He has permission to see Mr. Scarezza until pre-sleep drinks are served. Will you take him in?” Chapel turned to me. “Good luck, Mr. Goodey. If I can be of any further help, I’ll be downstairs in my office. Thompson will see that you find it.” I could tell that he’d be lonesome if I didn’t drop in, but I just smiled a bit grimly and gave him a firm handshake.

“I’ll do that, Doctor,” I said vaguely. “Thanks for all your help.” He started back down the staircase like somebody’s kid brother being left out of the big boys’ games.

Thompson pulled open one side of the door. “This way, Mr. Goodey.” The hallway we entered was wood paneled and lit discreetly. It wasn’t much like a hospital, but it smelled of old men and bad chests and death.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” I said, just to pass the time. “You planning to specialize in geriatrics?”

“Not me,” he said without a smile. “I’m at the other end of the business—pediatrics. You meet a better class of young mothers, and your patients very seldom end up forgotten and drowning in their own spit. This is just a way of working my way through med school.” As we passed a closed doorway on the left, a loud, monotonous murmur droned through the thick-looking door. Thompson checked his step and cocked an ear. So did I, and I heard a thick, strangled, old-man’s voice warning someone called Madeline against the attentions of Mr. Battenborough. The drift of the monologue was that Mr. Battenborough was only after her fair white body and money, and she’d best listen to Dad and stay clear. The voice dropped to a muffled wheeze, and we moved on.

“What happened to Madeline?” I asked.

“She married Battenborough,” Thompson said, “went through his money and the old man’s, and ran away with a real estate man down in Menlo Park. I’ve never seen her, but Battenborough comes to see the old man twice a week.”

As he said this, Thompson stopped in front of a door on the right and knocked softly. There was no answer, so he rapped more sharply.

“It’s open,” said a thin but unwavering voice.

Thompson turned the knob, and the door swung inward, revealing a fair-sized bedroom tricked out like a rich man’s study. Flanking both sides of the large windows were library shelves loaded with thick volumes. A long desk with an extending-arm lamp commanded one wall, shoving a single bed into one corner as if it had been left there by mistake. The bed was unmade. Its usual occupant sat in a leather chair beneath a standing lamp, looking up at me with a sour expression.

He was a compact little guy. He looked hard but resilient, as if something hitting him would bounce back faster than it came. He had yellowish white hair, cut Jimmy Hoffa-style, and held in his hand a pair of tortoise half glasses that had been on his nose when the door opened.

His eyes weren’t friendly, and they didn’t melt much when Thompson said, “Mr. Scarezza, there’s somebody here who would like to talk with you for a moment.” He turned back to me. “Mr.—?”

“My name’s Joe Goodey, Mr. Scarezza,” I said. “I’m a detective, and…”

“Copper?” he said, his old face softening a bit with surprise.

“Ex. I’m private now. I…”

“Why should I want to talk to you?” he asked sharply. I was beginning to feel like a dog turd on his carpet.

So much for reverence for age, I thought, and put a bit of cutting edge on my voice. “You will when I tell you what I’ve come about. Do you want me to tell you or you and Dr. Kildare here?”

His dark gray eyes brightened a bit at that. Maybe nobody here bothered to get sharp with him. If I’d grabbed him by the front of his tweed robe and belted him in the chops, Scarezza would probably have given me a smile.

“Okay, Thompson,” Scarezza said. “You can leave him here.” He sounded as if he were talking about a box of groceries.

“Right, Mr. Scarezza,” said Thompson. “Pre-sleep drinks will be around in twenty-five minutes.”

“I don’t sleep, Thompson,” the old man said. “You know that.”

Thompson nodded professionally and beat it. He closed the door quietly behind him. I walked over to the desk, pulled a swivel chair out of the desk well, and sat on it facing Scarezza.

“It’s true,” he said, his voice a bit querulous in spite of himself. “The worst damn thing about getting old is you can’t sleep. If it weren’t for my books, I’d go nuts.” He patted his book as if it were a favorite spaniel. Reading upside down, I could see that it was The Dialogues of Plato. I’d expected a bound volume of Spicy Tales.

“It all started the first year I was here,” he said as if I’d asked him, “when some old broad of a night nurse saw that I couldn’t sleep. She lent me her copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. I was never much of a reader, but I got through it during that night. And it was such incredible bullshit that I thought I’d better see what else was going in philosophy. And that led to this.” He waved a hand at the book shelves, and my eye caught the names Descartes, Socrates, Sartre, Hegel. Not a Spillane in the lot.

“You learn anything from all that?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet. A lot of it is garbage too, but it helps pass the time. Which is what we’re wasting right now. What do you want from me, Goodey?”

“I’m looking into who killed Tina D’Oro.”

That got a reaction, all right, but it wasn’t one that I could catalogue. Maybe what I saw was the ripple of a memory coming to the surface from someplace deep and nearly forgotten. It didn’t drag a lot of obvious pain with it.

“Yeah, Olga,” he said, as if speaking of a childhood friend. “I read about it in the papers. Who put you onto me?”

“The old lady—her mother. She calls herself Mrs. Barton now and lives with some old geezer on the Contra Costa Canal. I ran into her today at Tina’s funeral. She’d copped a couple of the letters you used to write Tina and had them stored away.”

“How much did you give her for my name?”

“Nothing.”

“That doesn’t figure,” he said, “but then maybe she’s changed. When I first met Maggie she’d have taken your shirt and tried to sell you back the buttons.”

“She’s a little mellower now,” I said, “but not much. I had to apply a little pressure.”

“Cutting up old acquaintances is fun,” he said, with his fingers gently drumming on his book, “but what do you want from me?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe…”

“Maybe nothing,” he said. “I haven’t seen Olga to talk to for at least eleven years, and I’ve been here for nearly six. I knew she’d changed her name, got her tits done, and was go-go dancing, but that’s all. You know more about her than I do. I could tell you about the Olga Dombrowitz of sixteen or seventeen years ago—if I wanted to—but Tina D’Oro I know nothing about. I—”

There was a sharp, just-for-the-hell-of-it knock on his door, and a big, dun-haired nurse barged into Scarezza’s room dragging a wheeled cart loaded with glasses and aluminum jugs. She had a face full of misdirected energy and cat’s-eye glasses, which made her look slightly satanic.

“Evening, Antonio,” she said briskly. “What’ll it be: hot milk, cocoa, or Ovaltine? If you’re a good boy, I could let you have some decaffeinated coffee.”

I could tell from Scarezza’s face that his idea of being a good boy would be to tap dance on her windpipe, but she hovered blithely over the pre-sleep drinks like a magician about to produce a pink rabbit.

“Hot milk,” said Scarezza in the voice of someone dealing with a natural enemy. “Two hot milks. Put the other one on my bill.”

“Oooh, big spender,” she said with the mocking good humor of someone who doesn’t know she’s hated. She poured out two tall glasses of steaming milk and put them on a small round table at the side of Scarezza’s chair. “Well, ta, then, Antonio,” she said cheerfully, bumping the cart out of his door into the hallway. “Sweet dreams!” The door closed behind her.

“Sometimes I think that’s why I don’t sleep,” Scarezza said, “because she says ‘sweet dreams’ every night.” He reached down beside the overstuffed cushion of his chair and came up with a flat, heavily embossed pint bottle of expensive Scotch whiskey. He poured a nice amount into each of the milk glasses and handed one to me.

“Here’s to a painful death for Mrs. Monahan,” he said, downing half of his milk and whiskey. I sipped mine and found it was better than I’d expected.

“Where was I?” he asked, wiping away a slight mustache of milk from his clean-shaven upper lip.

“You don’t know anything about Tina D’Oro,” I said wearily, feeling the familiar energy drain of wasting time and effort.

“That’s right,” Scarezza said with geriatric self-righteousness. “I don’t.” He drank most of the other half of his milk and relaxed a bit. His grooved forehead smoothed out considerably, and his left hand lay at peace on his book. “I don’t see how you could have expected me to,” he added, “what with me not having seen her for so long.”

“I didn’t know that,” I admitted. “When Maggie Barton told me about you and Tina and the kid, I just thought—”

“Kid?” said Scarezza, his brow furrowing again and looking at me as if I’d started speaking Urdu.

I opened my mouth to say something, but the word suddenly sank in. “Kid!” said Scarezza, coming out of his chair on a spring and throwing the rest of his milk all over my pants legs and shoes. “What kid? What kid is that?” The contortions of his old face somehow made him look younger. Or maybe it was the surge of adrenaline.

“Olga’s baby,” I said with that dumb feeling you get from telling somebody something he already knows. “Maggie said she came back from San Francisco a couple of years after she left home to have a baby and then went back to the city, leaving it with her mother. Hell, you ought to know that.”

Scarezza didn’t even hear that last bit. He was still standing, so I got to my feet. I can’t bear people standing over me, not even sawed-off retired gangsters.

“Tell me about the baby,” he demanded. “That was my baby. Olga never told me, the dirty bitch. Tell me, you punk!”

“There’s not much to tell. The next winter after Tina left the baby with Maggie it died—probably of gastroenteritis. Maggie said she buried it in West Pittsburg.”

I think maybe he was going to jump me, or at least that’s what the remnants of his reflexes told him he ought to do. But this last one stopped him like a bullet in the chest.

“Died?” he said, but I knew he wasn’t really asking me a question, so I stayed mum. It was his scenery; let him chew it up. His dry lips played silently with the word. I looked away. “Died,” he said again to himself. But then he shot me an accusing look. “Was it a boy?”

“I don’t know. Maggie didn’t say.” He made me feel stupid.

“Didn’t say,” he shouted. “Didn’t say. She didn’t say. You dumb, crummy bastard. My son is dead, and you don’t know anything about it. You probably don’t even know if he was baptized, you son of a bitch.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t.” This wasn’t fair; Scarezza was getting all the best lines. Scarezza was still standing in front of his chair, twitching in all directions as if warming up to do something rash. He’d jettisoned his glass somewhere.

Then he was moving toward a tall wardrobe against the wall at the foot of his bed. I’m glad nobody gave me the job of stopping him. Flinging the door open, he threw a suit of clothes on the unmade bed and began ripping off his robe and pajamas. He was mumbling to himself, probably cursing me and Maggie and Tina and anybody else handy. I stood and watched. Scarezza didn’t even know I was there. Half dressed, he looked like a poorly fed turkey with a thin chest and saggy, blotchy skin. But as he tore off his pajama bottoms and donned a suit—a midnight-blue pinstripe number with a sixties cut—a new Scarezza appeared.

He didn’t quite fill the suit anymore—his thin neck bobbled around in the starched collar of a white-on-white shirt—but I could see that he had once filled it well. There was nothing comical about him even now. He exchanged soft carpet slippers for a hard-looking pair of black wing tips and fumbled a bit with the laces before he got them knotted. The final touch was a snappy, narrow-brimmed Stetson with a chicken feather in the band. He looked ready for anything.

But he wasn’t quite. Pausing to give a button on the wall next to his bed three sharp jabs, he plunged toward the desk behind me. I nimbly got out of his way and turned to watch him unlock and then open the long middle drawer of the desk. A thick sheaf of currency disappeared into an inside pocket of his suit coat, and his hand went back into the drawer. It came out full of black automatic, a matte-finished .45 with a muzzle that looked big enough to take a potted plant. He rammed a clip full of fat, ugly bullets into the butt of the automatic and clicked the safety back and forth a couple of times.

“Do you think you’re going to need that?” I asked him.

Scarezza started and swiveled toward me with a surprised expression, pointing the pistol in my general direction. He’d forgotten that I was there.

“I might,” he said levelly, looking me in the eye as if to head off objections. “You wouldn’t be planning to try to stop me, would you?”

I started to explain that I wouldn’t stand in his way even if he was off to rob a train, but the door came open in a hurry, and Thompson, textbook still in his hand, lurched in and stood with his mouth open, staring at the new Tony Scarezza.

“Mr. Scarezza!” he said.

“Thompson,” said the old man, totally in command of the situation, “how much is that old heap of yours worth?”

“Heap?” asked Thompson. He wasn’t getting many good lines either.

“Your car,” said Scarezza snappily, “that thing that belches and farts every morning when you leave here. How much, boy?”

“My car? I don’t know. Maybe a hundred dollars. Why—”

“Here’s two hundred,” said Scarezza, riffling through his wad of notes and shoving a few into the student’s hand. “Give me your keys. Now!”

The confused Thompson, money still in one hand, dropped his book and dug for the car keys with the other. Scarezza snatched them, favored me with a crisp look and went through the doorway into the long hall. Thompson and I looked at each other for a moment and then followed him.

Scarezza was making good time down the polished hall and was nearly to the big double doors at the end of the ward when we caught sight of him. The sleep talker was again giving Madeline good, sound parental advice when we passed his door. On the marble apron at the top of the stairs a couple of nurses and a sleepy porter stood dopily watching Scarezza as he started down the spiral staircase. He’d had the good sense to put the automatic away. We followed him down like two store dicks after a fleeing shoplifter, and on about the second turn we all met Dr. Chapel coming up with an alert expression on his pleasant face. He looked as though he were either going to shake hands with the old man or tackle him.

He did neither. Instead, he looked past Scarezza at me and said disapprovingly, and I thought a bit disappointedly, “Mr. Goodey, I really cannot allow you to take a patient from this establishment without the proper procedure.”

By this time he and Scarezza had passed each other without so much as a how-dee-do, and Chapel joined our merry little group in pursuit—although not very hot—of the old man.

“I’m not, Doctor,” I told him as he fell into step between me and Thompson, who had given way eagerly. “Mr. Scarezza seems to be going someplace, and we’re just following along. Would you care to join the posse?”

We were now in the foyer, and Scarezza was just going through the outer door. He went down the steps, but we stopped at the top and watched his dark figure leave the circle of light created by the tall street lamp.

“He seems determined to leave,” I observed to Chapel. “Do you want me to stop him?” It was the least I could offer, considering that I’d set Scarezza in motion.

Chapel thought for a moment, but his forehead didn’t show it. “No,” he said in a long-drawn-out syllable, “we have no right to stop him. Mr. Scarezza is free to go where he likes.”

From somewhere out in the dark we heard the wheezing roar of an old car coming reluctantly to life. Gears clashed, followed by a short screech of tires. Well, so long, Tony, I said to myself. Nice knowing you. But then, still with no lights on, a dusty 1957 Ford hardtop came barreling into the building’s half-moon drive. Welcome back, Tony.

Scarezza brought the car to a sliding stop, leaned over, rolled down the passenger side window and shouted, “Hey, Goodey.” Ever helpful, I trotted down the steps and leaned toward the window of the car.

“Yes, Mr. Scarezza?”

“Where exactly did you say Maggie was living on the Contra Costa Canal?”

“I didn’t,” I said, smiling in an effort to keep from seeming rude.

Mr. Scarezza said something in Italian and popped the clutch, nearly taking my head off as I stepped smartly out of the way. The car veered away into the second half of the horseshoe, and the headlights came on as it disappeared on a sharp turn to the right

By this time, Chapel had joined me on the narrow sidewalk. Thompson was on his way back to his anatomy textbook. The doctor seemed subdued and didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he did.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said with quiet wonder, “whatever did you say to Mr. Scarezza to get him to take off like that?”

“This is going to sound a bit strange, Doctor,” I said, “but all I did was tell him that he’s a father.”

I know an exit line when I deliver one, so I walked over to my car, leaving Dr. Chapel to deal with his gaping jaw and fevered imagination.

17

As I drove back toward North Beach, I gave some passing thought to Scarezza and his .45 coming up against Jim Barton’s old hawg-leg, but I didn’t worry about it too much. They were both old enough to take care of themselves.

Broadway was alive. Bumper-to-bumper carloads of yokels stared at heel-to-toe pedestrians, who stared right back when they weren’t trying to catch a free glimpse of flesh throughout the curtained entrances of topless clubs. They were all having a hell of a good time. The only person I could see having a better one was a heavy from the Klondike Klub who was carefully beating up a citizen who’d had the temerity to get drunk before ten p.m. And not at the Klondike. No sense of protocol.

The Broadway clubs were just getting into top gear. The quality trade was lined up across the sidewalk to get into a famous drag cabaret, and doorway barkers were frantically trying to skim off whatever cream was left. “Come on, come on,” chanted a slick young thug in the doorway of Skin Alley, “come right in. Show’s just starting this minute, folks. Step right in for a full hour of solid sensation, sizzling syncopation, and sex, sex, sex!” What the barker meant was a twenty-minute wait, thirty-five minutes of tantalization, five minutes of sock-it-to-’em, and out the suckers came, at least eight bucks poorer and very little wiser.

At a momentary break in the traffic, I cut off Broadway into a dimly lit network of small streets and alleyways, the part of North Beach few of the Saturday night crowd ever saw. When you live in North Beach you know all about these narrow, wandering streets and cul-de-sacs that offer parking places unblemished by tourists. I found these all full of tourists’ cars, so I left the Morris half on the sidewalk and half in somebody’s prize bed of daffodils. It was a short walk through a couple of alleys to The Jungle, where Irma was supposed to meet me.

I like alleys. You can never tell what you’ll find in them. This one was full of surprises. At a point where one alley jogged slightly into another, I heard a sound somewhere in the darkness to the left of me. It was high-pitched, could have been a moan or a cry for help. It could have been a cocker spaniel in heat. Whatever it was, it stopped me and turned me two or three steps toward the sound. Where I stood was slightly lit by the dirty glow of a street light, but straight ahead of me was as flat and black as a strip of new blacktop road.

Out of that blackness a pair of strong hands grabbed the lapels of my jacket and jerked me forward. A foot in my stomach provided a nice amount of leverage, and I found myself flying through the darkness like an oversized bullet. Someone had been practicing his judo.

Fortunately, someone—small and hard, mind you, but better than nothing—got between me and the ground, so I slid off him to a fairly safe landing except for a dull pain in my knee, a scraped cheek, and a mouthful of something gritty and nasty. Not that I had a lot of time to feel thankful, because what felt like several dozen pairs of invisible hands began trying to grasp each other—through my body. I lashed out with a foot hopefully, but hit nothing. And to make it worse, a pair of hands latched onto my ankle and began dragging me on my back away from the dimly lit alley into ultimate darkness. At the same time, several pairs of well-shod feet began trying to make field goals with my head. One glanced off a bit too sharply, taking, I felt sure, one of my ears with it.

I thought about my police special tucked neatly among my underwear in the trunk of my car two blocks away. More to the point, I thought about the palm sap nestling next to the handkerchief in my left rear pocket. The palm sap is not necessarily a very sporting weapon—six ounces of birdshot nicely wrapped in a leather cover just made to fit in the palm with a couple of loops for fingers—but it is comforting. To the sapper, that is. It turns what looks like a lazy slap of the open hand into a real knee trembler. The civil liberties people call it dirty pool, but where were they now?

I lay there bumping feet first down the alley, protecting my head with my arms as best I could and thinking that no trip lasts forever. He had to drop my feet sometime. But I wasn’t sure that I was looking forward to that event. The outsides of my arms and elbows were catching hell, not to mention my ribs. After this, I could no longer claim a perfect body. My coat and shirt were now knotted up under my arms, and bits of broken glass and dog bones joined in the fun by scarifying my back from waist to armpits. This was getting past a joke.

Then it happened. The fiend hauling on my ankles tripped and fell backward. When my heels hit the ground, I gave up self-defense for a moment, got my feet under me at the cost of a nasty kick to the jaw, and sprang forward as far as I could, hoping to come down on the dragger. At the same time I reached back for the palm sap and slipped it on my right hand. I came down with a satisfying crunch on a limb belonging to the man on the ground and was rewarded with his howl of pain. Things were looking up, but I was still surrounded by slugging midgets.

An old vice-squadder once told me that in a fight a wall to your back was worth more than a ten-lesson course in jujitsu. His face had looked like a pound and a half of chopped liver, but I took his advice. Figuring that there had to be a wall to one side or the other, I flailed out with the sap and bulled my way to the left, knocking shadowy figures and trash cans out of my way as I went. My outstretched hand touched a brick wall, and I flung myself toward it. A bit too enthusiastically. My head hit the bricks with a jarring crunch and a pain which obscured everything but a solid thump to the kidney that one of my friends dealt me.

Shaking my head to clear it, I felt better and continued to hit anything I could see that would stand still. I was beginning to make out my attackers pretty well. There were five or six of them, none taller than my shoulder and all wearing some sort of wool skiing mask that seemed to take some of the sting out of my sap. They went down, all right, but they came bouncing right back up with hard knuckles and knees. None of them said a word; the only sounds were grunts and exploded breath and punches landing.

Don’t let movie fights fool you. Throwing punches may be satisfying—if they land—but it’s hard work. Every punch I gave took a little more out of me, and every one I took hurt a little more.

You’d think that at a time like that I’d be too busy to do much gazing around, but I began to notice something tall and bulky out in the alleyway at the entrance to our little arena. It had two legs and stood with hands on its hips. My first emotion was relief. Good deal. The Seventh Fleet was about to arrive and rescue me. But the figure didn’t move. For what seemed like five minutes but may have been thirty seconds, it just stood there looking on. Well, I rationalized, as I discouraged a knee to the balls, it’s no good rushing in if you can’t see. He’s acclimatizing his eyes to the darkness. Relief is only seconds away. But still he didn’t move. One hand moved up to his mouth with a red point of light in it.

Of course, he was finishing off the last few drags on a cigarette. No use in being wasteful. But even when the cigarette had been shot pinwheeling against a wall, my rescuer didn’t move. Maybe he was working out a game plan. It occurred to me with a sick feeling that maybe he was one of them. But just then I had to devote my attention to one little monkey who was trying to chew off my thumb while another of them jumped on my back and a third party took my legs out from under me, dropping me into a heap of rotting vegetables. One arm was pinned under me, and somebody was trying to rip the other one off.

I was just about to swallow my manly pride and start crying for help when my arm was suddenly freed, and the lad who had been wrenching it flew backward over a row of vegetable boxes. Someone was among the enemy, dealing out vicious and efficient punches, and quite quickly my attackers began to lose heart. Somehow, as he threw them away, they didn’t come back, but melted into the darkness. And without even saying goodbye. Soon I felt a pair of large hands grab the tattered front of my jacket and pull me to my feet.

“Things were beginning to look a bit dark for you, pal,” my rescuer said. Then he recognized me—or pretended to. “Goodey!” said Bruno Kolchik.

I didn’t say anything. I was too busy taking a rough inventory of my parts and accessories. I seemed to be in one piece, if you don’t include extraneous bits of skin I couldn’t account for. My clothing—never much to start with—had suffered. I was not a well-dressed private detective. However, my palm sap was virtually unblemished, and I put it away tenderly. A boy’s best friend is not his mother.

All this time Bruno was watching me with an expression halfway between smug self-satisfaction and idle curiosity. I didn’t like either much and thought about getting the palm sap out again. Then I thought about the way he’d handled my attackers. Instead, I did a good neat job of tucking in my shirt and smoothing down what was left of my jacket.

“It took you quite a while to pitch in,” I said accusingly. “What were you waiting for—the first body count?” I was neither friendly nor grateful, which is perhaps a personal failing of mine.

“Hell, Goodey,” he said good-naturedly, “how quick would you be to jump into a back-alley brawl in North Beach? I didn’t have any idea it was you until I pulled you from the bottom of the heap.” He had me there. If our positions had been reversed, I’d be two blocks away whistling, and he’d be getting his spleen ventilated. That is, if I could believe that he didn’t know it was me. I had only his word for that.

“Anyway,” he said, “you don’t seem to have suffered any permanent damage. It’s a good thing you were wearing your old clothes. Do you have any idea who your little friends were?”

“It could have been my fan club, but somehow I doubt it. None of them left a visiting card. But if you run into half a dozen bruised midgets, you might ask them a few questions.”

“I’ll do that,” he said. “In the meantime, where were you going?”

“Why do you want to know?” I asked cautiously.

“You’re a suspicious bastard, Goodey,” he said.

“All right, I was going to The Jungle. Now what?”

“I’ll walk along with you,” Bruno said. “I might even buy you a drink, if you don’t mind too much.”

“Okay,” I said grudgingly, and we started walking. Neither of us said anything. I was too busy trying to figure out his motivation for becoming my best buddy. Goodey’s First Law is always mistrust someone in power who is being too obliging. I liked The Brother better when he was his own nasty self. I didn’t know what Bruno was thinking, and that bothered me a bit, too.

Sherman, the night manager at The Jungle, nearly wet himself when he saw The Brother, and started herding us toward a star sucker table directly under the flying tits. But Bruno turned toward a back table in the dark and stared at two local bravos until they remembered that they had a date elsewhere. He waded toward the table, memorizing the clientele, but I headed for the Gents’ room and a bit of general repairs.

I didn’t look too bad in the cracked and cloudy men’s-room mirror. A bit of soap and cold water took off a little more dirty skin, but I could have used some pancake on my scraped cheek. When I finished, I was sure that my mother could have picked me out of any Tenderloin lineup. I was rather hurt when a local queen with purple talons came in, caught my eye in a routine way and then shuddered delicately and ran out of the door.

As I came back into the main bar, I asked Sherman to watch for Irma Springler and tell her that I was there. He promised insincerely, and I set out for Bruno’s table, where he sat in lonely splendor like a leper at a convention of hypochondriacs. He didn’t seem to mind a bit. Bruno waved me to a chair and pointed out the drink he’d bought me. Or rather, the free drink the management had given him for me. Bruno’s money was no good at The Jungle, strangely enough.

I sipped my drink. It didn’t seem to be poisoned. I relaxed as much as aching muscles and increasing paranoia would allow.

Bruno surveyed the crowd at The Jungle as if about to order a mass arrest. Finally he spoke. “Is it too much to ask, Goodey, whether you’ve made any progress on the job we gave you?” A fair question, I figured, considering the job and Bruno’s connection with the mayor.

“I can tell you one thing,” I said. “I’ve eliminated a number of very remote suspects. That leaves a couple of million to go, but I’m working on it.”

Bruno just looked tired. “Is it possible, Goodey,” he asked, “that we made a mistake bringing you back?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but then it’s possible that I’m telling you less than I know. Just possible.”

His face said he didn’t believe it, but before he could expand on the theme, I became aware of someone standing next to our table. It was Irma Springler.

The Brother’s heavy eyes lit up at the sight of a pretty girl. At that moment, The Jungle was between shows, and its tacky stage yawned emptily in the shower of cold light. It was obvious that Irma hadn’t noticed The Brother sitting with me and certainly hadn’t expected to be sharing a table with him. Unless Bruno was a great actor, he didn’t have the slightest idea who she was.

I thought for a moment that Irma was going to bolt, but then she got a grip on herself and sat down in a chair by my side as far as possible from Bruno. All the while I kept smiling like a sex maniac. Sherman suddenly appeared with a drink for Irma and seemed disposed to hang around and chat. My fear was that he’d inadvertently drop her first name. Bruno was not that much of a dope; he’d know the second name.

“That’s fine, just fine, Sherman,” I said in my best Gauleiter voice. “We’ll call you if we need you.” Sherman started and then shied off like a big dog accustomed to rebuffs but always hoping for better.

That left the three of us. Bruno was looking interested in Irma and rather pleased with himself. Irma looked as though she didn’t know whether to flee or go for his face with a broken bottle. I don’t know how I looked, but all I wanted to do was keep Irma out of official hands. I knew Johnny Maher was looking for her; Bruno probably knew the same.

“Say,” I said stupidly, “you two probably don’t know each other.” Boring hard into Irma’s eyes with mine, I said, “Alice, this is Deputy Chief of Police Kolchik.” I couldn’t have been more emphatic if I’d gotten up on the table and tap-danced his title in Morse code. “Chief, this is Alice Parsons, a friend of mine.” I only hoped she wouldn’t forget the name.

“How do you do, Alice?” said Bruno with a heavy bonhomie of someone who is sure he’s going to be liked. “Joe didn’t tell me he was going to meet someone as pretty as you here.” Oh, me and Bruno were great buddies, we were.

“And I didn’t expect him to show up with a copper, Mr. Kolchik,” Irma said. “I don’t like coppers.” She didn’t say it quietly, and we were suddenly in the middle of a growing island of silence. Oh, great, a cop hater. Just what the situation called for.

Bruno leaned back in his chair with the expression of a man who’d just been hit in the face with a strawberry waffle: not hurt, but puzzled and just beginning to get sore. Irma didn’t give him a chance. “It’s not just that you’re a copper,” she said in a voice diamond-edged with malice. “Some of them are honest. But you’re a political cop. You got where you are on your brother’s back. Don’t think I don’t know who you are.”

The famous Kolchik ears were turning a translucent carmine. Bruno put both big paws on the table as if ready to vault over it and gritted through his large teeth: “Listen, miss”—he said the word the way anyone else would have used slut—“you may know who I am, but I’d like to know just who the hell you think you are. Who are you, anyway?”

I honestly think she was going to tell him, but just then, in the smoky middle distance, I spotted Phil Franks coming our way. It would be more accurate to say that he was drifting our way like a giant barge cut loose in a choppy sea, with the hapless Sherman acting as guide-cum-scout, apologizing for upset drinks and customers accidentally pushed under tables. Phil announced his impending presence and saved Irma’s bacon by croaking out: “Good evening, Bruno, welcome to The Jungle.” Phil’s not shy.

This cut short both Irma’s answer and The Brother’s likely reaction. Quickly becoming aware that he’d soon be sharing a table with me, Phil—not Bruno’s favorite person—and a hostile broad, Kolchik knew a losing combination when he saw one and looked for a way out. Not seeing one, he decided to make one. Pausing only to glower at me in a very meaningful way, Bruno headed for the other exit with little regard for the paying customers he trampled.

“Hey,” said one of these socialites in the middle of the mob, “who do you think you’re shoving around?” He struggled to his feet.

“You, Buster,” said The Brother, putting the citizen back in a sitting position so forcefully that the chair splintered under him. Another job of soothing for Sherman.

Irma and I had plenty of time to hiss at each other before Fat Phil arrived.

“What the hell,” I said. “Here I am trying to keep you out of the hands of the police, and you practically stick your head in Kolchik’s mouth. What gives?”

“I’ve got my reasons,” she said sulkily. “I can’t stand that bastard. Besides, nobody asked you to save me from anything. I can take care of myself. I was just about to tell your big buddy who I was anyway.”

Any clever answers I might have had were stifled by the arrival of Fat Phil. I gave Irma an I’ll-sort-you-out-later look and turned toward Phil.

He slipped into two chairs as close to the table as he could manage and sat glistening with sweat and looking like a textbook case of cardiac arrest. Sherman appeared with more drinks for us and Phil’s sickly special. Somehow Phil got the glass to his lips a few times, and his green complexion turned several shades lighter.

“So you found her,” he finally gasped, favoring Irma with a proprietary leer. “What do you think?”

“Sensational, Phil,” I said. “You’ll make another million, at least. Your Doc Irving is quite a little miracle worker.”

He frowned. Phil didn’t like his little secrets discovered. But then he shrugged, a massive operation in itself, and turned to Irma. “How did you make out with our friend today?” he asked.

“All right,” said Irma in a carefully controlled voice, keeping it businesslike and cool. “He’s ready to start Monday morning.”

“How about you?” he asked slyly, looking intently into her face. “Are you ready? Are you sure you’re ready?”

I was watching Irma’s face, too, and she handled it beautifully. “I’m ready, Phil,” she said without a tremor of revulsion and without coyness either, “or I wouldn’t have gone to see Dr. Irving today.” She held his eye, not consciously or challengingly, but definitely, until he shifted back to me, apparently satisfied. I’d have to watch that girl. I was no match for her.

“You see, Joe,” he said, “she’s going to be sensational. Would you believe she’s only twenty-one years old?”

“No.”

“Thousands will,” he said with self-satisfaction. “Thousands will. And I’ve got her on an ironclad contract.”

All three of us knew exactly what he was talking about, but none of us said it. And each had a different motive for saying nothing. The ghost of Tina D’Oro sat in the empty chair at the table.

“Only one big problem, Joe,” Phil rumbled on. “I still haven’t got the right name for Irma to use. Can you think of a good one?” I could have made some interesting suggestions. But I had to watch my smart mouth and Irma’s tender sensibilities if she was going to be any help at all. So I just turned my mouth up at the corners in what might have passed for a smile.

“Sorry, Phil,” I said. “I’m not much good on the creative side, but if it will help, I’ll give it a lot of thought.”

I’m sure he was about to thank me profusely when the lights dimmed and the house band began to thrash about in the pit, making noises. But, instead of one of the second-line bimbos coming on, a large motion-picture screen began to descend in the jungle-clearing stage. And Sherman’s anonymous voice said, “And now, friends and gentle customers, as we promised you, The Jungle proudly presents, in living color, in brilliant detail, the one, the only, the Late Great Tina D’Oro!”

The pit band went mad on cue, and I could see Irma instantly go tense. She still had a glass in her hand, and it looked as though she was going to crush it. Her teeth went into her full lower lip, and I knew she wasn’t going to sit through any Tina films. I put a restraining, and I hoped soothing, hand on her wrist and started to my feet. Phil’s eyes were on the screen. His face had taken on an abstract, distant look.

“Sorry, Phil,” I said, pulling Irma woodenly to her feet, “we’ve got a hot date on the other side of town.”

“Sure, Joe,” he said absently. “See you later.”

I started moving Irma away from him as fast as I could, but I heard his fat voice following me: “Take good care of the merchandise, Joe.” I don’t think Irma heard, and I pretended that I didn’t.

Moving Irma through the tightly bunched tables was not easy. My already aching arms were starting to crumble by the time we reached the side door. But outside on the sidewalk, Irma took several long gulps of cool night air and seemed to recover. She moved slightly away from me and supported herself with a hand on a brick wall.

“Thanks,” she said after a moment “I didn’t know what to do in there.” She shook her head and shuddered deeply at the memory.

“Are you okay now?”

“I think so.”

“What now?” I said.

“Now, I’m going home,” she answered. She took a couple of steps as if to demonstrate that she could walk, but then her legs gave way a bit, and she leaned back against the wall. “It has been a hard day,” she said.

“I’ve got a car a couple of blocks away,” I said. “If you could hold that wall up for five minutes, I’ll bring it here and give you a ride home.”

She looked back toward the side entrance of The Jungle and then at the stream of humanity bobbing and throbbing along Broadway. “I’d rather walk with you to the car,” she said. “I don’t think I could stand five more minutes of this particular location.”

I thought about the most direct route to the Morris, and then about the banditos I might run into on it. It wouldn’t do to meet them again so soon with a slightly woozy girl in tow. That is, unless she carried a palm sap, too. I decided to give that route a pass until I was a bit better prepared. We’d take a longer, safer way.

“All right,” I said, “but we’ll have to walk along Broadway for a bit. Here, let me give you a bit of support.” I put an arm around her waist—a very nice waist with just the right amount of flesh on it—and pulled her away from the wall. I could feel her resist at first, then give up and put her arm around my waist.

We must have seemed like any other happy Saturday night couple, except that one of us looked as if he’d been rolled around in the gutter by a pack of Great Danes. Irma had so far been polite enough not to mention it. Or maybe she hadn’t noticed.

We had only half a block of Broadway to negotiate and made it unscathed. A picket line of young sailors at one point offered to block the sidewalk. But at the last moment they broke up in a welter of sub-drunken giggles and shy looks at Irma. Then we turned off into the small but well-lit street which would lead to the cul-de-sac where the Morris lurked. Nothing jumped out of the shadows at us.

The short drive to the 400 block of Union Street was uneventful. Irma was slumped against the passenger-side door, saying nothing, and I was beginning to feel every bruised and aching muscle, sinew and bone. I leaned the car against a curb in front of her building, flicked the ignition off and went limp. Nobody said anything.

After a decent interval, I said, “Let’s flip a coin to see who carries whom up the stairs.”

“I’ve a better idea,” Irma said, and her voice sounded much more relaxed. “I’ll just sleep here in the car. You won’t mind, will you?”

“Not if you’ll let me wash up and change clothes up at your place. In case you didn’t notice, I’m less than my impeccable self this evening.”

“I did notice,” she said, “but I didn’t like to say anything. What happened? Did that appointment turn nasty?”

“Not exactly. But on the way to meet you at The Jungle I took a shortcut through an alley and met a group of gentlemen who took a dislike to me and weren’t shy in letting me know.”

“I hope you weren’t badly hurt.”

“We won’t know until the post-mortem,” I said. “Do you think we’re ready to attempt the climb to your place yet?”

“No, but if we don’t go now, I’ll never get up the nerve again.” Getting one of my suitcases out of the trunk of the car, I tried to remember exactly when I had put it there. It seemed a long, long time ago.

The stairs up to Irma’s apartment hadn’t gotten any less steep, and the suitcase on my arm seemed to be doubling in weight at every floor. But finally we were standing in front of Irma’s door. Nanny Goat next door stuck her head out, took one look at me and my suitcase, snorted sharply, and ducked back in with a slam of the door.

“There goes your reputation in the neighborhood,” I said.

“It couldn’t be any lower with her,” said Irma, unlocking the door and stepping inside. “She’s convinced that I’m a prostitute, and when I’m out she slips little notes under my door in favor of chastity and against the sins of the flesh. The bathroom is straight through that door on the right. Help yourself.”

I marched, suitcase in hand, toward the bathroom door. Irma’s apartment was almost military in its simplicity. The walls that weren’t painted a flat white were covered with cork or hessian. Paintings or other decorations were few. Bric-a-brac was nonexistent. The couch was a flat slab of foam rubber scattered with a few cushions. A door led to a small kitchen, and beyond that another probably opened onto her bedroom. The apartment wasn’t quite so anonymous as mine, but if it was stamped with a personality, it was a subtle one.

In the bathroom—shower, no bathtub—I stripped off my tatters and admired myself in a long, narrow mirror. I looked like an aerial map of a long, thin peninsula with the elevations marked out in bruises, some blue, some faint mauve. My days as a figure model were over. In the shower, the pins and needles of the hot spray went to work like Torquemada’s stiletto. I wished I’d stayed dirty. But soon the heat began to wash away some of the pain, and I started to feel faintly human again. As I dressed, I debated whether to strap my pistol on again, but decided against it. I left it on top of the clothes in my suitcase, but loaded it just in case.

When I got back out into the living room, Irma had two drinks poured and was sitting on the foam-rubber sofa. She looked fully recovered. She looked better than that. In a relaxed state her face was more than pretty. Doc Irving would have been happy to claim her short, straight nose as his own work. I sipped my drink and enjoyed looking at her.

“Do you always carry suitcases of clothes around in the trunk of your car?” Irma asked.

“Not really,” I told her, explaining as vaguely as possible that through no fault of my own my apartment was full of Chinese delinquents and, possibly, cops. In theory, I said, I had a bed there. But the odds against finding it empty were less than encouraging. I may have said this with a slight ulterior motive, sitting as we were on a couch which looked comfortable enough to sleep on.

Irma’s reaction was mixed. She didn’t laugh in my face, but neither did she melt with sympathy and offer me a place to sleep, although I didn’t give up hoping. For the moment, though, I thought I’d better steer the conversation back into a channel which might lead in the direction of Tina’s murderer. Unless, of course, I was having drinks with her right now. I tried to bear that in mind.

“If it won’t upset you,” I said, “could we talk a bit more about the last time you saw Tina and the events leading up to the night you found her—uh—found her in her apartment?”

“I suppose we’d better,” she said. She looked me dead in the eye. “I want to find out who killed Tina as much as you do, Joe. Maybe more than you do. To you, it’s just a job. Am I right?”

“Yes,” I said. Aside from threats coming from various Kolchiks and their minions, it was just a job. This was a girl you couldn’t bullshit. It made life easier if I didn’t try.

“Well, to me it’s the most important thing in my life. I hate the whole idea, but if I have to, I’ll let Dr. Irving inflate my breasts like footballs. And I’ll shake them at anybody who comes into The Jungle if it will get me closer to knowing who killed Tina.”

“And what if whoever did it has nothing to do with The Jungle? What if it was somebody completely outside North Beach, someone who’ll never come into the club again?”

“Then I’ll have been shaking my tits in vain, won’t I? That’s the chance I’ve got to take. But I have a feeling that I’m not wasting my time. Tina’s world was a small one. She’d never lived any place but North Beach since she came here. I could count on the fingers of one hand the people she knew from more than five miles away from The Jungle.”

“That narrows it down considerably,” I said. “But let’s try to thin the suspects a bit more. For instance, who’s your current favorite?” She didn’t answer right away, and it wasn’t because she was considering the question. Something clouded behind those blue-gray eyes. Little Irma wasn’t being completely candid with her new partner in crime detection.

“Let’s not kid each other, Irma,” I said. “You’ve got a favorite, but you’re not going to tell me who it is. Right?” She did it again—looked me in the eye. A disconcerting habit for a pretty girl.

“You’re right, Joe. I have. Are you telling me everything you know?”

She had me there.

“All right,” I said. “Every partnership has its little running-in difficulties. Let’s just agree not to lie to each other. That will help. If you want to keep something to yourself, that’s okay by me. And I’ll do the same. Now, just for the hell of it, run once more through the last time you saw Tina.”

Patiently, Irma recounted that last meeting with Tina, the setting of Tina’s hair, what they said, as best she could recall, the parting after making a date for early the next morning after the last show at The Jungle. Then she switched to when she found Tina’s body. Nothing new there, either, until she was telling me, quite calmly, I thought, about the chaos that set in after the door to the apartment had been opened. Then something occurred to her.

“Joe,” she said, “I can’t put my finger on it, but even at a time like that—with Tina dead on the floor—I found myself looking around the apartment, just aimlessly gazing. Maybe to avoid looking at Tina. They tried to get me out of the apartment, but I wouldn’t go. I kept thinking—it’s the strangest thing—I kept thinking something was missing. Something I was used to seeing just wasn’t there. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it’s driving me crazy. I can’t think what it was.” She put long, slim fingers to either side of her forehead.

“Don’t strain,” I said. “It’ll come to you when you least expect it. The harder you try, the more elusive it will be. Let me take your mind off it for a minute with another question.”

She looked up at me under heavy lashes with a look I couldn’t consider completely trusting. Or maybe it was just wariness. “What is it?”

“Why did you have a go at Bruno Kolchik tonight?”

“I don’t like him.”

“That was obvious,” I said. “But you must have some reason. It’s not just because he’s a cop. Or even because he got to the top on his brother’s back. There’s got to be another reason.”

“Does there?”

“Yes. Remember our no-lies policy. How can I trust you if you so obviously don’t trust me?”

She thought this over carefully. If I say so myself, it had the ring of truth. Finally, she said: “All right, I’ll give it a try. I went for Bruno Kolchik because of something Tina told me.” She stopped as if reconsidering her candor.

“And what was that?” I prompted.

“A couple of weeks ago, Bruno came to see Tina and told her that the mayor was about to get rid of her. For political reasons or something. What’s more, he suggested that it might be a good idea if he—Bruno—sort of took the mayor’s place.”

“And what did Tina say?”

“She told him to fuck off, of course,” Irma said positively. “And when he hinted that she might get leaned on, Tina offered to claw his rotten eyes out.”

“She told you this?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“And do you think she told the mayor about it?”

Irma bit a thumbnail. “I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t get a chance to. Tina wasn’t one to rush into something without thinking it over.”

Bruno’s little try at Tina gave me something to think over. Maybe he would bear looking into. I copped a look at my watch. It was past midnight, and my body felt like four in the morning. I drained the watery liquid in the bottom of my glass and stood up.

“I’d better hit the road for home,” I said mock-heroically. “The later I stay out, the more diminutive Chinese I’ll have to evict from my bed. It’s not all fun being a private detective.” I looked around for my suitcase, knowing very well where it was. Finally spotting it and limping—genuinely—over to it, I picked the case up as if it weighed several tons and turned bleakly toward the door.

“Thanks very much,” I said, “for the use of your bathroom. I leave here a cleaner if not a wiser man. If you need to find me…” I saw that she was fighting a losing battle with a smile and let my voice trail off. I stood looking at her and trying not to appear too foolish. I don’t think I was succeeding.

“If you’d like,” she said fatalistically, “you could sleep on this couch. It’s not very soft, but…”

“Great,” I said, dropping my suitcase and no doubt half of the plaster on the ceiling of the apartment below. “I accept.” I never have been very good at mealy-mouthed if-it-won’t-be-too-much-troubles. An expression flickered across her face. It could have been a second thought. Too late for that.

It didn’t take Irma long to make up the couch into a neat little bed topped with a satin-edged blanket. We said our civil goodnights. The door to her bedroom had hardly closed when I stripped off all my clothes, hobbled to the couch and slipped between the smooth, cool sheets. I lay there trying not to think about who killed Tina and attempting to ignore the multitude of little pains gathering like the Cherokee nation to massacre my central nervous system.

I closed my eyes, and I could swear that my eyelids ached. I hoped that those lads from the alley were going to feel as bad in the morning as I did right then. I tried to imagine that a soothing, healing liquid was flowing over my body, but that hurt, too.

Sometime later, a noise, not much of a noise, more like a swish, jerked my eyelids open, and a small, painful turn of my head told me that I wasn’t alone. Something pale, filmy and diaphanous was moving toward me from the direction of Irma’s room. It was Irma. The light from a moth-splattered street lamp outside the window showed that she was barefoot and wearing a translucent, off-white nightgown which skimmed the top of her knees.

“Joe,” she said. “Joe, are you still awake?”

“Yes, but I’m not so sure I’m still alive.”

She was at the side of the couch, leaning, then kneeling.

“I can’t sleep,” she said. “Tina’s in her grave, and I’m all alone. I don’t think I can stand to be alone tonight. May I sleep with you, Joe?”

I won’t go into all the thoughts that ricocheted through my head. They were too various and not all to my credit. But I knew what she meant. The night that Pat caught that final, irretrievable plane to New York I was reduced to sleeping with a big, plush teddy bear I’d bought her in happier days. It was better than nothing. I suppose, to Irma, so was I. I didn’t really think it was love.

It won’t do to hesitate too long in a situation like that. “Sure,” I said. “But for God’s sake be careful. Don’t bump me too hard, or I’ll probably come apart all over your couch.”

“Don’t move,” she said softly. “I’ll climb over you to the other side.”

Something feather-soft fluttered over my face, leaving a suggestion of a dry, clean but faintly exotic perfume. That didn’t hurt a bit. She lifted the covers slightly and then was between them, lying on her left side facing me. We weren’t actually touching, but I could feel the slight pressure of her body on the bottom sheet.

“There,” she said. “Did that hurt you?”

“No, but it’s the only thing that’s happened to me in the last few hours that hasn’t.” I could feel her breath softly on my right ear.

“Where does it hurt most?”

“Everywhere,” I said. “I feel as though a vast herd of tiny elephants has been using me for a parade ground. It would be easier for me to tell you where it hurt least.”

“There?” she breathed, placing a warm hand on my bare chest.

“Nope,” I said. “One of those little bastards was butting me. I think he was trying to put his head through my chest.”

“How about there?”

She moved her hand down in easy stages over my ribs to my stomach, which when last seen had looked as if someone had painted a stormy sunset around my navel. My involuntary wince answered her question, and Irma’s hand wandered slowly southward, then paused.

“Joe,” she said with a note of genuine surprise in her voice, “aren’t you wearing any clothes at all?”

“Nope,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting any company tonight.”

“I wasn’t expecting to offer any,” she said. “But somehow it just…”

“Happened?”

“Yes. I got into bed and found that I couldn’t help thinking about Tina. I didn’t want to. I’ve been fighting it ever since…ever since Thursday night. But it caught up with me, and I just couldn’t stand to be alone.”

My ears were taking in what she was saying, but my mind couldn’t stop thinking about her hand on my hipbone. Somewhere in back of my mind a spark of feeling was rising which had nothing to do with Tina or the hurt my body had received. I think Irma noticed. She moved her hand even farther down.

“Does it hurt there?”

“It does actually,” I said. “One of my friends had a knee like a pile driver. But don’t stop.”

18

I woke up with the taste, smell, and feel of Irma stamped on my bruised senses, but no Irma. I was alone on the couch, Irma’s nightgown was still on the floor, and the sound of the shower was coming out of the open bathroom door. I got up with a grunt of vividly remembered pain and walked stiffly into the bathroom. She was behind the opaque glass door, and steam was billowing out of the shower stall.

“Good morning,” I called. “If you don’t take all day in there, I’ll buy you breakfast at Rico’s.”

Irma turned off the shower, slid the door open and came out wearing only a towel tied over her hair. When she saw me, she stopped and stared. “My God,” she said, “you weren’t kidding last night. You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” I said, wiping the long mirror with a hand towel and taking a look. There was a lot in what she said. Most of my bruises had turned a nasty yellow with red and blue overtones. They covered most of my body from knees to chest, with a few wild-card extras above and below. An especially vivid blotch over my left kidney made me wince just looking at it. But, except for general soreness, I didn’t feel much worse than I used to after a fairly dirty football game. Maybe I would later.

Irma laid a hand softly on the least bruised part of my rib cage. It didn’t hurt a bit. “I tried to tell you,” I said, “but you wouldn’t listen. I think you must have done most of this last night.”

“Fool!” she said, kissing me and going out of the connecting door to her bedroom. If this was what a private detective’s life was like, I was sorry I hadn’t switched over years ago. Even with Maher and the midgets from the alley. By the time I showered again and shaved, Irma was dressed and waiting impatiently.

Rico’s is one of those sidewalk cafes where a certain sort of San Franciscan likes to be seen eating overpriced bacon and eggs and reading the funny papers. If it’s a good day with blue skies and that luminous sunshine only San Francisco gets, overcooked eggs taste like ambrosia, and local eccentrics are transformed into wits. If not, you sit with your teeth chattering in the dirty wind, picking grit out of your food and watching people file toward the Golden Gate Bridge to commit suicide.

This Sunday morning was bright, if a little brisk, and I felt just fine sitting across the table from Irma and watching the clientele pickle their livers with Ramos gin fizzes. The feeling is that if it’s frothy and sweet, it’s not really alcohol. Rico must have been doing some sort of penance. He was out on the sidewalk taking orders himself, but in his usual half-hearted manner which said they might never get to the kitchen. He sneered when we turned down a pre-breakfast drink, took our orders and then lingered to enjoy the view down the front of Irma’s long-sleeved white blouse.

“I know you’re having a good time, Rico,” I said, “but we’re hungry. If you’ll get me a telephone, I’ll send out for a sandwich.”

Rico knows who I am—vaguely—but pretends not to. He looked past me with the distantly pained expression of someone who once watched his mother drown rather than ruin a new suit. Then he did a fairly military about-face and marched stiffly toward the kitchen.

“Do you really expect to get any food talking to him like that?”

Irma asked me. “He’s probably gone to get the bouncer. I’ve seen Rico refuse service to people just because he didn’t like their posture.”

“That’s because they smiled at him instead of kicking his shins,” I said. “If I’d set his coat on fire, we’d have our breakfast by now.” Just then the double doors to the kitchen came flying open, and a giant in a dirty white coat came out carrying a huge tray high overhead on one arm. With five long strides, he was at our side, had commandeered a tray stand and was sliding covered dishes of food onto our table like a demon blackjack dealer.

Working as smoothly as the best shell-and-pea operator in the world, he quickly uncovered and re-covered each of the stainless- steel containers, giving us an intriguing glimpse of mushrooms, bacon, sausage, kippers, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, steak, and two or three other things I’ve forgotten. This was not the simple bacon, eggs and English muffins we’d ordered, and the hostile stares of six over-dressed tourists across the sidewalk gave me a good clue to its rightful owner.

“With the compliments of Monsieur Rico,” said the magician, pouring two giant cups of coffee and vanishing into the kitchen.

“Will you have some scrambled eggs?” I asked Irma with an I-told-you-so look. We began to nibble around the edges of this feast. There was a momentary flurry as the robbed tourists leaped up from their chairs and flounced down the sidewalk, but then Rico’s settled down to its usual quiet hum of dropped names and characters assassinated.

Something was still nagging Irma as she chewed thoughtfully on a bit of Rico’s breakfast steak. Finally, she said: “You were wrong, Joe. It still hasn’t come. I’ve been trying not to think about that thing—whatever it was—that was missing from Tina’s apartment that night. But I can’t help it. I’ve got to get back into that apartment and see if I can remember what it was. It may not be important, but I’ll rest easier if I know.”

“How are you going to manage that?” I asked, peering in at a flock of grilled kippers and deciding against it. “Fat Phil’s not offering guided tours, is he?”

“Well, you’re a policeman—you were a policeman. Can’t you jimmy the door or something?”

That’s the public for you, always giving a copper credit for useful skills and unethical methods. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s been a long time since I did any burglary, but I could have a go at it. I wouldn’t mind taking a look at Tina’s place myself. The scene of the crime and all that. But why don’t we just ask Fat Phil and skip all the counterspy routine?”

“Do you think he’d let us?”

My educated guess was interrupted when Irma reached over and jogged my arm. “Joe,” she said, “I think there’s somebody across the street who’s trying to get your attention.”

I looked up, and there a couple of feet back in a tall, thin alley was Lee, one of Gabe Fong’s juvenile delinquents. I knew him by the flashy club jacket. He was mouthing something fairly urgent, so I motioned for him to come over. We had plenty of breakfast left. But he took a backward step deeper into the alley and gestured even more frantically. If they went back to making silent movies, that boy’s future was assured.

I thought about ignoring him, but then the better side of my nature prevailed, and I decided that I’d better at least find out what he wanted. Spearing a pork sausage and gulping some coffee, I stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Irma. “Then we’ll see what we can do about getting into Tina’s apartment. This shouldn’t take long.” When I started across Broadway, Lee was no longer in sight, but I found him a few feet farther down the alley looking as agitated as a smooth-faced, nineteen-year-old Chinese boy can.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said, “come with me quickly. Gabriel Fong is in trouble. Hurry!” He was already scuttling sideways down the alley, looking back anxiously at me like a relay runner waiting for the baton. Only I was the baton.

“Trouble?” I said wittily. “What sort of trouble?” I kept moving with Lee in order to keep him within earshot. Soon we were twenty yards or more inside the alley. “Stand still, damn it,” I said. “What do you mean, Gabriel Fong is in trouble?”

Lee stopped and turned fully back toward me. “I can’t tell you now,” he said. “There’s no time.”

I reached out and grabbed his thin, bony arm between shoulder and elbow. I dug my heels in, and he had to stop or lose the arm. But he wasn’t very happy about it. “There is time,” I insisted. “Look, either you tell me what you’re talking about, or I’m not going any place with you. Now, just what sort of trouble is Fong in?”

Lee’s face underwent a disturbing transition. His arm stopped pulling against my grip, and he turned to face me. I automatically relaxed my hold on him.

“To tell the truth, Joe Goodey,” he said, “Gabriel Fong isn’t in trouble at all. But you are.” His other hand came up fast with a white-metal .32 caliber revolver in it. It couldn’t have cost more than ten bucks and looked about as dangerous as a cap pistol. All by itself, my hand let go of Lee’s arm and started minding its own business.

I didn’t bother going through the what’s-the-meaning-of-this routine. I figured that if he wanted to tell me, he’d tell me. My police special, which I’d finally gotten around to putting on my belt, hung there as useless as an extra kidney.

“The wall,” said Lee, shoving his shiny toy gun up toward my sternum, too far away to grab but close enough to kill even if it merely exploded as he pulled the trigger. Up close, I could see that it was one of those Czechoslovakian imports that had been blowing hands off lately. I felt I ought to warn him, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate at that moment. “Put your hands against the wall wide apart, Goodey, and lean,” he said.

I knew the drill. Lee had learned his lesson well from all those cop shows on TV. I leaned forward until my hands were touching the wall and only my toes were still on the ground. A deft hand plucked my pistol out of its holster, disappeared it and then delved into my left rear pocket for my palm sap. I had been hoping he wouldn’t do that.

“Very nice,” said Lee, admiring the sap.

“It’ll do,” I said. “How are you feeling this morning, Lee? A little stiff and bruised perhaps?”

I shouldn’t have said that. Suddenly my feet were swept out from under me and I fell heavily against the wall, absorbing most of the fall with my cheek—the unscraped one. I felt the sting of the sap against the back of my head, not hard enough to stun me but enough to hurt like hell.

For some time I didn’t say anything, just lay there in the dirt trying to hold the back of my head on and doing my best not to scream out with pain. I nearly bit my lower lip off and waited for the waves of stinging pain to recede a little. Finally they did, and I was left with a bleeding face, a stinking headache, and Lee standing there waiting for me to do something stupid. I didn’t do it.

“Do you think I could get up now?” I asked through a dry and dusty mouth.

“Of course,” said Lee, friendly enough, but he didn’t lend me a hand. When I got to my feet and turned around, he was standing a few feet away with the Czech special peeking coyly out of his club jacket. “We’d better hurry now, Goodey,” he said. “Somebody wants to see you.”

19

“Who might that be?” I asked Lee, well aware that he was walking behind me and just slightly to the left.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Lee said, but he wasn’t unfriendly. I liked that. It’s bad enough being roughed up without having rudeness thrown in.

“Do you mind if I have a guess?”

“Go ahead,” he said, “but just keep moving and don’t try anything funny. My boss won’t mind much if I leave you here dead instead of bringing you in.”

He was lucky to have such a lenient employer. Some would be furious. The conclusion that his tolerant chief was my roommate, Gabriel Fong, forced itself upon me. That hurt. But we weren’t going toward my apartment. My friend was prodding me through the back door to Chinatown, the drab and dreary side of the gaudy front that tourists think is the Chinese quarter of San Francisco. It was a nice morning for a walk, but I would rather have gone in the opposite direction toward Telegraph Hill for a look at the view.

We came out of the alley into a small street overhung with laundry which seemed to be mostly gray and black. All the faces were Chinese, and Lee passed a civil word with some of them. Nobody said a word to me, but then my Chinese isn’t that good. A ring of small boys playing marbles on the sidewalk declined to let us through, so we walked in the gutter among the rotten vegetables. Across the street, sober-faced locals listened passively to a strident speech by a hollow-cheeked boy standing on an empty vegetable stand.

“Gabriel Fong,” I said as we passed the gathering.

“Pardon me?” said Lee politely.

“Your boss, the man who wouldn’t mind if you brought me in dead, is Gabriel Fong. Am I right?”

He might have been about to answer, but just then a prowl car turned onto the street about fifty yards ahead and was closing on us fast. My gut tightened, and I supposed that Lee wasn’t exactly indifferent.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said calmly, “you may wave to your friends if you like. But if they stop, you’re a dead man.”

Bearing that well in mind, I let my feet move me along automatically while I watched the squad car come nearer. When it was close enough, I forced my mouth into a broad smile and waved in a subdued but very friendly manner. This may have come as a shock to the two cops in the car, because I soon recognized them as John Barnett and Glynn Mapes, not two of my favorite people on the SFPD. Nor I theirs. Mapes’s pointy jaw dropped, and from the corner of my eye I saw John’s woolly head whip around. But there was no screech of tires, no shouts, no nothing. Maybe they thought I was drunk.

Perhaps I was walking in a disappointed way, because Lee said: “It won’t be long now. Turn into that small opening just past the herb shop on the right.” Schooled by nearly twenty years of army and police discipline and a lifetime of cowardice, I did as I was told and found myself in a narrow, high-walled passageway about the width of two bowling alleys. Half a block down at the end of the passage was a dirty green door in a brick wall nearly black with age.

“Straight ahead,” said Lee. “Just keep going,” he added reassuringly. “There’s only one way out of here.”

Once inside the green door, Lee said, “All you have to do is keep climbing until I tell you to stop.” He was right. The route was clear enough: a thin set of steep and well-worn stairs leading straight up to a small landing. As I climbed I made the mistake of continuing to breathe. The building had the aroma of a linebacker’s sweat socks, but it didn’t seem to bother Lee, who continued to pad softly behind me. At the landing I paused, but Lee prodded me again, directing me to yet another steep set of stairs.

This time the landing was long, narrow, and murky, and voices were coming from behind a door at the head of the stairs. Keeping the revolver leveled at my chest, Lee darted around me and did a little fancy knuckle-work on the door. With a rustling of chains, the door cracked open, revealing a young, worried-looking Oriental face. Then it opened a lot wider and Lee shoved me into a small room containing half a dozen Chinese youths and someone else I knew.

“Hello, Joe,” said Lum Kee. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Lum Kee was sitting at a small table with yet another ledger book open in front of him. He had a smudge of dried ink on his round cheek. Lounging about on hard chairs were the youths. One of them had a new bandage over his left ear. Another had a splint on the middle finger of his right hand. Several others wore attractive facial bruises. None of them said hi.

I did what I could to straighten out my clothing, but I knew I didn’t look my best. Lee received a nod of approval and went over to lean against the door and pick his teeth.

“Hello, Lum,” I said, trying not to look too surprised. “I don’t want to sound stupid, but are you the someone Lee said wanted to see me?”

“That’s right, Joe,” he said. “But from the look of your face and clothes, you weren’t too eager to come. I hope Lee wasn’t too rough with you.” He didn’t seem all that concerned.

“Oh, no,” I said, fingering the lump at the base of my skull. “I was a little reluctant at first, but Lee persuaded me. He’s a very persuasive boy. But it wasn’t really necessary, Lum. If he’d said it was you, I’d have come without any persuasion at all.” I looked at Lee, but he was communing with nature. The Czech popgun was stuck in his waistband.

“Would you, Joe?” Lum Kee asked. “Somehow, I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.”

He had me confused there. “What are you talking about, Lum Kee? I know we’ve never been the best of buddies, but why the hell wouldn’t I come see you?”

He gave me a look that would have scared a debtor to death. “You know the answer to that as well as I do, Goodey,” he said. “Let’s drop all the pretense. Who did you think you were fooling with that silly act of getting kicked off the police force, leaving town, and then suddenly turning up again? I’m not a fool, you know.”

I’m afraid I just looked dumb and said: “Act? Lum, you know—”

“I know only that you’re getting to be a nuisance, Goodey. You and your fat friend were beginning to—”

“Seymour,” I said. I may be a bit slow on the uptake, but nobody has to draw me a picture. “Is that why you had Kroll killed, Lum? Because you thought that he and I were working together and getting too close—too close to something you had going on? Was that it?”

“Your friend was killed,” Lum Kee said, eyeing Lee as a teacher looks at the class dunce, “because someone didn’t make sure what he was doing before he struck.” Lee looked embarrassed.

“Make sure?” I said. “Make sure of whom he knifed? Lum, are you trying to tell me in your obscure way that it was supposed to be me bleeding all over the cheap carpet outside my apartment instead of Seymour Kroll?”

Lum regarded me as if I’d asked him today’s price on bean sprouts. “You could say that, Goodey. But believe me, it was nothing personal. I didn’t really want to do it.” He waved a plump-backed hand near his head like a man warding off mosquitoes. “But these are difficult times for a businessman. Even without the competition I face…”

I cut him off. “Spare me your miseries, Lum. I cry easily. I hate to puncture any illusions you have about my powers of detection, but I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Aside from peddling overpriced Communist-made canned goods, I don’t know what you’re up to. I always thought you were some sort of crook, but what kind I never knew. And I certainly haven’t been investigating you. With Kroll or with anybody else.”

Lum looked as though I’d spiked his soy sauce.

I tried to seem sincere. “Have I ever lied to you, Lum? In our long and honorable friendship?” I was pushing it a bit. “Have I ever even been late with the rent?” If I knew my man, that should weigh in my favor.

Lum put on his “credit, yes? credit, no?” face, and I knew I’d have to wait him out.

In the meantime I occupied myself looking over his coven of young thugs and calculating my chances of bulling my way out of there. They didn’t look good. One of the lads, the one with the bent ear, caught my roving eye and looked as though he’d like to kick it into the next block. My no-hard-feelings smile didn’t have much impact. The rest of them eyed me the way a duck watches a June bug.

Then Lum’s voice snatched me back from my reveries of survival. “I think you must be telling the truth, Goodey,” he said. “I gave you credit for being much smarter than you really are.”

“That’s okay.” I forgave him. I could see a flickering light at the end of the tunnel. Just barely. “It’s a mistake anyone could have made.” I pretended to relax, although it probably looked as if I were going to collapse. I asked, “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“No,” said Lum absently. “Go ahead.” He nodded toward a chair at the side of his desk, and I pulled it toward me. It wasn’t much better sitting down. The back of my head still ached, and my face felt as if I’d shaved with a handful of gravel.

Lum Kee interrupted this personal inventory by looking up at me and saying, “Joe, I’m afraid we’re going to have to kill you.”

20

Lum Kee sure had a way of getting a fellow’s attention. He had a hundred percent of mine, anyway.

But what can you say to an announcement like that? “Oh, really?” I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Or maybe it was because just at that moment somebody dumped a barrel of sand down my throat. My mouth was drier than a hangman’s sense of humor.

Then a strange, high-pitched voice came from somewhere: “Do you—uhhhh—do you think I could have a drink of wa—water?” It must have been me speaking unless the lad behind me was a ventriloquist, a bad ventriloquist. The last word barely squeezed out like the last of the toothpaste, and I knew how the tube felt.

“Of course, Joe,” Lum Kee said. He snapped at the boy with the finger in a splint, who quickly left the room. I thought of volunteering to get my own drink. Hell, I’d have gone to get them all a drink. But I sat there waiting—nobody said a word—until there was a cryptic knock on the door, and the boy came back, carrying a bottle of Chinese beer.

Warm Chinese beer. If Lum was trying to weaken my will to live, he was going about it the right way. Chinese beer tastes like Neolithic swamp water. But just then I’d have lapped the dew off the Lone Ranger’s saddle. I forced down a long gulp of the beer and showed most of my teeth to Lum Kee.

“That was great,” I lied. “Now, what were you saying, Lum?” What the hell, he might rephrase his statement to my advantage. He didn’t.

“I really am sorry, Joe,” he said somberly, “but you know too much. I don’t see how we can let you go now, do you?”

I did, but I think that was a rhetorical question. I gave it a try anyway. “I don’t know anything, Lum,” I said. “I don’t even know what sort of racket you’re running. And even if I did, I’m not even interested. I’m not a cop anymore.” That was true enough.

“Aren’t you, Joe?” Lum Kee peered gravely over his ledger at me. I’ll say one thing for him as a villain: he didn’t gloat. “Then why did you visit the mayor yesterday? How was it that you were drinking with his brother last night? That doesn’t sound like an ex-policeman to me.”

“I can explain all that,” I said, “if—”

“And besides, there’s the death of Seymour Kroll, whom I believe you called Chum. You know how he died.”

“It was Chub,” I said, “with a b.” But he had me there. I did know how Chub died. But only because he had told me.

“Yes, but…”

“And he was your friend,” Lum Kee continued. “Certainly you’d have to try to see that his murderer was punished.”

Lum Kee had me in a dilemma. How could I disavow Seymour as a friend and pretend not to care whether anybody got done for his murder? Easy. And I was just about to start when Lum rattled off something in Chinese, and I found myself being lifted from the chair by several pairs of willing hands.

“Lum!” I said with a certain amount of alarm. “Lum, can’t I…”

“Goodbye, Joe,” Lum Kee said, and, believe it or not, he dived back into his ledger. Talk about devotion to business. And I was being propelled toward the door with Lee in front of me, pointing his pistol at my wishbone.

With his eyes still on me, Lee half turned to slip the chain and was opening the door when he was saved the trouble. The door seemed to explode into the room, followed by a mob of Chinese teenagers led by Gabriel Fong. Lum Kee’s boys quickly lost interest in me and began trying to fend off the Christian horde. Things got confused in the jammed doorway, what with all the yelling and slamming of fists into faces. So I backed off and looked for someplace a little less busy.

There was an oasis of calm behind Lum Kee’s desk, and in the middle of it that successful businessman was reaching deep into a side drawer with an intent look on his face. I went over the top of his desk as his hand came out full of something black and ugly. It was an automatic pistol of some bastard make—probably Japanese or Russian. I don’t know what he intended to do with it—perhaps scare us to death—but my kick to his wrist spoiled that plan. I put an arm around his thick neck and started to pull his head off.

He didn’t like the idea much. “Stop, Joe Goodey,” Lum Kee croaked. “I surrender.” I gave his head a couple more twists just for the fun of it.

Things were calming down considerably in the little room. The resistance of Lum Kee’s little band had quickly turned into a fight for survival, and Fong’s muscular missionaries soon had them driven into a corner.

Fong was in the middle of the room, overseeing surrender terms. I put a hammerlock on Uncle Lum and was taking him over for a family reunion when a newcomer appeared in the doorway. It was Mickey, the sawed-off kid from my apartment. He was breathing hard, and in his right hand was the longest, sharpest-looking knife I’ve ever seen. His eyes were bright and glassy.

“Mickey,” said Gabriel Fong, moving toward him, “it’s all over. We’ve won.” Fong held a gentling hand toward Mickey and toward the knife he held. I wouldn’t have done that. But I don’t think Mickey even saw him. The boy had his eyes fixed on Lum Kee and was moving toward him—and me. He held the knife at belt level as if he knew what he was doing.

Lum Kee was between me and Mickey, and I was about to do something to change that position when the boy lunged swiftly, and about four inches of the knife went soundlessly into Lum’s stomach. I could feel every inch of it.

I let go of Lum Kee, and he brought both fat hands around to grip the blade, to push it away. But by then Mickey had released the handle, and the bloody knife slipped out of the wound and fell to the dirty linoleum. Lum Kee’s grasping hands closed over the gushing wound as if to hold in the blood.

“Gabriel,” he said. His eyes were on Fong. “Please help me.” His face was almost placid, and didn’t belong with the words or with the blood, dark and viscous, welling up from under his folded hands, running the obstacle course of his fingers and dripping onto his ancient black trousers. Lum took a step toward his nephew, then stopped. His knees broke in a strange, twisted way, and he fell heavily onto his left shoulder and flopped face down on the grimy floor.

Gabriel Fong, already moving forward, fell on his knees beside his uncle. I was moving toward the desk and the telephone on it. I gave the ambulance service the address, how to get there and the information that we had a heavy bleeder on our hands. When I looked up, Fong was doing a good job of comforting his uncle. Lum Kee lay neatly on the floor with his beetle’s eyes open but not looking at anything in particular. The janitor wasn’t going to be happy about all that blood on the floor.

“I think he’s gone into shock,” said Fong, “but his pulse is strong. Is an ambulance on the way?”

I nodded. “Why did he do it?” I asked, shooting a glance at Mickey, who stood crying noisily and being comforted by the other Dragons.

“Fsui-tang died early this morning,” Fong said, getting up on one knee, “in a shack out near the Cow Palace where Mickey had taken her from your apartment. I knew he was after my uncle, and that’s one of the reasons we invaded this place today. We wanted to stop him. And also because one of the boys saw Lee pick you up this morning. That made it all the more urgent.”

“I think so, too,” I said. “But why should he want to stab Lum Kee?”

Fong looked down at his wounded uncle and then sadly at me. “I’m afraid, Joe,” he said, “that my uncle was the central figure in the ring which has been providing Chinese kids in San Francisco with drugs and exploiting them in many other nasty ways. He has now paid for his crimes.”

“He’s likely to pay a bit more,” I said. “The police are on their way here, too.”

As I said this, I was looking around for Lee—my good friend Lee—but I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t with the cowed remnants of Lum Kee’s junior army. For a moment I thought he’d gotten away. But then I saw an arm and a leg sticking out from under the door which had been torn from its hinges in the charge. I flipped the door aside and uncovered Lee, squashed, unconscious, but still breathing. One of the Dragons had the Czech pistol and was admiring it like a new toy. I reached into Lee’s coat pocket and pulled out my service revolver and sap. Putting them where they belonged, I looked over at Fong. He was busy with Uncle Lum. I quietly left the room, heading back toward North Beach.

21

When I got back to Rico’s, Irma, naturally enough, was gone. In fact, the whole crowd had changed. Now sitting around Rico’s little tables were the we-just-finished-drinking-our-lunch-and-we’re-sitting-here-having-a-drink-while-we-wait-to-drink-our-dinner crowd. We exchanged warm stares, and I carried on toward The Jungle.

Nobody was there. By that I mean Irma wasn’t there. The day bartender, an obvious student, was leaning over the bar catching up on his required reading. At a corner table, two apprentice Mafiosi shook liar’s dice to see who was going to buy the next Bloody Mary. I’d always wanted to see the sort of people who drink in The Jungle on Sunday afternoon.

The bartender said he hadn’t seen Irma that day, so I settled onto a bar stool to wait. That’s one thing the police force makes you good at—waiting. I can wait with the best of them. But it’s thirsty work.

The bartender poured me out a beer and looked me over with scientific detachment. “Your face is bloody,” he said.

“It’s the altitude. It’d stop if I sat on the floor, but then some drunk would probably step on me. What are you studying?”

“Forensic medicine.”

“Oh? Okay, I’ll give you a snap quiz. Suppose you were asked to testify in court as to the medical implications of the condition of my face. What would you say?”

The bartender, a thin, bony kid with a Jewish forehead, tugged at his cleft chin for a while and squinted across the bar at me. He asked me to turn to the left and then to the right. “The light’s lousy in here,” he said, “but I’d say those lesions were caused by scraping against something fairly rough, maybe the pavement. There are no deep cuts and no tissue bruising that matters. The left side was done today, but the right side I’d place between twelve and eighteen hours ago. The bump on your right occipital is pretty new. Caused by a glancing blow from something small and hard but lightly padded.” He stood back with a smart-aleck smile of satisfaction. “How did I do?”

“Alpha plus,” I said. “You pass the course. But you didn’t say that the guy who did it was Chinese.”

“It’s the light in here,” he explained. “Outside in the sunlight I could have told you the province his grandmother came from.”

“You’ll go far. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Save your money,” the student said. “You probably need it more than Fat Phil does.”

“I do. Speaking of Phil, have you seen him today?”

“Earlier, yes. But not in the last couple hours. Do you want a prognosis of his chances of reaching his fortieth birthday?”

“No, thanks, I—” Just then a sound, not a big sound, more like a sharp phoum or a dull crack—I’m not much good at onomatopoeia—came from somewhere over our heads, followed by something that could have been a groan.

“You’re back in court,” I told the student. “What was that sound?”

“What sound?”

“You flunked,” I said, getting off the bar stool. “But you can win back some of my esteem if you’ll do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Look at that clock.” The timepiece in question was embedded in the belly of a plastic model of Tina D’Oro in working costume. “If I’m not back sitting on this stool in exactly ten minutes, get some police down here.”

“Okay,” he said. “But what will I tell them?”

“You won’t,” I said. “They’ll tell you. Remember. Ten minutes. No more.”

“Ten minutes,” he said a bit doubtfully.

As I suspected, the door leading to the toilets also gave onto the stairs going up to the floors above The Jungle. In a previous incarnation, the building must have been a family house, and these would have been for the servants. The stairs were narrow, dirty and creaked a lot, but they did the job.

They took me up one flight through a peeling, green-painted stairwell. And then another. From the top of the stairs, I could hear that it was all happening on the other side of a door on which someone had had the bad taste to paste a luminous orange star. Even through the door, a strange counterpoint of voices—angry, pleading, desperate—filtered into the hallway.

I tried the knob and found the door unlocked. As I turned the knob, another crack! sounded, this time definitely the report of a small-caliber pistol. I pushed in through the doorway with my .38 in my hand.

The scene was not a pretty one. Fat Phil was in one corner of a ticky-tacky overstuffed room, doing his best to hide behind a red-leather pouf. He wasn’t succeeding, and two bullet holes in his massive, pink-shirted right side testified to his failure. The wounds, no larger than cigarette burns, weren’t bleeding much, as if Phil’s fat weren’t so much part of him as a removable blanket of armor.

“Joe,” Phil cried when his terror-widened eyes had focused enough to recognize me, “stop her. Save me. She’s trying to kill me.”

He seemed to be right about that. Standing no more than ten feet away was Irma Springler, holding a tiny .22 caliber automatic as if it were an electric hair dryer. She was standing spraddle-legged with an intent expression on her face and her lower lip caught between her even teeth.

“Go away, Joe,” she said without looking at me.

“Joe,” said Phil. “Please, Joe.” He abandoned the idea of shrinking to fit behind the pouf, cast his eyes in several directions, then compromised by forming a shield of his hands and massive forearms and peering with frightened eyes at his determined huntress. “Joe!” he added in a shriek which climbed until it died as a moan.

“I don’t like to be nosy,” I said to both of them, “but could somebody tell me what’s going on here—except for the obvious, that is?”

“It’s none of your business,” Irma said, still not looking at me. Her eyes had Phil pinned like a gross butterfly. “Go away.”

“Nooooooo!” howled Phil.

“I’d like to, Irma,” I said. “I really would. But I’ve got an uneasy feeling that if I did, you’d go on shooting Phil here. And I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“He deserves it,” Irma said. “He killed Tina, and I’m going to kill him.”

“It’s not true, Joe,” Phil said. “She’s crazy.” But somehow the way he said it lacked conviction. A thought came to me.

“Is she, Phil?” I asked. He didn’t say anything, just crouched there sweating and bleeding and wishing I’d blow Irma’s head off. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that. It was a pretty head. “Tell me something, Phil,” I added. “What are you doing up here, up these two flights of steep stairs? I thought your climbing days were over. I thought your heart couldn’t handle that sort of exercise anymore. You haven’t been faking, have you?”

Phil still didn’t say anything. He was doing a damned fine impersonation of someone doing his best to overcome a great handicap and being modest about it.

“Sure, he’s faking,” said Irma bitterly, “the fat, murdering phony. After you left Rico’s, I went to my place and then I remembered what it was that was missing from this room. It was a crazy brass letter opener Tina had—one with a phallic symbol for a handle. Somebody sent it to her for a joke. I came here, and the door was open. Phil was in here rummaging around. He tried to bluff his way out, but I kept him talking. And the more he talked, the more something seemed to be fishy. Then I knew: he’d killed Tina. I knew it, Joe, and I’ve been trying to get him to admit it. I’ll kill him if he doesn’t.”

“And if he does, Irma?” I asked. “What then?”

I could see that Irma hadn’t really explored that possibility. She hadn’t had time. She gave it a bit of thought. So did Phil.

“I’ll kill him,” she said flatly, raising the tiny automatic until it was aimed directly at Phil’s sweaty moon face half sheltered behind his hands and arms.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please, Irma, don’t.”

“You know, Phil,” I said. “I think she really is going to kill you if you don’t convince her that you’re innocent. That is, if you are innocent. Talk to the lady, Phil.”

“Christ,” he said, “how can I talk with that gun in my face? I’m afraid to open my mouth.”

“He’s right,” I said. “You could at least lower that popgun a bit, Irma. Phil’s not going anywhere. If he ran for it, you could shoot his legs off before he got to the door. Besides, I’m here, and I’ve got a real gun.”

Irma thought it over carefully. Then she lowered the barrel of the .22 until it was aimed at Phil’s knees instead of his face.

“That’s better,” I said. “Now, Phil, you were saying?”

Despite his relief, Phil hadn’t lost the look of apprehension which would have wrinkled his brow if he hadn’t been so fat. “Could I sit down?” he asked. “My legs are shaking so much I’m going to fall down in a minute.”

“Sure,” I said. “That is, if it’s okay with Irma.”

We both looked at Irma, and she gave a cool nod. Phil reached for Tina’s padded dressing chair and let his awesome weight down onto it. The chair, unused to such burdens, shuddered delicately.

“You comfy now, Phil?” I asked.

“I don’t feel good, Joe,” he complained.

“You’ll feel better after you start talking.”

“I’ve been shot, Joe,” he said, surveying his vast side with apparent detachment. “I’m bleeding. I need a doctor. This isn’t fair.”

“No, it isn’t,” I agreed. “But if you don’t start saying something, Irma is going to put some more holes in you that a doctor might not be able to do anything about.”

“But, Joe…”

“Talk!”

“I didn’t kill Tina, Joe,” Phil said in a rush. “I—I loved her.” He looked down shyly. If you’ve never seen a 350-pound man look demure, it’s a frightening spectacle. But my mother taught me never to laugh at a fat man with two bullet holes, however small, in him. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. Irma did it for me. It was a nasty laugh, like somebody ripping up old linoleum, but it expressed our mutual doubt if not a good deal of amusement.

“It’s true,” Phil insisted, glaring at Irma with such righteousness and indignation that I almost believed him. “I did love her. You don’t understand. I made Tina what she was. I took Olga Dombrowitz, just an ordinary North Beach bimbo, not even very young anymore, and I turned her into Tina D’Oro—that was my name, you know; I chose it—the hottest thing in North Beach. Hell, in all of America. I made her a celebrity on network TV. Without me, she’d have been just an aging hooker.”

I was watching Irma’s face while Phil said all this, and she didn’t like it much. She believed it, but she didn’t like it. And that last bit about the aging hooker made her blink fast and bite her lip. But she didn’t say anything. Somebody had to, so I did.

“So, why did you kill her, Phil?”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “She said she was leaving. Really leaving, this time. Not like all the other times when she was trying to get more money, better billing, a bigger slice of the action. Hell, she owned half of The Jungle as it was.”

“Tina was The Jungle, you slimy bastard,” Irma said, as if coming out of a trance.

“Sure,” Phil said, “sure she was The Jungle. Without her, it was just another topless joint. Don’t you think I know that? And this time she was really leaving. Some offer from a big hotel in Vegas. ‘Tina D’Oro’ in neon lights over the Strip. Those magnificent tits I paid for bouncing in some Vegas show bar. She was really going to do it this time. Nothing I said made any difference. She was sitting right in this chair, playing with that stupid letter opener and laughing at me. Telling me how empty The Jungle was going to be after she left. I got mad. I’ve got feelings, too, you know. I grabbed the letter opener out of her hands, and she tried to get it back. She called me names. She called me some awful names.”

Phil ran down like an obscene mechanical toy. He let his head fall forward and sat slumping in the sleazy, padded chair. Sweat from the top of his head ran down over his vast brow.

“And then what, Phil?” I asked. Irma just stared, her mouth unconsciously hanging open. The .22 hung limply from her hand. I could have taken it away from her. Maybe.

Fat Phil raised his head and looked directly at me. It was as if he had forgotten that Irma and her gun were there.

“I got mad, too,” he said. “She was trying to scratch me. I said, ‘Take the fucking thing’ and I pushed it at her as she was coming toward me. It went in just like cutting butter. Honest to Christ, just like nothing. It went in right between her tits, and she started pumping blood, gallons of it. She was still coming toward me, but I dodged out of her way, and she fell on that big, orange rug I bought her. And she was dead. There was no way I could have stopped that blood. She was dead. Right there. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You could have called for an ambulance,” said Irma in a calm, almost dead voice. “You could have saved her life.”

“She was dead, I tell you! She died like that.” He tried to snap his sausage fingers, but they slid across each other wetly and noiselessly. As silently, probably, as Tina had died. “Like that.”

“And that’s how you’re going to die, Phil,” Irma said, coming to life again and raising the handgun on a level with Phil’s head. “Now.” I could sense her gathering all her strength to pull the trigger.

“Irma!” I said sharply. “Hold it.” She didn’t lower the pistol, but she turned her head and lifeless eyes toward me. She said nothing, but I knew she was waiting for what I had to say.

“You don’t want to kill him,” I said. “It’s not worth it. Let the State take care of Fat Phil. With that heart of his, even a manslaughter rap will finish him off. He’ll die in jail. If you kill him, you’ll be an old, old lady before you see the street again.” I was still holding my gun in my hand, but it felt as useless as a steam iron. “My God, Irma, why waste your life on this slug?”

“I have to, Joe,” Irma said. “I have to kill him.”

Fat Phil was following our dialogue as a tennis fan follows the ball in flight. He was interested. But I think he felt left out too.

“Could someone please get me a doctor?” he said plaintively to nobody in particular. “I’m bleeding.” He was hunched over with his chins on his chest and his hand splayed over his right side, trying to cover the two bullet wounds which were still seeping only a little blood.

“For Christ’s sake, why, Irma?” I asked. “All right, you were Tina’s friend. Maybe you were her only friend. But that’s no reason to feel that you’ve got to take personal revenge on Phil. Do you think you’ll feel better if you kill him?”

“No,” Irma said, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Phil brighten up as much as a fat man with two bullet holes in him is capable of brightening up. Then Irma continued, “But I’ve got to do it.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew there was a reason in there somewhere, and that it would come out by itself. It would have to, or Irma would crack. Then it did.

“Joe,” Irma said softly but with great force, “I loved Tina. I loved her. She was my life.”

Irma read something into my expression that I didn’t know was there yet. Her eyes brightened, and her mouth went firm. “You can scoff if you want to, Joe. I don’t expect you to understand.” She blinked hard and tossed her head.

“I’m not scoffing, Irma,” I said as sincerely as I could. “I’m just a bit—uh—”

“Surprised? Surprised that a woman can love another woman rather than a man? That Tina could prefer me to—to a machismo copper who thinks a woman is just something to push into bed?” That hurt. It really did. I didn’t push her.

Irma whipped around to Fat Phil. “Or a fat slob of a flesh peddler who considered Tina just another pair of tits to be sold over the bar like watered whiskey? Who would have been perfectly ready to dump Tina the minute the slobs who come into The Jungle got tired of her. Who couldn’t stop selling Tina’s body even after he’d killed her. Put her in the ground to rot…to rot.”

Irma’s voice had gotten shriller and shriller, and her whole body was drawn with tenseness. Her mouth was pulled back in a smile-snarl that wasn’t pretty to see. The hand with the gun in it started to rise from the vertical again as if under its own power. She could see nothing but Fat Phil.

The object of her hatred seemed to wake up from a light trance. Phil was shaking his head and mumbling something as if he were talking to himself. In the dead silence of the room, Irma and I strained to hear what he said. Then some words came clear.

“…Christ’s sake,” Phil was saying, “to think that Tina was a dyke, a fucking bull-dagger. I…”

That was exactly the wrong thing to say at that moment. The words set me in motion, but it was a little too late.

Irma’s gun hand sprang up. Instantaneously, the gun rapped, and Phil’s right eye was gone. Except for the blood which began to gush from the eye, Phil’s face didn’t change. It was frozen in an expression of mild wonder, and it would never change again. His body didn’t so much slump as settle into itself like a big balloon under a heavy weight. Then Phil toppled forward with a heavy thud onto the bare floorboards and lay unmoving, flat on his bloody face.

Irma moved quickly across the room and emptied the rest of the .22 bullets into the back of Phil’s fat, hairy, defenseless neck. It was a waste of bullets. Then she pivoted and threw the gun at my feet.

“You can call the police now,” she said. “I’m finished.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to.” Heavy footsteps pounded up the old stairs like second-hand thunder. The door buckled at about shoulder height, clung briefly to its catch, and then crashed open, admitting a well-fed young cop who tripped to a stop with his mouth open. Johnny Maher came in after him with a gun in his hand and certain conclusions rapidly forming behind his pale eyes.

“Hi, Johnny,” I said. “We were just talking about you.” Irma said nothing. I had put my gun away by then, but I’m sure I must have looked suspicious.

“I’ll just bet you were,” Maher said.

22

Everybody was very happy.

Mayor Kolchik sat in his vast leather chair, beaming like the bride’s father at a Polish wedding. In his hand was a glass of the best whiskey the city’s money could buy. The Brother, splendid in his Bolivian admiral’s uniform, bubbled with bonhomie. He showed me more of his dentist’s artistry than I wanted to see. Ralph Lehman had that giddy, hysterical look of a man whose runaway car has just stopped, teetering on the brink of a high cliff. In his mind’s eye he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt on the dock in Sausalito, drowning live bait.

I tried to do my share of grinning, but I couldn’t help thinking about Irma Springler, just beginning to learn how to be a prisoner. Or about Phil Franks, who’d had to become a corpse without any practice at all. And I couldn’t ignore the fact that I hadn’t done much to slow down the process. If I’d been willing to shoot Irma—even just a little—he’d still be alive. But I consoled myself that I’d saved the State a tremendous amount of money for his food alone. Irma wouldn’t eat nearly as much, or for as long. I’d tried to see Irma in the cells, but she wouldn’t see me. The message she sent said that she was going to do it the hard way.

One of the reasons I’d accepted the mayor’s invitation to drop by his office was that I thought I’d do what I could to get Irma a break in court. I was biding my time until the right opportunity came up.

“Yessir, Joe,” The Brother was saying, “it’s all over now. Thanks to you. I have to admit I thought you were a dumb bastard, but you zeroed in where Maher and his jerks failed. Where we all failed,” he added, with a fairly meaningful look at Ralph. But Ralph wasn’t really there. He should have hung a big sign on his forehead: “Gone Fishing.”

“Tell me,” Bruno said, “how’d you know that the Springler broad would lead you to Tina’s murderer?”

“It’s a trade secret, Bruno,” I said, tapping the side of my nose. “We private detectives have our little tricks, you know. Just be satisfied that the murder has been solved. Neat, clean, no loose ends. It’s buried as deep as Tina D’Oro.”

“Deeper,” said Bruno with some satisfaction.

“By the way,” I said casually, directing my words to the mayor, “what are you going for in the Springler trial? You know she’s going to plead guilty.”

“Murder One,” said The Brother before His Honor could open his mouth. “Murder oh-enn-eee. I’m not settling for less than life, with a mandatory fifteen, maybe twenty. Why, she shot that fat boy down in cold blood. She flat out executed him.”

“You’re not settling, Bruno?” I said. “Since when are you running the district attorney’s office?”

Bruno got that Watch-it-boy-I’m-about-to-get-exercised look on his face. “Listen, Goodey,” he said, going cerise around the chops, “you did a damned good job, but if you think…”

“I do think, Bruno,” I said. “I think it. You’ve got what you want, but now you’re getting greedy. I’m not going to let you buy Irma a season ticket to Tehachapi just because it makes you feel like a big man and not an overblown property clerk.”

Now it was Bruno’s turn. “You’re not going to let me? How are you going to stop me, Goodey? You’ve got about as much pull in this town as a busted flush.”

“Easy, little brother, easy,” I said. “If you try out your running spikes on Irma, all I’ve got to do is whisper a few sweet nothings to my friends at the Chronicle, and you two will be lucky to get berths on the last banana boat back to Poland.”

Bruno was up and out of his chair and on his way over to wring my neck when Mayor Kolchik, who’d so far been watching us scuffle like a couple of playground desperadoes, said sharply, “Bruno!” If that was supposed to stop The Brother, it didn’t. I was looking around for something to break over his head, when Ralph stuck out a big foot, and Bruno fell like a majestic oak full length on the expensive Oriental carpet. I was up and about to try for the point-after-touchdown with his head when a mighty roar caught my attention.

“Goodey! Stop right there. Sit down!”

Sanford Kolchik was up from his baronial chair with veins like soda straws popping in his thick neck. Bruno, now on his hands and knees, seemed to have been stopped by the bellow, too, so I backed off. But I didn’t relax. Bruno thought it over several thousand times, then got up casually from the carpet as if he’d been examining the weave and stomped back to his chair. I’m glad I didn’t see the look he gave Ralph.

When we’d all gotten comfy again, the mayor sat down, made a pyramid of his fingers on his spotless blotter and looked at me. “Well, then, Joe,” he said, “what do you think would be a proper plea for the State to accept from Miss Springler? I’m assuming you’re not asking me to give her a key to the city.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I figure voluntary manslaughter would be all right, if she won’t go for a temporary insanity plea. With a recommendation for mercy, of course.”

“Mercy?” Bruno went into his geyser act again. “That fucking dyke deserves the same amount of mercy she gave Franks.”

“Shut up, Bruno,” the mayor said in a quick aside, and Bruno went back to glowering at Lehman. “I don’t know about the mercy, Joe,” he said. “That might be a bit strong. But I’ll tell you what: I think the district attorney will accept voluntary manslaughter with mitigating circumstances, and the prosecutor won’t get rabid or talk about long, lonely years in a cell. Is that all right?”

I didn’t have to think very hard about that one. It was the best offer Irma was going to get. “You’ve got a deal,” I said. I made a preliminary motion to get up.

“Another thing, Joe,” Kolchik said, and I settled down into my chair again. There had to be a catch. “We’ve got a deal,” he said, “and I’ll keep my end of it. But this has got to be the end of the Tina business. All right, I was foolish, and I had to bend a few laws to protect myself. But it’s all over now. It has to be. I don’t want you to think that knowing about me and Tina is your meal ticket for life. Is that understood?”

“It is,” I said, and I meant it. “I don’t know anything about Tina D’Oro. I never did.” Kolchik smiled with satisfaction, but I wasn’t finished yet. “But there’s one proviso.”

The mayor looked at me and let a hood fall over his eyes. “What is it?”

“The same has got to go for your Cousin Stanislaus. I don’t want to hear any more about the grievous harm I did to him and the possibility of criminal charges. I’m not overjoyed that I shot him; I wish I hadn’t. But it’s a closed chapter. A city cop shot him; let the city settle the rap. If I perforate any more of your relations, you’ve got a squawk coming, but you’ve had all the mileage you’re going to get out of Cousin Stan. Is that agreed?”

“Agreed,” said the mayor solemnly. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.” Just as I got to my feet, he added: “One last thing, Joe. Have you thought about getting your job back in the department? I’m sure Bruno would have no objection,” he said without a glance at his brother. “I think we might even be able to manage a set of sergeant’s stripes in a couple of months. I don’t want you to think I’m an ungrateful man.”

Even Lehman had returned from his reverie to listen to this last bit. He was watching me calculatingly, as if trying to guess how much I weighed.

“What do you think of that idea, Ralph?” the mayor asked.

“It sounds good to me, Your Honor,” Ralph said, playing it straight. Then he looked at me. “You know, Joe, you’ve got only five years to go before you could retire. A sergeant gets a fair pension these days. You’ve already put in a pretty tough fifteen years earning one; you might as well stick around to collect it.”

All three of them were watching me. Even Bruno eyed me with fairly restrained malevolence. Maybe, like a small boy who puts a frog on a hot stone, he just wanted to see which way I would jump. So I satisfied his curiosity.

“Thanks very much,” I told Kolchik. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not going to take you up on it.” I swiveled toward Lehman. “You were right, Ralph. I don’t look like a cop. And I don’t feel like one anymore, either. No offense to your proud calling, but you can keep the stripes. In a few years, I’ll probably wish I had that pension, but right now I’ll settle for my contributions toward it.”

“But what are you going to do, Joe?” Ralph asked. I think he honestly wanted to know.

“I’ve still got that lovely private operative’s license you gave me. I think I’ll give it a bit of exercise. There are so many bad private detectives in San Francisco already that one more won’t hurt.”

“Are you sure, Goodey?” the mayor asked. “My offer closes when you walk through that door.” He thought I was being stupid. Lehman thought I was being suicidal.

“I’m sure,” I said, as if I were.

“All right, then,” Kolchik said. “That’s settled. But I’m going to give you a going-away present.” He jabbed a button on his desk and spoke into his intercom: “Will you send my other visitor in, Dorothy?”

In about fifteen seconds Johnny Maher came through the door like a man walking into a minefield. The polished effect he cultivated was looking a bit thin in spots, but his crease was sharp. Maher raked his eyes across me expressionlessly and stopped in front of the mayor’s desk. He could have been facing a firing squad.

“Sergeant Maher,” Kolchik said in a carborundum voice, “I called you in here to meet a friend of mine, Mr. Joe Goodey.”

Maher expected anything but that. His mouth opened involuntarily, but no sound came out.

“I’ve just offered Mr. Goodey a job in the police department,” the mayor went on. “Your job. And with your stripes to go with it. Luckily for you, Mr. Goodey refused. He prefers to work as a private detective. I want you to know that Mr. Goodey saved your stripes for you. I wanted to take them. Bruno wanted to put you back in uniform. Wasn’t that nice of Mr. Goodey?”

Johnny didn’t speak. He stood there stiffly. Whatever emotion he was feeling was buried deep.

“Well?” demanded the mayor. “Wasn’t it? Don’t you want to thank Mr. Goodey?”

Sure he wanted to thank me. Almost as much as he wanted to swallow his own tongue. To my surprise, I wasn’t enjoying this spectacle very much.

“That’s okay, Sandy,” I said. “The boy is tongue-tied with gratitude. He can thank me later. I’ve got to go now.”

“All right, Joe,” Kolchik said, coming around his long desk. He put a thick arm around my shoulders. “Thanks for dropping in. If you feel like sampling a bit more beer, I’ve got a new batch just coming along. Be ready any time now.”

“Thanks, Sandy,” I said, hugging him back. I never feel very comfortable hugging men. I looked at the other three, reading various shades of incredulity in their eyes. “I’ll be seeing you gentlemen around,” I said. I walked through the doorway. As the door closed, I could hear Bruno start in on Maher, and I felt sorry for him.

On the street floor, I bumped into Gabriel Fong as he was getting into the elevator. He backed out hurriedly, and we stood next to a thick marble pillar.

“Hello, Gabe,” I said. “How’s your uncle?”

“Not well, Joe,” he said mournfully. “Complications have set in, and the doctors don’t think he’ll live to stand trial.”

Fong was back in his sincere black suit with the gold cross on his tie, but there was something intangibly different about him. Recent events had rubbed some of the down off him.

“That’s too bad, Gabe,” I said, “or a good thing, depending on how you look at it. A trial would have been a pretty messy business, what with the death of Fsui-tang and the dope angle.”

“The family will be grieved at Uncle’s death,” Fong said solemnly, “but they will be much relieved if his name is not dragged through the courts and newspaper headlines. We already have much to atone for if we are to hold our heads high again.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you going home, or will you continue at the Bible College?”

“Neither, Joe,” he said. “My uncle is thoroughly penitent and has asked me to take over his business obligations—his legitimate activities only, of course. They will occupy me for some time.”

“What about your work with the street kids?” I asked.

“I’ll do as much as I can, naturally,” Fong said, “but family obligations must come first. There are many ways one can serve God.”

“There certainly are. I’ve got to go, Gabe. See you later.”

“Of course,” he said. “But one thing quickly while I think of it. I’ll be living in my uncle’s house, so I won’t need to share your apartment anymore, but…”

“But…” I said.

Fong swallowed laboriously, then got his nerve back. “Well, Joe, even a cursory look at my uncle’s records shows that he’s charging you much too little for that apartment of yours. With those views it should be bringing in much more money. Do you think—do you think that…”

I’m slow, but I got Fong’s drift.

“Do I think that perhaps I could move out so that you could fix it up and double the rent? Is that what you want to know?”

Fong nodded nervously.

“No, I don’t think it, Gabriel-boy,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “And don’t you think it, either. It won’t do you any good. You’ll only lose sleep.”

I smiled sincerely and headed for the parking lot. There was an old Polish gentleman in San Francisco General Hospital who was overdue for a visit.

THE END

Not Sleeping, Just Dead

Joe Goodey Mysteries (Book 2)

She was rich, young and pretty—so why did Katie Pierce jump? Unless she didn’t.

Former San Francisco detective turned private investigator Joe Goodey is broke and needs a case. When a wealthy man shows up at Goodey's local watering hole and cuts him a check on the spot to investigate his wealthy niece’s alleged suicide, Goodey immediately shuttles off to the scene of the crime: a mansion housing a local cult called The Institute.

To find the killer and uncover the truth about Katie Pierce's death, Goodey must infiltrate The Institute's ranks. But as the investigation twists and turns through the mansion's labyrinthine halls, Goodey finds that the murderer might not even be the most dangerous person in the group…

1

I was stretching a tall gin and tonic at Aldo’s, the only bar I knew that hadn’t yet torn up my tab, when I looked up and discovered that my elbow room to the west had been annexed by an elderly gentleman in a three-piece suit.

Before I could decide how I felt about that, my new neighbor reached over and placed a cellophane-covered card over the mouth of my glass. Even in the dim light Aldo cultivated—he claimed that it confused germs—I could see that it was a business card identifying Frederick M. Crenshaw, Chairman, Cosmopolitan Fire & Casualty Insurance Co., Los Angeles. I had to make a quick decision: say something or drink the card.

“You’re out of luck,” I said. “Even if I bought some, someone would probably bum me down before the night was out.”

He didn’t answer but just flipped the card over, revealing a colored photograph of a fresh-faced girl with a wide mouth, freckles and long, auburn hair. She was wearing a white graduation gown and a mortarboard at a slightly rakish angle.

“Very pretty,” I said, “but is she old enough to hang out in a joint like this?”

“She would have been,” he said, withdrawing the photograph, “but she’s dead now. She was my granddaughter.”

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.

“Don’t be,” he said, slightly sharply. “It won’t help Katharine or me. But you could help me a lot, Mr. Goodey, by finding out who killed her.”

I sipped the watery dregs of my drink. “Do you want to tell me about it, Mr. Crenshaw?”

“Do you have an office?”

“Not one that I’m very eager to go back to right at this moment,” I said honestly, if enigmatically. That’s the trouble with having an office. I’d found in the nine months since I’d left the San Francisco Police Department that it gave people I didn’t want to see very much—like Gabriel Fong and other creditors—a pretty fair idea where to find me.

“Well, then,” said Crenshaw, still game, “have you had dinner?”

Yes,” I said. “Quite often in the past. But not recently.”

Twenty minutes of silent taxi ride later, we were putting our feet under an expensive tablecloth in a very private back room at McGinty’s, the best steak house in San Francisco. Carlo, the waiter, an ectomorphic Italian with the eyes of a failed tenor, watched glumly as I ripped through the menu. A closet vegetarian, Carlo worried about my carbohydrate intake. He cheered up at Crenshaw’s order of a bowl of clear broth and then disappeared through the thick velour drapes that separated us from the rabble.

I lapped appreciatively at some very nice claret and waited for Crenshaw to enlighten me further, but he didn’t seem to be in an awful hurry. He took a drink from a glass of iced Perrier water and watched me with eyes that were not particularly kindly. Probably nobody at Cosmopolitan Insurance called him Uncle Fred. Crenshaw was a trim, upright man barely on the wrong side of sixty-five with a faintly military look that seemed cultivated. His cropped hair was an honest, uniform gray, which cast a pallor over regular but thin features. His eyes were a brittle blue and didn’t seem to spend a lot of time twinkling. His well-kept hands had probably never touched anything dirtier than money.

Crenshaw seemed to be looking me over, too, possibly with a view to adopting me. I couldn’t tell whether he liked what he saw, and I didn’t care much. I’ll eat any man’s steak—friend or foe. Finally, he spoke.

“You’re probably wondering, Mr. Goodey, how I know who you are and how I came to seek you out.”

“The question occurred to me,” I said, “but I imagine you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

His expression didn’t change, but I could tell that he wasn’t really too happy with my attitude.

“If you’re going to work for me, Mr. Goodey,” he said, “it is essential that we establish a viable relationship. Do I detect a certain negativity?”

I could guess that the sort of relationship he was thinking of wouldn’t involve a lot of camaraderie. “Not really, Mr. Crenshaw,” I said. “It’s just that I’m hungry. I get a lot more likable with a full stomach.”

At that moment, Carlo wafted in through the drapes and put a lobster bisque in front of me as if it were a time bomb. He lingered while I took my first taste, supposedly to see if I liked it, but I knew that he was waiting to see if I was really going to subject my insides to that sort of abuse. “Wonderful,” I said with a glutton’s smile. He administered the Kiss of Death with his black-olive eyes and disappeared.

Crenshaw thought he’d try again. “Ralph Lehman tells me that you’ve been off the police force since last August.” So it was Ralph’s size-nine sombrero from which Crenshaw had picked my name. Good old Ralph. He looked out for his boys even from beyond the veil of retirement. I knew Crenshaw must have been pretty desperate, or Ralph would never have put him onto me. Ralph loves me, I know, but he has no illusions that I’m Bulldog Drummond.

“That’s right,” I said, “but it hardly seems that long, I’ve been having such a good time.”

His face pretended to believe me, but his eyes didn’t bother. “Ralph was under the impression that life for a newly established private detective in San Francisco was somewhat—straitened,” he said. I appreciated his nice choice of adjectives. He could have said poverty-stricken.

“I won’t say I’m being measured for a yacht yet,” I said, “but I’ve turned down more cases than I’ve accepted.”

I skipped the details of those rejected cases. For instance, the one just that week in which a perfectly respectable car dealer had wanted me to kidnap his ex-wife and knock out all her teeth. They’d been really rotten when he’d picked the tramp out of the gutter, he said. Now she kept flashing them at him when they met in public. I had to refer him elsewhere.

And that overlooked the really unpromising offers I’d had since I’d turned in my shield for a private operative’s license and a used hair shirt. But I didn’t want to take the chance of depressing Crenshaw so much that he ran off before paying the bill. McGinty had a couple of lads in the back room who were expert at handling slow payers.

Carlo picked that moment to arrive, bearing about half of a charred cow and a disgusted expression. For the next little while I was too busy to do much talking anyway, so a discreet little silence, broken only by grunts from my side and the gentle lapping of the broth in Crenshaw’s bowl, fell over the table. I couldn’t help admiring his way with a soupspoon. Each spoonful rose what seemed to be about four hundred feet from bowl to thin-lipped mouth with unerring precision and zero fallout. His back was parade-ground stiff, the eyes resting comfortably on the middle distance.

Once Crenshaw had reduced the broth to a polite level of about three sixteenths of an inch—without unseemly bowl-tipping—he placed his spoon at parade rest and patted spotless lips with the spotless linen napkin. “I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Goodey,” he said, “if I give you the background of the—situation—while you go on with your meal.”

Caught in mid-chew, all I could do was bobble my head up and down. I could have used a bit more butter for my baked potato, but it didn’t seem fair to make Crenshaw wait any longer. And I knew that Carlo would get after me about taking in too much cholesterol.

Crenshaw correctly interpreted my mime and began: “Mr. Goodey, are you familiar with an organization called The Institute?”

I nodded, choking only a little, and managed: “I’ve heard of it. But all I know is that it’s some kind of cult down below Monterey that seems to have some problems with the neighbors and the authorities from time to time.” I could tell from his expression that I hadn’t exactly put The Institute in a nutshell, but he plowed on. “Last summer, Mr. Goodey, my granddaughter, Katharine Pierce, joined The Institute at its headquarters at Las Palomas near Big Sur. Katharine—her friends called her Katie”—he said this as if it were a mystery—“was a restless young girl. She quit Stanford University and had had a certain problem with—”

I could see that he was a bit stuck, so I swallowed the last of my steak and said: “Drugs?” It was a bit of a guess, but not that great considering what I knew of The Institute.

“Barbiturates, Mr. Goodey,” he said, in case I was mentally bunching her with hash heads and needle enthusiasts. “Originally prescribed for her nerves. Unfortunately, Katharine became somewhat dependent on them. It was nothing really serious, but the doctors couldn’t seem to help her.” He paused. “Nor could I.” That was probably as close to a confession as I was going to get out of Fred Crenshaw. “Then, early last summer, she went to a lecture given by a man called Hugo Fischer, the founder and president of The Institute. I don’t quite understand what happened, but within days, Katharine had left her apartment on Nob Hill and had moved into The Institute’s mansion at Las Palomas, taking a certain amount of money with her. Fortunately, most of her inheritance was legally tied up, but—”

Crenshaw suddenly realized that he was getting off on a tangent. Looking about as embarrassed as his nature would allow, he finished starkly: “On a Sunday morning late last December, Katharine was found dead on the rocks below the mansion. She had allegedly fallen from a roof terrace during the night.” He leaned on the word allegedly so hard that it nearly snapped. And he wasn’t too happy with fallen.

“At The Institute,” he went on, “they claim that Katharine jumped to her death. I don’t believe it. I want you to go down there and find out exactly what did happen. Will you do it?”

I didn’t say anything right away. There was something boiling behind his cool exterior, and I wanted just a peek at it. Even a dead-broke private investigator likes to get a glimpse of the real person who’s hiring him. I took longer than was strictly necessary polishing off the claret and then spoke slowly.

“You think someone may have pushed your granddaughter to her death from that terrace, Mr. Crenshaw.” I didn’t ask him; I told him.

Crenshaw’s eyes, never jolly, took on a glittering hardness. He put a well-manicured hand on either side of his soup bowl; the knuckles were dead white.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said with tightly reined vehemence, “I know that someone at The Institute injected my granddaughter with a heavy dose of barbiturates and then threw her to her death on the rocks below. I want you to find out just who did it and see that they are punished. Will you do it?”

There was only one answer to that question, and I gave it. Crenshaw went back to being an aging, none-too-healthy business executive with a big problem. He put his hands back in his lap and asked me if I’d have any dessert. I almost said yes, but then decided that I couldn’t face Carlo’s disapproving eyes.

Instead, we talked a bit more, and Crenshaw gave me three things: a check for a retainer big enough to let me hold my head up among my fellow men and my creditors; a thin, blue-folder report marked: “Confidential—Monterey County Sheriff’s Department”; and another thicker report from an outfit called Brazewell Associates, Beverly Hills, California.

We agreed that I’d get in touch with him in Los Angeles just as soon as I had anything to report. To nobody’s surprise, Carlo gave the bill directly to Crenshaw. Outside McGinty’s, Crenshaw favored me with a crisp handshake, advised me that he was staying at the Fairmont Hotel, and vanished in a taxi, leaving me standing there with only two problems in the world: getting used to having money in my pocket again, and finding out who—if anyone—had killed Katie Pierce.

2

My old friend and former boss, Ralph C. Lehman, newly retired as chief of detectives of the San Francisco Police Department, lived at the top of a modest hill in the not so sleepy little town of Mill Valley. When Ralph had moved in about thirty years before, Mill Valley had been so small and homey that the chief of police had come around personally to investigate the rumor that the new residents were of the Jewish persuasion. The Negro had not yet been invented in Marin County. Ralph had offered to dropkick the chief all the way to Milpitas and had lived there peacefully ever since.

I put my tired old Morris convertible into a tight turn up Molino Avenue and listened attentively for the first sounds of the death rattle. But the old four-banger took the challenge and somehow propelled me up Ralph’s steep drive and onto the gravel apron in front of his crumbling Victorian house. Ralph came out onto the porch with a look of vexation on his big, ellipsoidal face. He was waving a sheet of white paper as if it were a flag of surrender.

He stepped all over my “Hi, Ralph” by booming: “Do you know what those sons of bitches have done, Joe? They’ve nearly doubled the property taxes on this shack. I can’t afford to live here anymore. They’re going to drive everybody but the fags and the millionaires right out of Mill Valley.”

I had a mental image of Mary Frances Lehman upstairs tying up a bundle of rags for the trip to the poorhouse, but then there she was peering out at me through the half-open screen door.

“Oh, shut up, Ralph,” she said. “Stop rending your garments for a moment and make us a drink. Come on in, Joe. He’s going to do the heath speech from King Lear in a minute, and I want to be sure to miss it.”

I followed the tight bun at the nape of Fran’s neck into the Lehman’s big, old-fashioned living room. In one corner, Ralph’s small desk overflowed with bills and receipts. In another, a television set flickered soundlessly as a black dude in a malnourished afro stretched his mouth and gesticulated at us. The room smelled of well-waxed wood and old leather and softly gleamed with brass and copper ornaments.

Ralph went over to a mahogany drinks cabinet and began rattling bottles while Fran whirled and leveled a long, bony finger at me. “You haven’t been to see me in months,” she accused. “All you have to do is retire, and all your friends pretend you’re dead.”

Before I could defend myself, Ralph forced a cold glass into my hand and fell into his massive, green leather chair at one side of the big stone fireplace in which a small fire behaved itself.

“Mary was up here with her sniveling little brutes last week,” Fran continued. “She sends you her love, but she wasn’t surprised to hear that you’d gone wrong.”

I’d first met Fran Lehman as a hot-blooded claimant for her daughter Mary’s hand about a dozen years before when I’d been a young detective just out of the blocky, blue uniform of the SFPD. Mary had wisely decided to marry a petrochemical engineer from Los Angeles, thus breaking my heart. And once I’d gotten past the gargoyle front Frannie put up, she’d become an auxiliary mother to me.

“You can tell your faithless daughter that I am risen from the fallen,” I said, putting Crenshaw’s check in front of Fran’s face.

“Not bad,” she said. “Who did you have to promise to kill? No, don’t tell me. Then I can’t tell the Grand Jury.” She gathered up a wicker basket of embroidery and her drink. “I sense a certain amount of business talk coming up,” she said, “and I’m too old and cantankerous to have to put up with it. You can find me in the nunnery.”

Before the door quite closed behind her, I asked Ralph:

“This Crenshaw bird you’ve sicced onto me, how much do you know about him?”

Ralph communed with the ice cubes in his glass before saying: “Fred Crenshaw was the best defensive end I ever saw. Between us we ruined more halfbacks than you’ve had Chinese dinners. I used to slow them down, and Fred would break them off just below the knees. It was murder.” He said this with gentle, contemplative relish as if remembering a great wine.

“I’ll bet,” I said. “But I assume that he’s given up that habit by now. Do you think you could bring me up to date a bit?”

“He was in the war, you know,” Ralph said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “The Marines. Used to crawl into Japanese machine-gun nests and slit throats. Won a couple of medals that way.”

“Thanks a lot, Ralph,” I said. “I now know who killed his granddaughter. Crenshaw did, by crawling into her machine-gun nest, breaking her off at the knees and slitting her throat. Case closed.”

“Don’t look at me like that, Joe,” he said, not sounding very hurt. “I’m not quite senile yet. Look at these eyes. Do you see any geriatric haze over them?”

I had to admit that I didn’t. Any haziness would have been Scotch-induced, and I couldn’t begrudge Ralph that.

“Well, then,” Ralph said, “don’t be too wise. I didn’t ask you to come begging for information. Hell, I got you the job, and now you want me to carry you around piggyback. Remember, I was the one who advised you to take the mayor’s offer of your old job back. You wanted to be a lousy private operative. So operate. If I’d wanted to handle this case, I’d have taken Crenshaw’s money myself.”

“All right,” I admitted. “I’m lazy. And I’m a smart aleck. But you did put mad dog Crenshaw onto me, right? And you two seem to go back to the day before they invented fire. If I sit here like a good boy, do you think you could enlighten me about him? Just a little?”

Ralph sucked up a little more Scotch and looked relenting. “Okay,” he said. “But don’t interrupt. And try to look intelligent.”

I nodded intelligently.

“Right,” he said. “When Stanford University decided that it could do without my services as a mayhem artist, Fred stayed on to make All-American, Phi Beta Kappa, and to win a Rhodes Scholarship. Fred was a bit of a brain in those days. He came back, went into business and, except for that unpleasantness we called World War II, pursued a very successful career and made a few million dollars, most of which, if I know Fred, he still has.”

“Is there a Mrs. Crenshaw?”

“There was,” he said. “Just before the war he married a Miss Evelyn De Lane Ventnor of the Nob Hill, Palm Beach and Honolulu Ventnors. Evelyn was no great beauty, but she served to humanize Fred a bit and helped him several hundred rungs up the social ladder at the same time. In those days, Fred wanted to be a social lion. And she brought along a fair little slice of the Ventnor millions.”

“A useful match,” I said. “Since they had a grandchild, I’m assuming that Fred and Evelyn had at least one child.”

“Just one,” said Ralph. “A son, Fred Junior, but called Bud or something equally awful. Went off to Korea in a Sabre jet and came back in a bronze urn. The daughter-in-law gave birth to Katie about five months later, got remarried to a Nevada rancher named Pierce and took Katie to live there.”

“And?” I said just to keep my vocal cords tuned up.

“Fred didn’t see much of Katie for about ten years. Mrs. Junior didn’t care much for his high-powered style. In the early sixties, Mr. and Mrs. Pierce split the blanket, and she took Katie to live in Las Vegas. Not long after, Evelyn died of something premature, painful and lingering, leaving a trust fund of about three million bucks.”

“To?”

“Katie. The trust to become hers when she turned twenty-one.”

“A useful sum,” I said, “but unless I miss my guess, not to Katie anymore. Who was the lucky heir?”

“One guess,” said Ralph, “but the initials are FMC, and you’ve met him. Not much later, Fred was struck down by an ungovernable hankering to have Katie by his side. I don’t doubt that he did feel a belated resurgence of grandfatherly feeling, but if I know anything about Fred, the trust fund made him feel it all the keener.”

“Highly understandable,” I said. “Let me guess what happened next. Crenshaw went wading over to Nevada, slugged Mrs. Junior with an attractive lump sum and brought young Katie back to Los Angeles strapped to the pommel of his saddle.”

“Close enough,” Ralph said. “Katie was sent to all the best schools, put on all the cutest ponies and generally spoiled rotten. Fred bought her into Stanford, but it didn’t do much to stop the rot. All she seemed to study was folk singing and pill popping, and the last couple of years she spent more time in clinics and shrinks’ offices than at the university. So Stanford gave her the boot and probably cost themselves a million-dollar bequest. Katie went her way until she ended up at The Institute last summer. Fred didn’t like it, but it seemed better than the street. I didn’t hear any more until she took the big fall just before Christmas. Then I began to hear a lot more about her than I could stand.”

“Fred figured you ought to do something.”

“Not at first,” Ralph said, crunching an ice cube. “Fred was perfectly happy to let the sheriff’s office down in Monterey handle it as long as they came up with the right answer—his right answer—right away and no dillydallying. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and that was when Fred started to lean on them. Until you’ve been leaned on by Frederick Melhuish Crenshaw, you haven’t lived. You know Sheriff Dominguez?”

“The same way I know Governor Brown. I’ve seen his picture in the paper. Little Mexican fellow, isn’t he?”

“Not exactly. To call Luis Dominguez a little Mexican is like describing Lorenzo de’ Medici as a dead wop. Dominguez is Spanish, so Spanish he makes your gums swell, and no touchier than the average fencing master.”

“He and Fred didn’t get along?”

“In a word: Not a fucking bit. Fred became such a nuisance that they nearly took out the phones. When he found out that even the Crenshaw millions couldn’t make the sheriff’s office roll over and play dead, Fred fell back on a high-powered—and higher-priced—firm of private investigators down in L.A.”

“Brazewell Associates,” I said.

“Those were the fellers. As you’ll discover when you read their report, Brazewell’s men got nowhere at The Institute. They were able to tell Fred a lot about that estimable organization and its founder that he didn’t know, but they got no further than Dominguez’s boys when it came to finding out how Katie Pierce came to die on those rocks. It’s a lovely report—good syntax, neatly typed, attractively presented—but no good to Fred. He couldn’t even wipe his butt with it. Fred gritted his teeth, paid through the nose, and—”

“Came running back up here to you.”

“Yes. I read the sheriff’s report, read Brazewell’s very interesting document, shrugged my shapely shoulders and passed him on to you. End of story.” Ralph settled back in the big leather chair as if that were true.

“Why me, Ralph?” I asked. “Sure, I can use the money. If anybody hates starving to death, it’s Jonah Webster Goodey. And I know we’re old friends, even if you did let them run me off the force last year just to collect your rotten pension. But what have I got that Dominguez and the Brazewell organization haven’t?”

Ralph looked smug. “What you’ve got that they haven’t, Joe boy, is a very good in with The Institute.”

I don’t mind being a straight man. “I’ll bite,” I said. “What would that be?”

“You know Rachel Schute,” he said.

That was true enough. I did know the Widow Schute. And although I really liked Rachel and had spent the best part of a year doing a poor imitation of a gigolo, it hadn’t been any good. After a few desultory attempts to meet her exalted expectations, I’d done a calculated drift out of her life last autumn and hadn’t seen her for over six months. I’d heard no word of attempted suicide at her half-million-dollar tepee over in Sausalito.

“So what?” I said.

“So Rachel Schute is in very deep with The Institute, and from all reports seems to be getting in deeper by the minute. I hope it won’t come as too big a shock, Joe, but she’s even romantically involved with one of The Institute’s big shots, some sort of doctor, I think.”

That was a small surprise. I hadn’t imagined that Rachel spent her nights knitting me bed socks, but I couldn’t imagine what she was doing messing around with The Institute. She didn’t even smoke pot.

“Some cynics,” Lehman continued, “have been nasty enough to suggest that Hugo Fischer has his froggy eyes on Mrs. Schute’s bulging moneybags. That’s slander, of course, but all the same, it’s pretty interesting.”

“Sure, it’s interesting. Several million bucks is always interesting. I wish Fischer a lot of luck. But what makes you think Rachel is going to make The Institute roll out the red carpet for me even if she does have some clout down there? You may not have heard over here in the sticks, but we’re no longer an item. She gave me back my fraternity pin last fall.”

“That’s not the way I hear it,” Ralph said. “I hear that the Merry Widow still carries a modest torch for you, though only God knows why. You’re not exactly Paul Newman. But if I were you and wanted to earn that impressive check you’ve been flaunting around here, I’d get over there and see how much credit you’ve got left with Mrs. Schute. You might be surprised. And I wouldn’t be amazed if Hugo Fischer welcomed you if not with open arms, at least without setting the dogs on you.”

3

It seemed pretty crass to use a dead romance as a lever to get inside The Institute. And if Rachel didn’t think the romance was so extinct, that made it even worse. A guy would have to be pretty low to do that sort of thing.

Such thoughts occupied me all the way to Rachel’s place in Sausalito. As I parked the old Morris in the carport and climbed the redwood steps to Rachel’s front door, I was none too proud of myself. I’ll bet my knock even had a shamefaced sound to it.

Ethelberta, Rachel’s black maid, answered the door with a “What, you back again?” look on her somber face and left me standing deep in grass-colored carpet while she went to spread the good news and hide the best silver. Long before, Ethelberta and I had developed a symbiotic relationship. I didn’t try to bullshit her, and she didn’t sell me any tickets to the Black Panther’s Ball. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Either there was more silver to hide these days or the news of my arrival hadn’t been received in milady’s chamber with much jubilation. I was beginning to feel like the second bride at a wedding. I studied the brushstrokes on an early Picasso, but time was beginning to get heavy on my hands when at last Rachel Schute came down the stairs with a less than welcoming expression on her face.

One glance at that face told me that I could have picked a better time for my visit. It was a face in transition from sleepy sensuality to a public expression of not particularly happy anticipation. I astonished myself by feeling a small surge of jealousy. She looked good, flushed slightly either from recent exertion or the knowledge that I could read her face pretty well. For the moment I felt some regret, which I did my best to smother.

“Hello, Joe,” she said in her throaty voice. “I didn’t expect you.” I was trying to come up with a response when someone else came down the stairs behind Rachel.

He wasn’t a big man, but he had a beefy, substantial look that made up for it and a square, slightly florid face with plenty of residual scowl lines. If he were a drunk, he’d be the nasty kind who always wants two olives in his martini and howls the “Yellow Rose of Texas” out of tune. But just then he wasn’t drunk. He was mentally tucking in his shirttails and looking smug. I did not take an immediate liking to him.

Rachel looked nervously over her shoulder at him and said: “Joe, this is Dr. James Carey. Jim, this is Joe Goodey. I think I mentioned him.”

I’d bet she had, but I didn’t care to learn what she’d mentioned about me.

“Evening, doctor,” I said brightly. “I didn’t know you guys made house calls anymore.” I turned to Rachel with a concerned expression on my face. “I hope none of the boys is ill.”

Rachel couldn’t decide whether I was being a smart ass, but she decided to give me the benefit of the doubt. “Jim isn’t that kind of doctor, Joe—I mean, he is, but he isn’t practicing right now. He’s a director of The Institute. You have heard of it, haven’t you?”

From her tone of voice, I knew I was supposed to have, so I decided not to mess around. “I have, Rachel,” I said. “That’s what I’ve come to see you about. Do you think we could sit down for a minute?”

The idea startled Rachel a bit. She’d forgotten that we were standing there like actors frozen in position after the second-act curtain. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll have some coffee.”

We settled comfortably on twin couches of pale green crushed velvet, with them facing me. A trenchant silence reigned while Ethelberta poured the coffee. “Thank you, Ethelberta,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you go home now?”

“All right, Mrs. Schute,” she said. “Good night, doctor.” Her eyes passed over me with all of the expression of twin fog lights, and Ethelberta headed for the door. I let her get her hand on the knob and then said “Ethelberta?” in a voice she couldn’t safely ignore.

She pivoted warily and dropped her eyes on me.

“Nice to see you again,” I said.

Her tea-colored face went even bleaker. “Thank you,” she said flatly, pivoted again and moved smartly through the doorway, shutting the door crisply behind her.

Rachel didn’t bother to comment on this little interplay, but came right to the point. “I don’t understand, Joe. Why have you come to see me about The Institute?”

“It has to do with an assignment I’ve just taken on,” I said. “Somebody wants me to find out who killed Katharine Pierce, the girl who died there last December. And I’d like you to help me get in there. I’ve heard—”

“No one killed Katie Pierce,” Carey butted in. “She jumped or fell from the terrace, and that’s that. There is no need for further investigation.”

“You sure about that, doctor?” I asked.

“Yes, I am. And we don’t need any more cheap private detectives prowling around wasting our time. That case is closed.”

That was said positively enough. I wished that I was as sure of anything as he seemed to be about everything. I was about to beg to differ when Rachel saved me the trouble.

“What makes you so sure, Jim?” she asked, in a tone I knew all too well. Rachel has her soft moments, but she’s no pushover. I knew—and Carey was no doubt beginning to realize—that he’d gone a bit far.

He brought his tone down a shade or two. “Hell, Rachel,” he said, “you know that we’ve already had two investigations. First, the sheriff had his men all over the place, and then those slick characters from Los Angeles were nosing around for weeks. Don’t you think that’s enough?”

Worried that his reasoning might get to Rachel, I said: “Dr. Carey, a young girl—not yet twenty-one—has died under very suspicious circumstances. An old man wants to know just what happened to his only granddaughter. Do you think that’s so very unreasonable?”

“Crenshaw knows, Goodey,” Carey said, fighting a rearguard action. “The sheriff’s department told him. That ought to be good enough, even without those private detectives. Katie’s death was an accident—or possibly suicide. She was a very mixed-up girl.”

“She was a very doped-up girl when she went off that terrace, Dr. Carey,” I said. “Is that usual at The Institute?”

“Of course not,” he said. “You have no idea—”

“That’s why I want to come to The Institute,” I said, running right over him. “If only to satisfy her grandfather once and for all. That’s not so much to ask, is it, Rachel?”

I thought I could count on Rachel feeling tender toward poor, dead Katie Pierce, and she didn’t fail me. She turned to Carey with an expression half imploring and half demanding, something that seems to come easy to rich women.

“No, it’s not. It’s really not, Jim. I don’t see what harm it can do if Joe can settle in the old man’s mind what happened to that poor girl. It’s not as if The Institute has anything to hide. Is it?”

“Of course not,” he came right back on cue. He turned his pale eyes toward me challengingly. “Goodey,” he started, “you can—” But then he thought of something. “Rachel,” he asked, “may I use your telephone?”

While he was out in the hall doing just that, Rachel and I sat staring at each other. There didn’t seem to be much to say. I learned that her three boys were just fine. She learned that I was staying alive but not getting rich.

Carey came back into the room looking more confident, even aggressive. I hoped he hadn’t been drinking out there. “Goodey,” he said, “you come on down to The Institute. Come any time. Turn the place upside down. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is the way to get that old nut off our backs for good.”

“Would tomorrow be too soon?”

“Come right now,” he challenged. “I’ll drive you down myself.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I can see that you’re busy here, and I’ve got to wash a pair of socks. I’ll come down tomorrow if that’s okay. You’ll be there, Rachel?”

“I was going to be there anyway,” she said, “for a wedding. But now that you’re going, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I want to be around when you bump into Hugo.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds like fun. See you then, Doctor?”

“Oh, sure,” Carey said, but didn’t sound all that sure. But it wouldn’t do him any good to have doubts. I was going to The Institute, and with Rachel behind me, I might even have a chance of staying there long enough to learn something. If there was anything to learn.

I got up from the comfortable couch. “I won’t keep you folks up any longer,” I said. “Thanks very much for your time.” Rachel’s mouth tightened. That’s not very good for the facial wrinkles when you’re pushing forty-five, but I didn’t think that was a good time to mention it.

I drifted into the hall, followed by Rachel with a mixed expression on her face. Dr. James Carey skulked in the drawing room doorway, looking baleful. He hadn’t been very happy to see me and he didn’t look sad to see me go. I have that effect on people sometimes.

As I went through the front door, I turned back toward Rachel. “It was good to see you again,” I said. “You’re looking fine, Rachel.” And she was. There must be something about getting laid regularly that brings a high polish to a mature woman’s appearance. “The Institute seems to be doing you good.”

“It is, Joe,” she said. “You could use some of what it has yourself.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said. “It didn’t seem to do a lot for Katie Pierce. See you tomorrow.” I turned to walk down the stairs.

“Joe,” she said quietly, and I stopped with my foot in midair. “Do you have to be such a complete bastard?” she asked just as quietly and closed the big door.

Rachel’s question gave me something to think about as I recrossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed for North Beach. Maybe Rachel was right. Maybe I was jealous because somebody had picked up something I’d rejected. I wouldn’t put it past me.

But before I could ponder the point to death, I was pulling off Broadway and heading into the little cul-de-sac where I lived at the tail end of Chinatown. It hadn’t changed much since morning. The dingy, dun-colored apartment houses still huddled together in self-protective squalor. Lum Kee’s grocery store lurked on the ground floor of my building, but it was run by a manager, an old lady with young eyes. Lum Kee, my late landlord, had gone to his ancestors with about four inches of war-surplus steel in his gut. I wondered what sort of celestial crooked deals he was working.

A man with money in his pocket must walk differently. Before I was halfway across the narrow street, I heard a familiar voice hailing me. “Hello, Joe,” said Gabriel Fong, just by coincidence getting out of his red Jaguar parked at the curb.

“Hi, Gabe,” I said innocently. “What a surprise to find you here. Come on up and have a drink.”

Suspicion crossed his round young face, but he followed me up the narrow, threadbare stairs to my small apartment. At that hour, the cooking odors from the other apartments had faded a bit, but it was still the next best thing to eating a Chinese meal. And less fattening.

Opening my door, I kicked a pile of unpaid bills to one side. The musty, unlived-in smell of the place met me. I made a mental note to myself: Start living.

Gabriel Fong watched me silently while I poured out two glasses of Napa Valley red. He’d probably had something else in mind. Fong had changed a lot since I’d met him the summer before. Then he’d been a clean-cut Bible College student, all fuzzy and sincere and full of apparently genuine piety and good works. But something radical had happened to him since he’d taken over Uncle Lum’s motley empire on the death of that old devil. He’d vowed he was going to run the enterprises for the greater glory of God. But lately, his two hundred dollar suits, Italian haircut and—especially—the red Jag indicated that Mammon might just be winning out. Gabriel’s jaded eyes spoke of something a bit more secular than church socials.

“Drink this, Gabe,” I said, giving him the wine. “You look as though you could use it.”

“It’s not an easy life, Joe,” he said, lifting his weary head from the back of my old green couch. “The responsibilities of being a landlord are many and taxing. You wouldn’t—”

“I would,” I said. “Chasing tenants for the rent must be a real burden. I’ll bet some of them are, as much as three months in arrears. I’ll bet.”

“Four,” he said sadly. “One is four months overdue.” I knew he wasn’t just quoting a random statistic.

“Well, Gabe,” I said, “I know you’re not worried about my rent, but, just in case, have a look at this.” I put Crenshaw’s check into his plump hand.

Fong looked at it for a while, memorizing the sum, subtracting the amount I owed him and probably wondering how I was going to waste the rest of it. “Is that a genuine check, Joe?” he asked.

“It had better be,” I said. “I don’t mind so much for myself, but you probably need another Jaguar.”

He let that pass. The check had him mesmerized. I fancied I could hear the whirr of tiny wheels and cogs. “This Frederick M. Crenshaw, Joe,” he said at last, “would you say he was a substantial man?”

“Only the chairman of the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company,” I answered. I was enjoying the prestige of my new association with Frederick M. Crenshaw.

Fong was impressed, but he didn’t like to show it. He just blinked and said: “I’ll cash it for you and give you the balance.” He made it sound like a big favor. “After I deduct your rent.”

“That’s okay, Gabe,” I said. “No need to bother. I’ll put it in the bank and send you a check. I don’t want to leave you short of pocket money.”

“No problem, Joe,” he said, pulling out a thick roll of bills. Faster than I could have counted my fingers, he’d done the calculation and peeled off a respectable number of bills. “Here,” he said, as if giving me a prize. “Now your rent is paid. Just sign your regular signature on the back of the check, Joe.”

I ignored the ballpoint pen he was shoving at me and slowly counted my share of Crenshaw’s retainer. Even though I had failed algebra, my calculations told me that Fong had subtracted five months’ rent. I held out my hand, palm up. Fong knew what I was getting at.

“It’s to your own advantage, Joe,” he said persuasively. “Think how secure you’ll feel with your rent paid in advance.”

“Think how terrible I’ll feel if I get gored by a musk ox tomorrow and die knowing that I’d overpaid my rent. Give.”

He did. Slowly, reluctantly, sorrowfully as if he were making a down payment on his own coffin. “Now beat it,” I said, “while I start to earn some of that money I just paid you.”

As Fong’s light footsteps died on the stairs, I snapped on my gooseneck lamp and sat down at the table to study the documents Crenshaw had given me. The sheriff’s report was simple and straightforward, a model of terseness and economy. It stated, in brief, that Katharine Melhuish Pierce, a Caucasian spinster twenty years old, had been found dead of head injuries on the rocks below The Institute (formerly known as the Carter mansion) on the morning of December 21, 1975. The fatal injuries were consistent with those that might be caused from such a fall, and the deceased had been dead for approximately eight hours when found.

The report went on to say that there was no evidence to indicate how Katie had come to fall from the roof terrace on top of the building. There were no known witnesses to the death, and the inmates—now, there was a word that the folks at The Institute wouldn’t be crazy about—although cooperative with investigators, hadn’t been able to shed any light on why Katie had been on the terrace or how she’d come to fall off.

The sheriff’s report gave a bit of background on Katie, including the fact that she’d been at The Institute for just under six months, but most of it was the same information Crenshaw had given me at McGinty’s. And it didn’t miss the fact that the late Miss Pierce had had a high concentration of Phenobarbital in her blood stream when she died. In short, she was higher than a steeplejack’s insurance premiums. That was worth thinking about. Supposedly, one of the great attractions of The Institute to Katie had been that it helped her lose her pill habit. Or perhaps lose was a bit strong. The cure didn’t appear to have been all that permanent.

The neatly bound, professionally typed report from Brazewell Associates was written in better English and a lot more of it; Brazewell’s boys certainly scored high for thoroughness. Crenshaw now knew more about The Institute and Hugo A. Fischer than he probably wanted to know. What he wasn’t any closer to knowing was who had killed his granddaughter. The Brazewell investigators, who also knew how to read an autopsy report, noted the phenobarb in Katie’s blood and suggested in the most subtle way possible that she just might have imagined she was Amelia Earhart and tried to fly to Hawaii.

This was not a suggestion likely to appeal to old man Crenshaw, and the Brazewell Report tried to make up in solid, well-researched information what it may have lacked in originality. It took Hugo Amholdt Fischer right back to Lamar, Missouri, where in 1927 he had the good fortune to be born the third son of a dirt farmer whose sidelines were Bible thumping and gin swilling. The report followed Fischer through an undistinguished academic career that ended after the tenth grade and into sporadic employment as a merchant seaman. That is, when he wasn’t in various Midwest slammers for such eccentricities as bad checks, assault and no visible means of support.

To telescope a lot more than Brazewell Associates felt able to do, Fischer was an amphibious bum for the first thirty-seven years of his life. Then in 1964, while working on a banana freighter in South America, he sampled one of the more exotic indigenous psychedelic substances. According to Fischer, he immediately experienced such a flash of insight that he jumped ship and caught the next plane to New York. To quote one of his fruitier declarations: “I instantly knew my destiny. I could visualize in broad outline the creation of a great social movement. All I had to do was make it happen.”

Fischer flew into New York without even bus fare to Manhattan in his pocket and began a tough three or four years while he gathered followers. One stroke of luck, according to the report, was that this was the beginning of the flower-power era, and some of the flower children, in various stages of disintegration, began to flock to his banner.

But his Appeal wasn’t limited to hippies. According to Brazewell, Fischer’s little movement consisted of neurotics, psychotics, alcoholics, workaholics, nymphomaniacs, blocked writers, pill heads, middle-class dropouts, homosexuals, just plain crooks and hoodlums and even a few hard-drug addicts whom nobody else had been able to get off the needle. And from this rabble emerged The Institute of Mankind, later shortened to just The Institute.

According to the report, in 1965 Fischer married Lenore Harston, heiress to a small textile fortune and sometime mental patient, now forty-five years old. They had no surviving children, although a son, Hugo Junior, died shortly after his birth in 1967. For a time in 1973, Mrs. Fischer left The Institute, but she returned the next year.

The report went into some detail on Fischer’s leading disciples, among whom was the following: “A quite recent recruit, as yet non-resident, is Mrs. Rachel Schute, forty-four, a widow and multi-millionairess of Sausalito, California. Mrs. Schute first visited The Institute’s headquarters in January of this year and appears to have been quickly given the status of privileged guest. This would seem to be not unconnected with Mrs. Schute’s considerable wealth, which she inherited on the accidental death of her late husband, Howard Schute in 1973. She has apparently developed a relationship with Dr. James Carey, an ex-alcoholic who is one of Fischer’s top lieutenants. It would of course be libelous to suggest that The Institute is endeavoring to provide Mrs. Schute with a new husband in return for certain financial advantages.”

It would indeed. Those Brazewell people walked a pretty fine line when it came to libel. I’d have liked to have seen Rachel’s face when she read that passage. Or better yet, the good doctor’s. If Fischer had his hooks out for a large hunk of Rachel’s money, he’d better be fairly sharp. She was no fool where money was concerned.

There was a lot more to the report, but I’d had enough for the moment. I’ve never been one to do too much homework, anyway. It takes the edge off your ignorance. A careful study of the Brazewell Report would probably have told me who killed Katie Pierce, but where would be the fun in that?

Besides, something was bothering me. Something small but sharp and irritating was niggling at the back of my brain. Not about the Brazewell Report or even what I would find at The Institute. It had to do with Fred Crenshaw. I went over our conversations in my mind, and somehow something just didn’t ring true. There was something missing. My watch told me that it was nearly midnight. Crenshaw was probably tucked snugly away by then, enjoying whatever kind of dreams millionaires have. On the other hand, he might not be able to sleep, either. It wouldn’t hurt to go find out.

4

It was a fine spring night, so I decided to walk. The Morris could use the rest, and I needed the exercise. Jackson Street was almost empty, and except for an interesting offer hissed at me from a dark alley by a young girl—I think it was a girl—my walk was uneventful until I turned onto Powell Street and looked doubtfully up the steep back slope of Nob Hill toward the Fairmont Hotel.

My resolve to walk it was melted by the clang of the Powell Street cable car coming back from Fisherman’s Wharf and the bellowing voice of my old buddy Rolly Poole: “Come on, Joe, if you’re too cheap to pay, I’ll give you a free ride.” The car had stopped at the intersection, and I could see Rolly’s massive shape among the tall levers in the dark interior of the driver’s slot.

“Best offer I’ve had all night, Rolly,” I said, jumping aboard the running board and getting a grip on a pole just over the head of a pretty Mexican girl. “How goes it?” I’d shared a squad car with Rolly in my early days on the force. Then he’d been a ten-year veteran on the verge of picking up sergeant’s stripes. But without warning one night, I’d found that I had a new partner, and that Rolly had been arrested for beating a pimp to death on Russian Hill.

The call girl in the middle of the action showed her gratitude by turning state’s witness, and Rolly picked up seven long ones over in San Quentin. However, his wife, Helen, kept the family together and never missed a visiting day. And when the parole board sprang him, Rolly found himself at the front of the long line for a job on the cable cars. The department takes care of its own, even when they’ve been a bit naughty. Now Rolly’s woolly hair was shot with dapple gray, and a lot of muscle had turned to fat, but I still wouldn’t have liked to get caught in the grip of his powerful arms on the levers.

“Couldn’t be better, Joe,” he said, giving the bell a bash and setting the car in motion. “You know my little Vanessa? She’s going to be a rock and roll singer, and I’m going to retire to manage her. Only about twenty thousand more trips up this damned hill and I’m a free man.”

The conductor, a slim, blond kid with a healthy crop of pimples, took a couple of fares but passed me by. A black guy carrying a big package snorted and told the night air. “Man, that’s rich. These honkies sure do stick together. No fare or nothing.” He snorted again.

“Joe’s no honky, stud,” Rolly told him, braking the car at Washington Street. “He’s an albino. You ought to see him dance.” That won him another snort. “You working, Joe?”

“You could call it that,” I said. “I’m on my way up to the Fairmont to call an old man a liar.” The girl in front of me, who’d been ignoring our conversation, looked disapproving.

“Nice work if you can get it,” said Rolly, clanging the bell vigorously at a kamikaze on a big Honda. “You really going to stick to this private cop scam?”

“You got any better suggestions?” I asked him, half hoping that he did. But Rolly got busy with the levers, and by the time he’d finished slamming them about and cursing under his breath, he seemed to have forgotten the question, and the cable car was creeping up to the brow of Nob Hill at California Street. “See you, Rolly,” I said, jumping off the still-moving car.

“Sure,” he shouted. I was on the sidewalk at the back of the Fairmont Hotel when I heard him add: “Give him one for me.” That was touching. Old cops never lose their instincts.

Crenshaw had told me his room number, so I went directly to the house phone in the nearly deserted lobby. The night man looked up at me with mild curiosity, but he didn’t go for his gun or scream for help, so I must have looked fairly legitimate. The reluctant operator put me through to Crenshaw’s room.

If I’d expected to confront a sleep-befuddled old man, I’d have been disappointed. Crenshaw’s crisp “Hello. What do you want?” gave the impression that he’d been sitting bolt upright waiting for my call. He received the news that I wanted further words with him without warmth, but suggested that I come right up.

Before I could hit the door a second time, Crenshaw opened it. “Good evening, Mr. Goodey,” he said and closed the door behind me. “Why have you come to see me so soon? Surely you haven’t learned anything useful yet.” That was businesslike enough, if a bit pessimistic about my ability. He was dressed in a rich but not gaudy silk dressing gown and still had his teeth in. The bed was West Point neat, and on a table near a standard lamp was an open book and a glass of what could have been whiskey and water. No bottle was in sight, and I didn’t think I’d get offered a drink.

“Not very much, Mr. Crenshaw,” I said, feeling sleepy and not in the mood for a lot of polite chatter. “Only that you haven’t yet told me the real reason why you want me to find out who killed your granddaughter.”

That got all his attention. Crenshaw turned his impassive eyes on me and asked: “You’re not satisfied with my explanation, Mr. Goodey?” It was obvious that he wasn’t used to taking lip from the hired hands. I sat down uninvited on a straight chair next to the wall, and he retreated to his perch near his drink but didn’t touch it.

“No, I’m not. I’ve been doing some research since I saw you earlier—and some thinking. Your story just doesn’t wash.”

If he was deeply wounded, Crenshaw concealed it well. He looked like a man who had been inconvenienced, but only mildly, as if his pen had run out of ink. “And what story is that, Mr. Goodey?”

“You’ve got to have another motive than grandfatherly love,” I said bluntly.

“Must I?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure you’re a clever businessman, but you were probably a lousy grandfather. And when it comes to playing the grief-stricken old man, you’re way out of your field. I’m sure you’d like to know who killed Katie, but that’s not what you’ve hired me to do. You want me to prove that somebody at The Institute did it. There’s a big difference.”

Crenshaw seemed to ignore what I’d just said. “Mr. Goodey,” he said calmly, “do you make a habit of insulting your clients?”

“Sometimes I have to,” I said, “when they lie to me or withhold useful information.”

“Perhaps it would be better if you just returned my retainer and left this hotel room.”

“Perhaps it would,” I said, “but I can’t. I’ve already spent a big chunk of it.”

That gave him something to think about. Crenshaw sucked his cheeks in and eyed me with mild disgust. “Is that your idea of professional integrity? Accepting a client’s money, spending that money and then calling him a liar in an effort to be relieved of your assignment?”

“I don’t want to lose this job,” I said. “I like this job. I like your money. But I want to go to The Institute tomorrow knowing as much as I can. As much as you know, if that’s possible.”

“Tomorrow? You’re going down there that soon?” Crenshaw’s face melted slightly. “And you think Fischer will be willing to let you in?”

“Better than that. I’ve had a personal invitation from the great man himself.”

“I am reluctantly impressed, Mr. Goodey—if what you say is true.”

“It is.”

He thought for a moment. “And what if I tell you no more than I already have? What will you do then?”

“I’ll still go. But if I fail, we’ll both know that at least part of the reason was that you held out on me. And I won’t be as cut up about it as I might be.”

“But I don’t understand how letting you in on my personal business could help you find Katharine’s killer. Surely, the facts of her death are the same.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but it wasn’t just your business, was it? Katie was involved,” I added, going way beyond my knowledge. I looked at my watch. “Come on, Mr. Crenshaw. I want to get to bed. Either tell me or don’t.”

“Last November,” Crenshaw began smoothly, as if none of all that had been said, “Katharine came down to Los Angeles to see me. She came alone, and I have to admit that she looked good, better than she had in a couple of years. I’d almost forgotten how pretty, how vibrant she could be. Katharine claimed that she was happier than she’d been in her life and completely free of her dependence on barbiturates.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I wanted to,” Crenshaw said. “I wouldn’t have challenged her anyway. I wanted it to be a happy visit.”

“And was it?”

He gave me a dry look. “Not entirely. It was not purely a personal visit. Katharine asked me to turn over to her the three million dollar trust fund left to her by my late wife. As executor of the trust, I had the power to decide whether Katharine, once she’d turned twenty-one, should receive the principal amount of the trust or just the interest on the money. I also had the power to give Katharine her inheritance before her twenty-first birthday, if I considered it appropriate.”

“That’s some power,” I said. “And did you consider it appropriate?”

“I did not.”

“How did Katie take that?”

“Very badly,” Crenshaw said. “She became emotional, almost hysterical.”

“So much for the therapeutic benefits of The Institute,” I said. “Did she say why she wanted the money?”

“She didn’t have to. I’m certain that Fischer and the others at The Institute were working on Katharine to get her money.”

“If they were,” I said, “they were being pretty successful. What did she do then?”

Crenshaw said, almost sadly: “Katharine threatened to go to the newspapers, to tell the world that I was holding back her money because I hated The Institute. The last thing I wanted was that kind of publicity. Besides, I didn’t want to alienate Katharine. I loved my granddaughter, Mr. Goodey. She was the last living member of my family. I had hopes that The Institute would prove to be only a passing phase in her life. That she would—”

“Come back to you?”

Crenshaw looked embarrassed to express such sentiment. “Yes.”

“So what did you do?”

“I succeeded in calming Katharine down, and we had quite a reasonable talk. We came to a compromise under which I agreed to her claiming the entire amount of the trust when she was twenty-three years old. That way, she would be able to give The Institute a large lump sum of money, and I could be more certain that she knew what she was doing. In the meantime—once she was twenty-one—she could start collecting a very nice sum in annual interest. Do you know what the annual interest is on three million dollars, Mr. Goodey?

“I dream about it all the time,” I said. “That’s very nice footwork, Mr. Crenshaw. And now that Katharine is dead, what happens to all that money, under the terms of the trust?”

“It reverts to me. Under the terms of the trust, I was the principal heir. Except for a modest income left to her mother, I was to get the money from the trust.”

“So you’re home free,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” said Crenshaw meaningfully, “is that as part of our agreement, the money in trust became part of Katharine’s estate. And at the same time, she made a new will leaving everything to Hugo Fischer for the benefit of The Institute. I made Katharine promise not to tell anyone of our arrangement or the new will, but less than a month later she was dead.”

“You think she told someone.”

“I know that someone at The Institute killed Katharine for the money,” Crenshaw said positively.

“That is yet to be proved,” I said. “However, it would seem that, under her will, Katie’s money is now Fischer’s money.”

“Technically, that would be true,” Crenshaw said, “if Katharine’s new will should come to light.”

“But it hasn’t yet?”

“No,” Crenshaw said. “It hasn’t. And it won’t—if I can prevent it—until you find out who killed my granddaughter.”

“I suppose you know,” I said, “what you’re fooling with. To a jury, it could look an awful lot like fraud, deception, malfeasance as executor of Katie’s trust fund, and a lot of other nasty things that could add up to a long stretch in jail.”

“I’m fully aware of that, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “And the longer I have to keep the will a secret, the greater the danger becomes. So far, Fischer has been cunning enough not to press too hard, but my position could become untenable within a very short time. That is why you must do the job I hired you to do. Once Katharine’s killer is discovered, I can use that information to delay things further. You are aware that under law the perpetrator of a crime cannot be allowed to profit from that crime?”

“I’ve heard something to that effect.”

“That is what I am counting on. Once Katharine’s murderer is discovered, the will shall be made public, and I’ll be quite content to take my chances in the courts of law. With the responsibility for Katharine’s death laid at Fischer’s door, her new will has to be ruled invalid. The money from the trust will revert to me and be put to its proper use.”

This was a lot for me to take in, so I just sat there and enjoyed his profile for a while. Crenshaw didn’t seem to mind. “Mr. Crenshaw,” I said at last, “I can’t help thinking that you are taking some terrific risks with your personal liberty. To me, three million dollars is a lot of money, and I can understand your reluctance to see it go to Fischer, but wouldn’t it be simpler just to let Fischer have the money as Katie intended him to?”

Crenshaw didn’t answer for a few seconds, but something seemed to be happening behind his cool facade. For the first time, he looked weary. “Yes, it would, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “But the money isn’t available right at this moment to give to Fischer.”

That stopped me. “And just where is Katie’s three million dollars, Mr. Crenshaw?” I asked when I recovered the power of speech.

“Safely invested,” Crenshaw said a bit sharply, apparently not crazy about my tone of voice. “Don’t think me a thief, Mr. Goodey. As trustee, I have every right to invest Katharine’s trust in any manner I choose.”

“But…” He was leaving something unsaid.

“I have used Katharine’s inheritance to protect some of my own investments,” he said. “Not bad investments, but situations which will require a bit of time to come to fruition. At this time…”

“What would happen at this time if Fischer demanded Katharine’s money? Could it be realized?”

“Yes,” said Crenshaw bleakly, “every cent. But to pull that three million dollars out at this time would ruin me completely. My investments would be worthless, and I would be all but a pauper.”

“How long do you need to hold on to Katharine’s money?”

“At least another three months. By then the business situation will have improved enough so that I could withdraw the money from the trust.”

“You hope.”

“It must!” Some of the snap came back into Crenshaw’s delivery. “Have you ever been poor, Mr. Goodey?”

“I’ve never been anything else.”

“Well, I have,” he said firmly, “and I’m never going to be poor again. I’d rather be dead. I will be before too much longer, anyway, but I must have my own fortune and Katherine’s to…”

“To what, Mr. Crenshaw?” I said. “Don’t be shy. I already know enough to deliver you to both the police and the bankruptcy court. What have you got to lose?”

“Nothing,” he said, “but it’s none of your business.”

“That’s what you told me about what you’ve just told me,” I said. “Go the whole route, Mr. Crenshaw. Enlighten me. I won’t laugh.”

I could see from his expression that the possibility had never occurred to him. “You’re right, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “I may as well tell you the whole story. It doesn’t matter what you think.”

I nodded encouragingly.

He began: “Mr. Goodey, I wasn’t being dramatic when I said that I will not live long. My doctors are not encouraging, to put it mildly. And when I die it will mean the end of my family. I won’t pretend to you that it has been an exalted family thus far. My father was a bartender. But I had hoped that Bud—my son—with the advantages that I was able to give him and his mother’s inheritance, would go on to do some really good things with his life. But Bud didn’t come back from Korea.

“Then, to be frank, I’d hoped that his child would be a boy—Frederick Melhuish Crenshaw III.” He smiled ruefully. “But that didn’t work out as I’d planned, either. I ended up pinning all my hopes on Katharine, even if she didn’t bear the family name. And you know, Mr. Goodey, what that has come to.”

Crenshaw plunged: “It may seem pointless vanity to you, but I want my name to live on after I am dead. It must. That is why I must continue to use Katharine’s money to safeguard my own. I then intend to use every cent at my command to endow a foundation—the Frederick Melhuish Crenshaw Jr. Foundation—to ensure that poor but promising boys, as I once was, Mr. Goodey, will have a chance at a good education whether or not they are athletes, as I had the good fortune to be.

“Even if my name survives only in this way, it will survive. I will not stand by and see myself ruined and my son’s inheritance go to a fraud like Hugo Fischer, simply for him to use for further self-aggrandizement.”

I could have said that it was probably a photo finish between him and Fischer in the self-aggrandizement stakes, but I didn’t. I just stood up and said: “Thank you for being so honest with me, Mr. Crenshaw.” And I went home.

Back in my apartment, I stacked the two reports under half a bottle of villainous Sonoma Valley Grenache rosé, turned off the lights and retreated to my long, narrow bedroom with the spectacular view. I got into bed and lay there watching cars cross the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, thinking about Crenshaw’s dilemma. In the alley below a convention of Chinatown’s cat population was in good voice. The last thing I heard was either a strangled cry for help or the beginning of a lasting friendship.

5

I woke up the next morning, which, in my business, is about as much as you can expect. For a moment I just lay there wondering how to best kill the day and avoid my creditors. Or vice versa. Then I remembered that I’d promised to do a little job for Fred Crenshaw. And that I had some of his money left in my pocket. There’s nothing like money up front to inspire my sense of responsibility, so I got out of bed. After a ritual cup of coffee and a peek out of the window—weather fair but with a slight overcast that would burn off—I threw some clothes in my old suitcase. I hadn’t thought to ask Rachel what they wore at The Institute. If it turned out to be flowing djellabahs and toe-thong sandals, I was going to stick out like a nun in Las Vegas. I didn’t pack my tux.

There are three ways to drive to Monterey from San Francisco. My favorite is little Highway 1 hugging the coastline with its dumpy beach towns, smog-belching power plants and second-rate redwood forests. I didn’t try to break any speed records. The Morris had developed something in the sweetbreads which sounded pretty terminal, and I dared not push it too hard.

I got to Monterey just before noon and had to look for the sheriff’s new office. The old one had been razed, and just about where the desk sergeant used to lean, a teenager was selling chilidogs to the unwary. A leathery old Mexican confused me with elaborate directions, but eventually I stowed the Morris in a parking slot for “Monterey County Sheriff’s Office Personnel only” and walked into the modernistic building, which only slightly resembled a pop-up toaster.

Just for the fun of it, I told the young deputy behind the desk that I wanted to see Sheriff Dominguez. Assuming that I was drunk, he signaled for a couple of weightlifters to help me out to the sidewalk. He called them off when I flashed my private operative’s license. I don’t think he was all that impressed; maybe he just didn’t want them to get their hands dirty.

“I wouldn’t want to pry into your business, Mr. Goodey,” the deputy said, “but you couldn’t see Sheriff Dominguez even if you had a note from God. I’ve been on this force three and a half years, and I’ve seen him only twice—once by accident.”

“It’s not really a state secret,” I said. “I’m looking into the death of the Pierce girl down at Las Palomas last December.”

“Another one,” he said, his face going a bit slack.

“Yep,” I said, trying not to sound too cheerful. “But…”

“Not another word.” He raised an ink-stained hand. “My contract says I don’t have to talk about Katie Pierce or The Institute. On Saturday I don’t have to talk at all. You just wait one minute, and I’ll get you someone who loves to talk about The Institute.” He picked up the receiver on the desk and dialed two digits. “Lieutenant?” he said, “I’ve got another one out here asking about Katie Pierce. No, not Brazewell’s bunch. Not the old man, either. It’s a private cop from San Francisco name of—” He took another look at my credentials. “—Goodey. Jonah W. Goodey. Okay. Sure.”

“You’re in luck,” the deputy said after he hung up. “Our expert on The Institute has a few minutes to spare.” He gestured toward an opaque door marked Investigations. “Just wander through there and ask for Lieutenant Grenby.”

It wasn’t too hard to find a door that had “Lt. Michael Grenby, Assistant Director of Investigations,” on it. It didn’t say knock, so I didn’t.

The face that looked up at me over a crowded desk was young, nearly as young as that of the deputy outside, but a lot more intelligent. It was the face of a star on the D.A.’s staff or a first-term congressman. It was the kind of face that makes you wonder how it ever got on a cop. His hair was dark and curly and just slightly longer than was absolutely necessary. Behind aviator-style spectacles, his eyes were friendly without being effusive.

“Mr. Goodey,” he said. “Won’t you have a chair?”

I did, and we sat facing each other in perfect silence for a few seconds. It was very restful.

“Would I be wrong in assuming that Mr. Crenshaw sent you down here?” he asked.

“Sent is a bit strong,” I said. “Crenshaw hired me to find out how his granddaughter died, and I’m on my way down to Las Palomas to do that.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, maybe not just like that, Lieutenant,” I said. “But can you think of a better place than Las Palomas to find out just how Katie Pierce came to die last December?”

“I know how Katie Pierce died,” he said, with slight impatience and more than slight weariness. “I spent weeks of my life on that job. The county paid me to do it. What do you think you can do down at Las Palomas except waste more of Crenshaw’s money?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I’m not going to sting him for nearly as much as Brazewell did. I might just find something out. Are you one-hundred percent positive that it was an accident or suicide?”

It was his turn to make an admission. “No, I’m not that sure of anything. But I wasn’t able to turn up anything that indicated that it wasn’t, either. You’ve seen my report?”

I hesitated, not wanting to give anything away. But he added quickly: “Don’t worry, Mr. Goodey. I know you’ve got it, and I know who gave it to you. The man lost his only grandchild, and I’m not the stuffy sort who objects to a little bribery and violation of confidential documents if it will finally convince Crenshaw that nobody’s hiding anything about Katie’s death. God knows I’m not.”

Grenby continued: “Aside from anything else, I don’t like open coroner’s reports. They’re untidy and they make me nervous. If you can settle the matter to Crenshaw’s satisfaction, I’m on your side all the way. I don’t dare to have a nightmare these days for fear of finding Crenshaw in it.”

“He seems a bit persistent,” I agreed.

“And Bluebeard was a bit of a ladies’ man,” Grenby said. “Does Hugo—does Fischer know you’re coming down to The Institute?”

“Yes. He kindly allowed one of his minions, Dr. James Carey, to invite me last night.” I paused and then added: “So you won’t have to tell him.”

He didn’t like that. He was still deciding just how much he didn’t like it when I stood up and politely thanked him for his time.

Grenby ignored my gratitude. When he spoke he was trying to keep his tone professional and detached. “I think you’re wasting your time, Mr. Goodey, but there’s no way that I can stop you from going down to The Institute. Nor would I want to. But I would suggest that you watch your step while you’re in Monterey County. This is not San Francisco.”

I thanked Grenby for the advice, not to mention the geography lesson, and carried on down the coast toward Las Palomas. Just below Carmel, my stomach began threatening industrial action, so I pulled off the highway into the parking lot of Nepenthe, a redwood and plate-glass fantasy hanging over the sea. The day had grown even finer, so I sat outside with the big, open-pit fireplace at my back, alternately admiring the incredible sea views and the waitress’s bobbling breasts.

Crenshaw was paying, so I went the whole hog and ordered the ambrosia burger, a basket of French fries and a pitcher of beer. The change left out of ten bucks wasn’t worth worrying about, so I gave it to the waitress. She wasn’t overwhelmed.

“Have you heard of a place called The Institute?” I asked her as she cleared the table.

“It’s that bunch of nuts down in Las Palomas, isn’t it?” she said, not too diplomatically. “Some of them come here once in a while. They don’t seem to be short of money.” I said I thought we were talking about the same place and asked if she’d ever been there.

“No,” she said. “There are enough freaks and weirdos in Big Sur without going to look for more. You going down there?”

“Yes,” I said. “I understand they’ve got some kind of a new lifestyle. I want to find out what it’s all about.”

“You a journalist?” she demanded, but another customer caught her eye with an urgent semaphore before I could answer.

Once I was on the highway again, the sunshine, the blue sky and the broad vista of surf crashing against the rocky shore exercised a hypnotic effect, and I was nearly into Lucia before I realized that I’d passed right by The Institute. Turning around, I was a bit more alert and eventually spotted a discreet wooden sign reading “The Institute” resting in some shrubbery beside an inconspicuous dirt road on the seaward side of the highway. An equally circumspect notice said: “Private Property—Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.”

Making a mental note of that fact, I turned the Morris down the dirt road, which quickly became a green tunnel of foliage with only glancing penetration of sunlight. It seemed like clear sailing until I’d turned the second curve and found a railroad-type barrier across the road. It was manned by two young blacks wearing gray coveralls of the sort mechanics wear. I stopped the car, and one of them walked over with an official look on his face.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “May I ask your business at The Institute?”

I told him I was an invited guest and gave him my name. He consulted his clipboard until he recognized one of the names on it. “Welcome to The Institute, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “May I see your identification?”

Not sure whether I wanted to alert the lower orders, I showed him my California driver’s license. The picture on it isn’t a very good likeness; I’m really handsomer and have much more hair. But he nodded, said “Thank you,” and gestured to his associate to lift the barrier.

I drove on. I couldn’t help admiring The Institute’s security arrangements, but then I’ve always been a sucker for good security. The road ahead continued to twist gently downhill, passing through stands of silver pine and eucalyptus until, quite suddenly, it opened onto a broad vista of unnaturally green grass—acres of it—running down to a mansion like a baroque wedding cake. I couldn’t place the period, but it was someplace between mock-Byzantine and Gay Nineties Gothic. I didn’t have much time to study the architecture before my attention was grabbed by the spectacle in front of the mansion.

There on the grass was something resembling a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as done by a tank-building collective in Omsk. Almost everyone was wearing coveralls, but the colors ranged from palest pastel shades to dark greens, blues and browns, plus a heavy sprinkling of drab gray.

These pixies seemed to be performing some sort of ritual involving a lot of flowers and heavy breathing. At first I couldn’t figure it out, but then I remembered that Rachel had said something about a wedding. Then I spotted the bride and groom in identical pink coveralls, leis of white flowers around their necks and wreaths on their heads, which were at that moment bowed in front of a bearded gentleman all decked out like the high priest of camp. I parked the car and joined the fringe of the throng.

Even from where I stood, there was a remarkable contrast between the bowed heads of the bridal couple. His bore the scars and wrinkles of over sixty years of hard times. What little hair he had was elaborately pushed around to cover the naked bits of a bullet dome. The bride, on the other hand, hadn’t weathered more than about twenty summers and had the profile of a fallen angel. Her large dark eyes were lowered in stagey solemnity.

As I was admiring this misalliance, the bearded one must have said the magic words because the mob went crazy. The air was full of confetti, balloons and flowers, and most of the celebrants converged on the blissful pair. But not Rachel Schute, who was coming at me from the crowd towing a none-too-eager Dr. James Carey behind her.

“Joe,” Rachel called, “I’m glad you didn’t miss the wedding. Wasn’t it beautiful?”

I grunted something noncommittal.

“Come on,” she said. “I want you to meet Hugo.” She turned, and I followed her gaze to a flower-overwhelmed bower, where the newlyweds were receiving the blessings of a figure in virginal-white coveralls. Hugo Fischer, I presumed. He was a thick man, blocky rather than fat, and his close-cropped, fur-like hair running nearly down to his eyebrows gave him a slightly animal look. At that moment, he was deep in conversation with the bride and groom, and his heavy features held an expression of total benevolence. He was the patriarchal figure deep in the bosom of his family. The bridegroom was well over ten years his senior, but basked in Fischer’s smile like a seal pup on a sunny rock.

Fischer wound up his benediction with a showy kiss on the bride’s ivory brow. Then he turned in our direction and was suddenly transformed. The left side of his face, hidden from me until then, was scarred with a livid, purple-red birthmark, which spread from his throat to his eyebrow like a flaming growth.

The effect was startling. The birthmark turned Fischer into a flawed idol, half-benign, half-malevolent. On the disfigured side of his face, his mouth seemed to turn down in a slight but perpetual scowl, and the eye wreathed in the dying tentacles of the birthmark had a saturnine cast.

Rachel was urging me toward Fischer when a girl in pale green coveralls approached him from the side and said something. Fischer inclined the disfigured side of his face toward her, and as he listened, his expression changed radically. The benevolent father was superseded by an outraged and angry god.

Straightening up, Fischer filled his bull-like chest and bellowed: “Form the circle!”

The effect on the crowd on the grass was instantaneous. One moment they were an aimless, happy rabble scattered over the lawn like sheep, talking, laughing, taking food and drink from long trestle tables. Then they were like so many iron filings obeying the dictates of a magnetic force. As if operating with one consciousness, all of the mob in coveralls spread swiftly but deliberately across the lawn, joining hands as they moved, until they were formed into a circle some fifty yards across with Fischer at twelve o’clock, standing with his back to the mansion’s oak double doors.

Rachel and I and a number of other plainclothes visitors were left on the periphery of the circle. Rachel didn’t seem particularly surprised by this development, but my mouth was hanging open. The faces of the residents that I could see seemed to go blank yet expectant at the same time. I noticed that Carey had left Rachel’s side and had slipped into the circle at Fischer’s left hand.

Fischer checked to see that the circle was complete and began to raise his hand in signal to someone off to one side. Then, at Fischer’s right hand, another figure in white, a slim, sallow-faced woman in her mid-forties with something haggard and haunted in her features, caught Fischer’s wrist lightly. She said something to him that I was too far away to hear. But her expression was pleading.

Fischer threw off her hand easily and finished the signal. “Yes!” he said in a booming voice. “Especially today.”

The ceremonial circle broke slightly at one point, and an escort of twelve fair-sized men in two gray columns marched into the circle led by a thin, hawk-like man in black. Between their ranks were a boy and girl not in coveralls. The circle closed like water behind them, and the phalanx pivoted smartly and stopped in front of Hugo Fischer.

“For God’s sake, Rachel,” I said. “What’s going on? Who are these people? I don’t have a program.”

“Shhh,” she shushed me. Her eyes were riveted on Fischer.

“You’d better tell me,” I warned her, “or I’ll do something human, like start laughing. Who’s the woman in white, for a start?”

“Lenore Fischer,” she whispered, just to shut me up. “Hugo’s wife.”

The bodyguard in gray peeled away with military precision leaving the character in black and the young couple in the middle of the circle. Their attitudes were a study in contrast. The couple stood with eyes downcast, as if caught in an act of original sin. The man in black stood ramrod straight, his zealot’s eyes locked on Fischer’s impassive face. He was about thirty-five, and had a face like a hammer.

“Identify,” I whispered, jabbing Rachel in the ribs.

“Don Moffitt,” she said with resignation. “Vice President of the Institute.”

At that moment, Moffitt jabbed his chin at the sky and said in a voice loud enough to be heard in Big Sur: “As you can see, Hugo, two of our lost sheep have returned.”

“What do they want?” Fischer asked, in a voice edged with malignant bonhomie. He was playing to the back rows and looked to be all set for a good time.

“They say,” Moffitt intoned, “that they want back in. They want to rejoin our community.”

“The hell they do!” pronounced Fischer, sticking his lower lip out like Mussolini.

“What did they do?” I asked Rachel.

“They left The Institute without permission—together,” Rachel said, without taking her eyes from the spectacle. “Two weeks ago.”

“That was naughty,” I said, but Rachel wasn’t listening.

“Why?” asked Fischer like a clap of thunder. “What can they want here? Perhaps they can tell me. What do you want of me? What do you want of your former brothers and sisters? Speak!”

The boy, tall, gaunt and Byronic with thick, curly black hair covering his ears, raised his dark-browed eyes toward Fischer in near defiance. But he couldn’t hold it, and let his eyes fall to the toes of his dusty cowboy boots. The girl, slight and fair and dressed gypsy style, didn’t raise her face at all. Her hair hung lank and knotted.

“Speak to Hugo,” Moffitt demanded. “He asked you a question.”

The boy’s lips moved hesitantly, but not much came out.

“Speak up!” barked Moffitt, and someone from the circle shouted:

“We can’t hear you, Lennie.”

The boy tried again, the strain showing on his face, and his voice came out broken and unmodulated as from a faulty radio. “We want to come back,” he said, “because we need The Institute.” He dropped his head again.

“But we don’t need you!” bawled Moffitt, and he was echoed by growls from around the circle.

“Throw ‘em out on the highway,” called Dr. James Carey, in a tone remarkably like Fischer’s.

“Give ‘em a dollar and put them on the road,” cried the bridegroom. His voice was raspy, his face contorted with suddenly summoned indignation. “We don’t need these bums.”

“Who the hell is the old geezer?” I whispered to Rachel.

“Pops Martin,” she said shortly. “A founding member of The Institute.”

Fischer swiveled his large head angrily in our direction, and Rachel went a deep pink. Then he turned his attention back to the more grievous sinners.

After looking at the couple for a long moment, he asked almost casually: “What do you think, Mark?”

A half dozen places to his left, a swarthy guy in his mid-twenties, tall but soft looking, as if he hadn’t yet lost all of his baby fat, preened himself for a moment and then replied in an adenoidal voice: “I can’t help wondering, Hugo, just how much they want back in.”

That must have been the right thing to say, for immediately other voices around the circle took up the cry.

“Yeah, how much?”

“Tell us!”

“Beg, you motherfuckers!”

“Yes, beg! Beg!” The mob took up this popular cry all around the circle.

I nudged Rachel again, but she ignored me.

“Who’s the big baby doing the rabblerousing?” I demanded, but Rachel didn’t know I was there.

“His name is Mark Kinsey,” said a woman’s soft voice behind us. I turned around to find a fellow spectator, a middle-aged suburban matron in a very subtle blue rinse, looking at me with some irritation. “He’s The Institute’s press officer,” she added, “and we’d all appreciate it if you’d shut up.”

I thanked her none too warmly for the information and considered asking her who she thought she was, but decided against it. When I turned back to the spectacle, the crowd was still demanding that Lennie and his girlfriend prove just how sincerely they wanted to be back in the loving bosom of The Institute. Those two weren’t saying anything, just studying the grass in front of their feet as if one of them had dropped a dime.

At that moment, Hugo Fischer raised a pair of substantial arms, and the clamor died down until the silence was so complete that I could detect that someone behind me had a mild case of asthma.

“Barbara,” said Fischer in a gentle tone that didn’t convince me one hundred percent, “look at me.”

Nothing much happened, and the silence piled up like snow on a frail branch. Something had to break. It turned out to be the girl. Slowly, painfully, she raised her dirty, tear-stained face until she was looking at Hugo Fischer. Her vague eyes blinked as if she were looking into the sun.

“That’s better,” said Fischer benignly. “You look, Barbara, as if you’ve had a hard couple of weeks.”

The girl said nothing. Her face was blank with exhaustion. She swayed slightly, and the boy at her side reached automatically toward her. Waves of convulsion seemed to rock her body; she opened her mouth wider than I would have thought possible and cried: “Hugo! Please let us back in! I—please!” She put her hands to her face and slipped to her knees. Instantly, Lennie was kneeling beside her and pulling her matted head to his chest, but everybody else froze. With effort, I pulled my eyes from Barbara and Lennie to see how Fischer was taking it.

I’m not learned enough to describe the expression on Fischer’s face at that moment. It wasn’t triumph, nothing as petty as that. If anything, it was a sort of heroic, grieved satisfaction such as God might have worn if Adam and Eve had applied for readmission to the Garden of Eden.

I found it hard to take, and was just about to find something else for my eyes to do when Fischer clapped his hands and signaled to Moffitt. “Take them away,” he said in a magisterial voice and turned away. As if it had been the creation of a magic spell, the circle was gone. The coveralled members of The Institute were a celebrating throng again, and Pops Martin and his blushing bride were the focus of attention. The cordon in gray disappeared with its prisoners.

At my side, Rachel stood very still in a trance. I couldn’t think of much to say myself, so I just stood there and marveled quietly.

Then Rachel seemed to shake the spell and said: “Now, we’ll find Hugo, and I’ll introduce you to—” We both looked in the direction where Fischer had been, but he’d vanished. She was looking around when a voice said:

“Rachel, it’s lovely to see you again.” It was the woman who had politely told me to shut my face.

Rachel, who seemed glad to have something to do, said: “Hello, Eloise. Did you know?”

Eloise shook her head. “No. So far as I knew, they were nowhere near here. It was a great shock to me when they suddenly appeared like that.”

“I don’t like to be rude, Eloise,” I said, “but my name is Joe Goodey, and I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

Rachel did the honorable thing and introduced us. She said that Eloise was Mrs. Barker, a local supporter of The Institute.

“I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Goodey,” Eloise said, “and I want to apologize to you for being so rude earlier. But we take ceremonies very seriously at The Institute. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go see someone.” She smiled opaquely and disappeared into the crowd.

“Who,” I asked Rachel, “was that?”

“That,” said Rachel, “was Barbara’s mother.”

“Barbara?” I said blankly, but then the realization hit me. “Not—”

“Yes,” she said, “that Barbara.”

Rachel got a slightly smug, pedagogic look on her face and said: “It’s not really as inexplicable as you might think, Joe. Barbara is a girl with very serious emotional problems. She’s been at The Institute for only three months, and she was making very good progress until recently when she and Lennie got too—too attracted to each other. He’s an ex-drug addict who came to The Institute from New Jersey.”

“So?” I said.

“So, Hugo banned Barbara and Lennie from seeing each other—for their own good. Two weeks ago they ran off together. And today they came back.”

“I can handle all that pretty well,” I said. “But what bothers me is that you all—even the girl’s mother—could just stand here and watch Fischer and his mad dogs play with that girl as if she were a bundle of rags.”

There was a pitying look in Rachel’s eyes when she said: “Joe, you just don’t understand. Hugo is trying to save those children’s lives. You’ve got an awful lot to learn about The Institute.”

“I’ll say,” I said.

6

Before I could say anything more, an anemic boy in pale blue coveralls was tugging on Rachel’s sleeve.

“Rachel,” he said, “Hugo is waiting to see you in his office. And your visitor.”

So my arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed at the highest levels. Perhaps the good Dr. Carey had whispered something in Hugo Fischer’s sizeable ear.

“Thank you, Glynn,” Rachel said, and she and I started walking up the drive toward the vast oak doors, which were now open. The celebrating residents and their guests were drifting freely between the lawn and the mansion. A band was playing in a large marquee at one side of the big house, and merriment was unrestrained. We pushed our way through the mob into the foyer of the mansion. It was a splendid house; someone had spent a fortune on the marble floor alone, but there was something odd and institutional about the atmosphere. I kept expecting an announcement to come blasting out of a loudspeaker.

I climbed the immaculate marble staircase at Rachel’s side. “How do I address this Fischer character?” I asked. “Your Lordship, or will a simple Sir do?”

“Everybody at The Institute,” said Rachel without a glimmer of a smile, “calls him Hugo. You’re no exception.”

On the first floor, we turned down a wide, cream colored hall. The carpets were Oriental and looked expensive. Rachel stopped outside an unmarked door from behind which I heard a low murmur of voices. She knocked softly, and the voices died.

“Come in,” called a familiar voice, a bit impatiently. When I pushed the door open, Fischer was sitting facing the door behind about a quarter acre of executive-style desk, flanked by Carey and the hard man in black, Don Moffitt. Pops Martin, a couple of pink petals still lodged in his thin locks, sat on an easy chair in front of a bay window, one leg cocked over the opposite bony knee. Mark Kinsey was perched on the opposite window sill, practicing an institutional rock and looking insecure. The walls of the office were crowded with framed 9-by-12 inch signed photographs of that same quartet and others who I assumed were big shots of The Institute. It looked like a parody of a third-rate movie producer’s office.

Rachel followed me into the room and shut the door. For lack of anything else to do, I stopped in front of Fischer and waited for him to say something. He didn’t disappoint me.

“What the hell do you want here, Goodwin?” he demanded.

A fair question that deserved an honest answer.

“The name is Goodey, Mr. Fischer, G-double-o-d-e-y, Joe Goodey,” I said. “And I’ve come here to find out which of you murdered Katharine Pierce.”

Fischer soaked it up without showing much response at all, but his honchos each reacted in a typical way. Carey let his jaw drop at my rudeness and started thinking about getting angry; Moffitt balled his fists ready for action; Kinsey rocked back a bit abruptly, hit his head against the windowpane and looked embarrassed. Only old Pops Martin did anything very active. He uncoiled himself from the chair faster than I’d have thought possible and came toward me like a small dog on a short leash. Planting both gnarled hands on the top of Fischer’s desk, he got a fierce expression on his old mug and snarled: “Watch your lip, shamus—or you’ll find yourself waking up in the gutter with your head on a dead cat.”

The word shamus went out of style in about 1938 and Martin couldn’t have whipped his weight in macaroons, but I had to give him points for originality. I’d have to think about that one. He was about to get off something even more horrific when Fischer yanked gently on his leash.

“Easy, Pops,” he said. “Don’t forget that this is your wedding day. I’m sure our visitor isn’t being deliberately provocative.” Pops retired to his chair with a nonchalant slouch, but his eyes served notice that I was on probation.

Fischer turned back to me and then had to lower his line of sight because I’d sat down on a very nice chair nobody seemed to be using. He didn’t much like the idea, but he’d get used to it. Rachel had retired to a couch out of the line of fire, and Carey was sending her obscure signals with his eyebrows. She was too busy eyeing Fischer with nervous apprehension to notice.

“You take a radical line of approach, boy,” Fischer said. “It may have been a success with the San Francisco Police Department,” he added, not without irony, “but it won’t get you far in my house. What makes you think I won’t have my good friends here pitch you right back on Highway One?”

“Because I’ve got a feeling that you’d like this mess cleared up once and for all if only to get Crenshaw off your back.”

“Mr. Crenshaw,” Fischer said, “is a very unhappy man. When he was here, we did everything we could to convince him that Katie’s death was an accident, a tragic accident, but nothing more. No one here could have or would have killed Katie. There is no mess here to clear up, Mr. Goodey.”

“That’s your story,” I said, “but I imagine that you can understand why Crenshaw feels a bit differently. And why he hired me. Sure, you can throw me out of here, but it won’t satisfy Crenshaw a bit. He’s got the idea that I can find out exactly how she died. He may be mistaken, but I’m the best bet you’ve got right now. That is, unless you’d like to be a perpetual target for Crenshaw’s paranoia.”

Fischer thought that over for a moment. He reached up and scratched his skull through his close-cropped hair. “Mr. Goodey,” he said at last, “you may have something. Frankly, I’m tired of holding open house for nosey private detectives. We’ve got nothing to hide here, but I get kind of tired of answering the same stupid questions. How long do you think it’ll take you to satisfy yourself and Mr. Crenshaw?”

“I couldn’t say,” I answered. “With luck, you may not have to feed me tonight. Or I could stay around to be your oldest living guest.”

“Just do your best,” Fischer said, a bit wearily. “Mark, please find Mr. Goodey some place to sleep.”

Kinsey leapt off his window sill, and I got the uneasy feeling that we’d both been dismissed. I wasn’t quite ready yet.

“I’m assuming, Mr. Fischer,” I said from my comfortable chair, “that I’m going to be given a certain amount of cooperation in my investigations.”

Fischer looked back toward me as if I were an ashtray that he distinctly remembered ordering to be emptied. “Mr. Goodey,” he said, “to you The Institute is an open book. You have only to ask. If anyone gives you any problems, I will solve them for you.” He quickly glanced to see if his minions had taken this in. “Now,” he said emphatically, “I will be very happy to see you later.”

Kinsey was already at the door, dancing with eagerness to carry out his orders, so I got up and prepared to follow him.

“One little thing, Mr. Goodey,” Fischer said to my back. I turned around. “You wouldn’t happen to be carrying some sort of firearm on your person, would you?”

I admitted as much, my police special being at that moment tucked snugly under my armpit in a shoulder holster.

“We’ve got a few rules here, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “One of which is no firearms of any kind.” He held out a large hand. “I’ll just keep your weapon here for you until you leave.” He was doing me a favor.

I thought for a moment, and then handed it over. I hadn’t been planning to shoot anyone anyway. He slid open a desk drawer, and my pistol disappeared. I turned back toward the door. “So long, Rachel,” I said. “See you later.” But she wasn’t paying much attention.

Kinsey set off down the hall at a fairly good pace, and I ambled along behind him, taking in the luxurious surroundings. When he discovered that somebody was dogging it, he dropped back reluctantly to my side.

“You people do all right for yourselves here,” I said, just to make conversation. “This place must have cost a fortune.”

“The mansion was given to us,” he said, rather sniffily. “Besides, it’s not the surroundings that count.”

“All the same,” I said, “it probably beats sleeping rough. How many acres has the place got?”

“Something over four hundred and fifty,” he said, “including the land on the other side of the highway. With nearly a half mile of beachfront.” He said it with a quiet pride.

“Tell me,” I asked him, “how’d you come to join a place like this? You weren’t a secret glue sniffer, were you?”

“Not exactly,” Kinsey said, not too unfriendly. “A couple of years ago, the Institute jazz band—you heard them playing in the marquee on the lawn—made a record album. I was doing public relations for the record company, and I came up here from L.A. to do research for the liner notes. I met Hugo, took a look at what he had going here, and discovered that my life was shit, my work was shit and my future was shit.”

“That sounds pretty shitty,” I said.

“It was. So I went back to Los Angeles, finished the album notes, quit my job, piled everything I owned into my car and drove back up here. I’ve been here ever since.”

“And happy with it?” I asked.

“Not entirely,” he said honestly, “but it beats being a whore for a record company.”

Kinsey led me down a dark flight of stairs into what must have been a household work area in the old days. We paraded along a deserted hallway until we came to a small room with “Housing Office” painted on the wall beside an open Dutch door. Inside the closet-like room, an olive-skinned guy in his mid-twenties was hunched over a ledger, biting his lower lip. He looked up as we approached. He had a biggish nose, a hard mouth and streetwise eyes. His hair was chopped into something spikey, and he looked as though he could handle himself. He wore his dark blue coveralls with natural authority.

“Jack,” said Mark Kinsey, “this is Joe Goodey. He’s a guest of The Institute. Find him a bed to sleep in, will you?” He turned to me: “This is Jack Gillette. He’ll take care of you.”

Gillette looked down at his ledger book. “I’ll just put you in the Starlight Suite, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sounds fine.”

He looked back up at Kinsey. “Thanks, Mark. I’ll take care of him and bring him along to the front desk later, okay?”

“That’s fine,” said Kinsey. “See you later,” he added to me and disappeared down the hall.

“Let’s go,” said Gillette, taking a big ring of keys from a nail on the wall.

As we walked up the back stairs, Gillette asked: “You got a suitcase?”

“In my car,” I said.

“Give me your keys,” he said, “and I’ll have somebody bring it up to your room.”

“I can do it myself,” I said. “I don’t need looking after.”

“No sweat. If there’s one thing we’ve got around here, it’s manpower.”

“All right, then,” I said, giving him my keys. “It’s the—”

“Beat-up gray Morris convertible, right?”

“Right. What else do you know?”

“You’re a private cop from San Francisco who’s come down here to try to prove old man Crenshaw’s theory that somebody at The Institute gave Katie Pierce the big shove.”

“I’d hate to be trying to go undercover,” I said. “Does everybody know what I’m up to?”

“They will. The rarest thing here at The Institute is a secret.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can think of one.”

“You’re going to play hell proving it. The sheriff and those superstars from L.A. were all over this place and they didn’t find out a thing.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re here, aren’t you? If those Brazewell dudes had proved anything, we’d have had a lot more sheriff’s department around here, and not a lone-star operator like you. Frankly, I think Crenshaw is getting a bit desperate.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Did you talk to the Brazewell people?”

“No,” he said, reaching a landing and starting up yet another flight of steps. “But they thought I did. I don’t like cops—private or otherwise.”

“That’s too bad. You going to talk to me?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.” At the next landing, he turned down a faded corridor and stopped in front of a tall, narrow doorway. “Here we are.” He shoved the door inward, releasing a musty, off-color smell. He moved into the room, shoved aside some mucus-colored drapes and opened the window wide. “It’s not luxury,” he said, “but you’ll be okay in here.”

It sure wasn’t luxury. You could have swung a cat in the room, but not a big one, and the sallow wallpaper had been new about the time Teddy Roosevelt fell up San Juan Hill. Some drudge of an under-butler had lived—and probably died—in this room.

“What’s that?” I asked, indicating a small, round metal box on the wall above the bed. It was about the size of an old-fashioned car-radio speaker.

“Bitch box,” he said “We don’t want you to miss anything while you’re here, do we?”

“I’ll try to live with it.” Gillette looked as though he were about to leave, but I asked him: “What did you do before you came here?”

“I hit people on the head and took their money,” he said. “That is, if they were small enough and I could get out of jail to do it.”

“It’s probably the question you hate most,” I said, “but how did you find yourself in a sissy outfit like The Institute?”

“I don’t mind,” he said, thumbing a cigarette up out of a soft pack and offering me one, which I refused. “I can answer that one in my sleep. I was doing a little street-nodding in downtown Los Angeles nearly three years ago, just looking for a nice, soft gutter to lie down in, when I found myself leaning against the plate glass of a storefront The Institute was running down there. A couple of passing cops wanted to do me for molesting the window, when one of the residents came out and made a better offer. Any bed but one in the city slammer looked good to me, so I took it. I figured that once I came down I could rip something off to hock and split.”

“Sound thinking,” I said.

“It seemed so at the time,” Gillette said, exhaling smoke, “but it didn’t work out that way. It took a long time, but I really went for the okee dokee and stuck around for the ride.”

“Been a pretty good ride, has it?”

“I suppose it depends on what you’re used to, but if you look out for flying horseshit, it can be a hell of a lot of fun. Of course, you don’t want to get caught up in the insanity too much. That can mess with your oatmeal something terrible.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “I hope this isn’t too personal, but what’s the deal with all those gaudy coveralls?”

“Well, as it originally came down from on high about three months ago,” he said, thumbing a lapel, “these colorful outfits—to quote Hugo—are a graphic representation of each individual’s position on the Rainbow of Life, or some shit like that. Myself, I think he just ran into a fire sale on coveralls that he couldn’t resist. Either that, or he just wanted to see what some of these pencil-necks looked like in lime green or magenta. I’m not bothered myself; it saves wear and tear on my own duds.”

“You don’t seem to take the situation here at The Institute very seriously, Jack,” I said.

“Oh, I’m serious enough,” he said, “about the big things. I know what I’d be doing if I hadn’t fallen in here by accident.”

“What’s that?”

“Time,” he said. “This is the longest I’ve been out of the slammer since I was eleven years old, and to me that says something. Maybe when I’ve been here a bit longer, I’ll know exactly what. Come on. I’ll take you down to the front desk, and Mark will probably pick you up and give you the big picture. I’m not authorized to deal with the big picture.”

As we left the room, I asked: “Don’t I get a key?”

“There are no keys at The Institute,” Gillette said. “Hugo’s policy.”

“But don’t things get stolen?”

“Sure they do,” he said. “But not as much as you’d think. We call it redistribution of wealth.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, but I wasn’t crazy about it.

As we walked down the staircase, I asked: “Did you know Katie Pierce?”

“Yeah, I knew her,” he said. “I make it my business to know everybody who comes to The Institute.”

“Did you know her well?”

“No,” he said. “She was cute, but a bit too ring-a-ding for me. Speed does things to your mush that I don’t understand or appreciate.”

“Who do you think shoved her off the roof?”

“I don’t,” he said curtly, “and don’t come at me with off the wall questions like that. I told you: I think you’re wasting your time and Crenshaw’s money, but it’s okay with me. As long as you don’t expect me to get caught up in your insanity. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, and we walked the rest of the way downstairs in silence. I didn’t know how useful Gillette was going to turn out to be, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to do my job for me. When we were on the main floor again, Gillette led me into a big, plush room full of residents and guests chattering and having a good time. Nobody paid any attention to us. One corner of the room had been turned into a kind of office festooned with typed notices, pigeon holes for letters and notes and official looking paperwork in neat stacks.

Behind the desk at that moment was a black dude seven feet tall with a shaved head. He didn’t look any too thrilled when Gillette said: “Roscoe, this is Joe Goodey, a guest in the house. Mark said he’d probably pick him up here. Joe, this is Roscoe Matson. He’s the house manager. I’ll leave you with him.”

7

Gillette walked away, leaving me propped against the desk like a beach umbrella. Matson seemed to be bearing up under the responsibility. For quite a while, he doggedly stuck to his knitting and didn’t even look up to say howdy.

I passed the time eyeballing what looked a lot like any other exquisitely furnished drawing room full of lounging drug addicts and social misfits. Stuck at various strategic locations on the heavily embossed wallpaper were butcher-paper banners carrying an eclectic variety of quotes from usually reliable sources ranging from Mao Tse-tung to Bob Dylan. A big favorite seemed to be Henry Thoreau. His “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born” from Walden was block-printed on a bedsheet hung over the mock-Adam fireplace at one end of the room. I remembered that from a night class at San Francisco State College, but I always figured that Henry was a bit of a nut.

Everybody in the big room seemed to be having a jolly time except for one character whose very lack of animation grabbed the eye. He was slumped in a big armchair next to the fireplace like a doll that had been hastily abandoned. Sitting down as he was, it was hard to tell how big he was, but the shoulders in a new loud sports jacket were broad and square, and the arms hanging with inert power on either side of the ornate chair looked too long for his trunk. He had enough gray in his tightly curled hair to be forty or a bit older, but his sallow face had a blank agelessness marred only by dark pockets around each expressionless, unblinking eye. He sat alone, but his thick lips were moving with sporadic twitches that should have come with sounds.

My scrutiny was broken when Matson looked up, seemed to be surprised to find me still there and grunted: “This fucking paperwork. You be okay where you are, right?”

Right. That is, until moss started growing on my north side. I was going to ask him about the big dummy in the sports jacket, when a pretty blonde in lavender came rushing up behind an impressive bosom and gasped: “Are you Joe Goodey?”

I started to admit modestly that I was, but she steamrollered right over me: “I’m terribly sorry I’ve kept you waiting, but Mark left a message—-and I was supervising the wedding cleanup—and nobody told me that he…so I…”

I held up a kindly hand just to stop her babbling. “Never mind,” I said. “You’re here now. That’s the important thing. Now, what?”

That stopped her a bit cold. “I don’t know,” she said. “Mark just said that I should meet you here and—well—show you whatever you wanted to see. What did you want to see?”

It might have seemed a bit crude to ask to be taken directly to the murderer of Katie Pierce, so I said, “Why don’t we just walk around a bit. It’s all new to me. You could, however, start by telling me who you are.”

Several quarts of blood came rushing to her face. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m Susan Wallstrom. I should have told you before. You must think I’m terribly rude.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Tell you what, Susan. Why don’t you just pretend that I’m a new resident here and show me around my new home?”

She looked serious: “A straight resident, you mean?”

“I don’t know. What’s that?”

She blushed again, and on her it looked good. She was a bit moonfaced, but other than that she was the kind of girl they use in advertisements to lure tourists to Sweden: flax-colored hair, high cheek bones and eyes the blue of the fjords. Altogether a nice package.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “We’re not supposed to use the word straight anymore. We’re all just residents here, but it used to mean residents of The Institute who’d come in without…well, without social problems such as…”

“Such as shooting dope or knocking people down and taking their money?”

She didn’t like that much. I got the feeling that I was just a bit too crude for her. “Well, yes,” she said reluctantly, “but a lot of other problems, too.”

“Like Katie Pierce’s little problem with pills?”

She really didn’t like that. Susan turned away from me and said in a muffled voice: “I’m sorry, I—Katie was a f-friend of mine. I—”

She put her hands to her face, and I could see that she was crying. Right there in the midst of everybody. Roscoe Matson didn’t even look up from his paperwork. We were beginning to get a few queer looks, though, from some of the other inmates.

Good job, Joe, I told myself. You’ve been here nearly an hour and you’re already developing a fine collection of enemies. I looked around hurriedly for some place perhaps a little less central and spotted a big set of French doors that looked as though they might lead somewhere. As gently as possible, I reached out and took Susan’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” She didn’t protest much when I led her along the side of the room to those big doors and through them onto a small balcony overlooking the gardens. It was getting on toward late afternoon, and the shadows of the fringe of tall evergreens along the drive were reaching like long fingers to a duck pond on the edge of a redwood grove. It was starting to get a bit cool out, too.

When we got outside, she escaped my grip, moved over to the edge of the balcony and stood staring at nothing much as far as I could see.

“I am sorry,” I said. “I’ve got this big mouth, and it sometimes runs away with my brain.”

She took a deep breath of the clear, cool air and turned around. Her eyes were still on the moist side, but she had herself under control.

“No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” she said. “I’m too emotional. I’m always being told that.”

“It’s probably not a capital crime,” I said. “Did you know Katie very well?”

“I think I did,” she said. “She was sort of my little sister, and for a while she worked with me in Mark’s office. It’s just that she was very hard not to like. Katie was so sweet and so vulnerable and…” Susan started choking up again, but then balled her fists, got a good Nordic grip on herself and shook it off. “I still can hardly believe she’s dead.”

“Do you know why I’m here?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, looking up into my eyes, “but I…”

“Don’t you tell me I’m wasting my time, too,” I said. “Try to be a bit more original. The way it’s going, soon every resident of The Institute will be lined up on the lawn like a Greek chorus chanting: ‘You’re wasting your time, Joe Goodey, wasting your time.’ Do you really think it’s so impossible that somebody here could have helped Katie off the roof?”

“Yes,” she said, looking up into my face, “but I think…”

Suddenly she was looking past me, not at me, and I turned to see the zombie in the horse-blanket jacket coming through the double doors with a mechanical-man shuffle.

“Tommy,” she said, in a tone that seemed both affectionate and cautious at the same time. “Did you enjoy the wedding?”

A salvo of animated gibberish burst from his lips, carrying a fair amount of saliva that lightly stippled the front of Susan’s pale lavender coveralls. She didn’t seem to mind. The wet syllables tumbled over each other in no order that I could appreciate, but from Susan’s face, he could have been telling a fascinating story. In his enthusiasm, he forgot to turn off his legs when he switched on his mouth, and Susan had to continue to back away slowly, until her back was against the cast concrete rail of the terrace.

Tommy was still shuffling forward, babbling as he went, so I stepped forward and took hold of his biceps to slow him up before he pushed Susan through the railing. It was like trying to get a grip on a moving engine piston, and I had no more effect on Tommy’s forward progress than a gnat throwing itself in front of an express train.

Without thinking, I kicked him sharply behind the right knee. Anyone else would have been down on one knee wondering what hit him, but Tommy just trundled to a halt and turned to examine me with perfectly blank eyes.

Susan gave me a slightly dirty look for using such a crude method of saving her from being crushed, and said brightly, “Tommy, this is Joe Goodey, a new friend of The Institute. He came down for the wedding.”

If that information didn’t delight him, it didn’t make him mad, either. His eyes passed over me without a ripple, and Tommy turned toward the French doors and launched himself in the direction of the living room. His lips began moving again, and nothing was coming out but a fine froth of spit. He didn’t say goodbye.

“Tommy’s really very harmless,” Susan said, in mild reproach. “He just has to be managed very gently. He’s made incredible improvement.”

“I’ll bet,” I said, “but I imagine you’ve got a way to go with him.”

Susan opened her mouth to answer and then shut it again.

“So there you are,” said a voice behind me, and I turned to see Mark Kinsey coming through the French doors with a forced expression of bonhomie on his flabby face. “How’s the tour coming along, Susan? Are you learning anything, Joe? Isn’t the view from here magnificent? You ought to catch the sea views.”

“Just f-fine, Mark,” Susan said, a bit nervously, I thought. “I was just about to…”

“That’s great,” he said. “Susan’s a real asset to The Institute, Joe, even though she’s been here less than a year.” Before I could respond, he added: “Susan, honey, could you go give Lenore a hand in her office? I’ll give Joe the seventy-five-cent tour, and we’ll see you later.” Susan’s expression said that was all right with her, and she was soon gone with hardly a mumbled farewell to me. And just as we were becoming buddies, too.

Kinsey was as good as his word, and in the next hour or so he took me on an extensive tour of the old mansion. I saw almost everything: the vast dining room, the two kitchens, the laundry room, the Olympic-length pool in the basement flanked by sauna baths and squash courts, a billiard room with velvet drapes the color of vintage port and so much more that it was soon just a blur to me.

As we looked at each section, Kinsey praised it with the slightly spurious hyperbole of a real-estate agent working on commission. His pride in the place was evident and genuine, but his public-relations spiel tinged everything with phoniness.

“It’s very nice,” I said as we left the billiard room, “but I don’t think I want to buy it.”

Kinsey looked at me keenly until he decided that I’d made a little joke, and then gave me a pawnbroker’s laugh. “Ha, ha, yes,” he said, without much humor. “I guess that’s about it for now. There are a lot of outbuildings, but it’s getting late. You can see them tomorrow.”

“I’ll look forward to that,” I said. “But there’s one stop on the tour I think you’ve forgotten. We could look at that right now.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The roof terrace,” I said, trying not to sound like a keen detective. “Considering why I’m here, I think that might be useful.”

“Oh, sure,” he said, as if glad to be reminded. “Now you’ll see those sea views I told you about.”

Kinsey said it was probably best to take the plush little elevator to the roof. As we stepped out, the sun lay like a fried egg on the horizon, and a crimson stain spread from it like blood. From the hills behind us to the wooded coast spreading out on both sides, calm reigned, broken only by faint, disconnected sounds from the wedding guests below. I began to understand why people went to all that trouble to get rich.

It wasn’t so much a roof terrace as a natural setting for moonlight dancing, three-piece bands and the pop of champagne corks. Some pretty expensive dancing slippers had brushed over that smooth surface. The leading edge of the roof was crenelated mock-castle style, and I stood with both hands on the battlements looking at the sunset. Then I looked down to the rocky beach where they’d found Katie Pierce.

The tide was in just then; rushing water and swirling foam covered most of the rocks. But my mind’s eye could still see the police photograph of Katie’s battered and bloody body broken on the rocks. My mind’s eye saw too damned well to suit me.

The sheriff’s report said that Katie had fallen from the right-hand side of the roof. I moved over there and tried to put myself in Katie’s place moments before she’d gone over the edge. I didn’t like the feeling at all. I looked back at Kinsey, who seemed to be communing with some inner spirit.

I cleared my throat, startling him back to the present, and asked, “Which of the residents have access to this part of the mansion?”

He understood the question, but he said nothing for a long moment. Then he said: “Uh, Joe, I don’t think I’m the right person to answer that sort of question. Perhaps…”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you didn’t hear Fischer say that to me The Institute was an open book. Full cooperation, that was what the man promised. Do I have to go down and tell him that you’re holding out on me?”

“Okay, okay,” Kinsey said, not exactly liking that idea. “In theory, this roof, along with every other part of the mansion, is open to all residents of The Institute.”

“But?”

“But, in practice, it is used only by the top echelon of members and their guests.”

“That top echelon,” I said, “how far down does it extend? I mean, how exclusive is it? For instance, are you among the happy elite allowed to frolic here?”

Kinsey brought his slack lips together in a way that told me that he didn’t much like my style of questioning. But he couldn’t think of very much he could do about it just then, so he said: “I have been here on occasion. Hugo likes to hold barbecues up here sometimes on summer evenings, and I have been invited to them.”

“But you wouldn’t really feel at ease sneaking up here with a girl for a little private necking?”

“No,” he said judiciously. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“So, that cuts down the number of people who would have a legitimate reason for being up here, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” he answered. “But it doesn’t mean that a lot of other people might not use it on the quiet. We don’t lock doors here at The Institute. We have no need to.”

He was probably right, and that opened my list of potential suspects right up again, and probably included some who weren’t even at The Institute anymore. But then, Crenshaw wouldn’t have been paying me so much money if the job had been a cinch. It would have been a lot easier for me if Kinsey had just confessed right there and then to heaving Katie over the edge and saved me a lot of trouble. Somehow I didn’t think he would.

It was beginning to feel a bit pointless staying on that roof, not to mention chilly, so I suggested that we carry on with the tour. As we waited for the elevator, I asked him if Susan Wallstrom was always so jumpy and emotional.

“Not usually,” he said. “I think you made her nervous, and of course she was very fond of Katie. She hasn’t been with us very long, but I think she’s settling in very well.”

“What did she do before she came to The Institute?”

“It’s hard to believe,” he said, “but Susan was a guard, or whatever they call them, at the state women’s prison up at Frontera. But she couldn’t take the work.”

Frontera. I knew someone at Frontera. I’d have to ask her if we had a mutual friend.

“What’s the rest of today’s schedule?” I asked.

“Nothing much for the next hour or so until dinner,” he said. “It’s a special wedding dinner for Pops Martin and Genie.”

“That’s the girl bride, right?”

“I believe Genie is nineteen,” Kinsey said, a bit stiffly, “but she’s quite old for her years.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “What then?”

“At about nine, we have our usual open house. Guests from the community come in for a party with the residents. The guests of honor are Pops and Genie.”

“Pops Martin seems to be pretty important here,” I said. “What does he do that’s so special?”

“That’s a bit difficult to answer,” Kinsey said. “To an outsider, it might appear that Pops doesn’t do much of anything. But I assure you that, next to Hugo, there’s hardly a person at The Institute who has done more to help it to survive and succeed. Not even Lenore or Don Moffitt.”

“Rachel told me Pops was an old-time member,” I said.

“Much more than that, Joe,” Kinsey said, getting a bit earnest. “Hugo and he have known each other off and on for over thirty years. They first met back in Missouri, worked on the same ships together at times and even shared a cell in prison once.” The elevator arrived, and we got in.

“Sounds like a firm basis for a friendship,” I said.

“But more important,” Kinsey went on, “is that when Hugo was in New York City trying to get The Institute started—he was still calling it The Institute of Mankind in those days—Pops suddenly reappeared. He was drunk, just out of jail and thought the meeting was some kind of a party to crash, but when he sobered up, Pops swore that he’d help Hugo with his dream.”

“Touching,” I said. “So in exchange for sticking around for ten years or so, Pops Martin has a meal ticket for life.” Kinsey didn’t like that very much, either.

“Joe,” he said, “your problem is that you’re a cynic. You can’t believe that The Institute could take such apparently useless material as Pops Martin and make it useful. I pity you.”

“That depends,” I said, “on what it uses them for. To me, Pops Martin looks just like any of the hundreds of old crooks and conmen I’ve seen drift in and out of jail. They usually end up in the gutter. Pops seems to have been a little luckier than most; quite a bit luckier, I’d say.”

The elevator door slid open at the ground floor to reveal that same reformed character standing there with his blushing bride. That is, she was standing. He was listing heavily to port and using her for a crutch. Her hard little face did not cry out: “Use me as you will.”

“Hi, Mark,” Pops said. “I’m just going up for a little rest before dinner.” His eyes, the color of stale beer, flicked over me, but he couldn’t think of anything worth saying.

“Hi, Pops,” I said. “You ought to drop in on the roof. The view is terrific up there.”

As tired as he seemed to be, Pops found the energy to give me a look that you could have used to open clam shells, and he and the bride disappeared into the elevator.

8

Dinner that night was a fancy affair, with Fischer and his leading lights sitting on a raised dais like the officers at a Kiwanis Club luncheon. At Fischer’s side was his wife, and fanned out on either side were Rachel and Dr. Carey, Don Moffitt and a tight-lipped woman with prematurely graying hair pulled straight back from her forehead. She didn’t look happy. There were a number of other faces I didn’t recognize, but to my surprise at one end, looking as if he hadn’t been switched on yet, was Tommy, my friend from the terrace. Sitting next to him was an overdressed, slightly imperious-looking old woman, who was giving Tommy all her attention.

Pops Martin, who looked to be a bit more rested, and Genie, got up like something that had been won at Coney Island, were sitting slightly higher in a corner of the room at a flower-decked table for two, bathed in its own personal spotlight. Fischer certainly knew how to stage an occasion.

I was seated at a long trestle table with some of the other peasants, but with a little judicious jostling I managed to sit next to Susan Wallstrom. Mark Kinsey was down the table, not looking entirely at ease, and I spotted Jack Gillette at another table. If he saw me, he kept it to himself.

While the food—the sort of wholesome institutional stuff you’d find at any third-rate hotel or a good mental hospital—was being served, I leaned on Susan to put names to some of the unknown faces at the head table. The woman with the gray hair—she couldn’t have been much over thirty—turned out to be Mrs. Don Moffitt, like him an old-time resident at The Institute.

“What’s she so unhappy about?” I asked Susan.

Susan really didn’t like to say, being loyal and all that, but finally she whispered that she had heard that Aileen Moffitt was restless and was urging Don to leave The Institute and take a job he’d been offered back East.

“What about the guy at the end of the table who’s a bit puffy around the gills? The one who looks as though he could use a stiff drink.”

Susan wasn’t crazy about my description, but she identified him as Harold Fischer, Hugo’s cousin, who had just given up a good business in the Midwest to move into The Institute. The faded woman next to him was Mrs. Harold F. Fischer.

“What’s he want to do that for?” I asked.

“Why, because he realizes that The Institute is an important social movement, and he wants to take part,” Susan said, as if reading from a tract.

I let that pass. If I was going to get information from Susan Wallstrom, it wouldn’t do to upset her too much. “What about the old bird sitting next to Tommy?” I asked. “The one who looks like she owns the place.”

“She did own the place,” Susan said, a bit smugly. “That’s Emma Carter, Tommy’s mother. She’s giving the mansion and the estate to The Institute.”

I didn’t know which little surprise to deal with first. I suppose people like Tommy have a right to have mothers, too, but you don’t expect it. The other news was slightly more sensational.

“Just like that?” I said. “She’s giving it? You mean, for free?”

“The Institute has done an awful lot for Tommy,” Susan said, a little bit defensively. “Emma believes in The Institute and in Hugo,” she added emphatically, “and so do I.”

“That’s a whole lot of belief,” I said. “But what—”

Fischer started tapping on his water glass with a butter knife. It had the authoritative rat-a-tat of a machine gun, and it silenced that noisy room just as effectively. Once you could have heard a mouse fart in the big banquet room, Fischer leaned forward with the benevolent dogmatism of a man talking to obedient children.

“Good evening,” he said. “If you are guests, welcome to The Institute. Welcome to our home. We are happy to have you among us. Before we get on with this evening’s festivities in honor of two of our residents who got married today”—Pops and Genie in their fairy bower looked pleased with themselves—“I want to introduce you to a rather special guest.” I started wondering who it was, when he said: “Mr. Joe Goodey.” No one was more surprised than I was when he followed up with: “Would you stand up, Mr. Goodey so that we can all see you?”

It would have taken a stronger character than I to have resisted that command performance, so I pushed back my chair and stood up with what I hoped was lithe grace. Probably not. From where I stood, I could see almost universal puzzlement on the faces of the diners. Rachel was looking worried; Pops Martin was just beginning to enjoy himself.

Fischer, apparently a master of timing, left me dangling there long enough to encourage paranoia and make everyone wonder what the hell was going on. I was just about to sit down when Fischer said: “Mr. Goodey is a private detective from San Francisco.” This revelation didn’t bring smiles of welcome to many faces. A good thing, too, because they’d probably have cracked and fallen off when he added: “Mr. Goodey has come down here to try to prove that one of us killed Katie Pierce, our late sister.”

Talk about the impact of the legendary turd in the punchbowl. Most of the faces that could summon up any expression at all opted for outraged hostility. It didn’t look as though I was going to leave The Institute with any lifelong friends. The amateur lynch mob noises continued to grow until Fischer raised a beefy hand.

In the grumbling silence that followed, he said: “Now, you and I know that Mr. Goodey is going to go away empty-handed…”

Somebody at the back of the room shouted: “And empty-headed!”

But Fischer wasn’t being taken in by such cheap shots. “I say,” he continued, “that we know that Mr. Goodey won’t find Katie’s murderer here because she wasn’t murdered. But Mr. Goodey has a job to do here—it’s not a job everyone would take, mind you—and I want each and every one of you to cooperate with him fully.” At this, the mob at the trestle tables began their tar-and-feather-him rumbling, which only died down when Fischer raised his voice to the diamond-cutting level. “Shut up! I’m trying to say that if we all cooperate with Mr. Goodey, it won’t be too long until he realizes that he’s wasting his time here and goes back to San Francisco.”

This was a real crowd-pleaser, and the cheers it evoked made Mrs. Carter’s crystal chandeliers vibrate. I tried to look humble about the whole thing, but Fischer wasn’t finished having fun yet.

“Perhaps,” he said, “Mr. Goodey would like to say a few words to us.”

That set off an uproar of sarcastic clapping. This was certainly turning out to be a jolly little dinner. I looked around and saw that a few people weren’t clapping. Rachel, for one, was toying with her fork and looking distinctly unhappy. Mrs. Carter was spooning food off Tommy’s flashy lapels and back toward his slack mouth. Jack Gillette wasn’t clapping, which was interesting in itself. But, even more surprising, Pops Martin wasn’t either. He was up at his table-for-two, looking preoccupied. Perhaps he was sulking because I seemed to be getting all the attention on his wedding day.

The uproar went on so long that I figured I’d have to say something just to get off the hot spot. I’d sat down during Fischer’s monologue, so I got up again and stood there looking around the big room and waiting for a bit of silence. To my surprise, I got it, but I waited a little longer just to keep them on edge.

Then I said: “You’re all under arrest.”

That got a better laugh than it deserved from such a hostile audience, so I let it run a while and then raised my arms high like a fight referee.

“Listen,” I said, glad to be able to get the message over to so many people at once, “I don’t know whether Katie Pierce was murdered, much less whether someone here did it. But that’s what I’m here to try to find out. You can make it easy or hard, but either way, I’m getting paid by the day, so I don’t mind. Thank you.”

I sat down in a pool of nearly perfect silence, but then at the edges a ripple of applause began, which grew slowly in volume until it was nearly as loud as that before I’d spoken. But this was different; it was real applause. These people obviously didn’t mind being spoken to straight. If they were a lynch mob, at least they were a fair-minded lynch mob.

I enjoyed this limited approval until Fischer stopped it with an imperious gesture. “I have another announcement. The regular Saturday night open house has been canceled. Sitches will begin fifteen minutes after dinner is finished.”

He started to sit down again, but a big guy at the back jumped up. “What about our guests?” he demanded. “Some of them are coming long distances to make the open house.”

“To hell with them,” said Fischer, not even bothering to stand all the way up. “If they are really friends of The Institute, they’ll understand and come back again. If not, we don’t need them.” He sat down; his questioner sat down, and an excited buzz of conversation broke out all over the room.

“What are these things—these sitches?” I asked Susan.

“They’re small meetings of about ten or twelve people,” she said. “The word sitch is short for situation. As Hugo says, they’re situations for intensive communication between individuals.”

“What happens at these—meetings?”

“I can’t describe it for you,” said Susan. “You’d have to experience it yourself.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think I’ll give that a miss.”

By this time, the banqueters were licking their sherbet spoons, and many had risen and were drifting from the dining room. Susan got up from her chair.

“I have to go now, Mr. Goodey,” she said, too polite just to walk away. “I’ll probably see you later.”

“You probably will,” I said. Then I remembered something. “Wait a minute.” She stopped and looked at me with some anxiety. “Somebody told me you used to be a guard up at the ladies’ slammer at Frontera,” I said, “and…”

“I was a matron at the California Institute for Women at Frontera,” she said with a frown.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s your terminology. But what I want to know is whether a girl named Irma Springler came in while you were there.”

“Yes,” Susan said. “Irma came in just about two weeks before I left, and I took her through orientation.”

“How was she? Did she seem to have any problems? I mean, besides six long years to do?”

“No,” Susan said. “Irma seemed fine when I last saw her. A bit detached, perhaps, but that’s understandable. I hadn’t heard of any problems when I left. Is she a friend of yours?”

“Not really,” I said. “I put her there.”

“It was kind of you to inquire,” she said sarcastically, then shot a look at her wristwatch. “I really must be going.”

It occurred to me as I watched her walk away that girls don’t really look all that glamorous in coveralls, even pale mauve ones. Especially, walking away, if they’re developing a bit of a lard ass.

By then, I was nearly the last one in the banquet room except for a crew of flunkies in gray who were none too joyfully clearing the tables, scraping garbage into buckets and grumbling among themselves.

This seemed like a good time to sort out my luggage in my luxury suite while the residents were having a bit of intensive communication. Upstairs, the narrow halls were deserted. When I opened the door to my room, not much had changed except that the smell of bus driver’s underpants had faded somewhat. My suitcase was sitting on the hard narrow bed, as Gillette had promised. I fished out the appropriate key, unlocked the case, swung open the lid and promptly went into a cardiac arrest. The two reports—the sheriff’s and Brazewell’s—were no longer stacked neatly on top of my shirts where I had left them. I did a quick rummage to the bottom of the case just to make sure, then wheeled and practically ran out of the little room.

It’s funny how fast you can move when you really want to. In less than a minute I was outside the big polished walnut door of Fischer’s office. Gasping only slightly, I twisted the brass knob and went into the room like a rookie on his first whorehouse raid.

It was a pretty picture that greeted me. At his desk, in the light of a Tiffany-glass lamp, Hugo Fischer was leafing through Brazewell Associates’ well-researched report, while back in his favorite chair like faithful dog Tray, Pops Martin was reading the sheriff’s version, licking his fingers as he turned the pages. It looked like reading hour at the Old Lag’s Home.

Fischer, who had put on a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses for the exercise, looked up and raised his eyebrows as I came into the room. I thought I saw him cock an ear for the missing knock on the door. He opened his mouth, but I didn’t wait to hear what would come out of it. Without breaking stride, I charged over to his desk, snatched the Brazewell Report from his hands and pivoted toward Pops Martin. The bridegroom was uncoiling as I came toward him, which brought the sheriff’s report up to easy grabbing height.

“Hey,” he protested, like a kid whose last comic book has been confiscated, “you can’t…”

“I can, Pops,” I said, facing them both. The reports were neatly tucked under my arm. “As for you, Fischer,” I said, “keep your thugs out of my room and my belongings, and your hands off them, too.”

Fischer didn’t look especially disturbed to have been busted with the stolen reports. He looked up at me like a flawed Buddha. “You know, Goodey,” he said, “that’s a pretty libelous piece of literature you’ve got there. Those Brazewell people want to watch it or they’ll end up in court with me on their ass.”

“I don’t care about that,” I said. “Just keep your hands off my stuff.”

I spun around and shot back out through the door. The last thing I heard before the door slammed was Fischer saying: “You already said that.”

I was heading back up to my room when Roscoe Matson loomed in front of me. “Hey, Joe Goodey,” he said. “I been looking all over the damn place for you. You’re late.”

“Late for what?”

“Your sitch, man,” he said. He looked down at the clipboard he was carrying. “Let me see. Yeah, I’ve got you down for the Karma Room.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s what it says here. I don’t make up the rosters. I just execute them.” Matson gave me some elaborate and confusing directions how to get there and then sauntered off down the hall. I turned back toward my room, but then heard his voice. “Goodey?”

I turned around. “Yeah?”

“Just wanted to say,” Matson volunteered, “that I don’t like cops and I think you’re barking down the wrong hole, Ace, but you’ve got some balls.” Before I could feel too smug about that, he added: “You may not be too bright, but, yeah, you’ve got guts.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He turned and continued down the hall with a springy athlete’s walk. He probably thought he was whistling a tune.

9

Making a short detour back up to my room, I tucked the two reports under the lumpy mattress with no doubt that if Fischer wanted them back, he’d get them. There didn’t seem to be a word for privacy at The Institute. I suppose I could have taped the reports under my shirt, but to tell the truth, I didn’t care much whether Fischer read them. I just didn’t like the way he got them.

Trying to remember Matson’s directions, I backtracked through the corridors until I found myself outside a substantial green door bearing a hand-painted sign: “Karma Room.” All seemed quiet inside. Squaring my shoulders, I put a hand on the doorknob and had begun to twist when from inside the room came an explosion of noise as if someone were trying to force spats onto an alligator.

I backed off a step and a half and listened intently. From my side of the door it sounded like a riot at the Tower of Babel, and it couldn’t have been much quieter inside. Somehow, it didn’t make me eager to charge into the Karma Room. Not just then. I called myself a coward, but the accusation didn’t have much sting. I was about to turn away and go find a good, rousing game of Parcheesi, when the door to the Karma Room opened and Hugo Fischer was standing in the doorway, looking at me with benign malevolence.

“Goodey,” he said, speaking over the tumult behind him. “I thought there was someone out here. Come in. You’re late.”

I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t have preferred jumping into a snake pit, but how could I resist such a gracious invitation? Fischer turned and went back into the room as if certain that I would follow. I followed.

I walked right into a very interesting little tableau. Mrs. Donald Moffitt was leaning aggressively toward Mr. Donald Moffitt and screaming that he was a “rotten, little, chickenshit, cowardly son of a bitch.” That wasn’t bad for openers, and Moffitt just sat there in an overstuffed chair and took it.

I paused for a moment, not wanting to interrupt this earnest communication, but quite willing to hear a bit more of it. No chance. Ten or twelve pairs of eyes swiveled toward me as one. From most of the expressions, I felt as welcome as a rustler at the cowboy’s ball. But then Rachel Schute spoke up to say: “Sit down, Joe. Just take any empty seat.”

They were seated in an irregular circle on a couple of small couches, some easy chairs and a piano bench. I took the least conspicuous seat I could find, between Aileen Moffitt and the great man’s cousin Harold. Further to my right were the new Mrs. Pops Martin, Dr. James Carey and Mark Kinsey. To the left were Don Moffitt, Dr. James Carey and Mark Kinsey. To the left were Don Moffitt, Susan Wallstrom and Rachel. Directly across from me, Fischer regained his lordly armchair, flanked on either side by Pops Martin and Cousin Harold’s harmless-looking wife. Most of the power structure was there.

Moffitt was looking pretty relieved to have the pressure off him for a moment, but then Harold Fischer stuck out his mock-Hugo jaw and said: “Well, Don, is what Aileen says true? Are you the original nutless wonder? Are you afraid to have a go in the big cold world outside? That job offer in New York sounds pretty good to me. What’s holding you back?”

Though only a cousin, up close Harold looked enough like Hugo to be his brother. They were like two pots that had been uniform when put into the kiln, but which came out different. Where Hugo was flawed, dynamic and unique, Harold was symmetrical, inert and very ordinary, a poor facsimile.

“Fuck you, Harold,” Don Moffitt snarled. “You’ve no room to talk. If it’s so wonderful out there, why aren’t you still in Omaha selling used cars? Instead of here in The Institute holding on to Hugo’s shirttails for all you’re worth.”

Score one for counterpunching. Harold’s handsome face developed a red blotch as if Moffit had landed a stinging jab. “Listen,” Harold said. “I was out there for twenty-five years. Some might even say I did all right. I sold the Cadillac dealership because I felt that The Institute offered more. I…”

“He’s right, Don,” James Carey cut in with authority. “Selling cars may be only a little better than pimping”—Harold’s face got a little bit redder—“but Harold made his thirty grand a year, maybe more. And he made it in the market place, where there’s no nice cushion under your ass if you fall. What the hell have you ever done in the real world but hustle drugs, knock over filling stations and generally fuck up your life?”

From Moffitt’s expression I could tell that the contest had changed, and not so subtly either. I had a feeling that he could handle his yapping wife and this poor imitation of Hugo, but in Jim Carey he was up against something else—a peer, and worse, a rival. He inhaled sharply as if to gather momentum.

“Bullshit!” he snapped, leaning toward Carey aggressively like a stag eager to lock horns. “You’re operating under some bullshit false assumption, Carey, that I want to leave The Institute but am afraid to.”

“That’s what it looks…” Carey began mildly enough.

“Well,” Moffitt continued, his ball bearing eyes sweeping the assembled company, “let me tell you—let me tell you all unequivocally—that I don’t want to leave The Institute, and I’m not going to leave The Institute—now or ever, not willingly.” He turned toward Aileen, who was watching his face with intensity. “It’s my wife who wants to leave,” he told the group, “so that she can have a house all her very own and all the horseshit modern conveniences every housewife in America has. And the two-car garage. The whole bit.” He leaned even further toward his wife, as if he were going to spring at her throat. “Well,” he said, gritting his gray, irregular teeth, “if that’s what my asshole wife wants, she can just go get it without me. Anytime she likes. I’m staying!”

Under this verbal assault, Aileen Moffitt crumbled. She didn’t cry, but her eyes, already suspiciously moist, went a bit vacant, and her thin lower lip began to tremble. Almost unconsciously, she put both balled fists to her temples, looked wildly around the room as if surrounded by a hanging jury, and then jumped up from her chair and ran to the door. After a bit of trouble with the knob, she wrenched it open and fled, leaving the door open a crack behind her.

Christ! This was better than tag-team wrestling. They certainly didn’t play by girls’ rules around here. I was wondering when somebody was going to pull a knife when a voice said: “Well, what have you got to say for yourself, asshole?”

I looked around to find out who the asshole was, and it turned out to be me. Mrs. Harold F. Fischer was leaning halfway out of her comfy chair and pointing a mauve fingernail in my direction. And I always thought she was such a nice little woman.

‘Me?” I said, as if there was some room for doubt.

“Yes you, sucker,” screamed Pops Martin’s brand-new bride, going into a Bela Lugosi impression. “We’re talking to you. Explain yourself!”

“Well,” I said modestly, “I’m just doing my job, just noodling around down here trying to serve the cause of justice and the common good. Trying to…”

“Not that crap, you lame motherfucker,” cried dear, gentle Susan Wallstrom. “We’re talking about the game you’ve been running on Rachel for the last year.”

“Game?” I said in a voice that came out in an unfortunately girlish falsetto. But I had the merest inkling what they were talking about. Somebody had obviously been telling stories. Not that I cared to discuss it at that moment, of course. I was there on business.

“Don’t try that horseshit on us, you chauvinist prick,” Susan insisted, puffing up like a Valkyrie. “You know what we’re talking about. You go over to Rachel’s, eat her food, drink her booze, play with her emotions and then split without leveling with her, you jerk.”

Then all the women in the room were on me except Rachel, who seemed to be memorizing the carpet. Harold Fischer and Don Moffitt were laying back on the oars, seemingly quite content to let me get cut up by these amazons. Hugo Fischer was playing the paterfamilias and keeping his hands clean.

I sat there feeling like one of Genghis Khan’s boys being raped by a nun. I don’t ordinarily mind being called a whole bagful of motherfuckers; it’s part of life. But for these ladies to ratpack me before I even knew the rules of the game seemed a bit unfair. Apparently, in the sitch, anything went, up to and including character assassination and lies, but the action stopped just short of blunt instruments.

But even my fabled tolerance had begun to wear a bit thin when the yapping died down a little and Susan said: “What about you, Rachel? You just sit there while we badmouth Joe. You’ve moaned enough about the way he’s treated you, but now that he’s here in a sitch with you, you’ve got nothing to say. Is that right?”

The room fell silent while we all looked at the top of Rachel’s head. Then she did just what I’d hoped she wasn’t going to do. She raised her head until her eyes met mine. They were pale eyes to begin with, a delicate astral blue, and now they were nearly opaque as they pinned me to my chair.

I tried to think of an urgent appointment that would get me out of the Karma Room, but before I could, Rachel said: “It’s true, Joe. You’ve messed me up quite a bit in the last year, coming around, going away, then showing up again, but with no commitment at all. Do you think you’ve been fair to me?”

I had no desire to look Rachel manfully in the eye at that particular moment so I was able to notice that Dr. James Carey was following the confrontation with a particular intensity. I could see that he might have a special interest in its outcome.

It was really more of a monologue than a conversation up to that point, but I knew I had to say something. I supposed I could have pretended to faint, but that mob would have probably tied me upright in my chair and carried on.

“What do you mean?” I said, just to stall a bit.

“You know what I mean, Joe,” Rachel said, warming to the job. “You’ve just been using me when it was convenient to you. Sure, it was comfortable to come over and see me, play with the kids, stay the night. You knew I liked you a lot, so it was good for your ego. But what was there in it for me?”

“Look, Rachel,” I said defensively, “I never promised…”

“Don’t be so chickenshit,” cut in Genie Martin with a sneer.

“Be honest, Joe,” said Susan. “Tell the truth. That’s what the sitch is for.”

To be completely frank, that’s not exactly what I had some to The Institute to do. Not that I’m particularly dishonest. I mean, no more than the average private investigator. But I’d have rather faced a punk with a .38 in each hand than tell Rachel the truth. But that was exactly what these virtual strangers—and Rachel—were waiting for me to do.

To my own surprise, I heard my voice say: “All right, Rachel, I’ll level with you. There is no future for you and me. It’s just no good, it wouldn’t work.”

She seemed to take it well enough. No tears, no overt emotion. She even smiled drily, which, I thought, was a fine reaction for a woman being given the finger, even in a super-polite and sincere manner. I sat back, relieved that it was over. That hadn’t been so bad. I ought to try telling the truth more often. It could get to be fun.

“Why, Joe?” Rachel asked quietly, but it certainly shocked me. “Go the whole way for once.”

Why? What did she mean, why? Women didn’t ask the reasons why they’d been dumped. Not in the circles I traveled in. This was asking too much.

“Look…” I said.

“Answer her, scumbag!” screamed Genie. Someone was really going to have to talk to that girl about her mouth. Somebody was going to mistake it for a sewer one of these days. Maybe her mother didn’t tell her that nice boys don’t date foulmouthed broads more than once.

“The reasons can’t be that terrible,” chimed in Mother Fischer. “You owe it to Rachel to level with her. We won’t bite you.”

That I could believe. But not much else. Then I thought: what the hell, why not? They could kill me, but they couldn’t eat me. Cannibalism is illegal. Rachel was asking for it; maybe she should get it.

“You’re going to laugh,” I warned them.

“Try us, Joe,” said Rachel. “We could use a good laugh.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Rachel,” I said. “There are two reasons why I can’t make it with you.”

Rachel just nodded her head and kept her eyes on my face.

“Well,” I said, still trying to think for some way to stall but failing, “the first reason is that you’re too rich. You’ve just got too much money.”

The room exploded. Everybody fell about in their seats laughing. At me. They roared, they giggled, they gasped for breath. Somebody in the Karma Room had the makings of a great comedian. Very funny. Except to me. I just sat there waiting for the general merriment to die down and hoping that I could buy them off with that tidbit of home truth. Gradually, the laughter died down.

“What else, Joe?” Rachel asked. “What’s the other reason?”

All right. I was getting a bit tired of this bullshit. If I was going to start telling the truth, I might as well jump in with both boots.

“Rachel,” I said, trying to take as much sting out of it as I could with the tone of my voice, “you’re just too old for me. I’m sorry.”

Silence. Deep, dark, aboriginal silence. Nobody had a thing to say. To my surprise, the expression on Rachel’s face hadn’t changed much. If it was a mortal blow, she was taking it like a stoic. She looked relieved, and I don’t think what I’d said had been as much of a surprise to her as I’d thought it would be. I was glad. I was also astonished at myself. The Institute must have really had something going for it. I’d only been around the place about ten hours, and I was already being honest.

I had a feeling that the primeval silence was going to break any second, and that one of our jolly little party wasn’t going to be the better off for it. God knows, I didn’t have much more to say, but I could imagine that the others might think of something.

Just then, Hugo Fischer’s barking baritone broke the silence. To my surprise and relief, he was talking not to me but to Dr. James Carey. Fischer accused the good doctor of spending too much time up in Sausalito wooing Rachel and not enough time doing his job at The Institute.

Slowly, deliberately, like a craftsman who really loved his job, Fischer took Carey apart verbally. He had a gift for it, all right. The others joined in with contrapuntal low blows that soon had Carey scrambling for cover.

Carey tried to defend himself, but he couldn’t very well maintain that in courting the Widow Schute he was really serving The Institute’s interests. Not with Rachel there, anyway. Finally, he gave up defense entirely, like an arm-weary heavyweight hanging on the ropes absorbing punishment, until the rest of them got bored and turned to someone else.

This someone else was Susan Wallstrom. But to my surprise, the mob, led by Fischer, didn’t harangue her, but instead softly and tenderly led Susan to examine her problem, which was in the boy-girl area, to put it politely. It seemed that, despite his dopey appearance, Mark Kinsey was pawing the earth in his eagerness to get young Susan into the sack. Susan couldn’t quite see her way clear, although she claimed she really wanted to.

It was a different Fischer I saw talking to Susan. Gone was the scowling martinet, the little tin god who knew he was firmly in control of the lives of a bunch of children and mental incompetents. Instead, Fischer was the gentle counselor, all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving, and very believable in the role. All else was forgotten except Susan’s problem, and Fischer took it upon himself to try to put it right. The others chimed in occasionally, but it was Fischer who carried the weight, and he did a good job of it. Susan didn’t instantly stand up and throw off her sexual hang-ups, but she did seem to feel better, and it was obvious that she gave Fischer the credit. When she looked at him, her eyes glowed with near reverence.

But just in case his kindly treatment of Susan had given the others ideas above their station, Fischer slipped on the four-ounce gloves and worked each of the others over as if they were a series of punching bags. It was quite impressive, in a sadistic sort of way.

Fischer started with Mark Kinsey, portraying him as an infantile satyr who didn’t have the human decency or compassion to allow Susan to discover how she really felt about him before trying to slip his horny hand into her undies. I had to give Fischer credit. If he could transform Kinsey into Don Juan Casanova, he was a magician.

Next was Cousin Harold. Fischer denounced him for going around bragging about his hotshot Cadillac agency when in reality he was a broken-down used car hustler who was damned lucky to have gotten into The Institute before the police or the Internal Revenue Service got him. Harold, he suggested, would be a lot better off to emulate the behavior of The Institute’s ex-addicts and forget about his sordid past. Then on to Rachel. Fischer dealt with her a bit more lightly than he had the residents, but he put on his Chief Thundercloud face when he accused her of playing the dilettante, dipping into The Institute but then running back to her luxurious life in Sausalito. Rachel, Fischer said, had better make up her mind which world she wanted. “You’d better,” he cautioned her, not unkindly, “shit or get off the pot, little lady.” Not eloquent perhaps, but to the point.

Fischer looked around the room to see if there were anybody left unwounded. He seemed satisfied that he’d made the rounds but then spotted Mrs. Cousin Harold—I never did find out if she had a first name—sheltering behind a massive, motherly bosom. Almost as an afterthought, he advised her to “stop wandering through the halls like Lady Macbeth wringing your hands and mourning the loss of your 20-cubic-foot freezer, Axminster wall-to-wall carpeting and Wednesday afternoon Mahjong orgies.” Mrs. Harold agitated her wattles, willing to admit to any sin just to get off the hot-spot.

I noticed that Fischer had passed right over Pops and Genie. Perhaps it was just as well. Pops was nodding in his chair, nearly asleep, and Genie didn’t look in the mood for serious introspection. If anything, she looked a bit apprehensive, but somehow I didn’t think it was a case of virgin’s jitters.

Apparently sated, Fischer heaved himself out of his armchair and announced: “Well, I suppose we’d better go join the others in…”

I never did learn where they were going to join the others, because I was up and out of the door in record time. I wasn’t eager to look Rachel in the eye in the immediate future, and there seemed no better time to take a little walk. I was halfway down the hall when they followed me out of the room like passengers leaving a crowded subway, all together yet beginning to break into ones and twos.

I heard a voice behind me call: “Joe.”

It was Rachel’s voice, and I kept going.

10

Without actually running, I moved away from the Karma Room as quickly as possible. A convenient flight of stairs led down to the ground floor and a side door out into the cool darkness surrounding the big building. After a few minutes, it wasn’t so dark. The stars were bright in a clear sky, and a gibbous moon was doing its best. The rich scent of flowering manzanita hung lightly on the soft breeze.

Behind me, the sound of chattering voices was rising, but as far as I could see I was the only one at large. I began to move away from the side of the building toward the big front lawn where the wedding had been held that afternoon. But then out of the darkness at the far edge of the lawn came two figures in gray overalls with white armbands moving with the traditional measured pace of a security patrol. They were walking with their heads together, one tall and white, with hollow, sucked-in cheeks, the other shorter, black and gesturing with barely concealed agitation.

For no particular reason, I ducked into the shadows to wait until they passed. I suppose I could have danced out into the moonlight, introduced myself and inquired of their health, but there was something about The Institute that was already turning me into a lurker. So I stayed there, enjoying the darkness, until they’d passed—the big one moaning about some grave injustice, the little one chiming in with a chorus of: “Yeah, but bullshit, man…”

Once they’d disappeared around the side of the mansion, I straightened up and stealthily made my way along the edge of the lawn, keeping well in the dark patches, until I was able to reach the orderly grove of cypress pines at the far end. From there I admired the mansion aglow with light.

I strained my ears, but couldn’t hear a thing from the mansion. The only sound in the night was the rushing of the waves against the rocks and the occasional distressed night bird. Now what, Goodey? I asked myself. You don’t particularly want to talk to Rachel Schute right now, but what are you doing out here? How is this going to help Fred Crenshaw?

No answer. I turned away from the mansion, and something deeper in the trees caught my eye. I blinked and it was gone. Then it was there again—a spectral figure with a flash of white. That was either a ghost, or somebody was out there whom I hadn’t yet met. I like making new friends, so I started moving away from the mansion and the sea, my eyes searching for the specter. I saw it again, but then lost it, and soon I found that I was following a faint path taking me in a northerly direction along the coast, rather than away from it.

What’s more, I was climbing, as my protesting legs and lungs began to tell me, and the ground underfoot was getting rockier. The trees were thinning, too, and eventually there were more rocks, even boulders, than trees. The moon over the sea was on my left now, peeping at me through diminishing foliage. Then the trail jogged to the left, and I came out onto a clearing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, the rocks and the mansion tucked neatly below among the breaking surf. From the edge I could see most of the terrace from which Katie Pierce had taken her big fall.

There was a sound to my right, and when I turned to investigate, something hit me behind the left ear, and the starry heavens began to fold in over my head like a collapsing tent. The rocky ground rose up to meet me.

When I opened my eyes, the stars were gone. They’d been replaced by a Fourth of July fireworks exhibition on the inside of my skull. I tried to raise my hands to ward off the rockets but found that they were tied behind my back. I tugged as hard as I was able, but only succeeded in giving my legs, which seemed to be up behind my shoulder blades, a painful wrench. Uh oh. A still, small voice told me that someone had hogtied me. And done a professional job of it, too.

I swiveled my head to the left, removing a few useless layers of skin, and found that someone was looking at me with a gleeful expression. In the dim, dim light of an oil lamp behind him, all I could see was a demonic grin, a pair of glittering eyes and an exuberant white beard that seemed to be full of electricity. My phantom.

“So you’re awake, are you, you son of a bitch?” he said.

“I think, you’ve made a little mistake, sir,” I said. I make it a practice always to be polite to people who have me hogtied. It works out better that way.

“Noooo,” he brayed. “It’s you who’s made the mistake, sonny. And now you’re going to pay for it. I warned you bastards not to mess with J. B. Carter, and now I’ve got one of you. Yes sir, I’ve got you.”

J. B. Carter. Wheels began to whir, and cogs clicked neatly into place. Mrs. J. B. Carter’s J. B. Carter. I’d sort of wondered whether there was one or whether Mrs. C. was just one of those batty old widows who can’t wait to give away her all to the first swami who comes along.

“You’ve got me all right,” I said, “but I think you’ve got me out of season. What did you use—a sledgehammer?”

“No, sir,” he cackled meanly. “This!” He hefted something oblong into view and smacked it into his other palm with a nasty whump. It was a sock—an argyle sock—stuffed with sand, and impressive in a silly way. He stuck his homemade mule-stunner under my nose, and it occurred to me that the only thing worse than being hit with a sock full of sand was being hit with a dirty sock full of sand. In fact, I didn’t much like pointing the finger of suspicion—couldn’t, in fact—but one of us was enjoying a serious case of B.O.

“Uh, nice,” I said. “Very nice.” The back of my head throbbed in unison with every word. “But I think I can clear up a certain misunderstanding here. You think I am a resident of The Institute. Is that correct?”

“I know you’re one of those claim-jumping sons-a-bitches,” he said, slapping Old Sockdolager into his palm again. “You’re not fooling me.”

“I’m not trying to,” I said, a bit testily. You try holding an extended conversation lying on your stomach with your hands and feet tied together behind your back, rocking horse-style.

“Could you do me a favor, Mr. Carter?”

“What’s that?” he said suspiciously.

“Just reach into my right hip pocket and take out my wallet.”

“I’m not a thief!” he said haughtily, as if a pickpocket were a notch lower than a blackjack mechanic.

“I just want you to have a look at my identification,” I said patiently. “That’s all. I think it will prove to you that I’m not with The Institute. In fact, I’m investigating The Institute.”

“Investigating?” he said, reaching for my back pocket. At least I had him curious. “Hell!” he grunted. “I can’t see a damned thing in this cave.” He reached somewhere and came out with a tiny, key-chain flashlight. A little beam of light lit up the papers in his hand. Carter fumbled in a shirt pocket and came out with a pair of round steel-rimmed glasses. With these on his nose, he started browsing seriously.

“Jonah Webster Goodey, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“Funny name, Jonah,” he said. “Means bad luck or something like that, doesn’t it?”

“Something like that,” I said. “Some say it’s an old Indian name meaning He-Who-Should-Be-Untied.”

That didn’t strike him as very amusing, so he just grunted and kept reading. He wasn’t a speed reader.

“Private investigator?” he said, as if it weren’t written right in front of his nose.

“That’s right, Mr. Carter,” I said patiently. “I used to be a policeman.”

“That don’t mean you’re not with them bastards,” he said. “They’ve got cops. They’ve got a big shot from the sheriff’s department in their pocket, and that’s why I haven’t had any success against them.”

“Look,” I said, truly getting weary, “I don’t work for The Institute. I’m trying to find out who killed Katie Pierce.”

At Katie’s name, Carter stopped reading and looked directly at me. With that little flashlight under his chin, I could see his face better, and some of the glitter seemed to have gone out of his eyes. I couldn’t see much of his expression through that bush on his face, but when he spoke, his voice was softer, somehow older.

“Katie?” he said. “I’ll tell you who killed Katie. That mealy-mouthed faker down there in my house, that’s who. Hugo Fischer!”

Now, that was an interesting theory that I’d be interested in pursuing a bit further, but preferably from a vertical position. Maybe this old geezer would turn out to be useful.

“Can you prove that?” I asked, but he ignored the question. Carter had gotten up from his crouching position and stood looking down at me.

“If you’re not with The Institute,” he asked, “who do you work for?”

“Frederick M. Crenshaw,” I said. “Katie’s grandfather. Now will you untie me, for Christ’s sake? I’m beginning to turn to stone.”

Carter stuck his hand into his beard, probably to stroke his chin, and looked doubtful. Then he made a decision. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take a chance.” Reaching into a side pocket, he unlimbered a menacing looking bowie knife and knelt down again. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but hoped that galloping senility hadn’t made his hand shake too much. Suddenly, my feet and hands were freed from each other.

Finally, he stood up with the rope in his hands, but I still lay there waiting for life to return to my limbs. Slowly and painfully it did, and I accepted the hand he offered me and got to my still-numb feet. I had to remain hunched because the ceiling of the cave was about six inches shorter than I was.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I’d have sworn you were one of them. I wondered why you weren’t wearing one of them colorful outfits, but then I figured maybe you were some sort of plainclothes night-fighter out to get me.”

I shook the fizzy feeling out of my hands, and as soon as I thought I could trust my legs, I said: “Do you think we could go outside, Mr. Carter? It’s a bit—uh—close in here.”

He looked a bit sheepish, handed my wallet to me and led me out of the cave. As I followed him, I could see that he’d made a sort of bed in one corner and had a little store of pots and pans and other utensils. A pair of binoculars hung on the wall.

The air was a lot less funky outside, and I stood erect and took several deep breaths. It felt good. We were standing only about ten feet back from the edge of the cliff where I’d become acquainted with Carter’s sock full of sand. I stood looking out to sea while behind me Carter was fussing with the foliage we’d had to pass through to get out of the cave. He panted audibly, as if struggling with something.

I waited, then got impatient, and asked him: “Mr. Carter, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Fixing up the entrance to my cave,” he said, giving the greenery a final adjustment. “Those dope fiends would give anything to find this place. They’d be up here after me with flame throwers.”

“No, I mean what are you doing up here living like a caveman, while Mrs. Carter is down there in your mansion, sitting at Hugo Fischer’s feet? At least you say it’s yours. The people at The Institute seem to think your wife is giving it to them.”

What I could see of his expression was pretty sour. Carter looked up at me and said: “Goodey, if you know anything about the state of California’s community-property law, you know that according to the idiots who run things, everything that is mine is half Emma’s.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard rumors to that effect.” Fortunately when my ex-wife, Patricia Berkowitz Goodey, had divorced me the year before, there’d been no property to share. And she’d been so relieved to get rid of me that she wouldn’t have bothered if there had been.

“Well,” Carter said, “the fact that I spent my life grubbing a fortune out of the mountains of Nevada with these”—he held up a pair of gnarled hands—“didn’t matter when Emma fell under Fischer’s spell and decided that we ought to give the damned place to The Institute.”

“But you weren’t crazy about that idea?” I asked.

“Not a bit,” he said feistily. “I could see through that phony messiah from the beginning.”

“Your wife and the others down there seem to think it’s done your son, Tommy, a lot of good,” I said.

That slowed him down a bit. “So you saw Tommy, did you?” he said, his face seeming to soften.

“Yes,” I said. “But only briefly. What about you? Don’t you agree that The Institute has helped him?”

Carter thought about that one. At last he said: “I don’t rightly know. I really don’t.” He seemed to be struggling to be fair. “I have to admit that he’s not in that nut house anymore. That’s something.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“You tell me,” Carter snapped. “I’ve been asking myself that for forty years. He was as pretty a little boy as you ever saw. Bright as a button, he was. You never saw such a lad. Then when he was six years old he took sick. Fever. I don’t know. I was away in the mountains—prospecting. When I came back, he was gone, and a little animal was left in his place. Half the time he was rolled up in a ball like a hibernating raccoon, and then like lightning he was climbing the walls like a monkey and trying to rip the place—and himself—apart. In the end, we had to have him put away. It near broke Emma’s heart.”

“But then Hugo and The Institute came along,” I said, giving him a touch of the spur.

“Yeah,” J.B. said reflectively. “And a couple of years ago Hugo talked Emma into bringing the boy—what was left of him—home. It’s not the first time Tommy’s been back with us, you know. Happened several times, but every time he had to go back. He’d seem to improve, but then he’d get so wild that we’d have to send him back. He’s strong as an animal, you know.”

“I got that feeling,” I said. “Do you think he’s improved since he’s been home this time?”

Carter was thoughtful. “Yes, I’ll give them that much. But he could go bad again any day. I wouldn’t trust Hugo if he walked from here to Japan and tap-danced back. After he tried and failed to ‘sell me the dream,’ as he puts it, he fell back to the idea that if Emma and I only signed the place over to him, Tommy would have a nice, safe home for life. Good deal, eh?”

“I’ve heard better,” I said. “What happened?”

“Well, as I said, I played along until this big signing-over ceremony down at the house. They made a real festive occasion out of it. A couple of tame movie stars hailed up from Los Angeles, people from the newspapers, that noisy goddamned band blaring away. Everything but a three-ring circus and the pope to give his blessing. Say,” he said, peering at me keenly, “you’re not Catholic, are you?”

“Not this year,” I said. “Then what?”

“Well, it was all mighty festive. Fischer was grinning like a mule eating sweet corn through a barbwire fence. Everybody gathers around that oval oak table in the big living room, Fischer gives Emma a fountain pen, and she dutifully signs the contract, simpering like a ninny. Then he hands the pen to me. But I surprised him a little. I took that contract, ripped it in about a million pieces and would have shoved it down his fat throat if a couple of his thugs hadn’t grabbed me. It was quite a hoo-ha, I can tell you. I thought Fischer was going to have a stroke.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Last October.”

“And that’s when you took to this cave, and started playing hide and seek?”

“No,” he said. “That was a bit later. After his pretty ceremony was ruined, Fischer threw out all the outsiders, beat his chest and howled like a scalded baboon. And everybody else looked at me as though I’d sat on the birthday cake. But then pretty soon he calmed down a little, and called a megathon.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sorry,” the old man said. “When you’re around The Institute for any time you start using the same gibberish they do. A megathon is sort of a long meeting of the big shots of The Institute, which gives Hugo Fischer an opportunity to rant and rave and howl for as long as he likes. Some of them have gone on for a week, day and night. Usually he calls them when he wants to straighten somebody out who’s threatening to throw a monkey wrench into Fischer’s master plan to rule the world.”

“And in this case,” I said, “that was you.”

“Yep, that was me, all right. Only for the first few hours, you wouldn’t have known I was there. Fischer started out taking names and kicking asses among the faithful, sorting out internal feuds, putting down minor rebellions and just enjoying making his pet animals crawl around on their bellies.”

“Sounds like good clean fun,” I said. “But I imagine that Fischer got around to you eventually.”

“Oh, he did that, sure enough. After about eighteen hours straight, when we’re all supposed to be about on the ropes, Fischer turned loose his dogs—Moffitt, Jim Carey, Pops Martin, the whole bunch—on me. They really ripped up the floorboards and went after me. I was an ungrateful old bastard; I was standing in the way of great human progress; I was condemning my own son to life in a strait jacket. Then, Fischer pushed Emma’s button, and she lit out after me, drawing on over fifty years of ups and downs and sideways. When she was done, there was nothing left you could call me. She didn’t miss a stop. She ended up screaming that she hated me because I was causing so much pain and trouble to this great, decent, beautiful man—she was talking about Fischer, mind you.”

“I figured as much.”

“Well, about this time I was supposed to melt into a great big puddle of remorse. They were all prepared to leap up and embrace me as a brother once I’d admitted the error of my ways. I just waited until Emma had finally wound down to a quiet boohoo, stood up and walked right out of there. I haven’t talked to any of them since.”

“What have you been doing all this time? Not hiding in that dinky cave?”

“Some of the time,” he said cagily, “but I’ve got a dozen places on this estate where I could hide out from an army. If I hadn’t decided to find you tonight, you’d never have found me.”

I rubbed the back of my head and admitted that he was probably right. “But is it really necessary for you to do all this hide-and-seek stuff?”

He looked a bit put out at the question. “Hugo Fischer is never going to drive me off my own land. I’ll outlast them. I’ll still be here when every last one of those drug-crazed maniacs and bloodsuckers is out on the highway, even if Emma goes with them.”

“You probably will,” I agreed, “but is all the hiding and commando stuff necessary? You don’t really think Fischer or anyone else from The Institute would hurt you? I seem to recall that they believe in nonviolence.”

Carter cocked an eye at me like a cunning old bird. “No, Goodey,” he said. “I don’t believe Fischer would. Not him. But not all of his flunkies are so choosy about high ideals. So, just to be on the safe side, I keep moving.”

“I can see your point,” I said, “but…”

Just at that moment, we both heard voices. They were coming in our direction. Suddenly, Carter was as alert as a jack rabbit.

“I’m gone,” he said, and started moving toward the bushes.

“Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. It was thin, but tough and sinewy. “I’ve got some more questions. How can I find you?”

“You can’t,” he said, jerking out of my grip easily. “If I want to talk to you, I’ll do the finding. If you come looking for me, you’d better be mighty careful.” Then he was gone like a wisp of smoke.

I walked back over toward the edge of the cliff and tried to look casual. The voices got louder, and in less than a minute, the two security guards I’d dodged down below came out of the trees to the little clearing.

They didn’t look friendly. It may have been my imagination, but I thought the little one got a better grip on the sawed-off baseball bat he was carrying.

“What are you doing up here, Mr. Goodey?” he asked.

“Oh, just admiring the view,” I said carelessly. “Why do you want to know?”

That wasn’t the answer he’d been looking for, but he said: “Security is very important here at The Institute. We have enemies. We like to know just what’s going on at all times on our property.”

“Oh,” I said innocently. “In that case, I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you that I was talking with a friend.”

“A friend.” They were surprised.

“Who’s that?” demanded the big one.

“Just a friend,” I said. “He lives”—I made a vague gesture up toward the woods—“out there someplace.”

“In the woods?”

“Uh huh.”

“J.B.,” said the taller one. “This guy’s been talking to that old bastard, Carter.” He turned back to me. “Where’d you see him?”

“Around,” I said. “But he’s gone now. He said he had to go to see a man about buying some dynamite.” They both looked startled, then realized that I was putting them on.

“He belongs in a loony bin!” exclaimed the tall one. “He’s nothing but an old…”

But the other guard was tugging him away from me along the cliff’s edge. I wished them a lot of luck trying to find J.B.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as they walked away rapidly. “Look out for his sock.” They disappeared into the woods.

The mansion was dark and deserted when I got back to it, and nobody challenged me as I crept up the stairs to my room. I opened the door and was groping for the light switch, when a girl’s voice said: “Don’t turn on the light.”

11

I peeked warily around the door and found Genie Martin looking at me from the bed. My bed. The pink coveralls were gone, and a sheer silk nightgown didn’t hide the fact that she was stripped for action. She was sitting propped up against the pillows, and the expression on her face was probably meant to be seductive. Instead of removing her make-up for bed, she’d obviously added more and none too subtly. Her heavily kohled eyes made her look like a raccoon in heat.

“Hello,” I said, never at a loss for an original opening, “aren’t you in the wrong room?”

“I hope not,” Genie said, switching on the bedside lamp. “You’d better close the door or we’re likely to have more company.”

“Like who?” I said, taking her advice. “Pops?” But I felt better with the door closed.

She snorted prettily, showing a nice set of sharp little teeth that didn’t do anything to dispel the raccoon impression. “Not a chance. The great lover is upstairs practicing breathing through his mouth. You never heard anything like it. Did you know that he keeps his teeth in a glass of water by the side of the bed? Ugh!”

She shuddered like a small girl who’d just been offered a fresh worm, and I felt a pang of compassion for the old hoodlum. I also got a vivid mental image of him snoring wet-mouthed at the ceiling. Not a pretty picture.

“You must have had some idea what you were marrying,” I said, looking around for someplace to sit. There was a chair at the table, and I reached for it.

“That’s easy for you to say,” she said spitefully. She patted what little bed she had to spare. “Sit over here by me.”

It was a tempting offer, but I said: “No thanks, not on the first date.” I turned the chair around and straddled it, facing Genie. “You didn’t say what you were doing here,” I reminded her.

“Waiting for you.” I’ll give her credit; she said it without coquetry. But somehow I didn’t feel flattered.

“Why me?”

“Who else?” she said, almost bitterly. “What am I going to do, go crawl into bed with Hugo? Or maybe that asshole Kinsey? Listen, these people think Pops Martin is pretty hot shit around here. He’s the Grand Old Man, Hugo’s right arm. If I so much as batted an eye at any of the guys in The Institute, they’d break both legs copping out on me. Most of them are eunuchs, anyway. I doubt if they could come up with one good hard-on between the bunch of them.”

If I’d wanted straight talk, I’d come to the right place. Genie didn’t waste much time on circumlocution. “If that’s what you were looking for, why marry Pops?” I asked. “You don’t look like a girl who would be short of candidates.”

She shrugged, dropping the neckline of her nightie another inch down her breasts. If it was calculated, it was a nice move. “I didn’t get a better offer,” she said. She must not have liked the expression in my eyes because she added: “Do you know what they had me doing here? Washing dishes. Then waiting on tables. That sort of dreck. As Genie Robbins, I was strictly another pair of hands. As Mrs. Pops Martin, I don’t wash dishes. I’ve got status. I drive that Thunderbird Hugo gave him, and everyone kisses my ass. Does that sound like a bad deal, to you?”

“Not that part of it, maybe,” I said, “but if you’re up here tonight, what are you going to do all the other nights?”

“I’ll manage,” she said. I must have looked doubtful. “Christ,” she added explosively, “tonight was special. You know, I was a princess today. A fucking princess.”

“You looked like a princess,” I said, without stretching the truth too much. Who says there can’t be hard-faced princesses with eyes older than time?

“It was beautiful,” she said. A bit of glow came into her flinty eyes, and she looked even younger. “Did you see the ceremony on the lawn?”

“Yeah, it was very impressive,” I said.

“Impressive?” she said indignantly. “It was wonderful—beautiful. And you saw us at dinner all by ourselves at that special table. Did you ever see so many flowers? And maybe you noticed that Hugo didn’t give us any shit at the sitch. Not us. Not tonight. Then after the sitch, we went up to Pops’ apartment. He put on a very romantic record, and I went into the bathroom—a private bathroom, all to ourselves!—to put on this.” She fingered the sheer material of her nightgown lovingly. “I splashed on my best perfume—twenty bucks an ounce—and came back out into the bedroom. Do you know what I found?”

“You tell me.”

“Him!” She spat out the word like a bad taste. “Sound asleep in the bed—snoring—and with no teeth in! Do you blame me for coming up here?”

“I don’t,” I said. “But Pops might if he finds out.”

“He won’t.”

“You know him better than I do,” I shrugged. “But you can’t know him all that well if tonight was a big surprise to you. I don’t want to be gross, but there must have been some engagement period.”

“Huh?” She was puzzled, but then it dawned on her what I was getting at. She got a bit shrill: “Are you kidding? I never let him lay a hand on me. No free samples. You don’t know Pops Martin, and I do. Any girl who gives him what he wants can forget it.”

“So, you’re still the virgin bride?”

Her laugh was like enamel cracking. “Yeah, that’s right. Come over here and see what you can do about that.” She raised both arms invitingly, and the front of her nightie did another nose-dive.

“I’d like to, Genie,” I said without moving. “I really would.”

“Well, then?”

“One little thing bothers me. I can understand that you’re disappointed at Pops’ lack of enthusiasm for honeymoon calisthenics. But it still seems to me that marrying him was a pretty drastic step. What was keeping you from kissing off the dishpan and Pops Martin and just hitting the road?”

“These.” She turned both thin arms elbows down, palms up. “Come over and have a close look,” she said.

That intrigued me, and I did. At first, in the flat light, I couldn’t see anything unusual about her arms, but then in the blue-white crook of her elbow I could make out a pale pattern of tracks like the faded reminders of aerial bombing. One major vein on her left arm had that destroyed look they sometimes get when a needle has been stuck in them a couple of hundred times too many.

“See?” she said with a bittersweet smile.

“I get your point. And you think this place helps?”

She shrugged, and the rest of the top of her nightgown fell, covering the needle tracks on her arms. She took my hands and pulled me toward her. It would have taken a more determined man than I was just at that moment to have pulled away, so I sat down next to her legs. “I haven’t used any since I came here over a year ago,” she said, “and it’s the first time I’ve been clean since I was fourteen years old. I don’t know what you think of The Institute, but it’s better than the gutter, and I’ve been there.”

I believed her. Whatever other kind of fraud Hugo Fischer was, The Institute seemed to work for some. I wondered whether it was because of him or in spite of him.

“Tell me, Genie,” I said, “did you…”

“I’m tired of telling,” she complained, slipping down to a horizontal position and trying to pull me on top of her. She didn’t have to try very hard to be honest, and I was just kissing my chastity goodbye when the intercom directly over my head cleared its throat and began to bark.

“Attention all residents and guests! Attention all residents and guests! Gather in the Horizon Room immediately! Immediately!” said a voice that sounded suspiciously like Hugo Fischer bellowing into a garbage can.

“Shit!” said Genie, snapping to a sitting position. Her eyes rambled around the room looking for another exit, but there was only the window.

Just then an obscure rumbling commenced as feet hit the floors and doors began to fly open. In the hallway outside the door, a babble of sleepy voices broke out, and somebody with a heavy foot thundered by hitting all the doors with a blunt instrument and crying: “Up, up, up! Let’s move it! Now!”

“What are we going to do?” Genie whispered, suddenly turning from teenage seductress to trapped rat. She struggled into the rest of her nightgown and jumped out of bed.

“I think I’ll just stay here,” I said. “I’ve never been much for midnight frolics. Fischer probably just wants to find out if anyone is having any interesting dreams.”

“You can’t,” she said. “They’ll come through all the rooms to see if anyone’s missing. When Hugo calls a meeting, everybody comes.”

By then, the noise from the hallway had risen to a modest din, and the gazelle in clodhoppers bounded by again, dealt my door a mortal blow and bleated: “Out, out, owwwwwt!”

“Then I guess we’ll have to go,” I said. “You weren’t wearing anything else when you came up here, were you?” Genie was nervously nibbling her thumb and looking sick. “No!” she wailed. “Christ, Pops is going to kill me for this.”

“No, he won’t,” I said, trying to comfort her. After all, it was her honeymoon, and she’d already had two disappointments that night. “Tell me, who’s sleeping on this floor?”

The panic began to drain from Genie’s face. Maybe she figured I knew what I was doing. “Mostly guests,” she said, “and maybe a couple of newcomers.”

Outside in the hall, I could still hear a bit of scampering about, but it was dying down as the sleepyheads filtered downstairs.

“Just a second,” I told Genie. Opening the door carefully, I stuck my head, out into the hall, making sure that no passerby could see into my room. Just my luck, Rachel Schute was just coming out into the hall knotting the sash of an apple-green dressing gown. Redheads ought to always wear green.

“Hello, Joe,” she said, a bit startled to suddenly see me. There was something else in her expression.

“Hi, Rachel,” I said. “Isn’t this fun? What do you suppose the great man wants?”

“We’ll find out when we get downstairs,” she said, with reproof in her voice. “Are you ready to go down?” She paused and turned toward me as if waiting for me to join her.

“Uh, no—no,” I said a bit hurriedly. “I’ve got a couple of—uh—things to do. You go right ahead. I’ll be right there. Save me a seat.”

Rachel looked puzzled, bit her lower lip and said: “All right, Joe. I’ll see you downstairs. But don’t be too long. Hugo likes people to be prompt.”

“I’ll bet,” I said to her departing back. I was watching her about to disappear down the stairs when she looked back at me. I shut the door in a hurry.

Back inside my room, Genie was flitting here and there in her bridal nightie like a nubile moth. “Listen,” I said. “I think everyone’s gone down from this floor. I’ll check again, and then we can creep down before Fischer sends his bloodhounds up to sniff us out. Where is your room?”

“On the next floor down,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “I’ll go down the stairs first. If the way is clear, I’ll whistle and head on downstairs to the big meeting. You make it to Pops’ room and get something on.”

“But what will I tell Pops? Remember, I was supposed to be in bed with him.”

“Tell him anything,” I suggested helpfully. “Tell him he didn’t wake up when the first announcement came and that you rushed out of the room before he did. Tell him anything but the truth.”

“Well, okay,” she said doubtfully.

“Right,” I said. “You ready?” She nodded, and I turned to open the door again.

“Joe?” she said, and I turned back to find her in my arms. She was like an armload of animated meringue, and I didn’t fight very hard when she kissed me. Her lips tasted like perfumed orange Kool-Aid. “Thanks,” she said, when she’d stopped molesting me, “for caring whether I get caught.”

“It’s nothing,” I said, putting her feet back on the floor, “but we’re both going to get caught if we don’t get moving.” A peek out of the door told me that the hall was deserted, and I moved out into it, whispering: “Follow me.”

It was clear sailing to the head of the stairs. “You stay here, now,” I said, “until I whistle. Then run like hell. If I start talking to someone in a loud voice, you’d better make it back to my room.”

“Then what?” she asked, not looking as confident as she had a few moments before.

“God knows.” I gave her hand a squeeze and started down the stairs. The next floor down was deserted. Giving the best whistle I could manage, I started blithely to turn toward the next flight only to come face to face with a breathless-Rachel Schute.

“Joe,” she said. “I forgot…”

Whatever she forgot was soon forgotten as her eyes caught sight of someone we both knew coming down the stairs behind me. Rachel’s face froze in surprise that was about to turn to something else when she spun around and flew back down the stairs.

Genie was frozen, too, with one bare foot in the air, but I dashed back and yanked her down to the next landing. Once her feet touched the floor again, I gave her a shove in the general direction of her room and then carried on down the stairs trying to whistle nonchalantly through a bone-dry throat.

12

When I got downstairs, most of the mob had filtered into the large drawing room that seemed to be the Horizon Room. I followed along, keeping close to the walls and playing the interested but detached observer. The last thing I wanted to do was draw attention to myself, which made it doubly unfortunate that I was just about the only one there who was fully dressed. My clothes aren’t much at the best of times, but even after being dropped in the dirt by J. B. Carter, I stood out like Diamond Jim Brady at a slumber party.

When I got into the big—and now crowded—room, it hadn’t changed much since that afternoon except that someone had spray-painted HUGO FUCK YOURSELF!!! on the expensive embossed wallpaper in a nasty shade of purple paint.

I began to get a glimmer why Fischer had asked us all to join him. And why that same charismatic figure was standing barefoot in a bright yellow terrycloth robe in front of a massive fireplace glaring at the assemblage. His birthmark seemed to be especially livid. Flanking him were Don Moffitt, looking as though he wanted to maim somebody—anybody—and Pops Martin, who was trying to be tough but mostly looked sleepy and a bit bewildered. He was peering around the room anxiously. I spotted Rachel among the crowd, but she studiously refused to acknowledge that I existed.

There weren’t enough chairs and couches, so most of us perched on window sills or just leaned against the walls. I was a leaner, myself. My watch told me it was after 2 a.m., and my head still throbbed where J.B. had sandbagged me. I noted that among those in the high priced seats were Mrs. J.B.—Tommy slumped beside her looking like a big baby in a set of woolly green pajamas—Rachel, Cousin Harold, Mrs. Harold and Dr. Carey. First among equals, you might say. Fischer’s wife, Lenore, was sitting behind his right shoulder looking played out.

A half-moon-shaped area between Fischer and the front row was left vacant, and he stalked its periphery while security men in gray coveralls moved among the crowd, taking a head count. Finally, one of them sidled up to him and announced that all residents and guests were present or accounted for. Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Genie tucked neatly in a far corner of the big room. She was swaddled to the chin in a very demure fuzzy blue kimono, and doing her best to be invisible. She wasn’t looking anywhere near me, and that suited me fine. Just at that moment, Pops spotted her, too, and his face was a confusion of emotions. Before he could decide which of them to vent, however, Hugo put his big hands on his hips and began to speak.

“We’re all here, friends,” Fischer said, “so I suppose we can begin.” A graveyard stillness fell over the room. Fischer surveyed us all for an uncomfortably long time, as if trying to extract a confession by sheer will power. The strain in the room was palpable, and I was thinking of confessing myself when Fischer broke the silence.

“Look about you, friends,” he intoned, “and see the handiwork of one among us.” He raked us with Gatling gun eyes, and we all dutifully inspected the graffiti as if we’d been looking at much else since we’d come into the room.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he cracked the word like a whip, pouring the maximum scorn on the scrawl and its anonymous author. “Isn’t it witty? Doesn’t it strike right at the heart of authority?”

Me, I didn’t think it was so wonderful. I’d seen better in public toilets. I’d written better.

“Hank Willis!” The name rang out like a shot, and a depressed looking guy with a receding hairline and matching chin stopped studying his thumb and gave all his attention to Fischer. He didn’t actually say: “Yes, Sir!” but he certainly began to look a lot more alert.

“Hank,” said Hugo, in a benign tone with a hook in it, “why don’t you read to us the work of the Phantom Scrawler?”

I’ll give Willis some credit: He had the guts to shoot Fischer a “what the hell for?” look and keep his lip buttoned.

“Go right ahead,” said Fischer with a flourish of his right hand. “We’re all listening.”

Willis opened his mouth. I’m not all that sure that he was going to obey Fischer, but Fischer didn’t give him a chance.

“Oh, not from there, Hank,” he said with deceptive bonhomie. “Come over here”—he pointed to the empty crescent before him—“where we can all see you and hear you.”

Willis thought about that a lot, and looked around at the others as if to gather support. But a corridor to the place of honor was already opening for him. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to take advantage of it. He stood, his eyes on Fischer’s fleshy, flawed face, as if trying to read something that wasn’t there. But Fischer’s expression of benign impatience didn’t change.

“Come on, Hank,” he said. “We’re all waiting.”

Willis squared his puny shoulders and began to move through the crowded room. He didn’t look at anyone in particular as he walked, but Susan Wallstrom—looking sleepily attractive in a soft-pink house coat—seemed to be trying to communicate some sort of support to him. If Willis received it, he wasn’t letting on.

When he got to the dead center of Fischer’s little no man’s land, Willis stopped and once again looked into Hugo’s eyes. His expression said: “All right, I know it’s crazy, but I’m here.” I wouldn’t say it was exactly a duel; Fischer was too powerful for that. He could have blown Willis away without trying. But in a chicken shit way, it was a sort of rebellion, and I could tell that Fischer didn’t like it. Not in front of the children.

Moffitt and Pops Martin didn’t like it much either. They strained at invisible leads, as if ready to rip out Willis’ throat on command. And they weren’t the only ones. The look on the faces of the lads in gray was positively predatory. I wasn’t sorry that it was Willis up there in the limelight instead of me.

The silence got on Pops’ already taut nerves and he snapped: “All right, sucker, start reading!”

But Fischer reined him in with a small gesture of his hand. “Oh no, Pops, not yet. Hank looks a bit lonely standing there by himself, don’t you think? Don’t you think he could use some company?”

“Yeah!” said Don Moffitt, with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. He raked the assemblage with a jagged look. I noticed that his look went right over the heads of the folks in the two-dollar seats up front. Rachel didn’t look worried. She was mesmerized, as if she were an anthropologist watching a cruel but fascinating ritual. But a lot of the company did. I imagined there was a certain amount of conscience-rummaging going on.

“What do you think, Hank?” Fischer asked, in a favorite-uncle tone of voice. “Could you use a little company?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued: “Like perhaps Vinnie Segundo?” His smile was alarming. “Come on up, Vinnie. Hank’s lonely.”

Vinnie, a dough-faced Italian boy in his early twenties with modishly long hair and slightly tinted gold-rimmed glasses, gulped audibly. “M-me, Hugo?” he said, after swallowing with difficulty. “Why me? I didn’t…”

Whatever Vinnie didn’t, didn’t seem to matter very much as someone in the rear gave him a helpful shove, and he found himself being propelled up to Willis’s side. There was a scattering of knowing smiles, and I got the feeling that perhaps Mr. Vincent Segundo wasn’t a leading member of the community.

“And how about the young lovers?” Fischer shouted in a cheerleader fashion. “Shall we get them up here, too?”

“Yay!” cheered a bloodthirsty voice from the back, and Fischer gestured to a couple of his running dogs who left the room by a side door.

Things were getting lively now, and sleepy expressions lad been replaced by emotions ranging from pity to anticipation to mild terror. But at least no one looked bored. Fischer sure knew how to throw a party. I seemed forgotten for the moment, which didn’t make me unhappy.

Willis, I’m sure, would have liked to be just as forgotten. Things had taken a turn for the worse for him in the last few minutes, and his face showed it. Things had begun to get out of hand. Willis recoiled from Vinnie as though he were carrying the Black Plague. It was a small space they were standing in, but Willis made the most of it. Vinnie just stood scratching his dandruff.

All eyes jumped to the side door as the gray wolves returned leading two grotesque creatures behind him. At first I thought it was a joke—a bad joke. Both were dressed in the black-and-white striped coveralls of cartoon convicts, and their heads hung forward. The head of the boy in front was shaved completely except for a one-inch swath from his forehead to the nape of his neck. The girl behind him had her fair hair tied up in dozens of ugly little clumps with faded ribbons and string. Then I recognized them as Lennie and Barbara, the runaways who had returned that afternoon during the wedding reception.

There was an involuntary sound from the crowd, half gasp, half sigh, as they caught sight of the couple. Rachel looked as though she were going to cry, but then bit her lip and forced her face back to a neutral expression. I glanced at Susan Wallstrom and was surprised to find her face completely devoid of any emotion. She was totally caught up in the spectacle. Behind the three chief inquisitors, Lenore Fischer’s face was like a death mask, and her eyes weren’t on the scene in the room.

Willis’s expression did a few gyrations as the security men led the boy and girl through the crowd. This was turning into a freak show, but he couldn’t think of any way to get out of it.

“Welcome,” said Fischer sardonically, but neither of the newcomers could manage to look up at him. “Now, let’s see,” he said mischievously, rubbing his stubbly chin, “who else?”

“Bob Fuller!” someone shouted, and I followed the mob’s eyes to one corner where an apparition slumped against the wall, apparently asleep. He was about thirty and fattish, with skin the color of putty and thinning black hair combed straight back from a mole-like face. He was wearing an ancient, rusty black, ankle-length raincoat, which looked as though it had been slept in.

“Wha—?” Fuller muttered, when someone poked him, but eventually he sleep-stumbled up to join the growing circus at the front of the room. If Willis had shied away from Vinnie Segundo, at the advent of this newcomer he began to climb the walls.

Fischer called for another couple of reluctant volunteers—a thin, bitter-faced girl with a build of a lady high jumper, and a handsome black boy with the languid air of a Zulu prince—and the company of pariahs seemed to be complete.

Fischer looked around the room with jovial menace. “I think that’ll do, don’t you?” he asked us. “Or would somebody else like to join this little band?”

Somehow none of us did. Clasping his hands like the bride’s father at a Polish wedding, Fischer beamed at Willis and said: “Perhaps now, Hank, you’ll be kind enough to read what is written on the wall.”

From the expression on his face, there was nothing Villis would have liked to do less, except perhaps swallow his tongue. But he pivoted back toward the graffiti and recited in a voice as flat as the Plains of Abraham: “Hugo fuck yourself.”

“Excuse me, Hank,” Fischer said with mock politeness. “I didn’t quite catch that. Do you think you could read it just one more time?”

There may have been someone in that room—besides the Mad Dog and his pups—who was enjoying this spectacle, but it wasn’t Willis. He toughed it out, though, and his face was blank as he repeated: “Hugo fuck yourself.”

“Thank you,” said Fischer. “Did everybody hear that?”

“I didn’t!” called out a tall wise guy near the side door. “Well,” rasped out Fischer, “for you and the other illiterates, it says: Hugo fuck yourself.”

The tall guy shrank until he could have fitted into Fischer’s vest pocket, and most everybody else looked suitably scandalized. Fischer had spoken the words with a Shakespearean roundness that Hank Willis hadn’t quite been able to muster.

“Hugo fuck yourself,” Fischer said again, but this time it was spoken softly, as if to himself. Now he was a ruminative Zeus wondering who’d had the hubris to piss on his leg. He repeated it, softly yet ringingly, and then raised his great, flawed head to take in all of us. “What can that mean?” he asked with his hands raised imploringly. Now he was Moses having a private chat with God. Fischer sure could run the gamut. Any minute, now, I expected him to speak in tongues or do the splits.

Instead, he zeroed in on Willis again. “Hank,” he said, “you’re a writer, a literary man. Can you tell us what it means?” When Willis didn’t respond immediately, Fischer darkened as though he was going to rain all over him and demanded: “What does it mean!”

I didn’t know about the rest of them, but I was getting a bit bored with this scenario. Not to mention, Fischer may have been the greatest performer since John Wilkes Booth, but not at nearly three in the morning.

“I think, Mr. Fischer,” I said in the kind of voice you use on a suspect in a police line-up, “it’s a pun, what you’d call a play on words.”

I certainly had everybody’s attention, even Hugo Fischer’s. He pointed his heavy brow toward me in surprise: “Is it, Mr. Goodey? Is it now? A pun, you say. I thought you were a detective, not a semanticist.”

Hank Willis looked relieved to be out of the spotlight. Rachel was shaking her head at me in warning, and Moffit and Pops Martin licked their lips and looked hungry.

I didn’t say anything, so Fischer went on: “Perhaps,” he said, playing to the cheap seats, “we could prevail on Mr. Goodey, our visiting linguistics expert, to expound on the literary merits of the work of the midnight scrawler. Do you think you could do that, Mr. Goodey?”

I really had the group’s attention now. There was something tribal in their faces, something mystical and savage that made me glad that I was just a stranger passing through. “I could, I suppose, Mr. Fischer,” I said, “but not just now. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”

Without bothering to read any faces, I turned and walked from the big drawing room. There was a security guard on either side of the doorway, but neither made a move. They stood like toy soldiers with open mouths.

Behind me, all was silent for a long, long moment. Then there was an explosion of sound, an angry clamoring punctuated by what I’d have sworn was the barking of dogs. I half expected to hear the heavy thump of running steps coming after me, but I was still alone when I got to the stairs. The racket from the Horizon Room seemed to grow even louder, but then as I climbed it faded, until from the top floor I could hear only a dull roar like rushing water.

When I closed the door to my room even that died down. At that late hour, the under-butler’s hard, thin bed was as welcoming as a bower of roses. The pungent shadow of Genie’s perfume lingered in the sheets, and the last thing I remembered before I fell asleep was the rustle of her translucent negligee.

13

Sometime during the morning I dimly perceived the intercom announcing that breakfast was being served, and I considered the possibility. But just then the sandman in the guise of J. B. Carter let me have it behind the left ear, and the next thing I knew my wristwatch said it was nearly noon.

When my feet hit the floor, I became aware of two things: my aching head and a flash of white on the floor just inside the door. It turned out to be a folded piece of paper. When I could get my eyes into focus, I read: “If you want to know who killed Katie, it was Rudolph Verrein. A friend.”

I had to treat this with suspicion. As far as I knew, I didn’t have a friend at The Institute. Especially after being caught on the stairs between Genie and Rachel the night before. But it certainly was interesting, whoever Rudolph Verrein might turn out to be.

The intercom above my bed made vague noises, but before it could decide what to say, I stepped up on the bed, wrenched the damned thing off the wall and lobbed it into the wastepaper basket. Then it occurred to me that it might have been about to inform me that the building was on fire. The dead speaker looked at me accusingly from the basket.

When I took my towel and shaving kit out into the communal bathroom, it was empty except for Roscoe Matson in bright red shorts glowering at his image in the mirror as if trying to hypnotize it.

“Hi,” I said, because I’m a very friendly guy.

He started to return my greeting but then said something that sounded like mmmph and turned to glare at me. “Hey, man,” he said belligerently, “I’m not talking to you.”

“How’s that?”

“You know. That session last night. You fucked it up for fair with your wise mouth.”

“Sorry,” I said with as much sincerity as I could manage. “I’m a new boy around here, you know. Don’t know all the ropes.”

“You sure don’t,” he said, “and if you don’t wise up somewhat, you may not live to be an old boy.” With that, he gathered up his shaving gear and headed for the door.

“Hey, Roscoe,” I said, before he could quite make it. He stopped, looked back at me and grunted: “Hummmph?”

“I know we’re not buddies anymore,” I said, “but do you think you could tell me who Rudolph Verrein is?”

“Rudy Verrein is a son of a bitch,” said Matson.

“Be that as it may,” I said. “Do you have any idea where I could find him?”

“I hope he’s in hell,” said Matson, “and I wouldn’t mind a whole lot if you were there with him.” With that, he flipped his towel over his shoulder and stalked out.

Feeling a bit cleaner but just as friendless as ever, I tramped down the stairs to find out what wonders that Sunday at The Institute would bring. The downstairs hall was nearly empty, and I saw nobody I knew.

Just then the aroma of food wafting from the dining room hit me, and I remembered that I’d slept through breakfast. As I was walking in that direction, something caught my eye in a room off to one side of the hall. It was Hank Willis behind a bar, pouring a big pot of steaming water into a coffee urn. I considered ignoring my stomach and going in to have a chat, but then I became aware of his face. It was the face of a man studying the fine print of his soul and not liking what he read. Even a man more famous for his insensitivity than I wouldn’t have barged in on Willis’s communion with Inner Truth. At least not while he had a pot of boiling water in his hand.

So I tiptoed on past to the dining room. I didn’t get a standing ovation from the lunch-eaters, but then nobody threw a knife at me, either. Spotting an empty chair beside Susan Wallstrom, I slipped into it before anyone could start forming a lynch mob.

“Hello, Susan,” I said.

She didn’t look too happy to see me, but good manners prevented her from spitting in my eye. She said hello nicely enough, but didn’t seem eager to go much further.

I helped myself to whatever looked edible and asked her: “What time did that clambake end last night?”

That may not have been the right question. “We all went to bed about four-thirty,” she said, a bit sniffily. “I hope you got enough sleep.”

“Nearly,” I said. “But that’s really not why I left early. I just didn’t care much for Fischer’s idea of midnight frolics. Did you? You didn’t look too happy to me last night.”

I began to notice that some of our tablemates had stopped grazing and were tuning in on our conversation. So did Susan, and the idea didn’t delight her.

“There are a lot of things, Mr. Goodey,” she said, “that you don’t understand about The Institute.”

I’d heard that refrain before, but rather than explore it just then I decided to change the subject.

“That’s becoming more obvious by the minute,” I said. “But I’m trying to learn. And there’s something else I’d like to learn: Who is Rudolph Verrein?”

From her expression, Susan didn’t like my new topic much better than the old one, but she answered: “He’s a portrait painter and a former friend of The Institute. He lives in Las Palomas.”

“Why former?” I asked, but lowered my voice to a level that I hoped only Susan could hear. Privacy was probably a sin at The Institute, but I liked it. “What did he do—accuse Fischer of being human?”

Another wrong thing to say. Susan wrinkled her pretty Scandinavian nose in distaste and said: “I don’t know why Rudy is no longer a friend of The Institute. Why don’t you ask Hugo?”

“I’ll do better than that,” I said, spearing a last string bean and standing up. “I’ll ask Rudolph Verrein. See you later.”

Susan was too busy chasing diced carrots around on her plate to answer, so I turned away and headed for the dining room door. On the way, I looked around for familiar faces. Fischer was nowhere to be seen, but Rachel and Jim Carey were eating forehead to forehead in one corner and talking something over intently. The honeymoon couple sat alone at another small table. Pops still looked a bit sulky, but from her expression Genie had things under control again. She raised an eyebrow that I pretended not to see. At that moment, Pops swiveled in my direction not looking very friendly, but she said something, and he turned back.

I was just about at the door when a large, strong hand grabbed my arm and helped me turn back around. A glowering face under a narrow forehead that belonged to a caveman stared down at me with hostility. I recalled seeing him at the table helping beans onto his fork with an outsized thumb. “You were asking about Rudy Verrein?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “but I wasn’t asking you.” He gave my arm a little shake of impatience that I felt down to my last vertebra. “But if you’d like to answer,” I said, “I’d certainly be grateful.”

That didn’t seem to placate him much, but he threw my arm down as if he had no further use for it.

“I’ll tell you who Rudy Verrein is,” he said. “He’s a faggot bastard who got thrown out of here for going around always trying to fuck our girls.”

I didn’t bother asking him to clear up this apparent contradiction, just thanked him very much and turned to continue toward the door, hoping not to be retrieved again.

“You tell Rudy to stay the hell away from here,” he shouted at my retreating back, “or he’ll get his scrawny neck broken. Tell him Jerry Wildenradt said so.”

I couldn’t help turning back at the doorway, and discovered every eye in the place turned toward our little scene. I tried to think of a comeback that wouldn’t get my neck broken in five places. “How do you spell that?” I asked him.

“W-i-l…”he started, but then something told Wildenradt I just might be having him on, and a carmine flush began to rise in his fleshy chops.

I took several rapid steps down the hall and was soon in the marble foyer on the way out of the mansion when something caught my eye. It was a vast oil portrait of Hugo Fischer high up on the wall over the front door. I didn’t have to guess that Verrein had done it. The pose was pugnaciously Churchillian, the technique bold with a rough, cobbled surface that looked as though it had been achieved with a blunt weapon. This wasn’t a school of painting I usually liked, but in this portrait Verrein had made Fischer several sizes larger than life and had infused the birthmark with something noble, even tragic.

In all, it was a majestic portrait that I could imagine Fischer spending a lot of time gazing at. I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to make an enemy of someone who could have made me look like that. But then, I wasn’t Fischer, and I hadn’t met Verrein yet, either.

The security guards at the barrier dented ice pick looks on the front of the Morris, but grudgingly let me pass. On Highway 1 in downtown Las Palomas—a general store, a post office and a Shell station—the pump jockey, a vest-pocket hipster in mirror shades, told me how to get to Rudolph Verrein’s, adding: “Some pretty freaky things go on down there, man.”

I thanked him for the warning and drove down the highway until my eagle eye caught an inconspicuous break in the hedge on the seaward side and a small bronze plaque with the initials R.V. I wheeled into the break and drove down an access road similar to the one leading to The Institute’s mansion. But there were no security guards, and at the end of it lay not a gingerbread extravaganza but an architect’s dream house in redwood and plate glass that lay against the landscape as if it had grown there.

I stopped the Morris next to a Lotus Elan in a little clearing under some eucalyptus trees and had started to open the door when my eye was caught by something moving toward me through the leaf-strained sunshine at a menacing gait. I blinked and it had disappeared. Then it was there again, a piebald Great Dane making slightly better than ramming speed in my direction. I had second thoughts about getting out of the car and rolled up the window.

The big dog came to a splay-footed stop with his long tongue lolling wetly and was probably wondering whether to eat the whole car just to get a taste of me when we both heard a commanding voice call: “King!”

A check of my dog tag told me it wasn’t me. King turned around in a single movement and bounded toward a tall man coming to the car from the house.

He was dressed for riding in a musical-comedy sort of way. Impeccably tailored jodhpurs rose from polo boots as if they were one unit he’d been ladled into, and the whole effect was topped off with a silk paisley-printed scarf that seemed to be holding his head on. His face suggested a minor Russian prince who’d been born under a sun lamp. The swollen veins in his fine Romanov nose hinted loudly of too many bottles of twelve-year-old Scotch, and the tinkle of ice cubes from the glass in his left hand reinforced the idea. His right hand was taken up by a riding crop that had never bothered a horse.

“Don’t worry, old boy,” he said, leaning down and peering at me. “King wouldn’t hurt a fly. I keep him mostly for effect.” Behind him, King sat down and besieged a flea behind his left ear as if to prove that he, too, had human foibles. “I’m Rudolph Verrein. Can I help you?”

Rather than hold the interview in my car, which King could have carried away and buried, anyway, I slipped out of the Morris, keeping Verrein between me and the dog.

“My name’s Joe Goodey, Mr. Verrein,” I said, giving him a peek at my credentials. “I’m over at The Institute trying to find out who killed Katie Pierce.”

The change in his expression was instantaneous. No longer was it languid. His eyes took on a hard, Baltic glitter, and if he’d had a mustache it would have bristled. “Ah!” he barked. “They told you I did it, did they? Who was it? Don Moffitt? Pops? Perhaps Jim Carey? They’re all charlatans and liars!”

“No, no…wait,” I said soothingly. “It’s not like that at all. It just occurred to me that perhaps you could tell me some things about The Institute and Katie Pierce that I couldn’t learn over there.”

“Ah, Katya,” he said softly, and the Cossack bluster was gone. His mobile features were a study in Slavic tenderness. “Poor, poor Katya.” I half expected him to whip out a gypsy violin. But instead he gulped his drink, and bisected an ice cube with large, white teeth. “Come,” said Verrein with a flourish, “I will do what I can to help you. I can tell you a lot.” He spun and stalked toward his house.

The interior of Verrein’s house was as spectacular as the outside. It gave the impression of having been built around a natural outcropping of rough granite, laced with a spectacular array of exotic house plants and set in a frame of oiled teak, stripped pine and the ubiquitous plate glass. A cunningly contrived indoor waterfall trickled down a pile of expensive rocks to a free-form swimming pool set in a grassy terrace on the seaward side of the house. I put a finger in the waterfall; it was blood warm.

I followed Verrein into a large airy studio like a glass box on the north side of the house. It was Spartan in the extreme, containing only a paint-splattered easel, a few Eames chairs and a naked sixteen-year-old girl sitting on a padded stool reading a comic book and popping black grapes into a softly carnivorous little mouth. Her smoky eyes registered my presence but showed no signs of modesty or alarm.

“Rudy, darling,” she said, stretching showily, “haven’t we done enough today? I promised to go surfing.”

As I passed his easel, I noticed that he had half-finished an idealized head and shoulders portrait in which the girl looked like a hip Scarlett O’Hara. Presumably, she was naked because Verrein was trying to portray the inner woman.

“Of course,” said Verrein, with the deference money and beauty attract. “You run along, and I’ll see you at the same time tomorrow morning.” She reached a hand down beside the stool, and as if by sleight of hand she was suddenly dressed in a pair of skin-tight Levis and a midnight-blue velvet top. She must have saved a lot on underwear bills.

“Kelly De Freese—Joe Goodey,” said Verrein by way of introduction. “Kelly is making her debut in Carmel this summer,” he added. “And I am immortalizing her beauty. Kelly, Joe is a detective from San Francisco. He’s come down here to solve a murder.”

She murmured: “Oh,” as if he’d said that I liked blueberry pie and wore size nine and a half D shoes. “Hello. See you.” And she was gone.

“Does Mama know that little Kelly sits for her portrait in the buff, Mr. Verrein?” I asked.

“Call me Rudy,” he said. “Of course. It’s the only way I paint women. That’s Violet De Freese up there.” I followed his finger to a large portrait of a Rubens-esque blonde lying back on a brass bed showing a lot of skin. I could see where Kelly got the eyes and a few other things.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating one of the chairs. “Now, how can I help you?”

“As I understand it,” I said, “you were very close to Hugo Fischer and The Institute in the months before Katie Pierce died, but that you’ve fallen out with them. Would you mind telling me why?”

“What did they say?” he demanded with a slightly cunning expression on his narrow face.

“Jerry Wildenradt said it was because you spent most of your time chasing girls at The Institute,” I said. “He added that he’d like to break your neck.”

To my surprise, Verrein responded not angrily but softly. “Ah, Jerry,” he said. “We were good friends once.”

“He didn’t seem to think so,” I said. “What’s your version?”

“I’d have to go quite a way back to explain that,” he said, gesturing expressively with a hand that shot out in a flourish and ended up drumming on his brown forehead with three fingers. He looked pensive.

“Tell me,” I said and put on my listening-attentively face.

Leaving out a certain amount of Slavic embroidery, Verrein’s story was that when The Institute had come to squat in J. B. Carter’s mansion, he hadn’t seen much charm in having the neighborhood overrun with drug addicts, criminals and other undesirables. He’d signed petitions, chipped in for lawyer’s fees and rained protests on the head of Sheriff Dominguez. All to no avail. Fischer was on perfectly sound legal ground, and all the antis could do were seethe and hope that one of the dopers would do something to get The Institute thrown out by the authorities.

But then came a personal invitation from Hugo Fischer urging Verrein and other influential neighbors to visit The Institute for an open house. Verrein at first rejected the idea, but then decided to go along—partly out of curiosity.

But—surprise, surprise—Hugo Fischer turned on his massive charm, the residents of The Institute couldn’t have been more appealing and winsome, and Rudolph Verrein was converted almost instantly from an enemy to a new supporter of The Institute.

“The most impressive thing,” said Verrein, “was that Hugo and the others seemed to be living such clean, worthwhile lives without the compromises which seem to be necessary to the rest of us.” A fluid gesture included Mama De Freese’s portrait on the wall and the unfinished one of Kelly. “I’m not kidding myself that this is what an artist should be doing.”

Once clasped to Hugo’s bosom and initiated in the mysteries of The Institute, Verrein became a very tight friend indeed. “I painted that portrait of Hugo,” he said, “which is the best thing I’ve ever done, became chairman of the sponsors group and spent more time over there than I did here. I think it was the happiest time of my life.” He looked wistful.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“To this day, I really don’t know,” he said, and his bewilderment seemed genuine. “Things were going so well. I was happy, and I had great plans for a really splendid art exhibition that would have brought money and good publicity to The Institute. But then, suddenly, overnight, I was frozen out. I was an enemy. People I’d come to love like brothers and sisters spat when my name was mentioned.” The memory brought pain with it.

“When was this?”

“Early last December,” he said. “The art exhibition was to have been at Christmas time. But of course there was none.” He looked like a kid who’d been crossed off Santa’s list.

“But you don’t know why you were frozen out?” I persisted. “It couldn’t have been over girls at The Institute as Wildenradt said?”

He thought about that for a long time, massaging his lean jaw lovingly. “No, I honestly don’t think so. I’ll be honest with you, I like girls, young girls.” He peeked at me to see how I was taking this revelation. “And there is no shortage of friendly young girls at The Institute.”

“Could the big freeze have had anything to do with Katie?” I asked, not really hoping for much from the question.

He started to answer no automatically, but then paused. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but…”

“But what?”

“Well, something a bit strange did happen just before…before I wasn’t welcome at The Institute any more. I didn’t really know Katie very well. When she’d first come to live there her mind was so confused that it was hard to communicate with her at all. But,” Verrein went on, “the longer Katie stayed at The Institute, the better she seemed to get, and I began to notice that this was no ordinary girl. There was something very special about her. You could call it soul, if you like. And as autumn came on I got to know her and to like her very much. You know, Katie was a very good singer. And she played guitar, too. I can still remember her sitting on the terrace, playing and singing ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.’ You know, the Bob Dylan song.”

I nodded appreciatively just to keep him going. He closed his eyes soulfully and swayed a little, recapturing the scene. I could almost see it myself.

“Katie and I became quite close,” he said. “I liked her, and I’m pretty sure she thought of me as something more than a friend.”

There must have been some doubt in my expression because Verrein drew himself up like a goosed librarian and insisted: “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Katie wasn’t ready for that yet. I’m not saying that one day…but I swear to you, at that time there was nothing between us but affection, purely affection.”

“I believe you,” I said, as sincerely as possible, not adding that there were thousands who wouldn’t. “But you were saying that something strange happened, possibly because you were…close to Katie.”

He let the little hesitation pass. “Yes, it was very odd,” he said. “I began to notice that some of the old-timers had begun to give me hard looks when I came around the mansion. These were mostly former drug addicts. I’ve never found it easy to understand the drug addict’s mentality, anyway. To me, The Institute had gone a long way past the stage of just drying them out and keeping them away from the needle.”

“You began to sense that someone wasn’t too happy with your behavior,” I said.

“To put it mildly,” he said. “I began to encounter real hostility at The Institute. Even Tommy Carter seemed to be unfriendly. At first, I shrugged it off, but then, late in November, Don Moffitt got in on the act.”

“He was trying to protect Katie’s chastity, too?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Verrein said. “I’ve never liked Moffitt. I think he’s a thug. And when he started to lean on me about Katie, I’m afraid I overreacted. I told him to stay the hell out of my business.”

“And then the iron curtain came down,” I said.

“No,” Verrein said. “Not exactly. You see,” he said with a self-mocking laugh, “I was convinced that I was a pretty important person around The Institute, and that I could handle professional hard nuts like Moffitt.”

“But you were wrong,” I prompted.

“I guess so,” he said. “Nothing happened at first, except I kept catching a lot of hostility from the dope fiends. Moffitt pretended I didn’t exist, but I didn’t mind that. But then one day early in December I was sitting in the Horizon Room with some friends when Hugo came wandering in and said casually: ‘Oh, Rudy, about that art exhibition thing you’ve been planning: it’s off.’ I didn’t understand at first, but then it finally got through to me that something on which I’d spent months of work and string-pulling was suddenly, arbitrarily canceled.”

“That was tough,” I said.

“It was worse than that,” he said. “To me it was a tragedy, and I tried to get Hugo to give me a reason. But he wouldn’t. He just said something about The Institute having more important things to do than mess around with such artsy-craftsy bullshit, and left me standing there. I went home feeling sick about it. And the next day when I tried to drive to the mansion, the security men wouldn’t let me through. They said my name wasn’t on the list of approved guests.”

“Fischer disappeared you, eh?” I asked, not too surprised to hear it.

“I just don’t know,” said Verrein gloomily. “I don’t want to believe it, but…” He made a palms-up gesture of helplessness and dismay. “I tried to call Hugo; I wrote him letters, but nothing happened. I was a nonperson as far as The Institute was concerned. But do you know what I think?” He looked at me intensely.

“No, what?”

“I don’t think it was Hugo at all. Oh, he made the decision, all right, but I’m sure that some of those mental cripples around Hugo poisoned him against me. I know it! But what can I do?” He slumped in his chair, the pugnacity going out of him.

“And you never saw Katie again.” I asked. But he surprised me.

“Yes,” he said. “Just once. One night about the middle of December—it was raining, I remember, a filthy night—I heard a knocking at the back door, and it was Katie. She’d walked all the way from the mansion, and she was soaking.”

He paused, as if reliving the experience, then started again. “I brought her in, got her a towel and one of my robes, and we sat in front of the fire while her clothes dried. She said she’d just come over to see me, to have a chat, but there was something more than that. Something wrong. She wasn’t the same Katie. I almost suspected…”

“That she’d gone back on pills?”

He didn’t like the idea, but he said: “Yes. But even if that were true, there was something else. I could have sworn that Katie was afraid of something—really afraid. I tried to find out what, but she wouldn’t talk about it. She started to, I think, several times, but then she would stop. She took my guitar down from the wall and sang some songs. You should have seen her, her hair still a bit wet and steaming from the heat of the fire, sitting there in my robe in the firelight, strumming the guitar and singing softly. It was…” He was lost in the image, and then the shadow of something unpleasant passed over his long features.

He broke out of his troubled reverie. “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “She was so beautiful. I reached out to touch her, and suddenly she jumped up from the hearth, screaming like a madwoman. Believe me, I didn’t mean…I only…she frightened the life out of me. Before I could do anything to calm her, she pulled on her damp clothes and ran into the night. I never saw her again—alive—after that night.”

He looked up at me, and we both sat in silence for a moment.

“Did you tell this to the police or to the Brazewell operatives?” I asked finally.

He shook his head. “No one,” he said. “It was a very personal experience, and there didn’t seem to be any point. It couldn’t bring Katie back to life.”

I agreed with him there. I seemed to have gotten about as much out of Rudolph Verrein as I was going to for the moment, so I stood up to leave him alone with his memories. He didn’t say anything, just followed me out to the Morris and watched me climb in. King stood in the background looking like a dog that had just missed a good meal.

“One thing,” I said. “When did you get that brute?”

“Last December,” he said. “Just after I…left The Institute.”

“You didn’t think Fischer would send his lads over here to harass you, do you?”

Verrein pondered that one for a moment, then said: “No, I don’t think Hugo would. But I’m not so sure of some of the others. There are some pretty desperate characters over there, you know, and some of them are not fond of me.”

“You’ve got a point there,” I said. “So long.” But then I thought of something. “Is there any message you want me to give Fischer for you?”

His face brightened. “Yes,” he said. “You can tell him that I…that I…ah, to hell with it.” He turned around and started walking toward the house like a man going someplace to have a drink.

I nodded goodbye to King and headed for The Institute.

14

A gray-clad security man straddled the long, winding driveway down to the mansion and showed me his outstretched palm. I’d seen cleaner. His partner lounged near the lowered wooden barrier looking mean. It sure was good to be back home.

I waved cheerily, expecting the one playing traffic cop to jump aside and tug his forelock. He didn’t. I had to abuse the Morris’s brakes to avoid ruining the crease in his coveralls. Stiffly he walked around to the driver’s window and looked at me blankly. “Goodey,” I said as if talking to a half-wit. “Jonah Webster Goodey. Of San Francisco. California.”

He’d have made a hell of a poker player. Without a flicker of recognition, he consulted his clipboard and told me: “I’m sorry, Mr. Goodey, you’re not on the list of approved guests. I can’t let you in.” He gave me a flash of the guest list, and sure as hell, no Joe Goodey. Could it be? Had I become an official unperson at The Institute during my visit to Rudy Verrein? That possibility became more probable when I noticed sitting by the side of the driveway a suitcase that could have been mine. Fischer had made his move.

“That’s the way it is, eh?” I said, giving him the smile of a good loser.

“That’s the way it is,” he said. “You can turn your car around just over there to the right.” He picked my suitcase up and put it in the back of the car.

“Right,” I said, tramping the accelerator to the floorboards and gunning the Morris directly at the wooden barrier. It didn’t disintegrate the way they do in the movies, but it sure swiveled out of my way in a hurry, laying low the other guard, whose scowl had turned to a terrified grimace. Through the rearview mirror I got a satisfying glimpse of chaos in my wake.

I skidded to a halt in the parking lot at the side of the mansion and discovered that The Institute had other guests. Two squad cars from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department and an ambulance. A young deputy was leaning against one of the cars practicing his squint.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“That depends on who you are,” he said.

I gave him a look at my I.D., adding: “Lieutenant Grenby knows I’m here.” He read the card, moving his lips slightly, and then thought about it for a while.

Finally he said: “They’re bringing some old dude up from the rocks.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the sheer rocks up above the mansion.

By the time I got near the top of the cliff, I was puffing and blowing like a gut-busted concertina and swimming in sweat. A black haze of exhaustion had settled over my eyes, and I made a vow to get in shape.

When I could see again, I got a good grip on the stitch in my side and continued along the cliff face with the sea on my left. I didn’t get far before I was met by a grim little procession.

Leading it was Lieutenant Michael Grenby looking somber and efficient. Behind him was an anonymous man in his shirtsleeves carrying a medical bag and walking as if he were on a tightrope, although the edge of the cliff was a good ten feet away. Following them, a sheriff’s deputy and two ambulance attendants in dirty hospital whites shouldered a body bag that looked to be half empty. Bringing up the rear was Hugo Fischer with Emma Carter leaning on his substantial shoulder. She wasn’t crying, but her head lay against his collar bone at a peculiar angle as if her neck were broken. I didn’t have to guess who was in the bag.

Grenby’s eyes took me in without much joy. “I’ll see you down at the house,” he told me softly as he walked past. The man with the medical bag nodded politely, but the three bearers didn’t even see me. All they wanted to do was get rid of their load. Mrs. Carter’s blue-veined eyelids were tightly closed as she passed, but Fischer was all eyes. He didn’t say anything, but his look said he had marked me up for later slaughter.

I watched the cortege out of sight around a bend and then proceeded along the path they’d just covered. In less than fifty yards, I was back just outside J. B. Carter’s cave hideaway, where two more sheriff’s men, wet to the armpits, were struggling to pack up a portable block and tackle and a thick reel of steel cable. With his back to me, a little man wearing sergeant’s stripes and built-up shoes was watching their struggles but resisting the urge to jump in and help.

There was something familiar yet alien about the back of his head. The familiar part was his ears, low slung and slightly crimped as if recoiling from something they didn’t want to hear. I knew those ears, but they didn’t belong on that head. Then he said: “I think we’re winning, boys,” in a high, nasal voice, and I knew.

“You’re doing a great job, Harry,” I said, “but why aren’t these lads giving you a hand?”

Harry Shearer turned around in a single graceful motion, and I suddenly knew why it had taken so long to recognize him. Since I’d seen him about a year and a half before, he’d acquired a head of thick, semi-wavy auburn hair that lay on his round little head like moss on a cannon ball. The last time I’d seen him he’d been trying to make six greasy strands cover about half an acre of highly polished scalp. I’d have to ask him how he did it, when I got up the nerve.

“Goodey,” he said flatly. He showed about as much surprise as a chorus girl on her seventh honeymoon. “Grenby said you were hanging around, but I heard they gave you the boot.” His eyes went to mine, and I started looking anywhere but at his hairline.

“Nah,” I said. “They love me here.” His snort said he’d have to see it in writing. “What’s the scam?” Harry hesitated, so I said: “You may as well play know-it-all or Grenby will. He and I are like this.” I held my two index fingers up and as far apart as my arms could get them.

“I believe it,” Harry said. “How much do you know?”

“You just brought old man Carter up from the base of the cliff in something less than perfect condition,” I said. “He didn’t tell you how he got there.”

“Wonderful, Joe,” Harry said. “You know, you ought to be a detective.”

“There’s no money in it,” I said. “What did he look like?”

“Not his best,” Harry said. “Those rocks down there can play hell with the complexion.”

“Did the coroner come to any instant conclusions?”

“Some,” Harry said. Then he hesitated.

“Come on, Harry,” I said wearily. “Grenby will tell me, and I’ll see the coroner’s report. Save me some time. I’m double-parked.”

“All right,” he said. “His best guess at this point is that death was fairly simultaneous with the old man’s arrival at the rocks down there. The usual massive fractures, contusions, hemorrhaging, that sort of thing.”

“It sounds like a carbon copy of the Pierce girl’s injuries,” I said.

“Close,” Harry agreed, “but with one difference, Joe. According to the coroner, not all of Carter’s injuries were sustained at the bottom. He suspects that he knows what put Carter there.”

“And what would that be?”

“A fairly sharp blow across the superciliary arch. That’s the lower forehead to you. Not hard enough to kill him, but with plenty of force to stun him or even put him out completely.”

“And over?” I asked.

Shearer shrugged. “It sure didn’t happen on the way down.”

“Did the man happen to say how long Carter had been dead?”

“Not to the minute, but he brackets it between ten and fourteen hours. Isn’t science wonderful?”

“Yeah, dazzling,” I said. “You got any idea of who or what hit him? I mean, just a rough idea. Don’t strain your mush.”

He looked at me with wonder tinged with disgust. “Christ, Goodey, you’re worse than Grenby, and I don’t even work for you. No, I don’t know what hit him, who was holding it or what sort of grip he was using. But I will, and if you read the newspapers, you will, too. What do you care, anyway? I thought the Pierce high dive was your meal ticket.”

“It is,” I said. “But I’ve got a bit of spare time on my hands, and I thought I might give you a hand. You know, in an amateur sort of way. Mind if I have a look around?” I gestured vaguely in the direction of the late J.B.’s cave hideaway.

“I sure as hell do,” said Harry. “You take one step, and we’re going to reenact the crime using you as a stand-in. Once I’m finished up here, you can nose around all you want. Until then, you keep away. Now, would you rather walk back to the mansion or take a short cut? Boys…” he said to his two bird dogs who had finished with the lifting tackle and were standing eyeing me coldly.

“That’s okay, Harry,” I said, backing off. “I’ll walk. I need the exercise.”

When I got back down to the mansion, Fischer was waiting for me on what in a less impressive house would have been called the front porch. He was backed by Moffitt and a couple of other thugs, and he didn’t look happy. Grenby stood off to one side, leaning on a fluted pillar and trying to look detached yet in charge of things at the same time. He wasn’t succeeding.

“You!” intoned Fischer, pointing a majestic finger at me as if it were about to flash lightning. “Get out! If you’re not off my property in five minutes, you’ll wish you’d never been born.” He had apparently heard about the gate-crashing incident.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fischer,” I said, “I’d love to, but I can’t. Not just yet.”

“Can’t!” Fischer shot the word at my head as if it were a bullet.

“I’ve got a job to do here,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “I can’t do it if you throw me out.”

Fischer’s expression of Olympian disdain said he wasn’t about to waste any more of his golden time on me. He was going to scrape me off his shoe like so much dog shit. “Don’t,” he said, and Moffitt and a couple of light-heavies took a step toward me.

I took a step backward and said: “Besides, I don’t think Lieutenant Grenby can afford to lose his best suspect.”

That stopped the mayhem squad cold, and even Fischer lost a little of his regal detachment. Grenby decided to let the pillar stand on its own and edged forward slightly. “What do you mean, Goodey?”

“I mean that it’s very likely that I was the last person to talk to Carter before he was killed. Or the next to last, if you don’t think I killed him.”

“This is not something to joke about,” Grenby said angrily. “An old man is dead.”

“I’m not joking, Grenby,” I said. “I spent quite a little time with Carter at around one o’clock this morning. If your coroner knows what he’s doing, that was just before J.B. went over the cliff.”

I snuck a look at Fischer’s face, and something told me that I wasn’t telling him anything new. I didn’t think there was much that went on at The Institute that escaped his notice.

“What were you doing up there with Mr. Carter at that hour?” Grenby wanted to know.

“Oh, discussing this and that,” I said. “Mostly who killed Katie Pierce.”

That got a reaction, all right. Moffitt and his braves snarled on cue, and Fischer started to puff up like a Christmas gobbler.

I appealed to Grenby: “Are you going to let this two-bit despot throw out your best chance of finding out what happened, to J. B. Carter?” This wasn’t strictly true, since I had no more idea who helped the old man over the cliff than he did. But I had developed one or two little ideas that I couldn’t do much about if Fischer gave me the boot. “You’re the law here, aren’t you?”

Grenby pivoted this way and that, ending up looking Fischer’s way. “Hugo,” he said, in a not very authoritative voice, “don’t you think…”

“No, I don’t,” boomed Fischer. “I don’t care what you do with this character, but I want him off my property—now! Take him, put him in jail. Put him under the jail, but get him away from me. If you have to bring him back, bring him in handcuffs. That’s the only way I’ll tolerate his presence in my house.”

Jesus. Fischer really believed it. He wasn’t just playing the guru; he’d taken out a patent on the role. And it looked as though nobody in this crowd was going to challenge him on my behalf. I was beginning to be sorry I’d said anything about my little visit with J.B. At least before I hadn’t been a murder suspect.

“Goodey,” Grenby started, “I’m going to have to…”

“Wait a minute,” I said. I was going to go down with guns blazing. “I get an uneasy feeling, Mr. Fischer, that you couldn’t care less who killed J. B. Carter. He was a nuisance to you, wasn’t he? Aren’t you the teensiest bit glad that you don’t have him for a problem anymore?” Fischer wasn’t going to answer me. He’d already turned his great head toward the mansion when somebody came out of the open front door.

“It’s not true what this man says, is it, Hugo?” asked Emma Carter. She was still pale, and the skin around her eyes was drawn tight with grief, but she’d obviously bounced back fast. J.B. wasn’t the only Carter who was made of durable stuff.

Fischer stopped short, and within a blink he’d changed gear and was a loving God, compassionate and all-caring. “Of course not, Emma,” he said reaching out and taking both of her hands in his. The rest of us could have been in another state. Emma Carter had all of Fischer’s attention. You could almost see it wash over her like soothing balm. “You know I care. We all share your loss.”

Fischer reminded me of the slickest undertaker in the world about to sell her the solid walnut coffin with the bronze handles. But there was something in the set of Emma’s jaw that told me that she couldn’t quite book his act, either. Fischer was trying, in a genteelly compassionate way, to muscle her back through the doorway so that his thugs could wrap me up and leave me on the road for the garbage truck.

But Emma Carter wasn’t being moved. She stood her ground against that juggernaut of compassion and certainty. It was easy enough for an outsider like me to sass the Great God Fischer. Win or lose, I wouldn’t have to hang around to face his wrath. Now that she’d lost J.B., Mrs. Carter would probably need Fischer and The Institute more than ever.

But Fischer also wanted something from her, and Emma Carter’s eyes said she hadn’t forgotten who still owned the mansion. “Yes, I do know, Hugo, but I don’t see what harm it can do for Mr. Goodey to remain here until…” she bit her lip and blinked hard, “…until the police find out who killed J.B. After all, Mr. Goodey may well have been the last person to talk to him. And if…”

Fischer knew an opportunity to back off a bit when he saw one. “Of course, Emma,” he said. “If you think it would help for this man to stay for a while, he will. He’s a nuisance, of course, but…” He made a generous gesture as if I were a present that was his to give.

“Thank you, Hugo,” she said simply, and I felt that she meant it. Around there, even the right to say who stayed in your own house was a gift from Hugo Fischer. “And now I’d like to talk to Mr. Goodey alone.”

“Right,” I said eagerly, bounding up the steps. Fischer gave me an interesting look as I passed him, and Grenby said: “I’ll want to talk to you when you’re finished, Goodey.”

Emma Carter led me through the entrance lobby of the big house, past the marble stairs and through an inconspicuous doorway I hadn’t noticed in my tour of the mansion. “This used to be a sewing room,” she explained as she turned on an overhead light, “but now I use it as a sanctuary when things get too hectic.”

It was a small, comfortable-looking room, furnished with simple but expensive taste. Unlike what I’d seen of the rest of the mansion, it seemed a truly private room. There was no public-address box on the wall. Mrs. Carter gestured toward a small, overstuffed couch and we sat down knee to knee. I didn’t say anything, figuring that she would come up with what was on her mind. She did.

“Mr. Goodey,” she said, “I’m not so sure that I like you very much.”

What could I say? Like J.B., she came to the point in a hurry, but at least she didn’t try to hit me on the head.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Lately a lot of people seem to feel that way. Maybe I’m using the wrong toothpaste. But I don’t think you brought me in here to say that.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “But I believe in being honest. Do you?” She gave me a probing look, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

“As often as possible,” I said. “But if you’re asking whether I’ll tell you the truth, the answer is yes. I can’t think of any reason to lie to you.”

Her expression said she didn’t think much of my limited candor, but she said: “Tell me about seeing J.B. last night.”

So I did. Everything. When I told her how he slugged me with his sock of sand, she said: “Oh, that was terrible.” But she couldn’t totally repress a wry old smile. I assured her that the damage had been minimal and went on with my tale. She listened intently, not interrupting again until I’d told how J.B. had disappeared into the foliage and I’d come back down to the house.

Then she said softly: “It’s such a shame.” I thought she meant that it was a shame that he was dead, but then Emma went on: “If only J.B. could have trusted Hugo, there’d have been no need for him to hide out in that cave. He could still be here with…” She lowered her eyes.

“Do you really think so?” I asked. “I got a very strong impression that he’d rather have lived out there forever than come back down here and be Hugo Fischer’s lap dog.”

“Is that what you think I am, Mr. Goodey?” she asked with her chin up and her eyes firmly on mine.

“I haven’t been around long enough to form an opinion on that,” I said. “But your husband seemed pretty convinced that you’d gone soft in the head to even think of signing this place over to Fischer.”

“To The Institute, Mr. Goodey,” she corrected me. “To The Institute.”

“From what I’ve seen so far,” I said, “The Institute walks around inside Fischer’s fancy moccasins. I haven’t seen anybody else who seems to be more around here than a…” I remembered just in time that I was talking with a very nice old lady who’d just been violently widowed.

But Emma Carter wasn’t going to let me get away with being chicken. “A flunky?” she asked with a probing look. “Is that what you meant to say, Mr. Goodey?”

“It’ll do,” I said. “This place doesn’t seem to be overcrowded with people eager to spit in Fischer’s eye. You’re the first I’ve seen even bother to stand up to him.”

She blushed a little as if she hadn’t thought about it in exactly that way. “Hugo does tend to dominate at The Institute, Mr. Goodey,” she said, “but I assure you that he is not nearly so autocratic as you seem to think. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I get the feeling that you think that Hugo might be a suspect in my husband’s murder. You don’t really think that’s possible, do you?”

“May I be completely honest?” I asked.

“That’s all I ask of you.”

“Then,” I said, “even if I was impressed with Hugo Fischer, as the rest of you seem to be, there’s no way that he wouldn’t be a principal suspect. Ask yourself, who else stands to gain so materially from your husband’s death?”

After a pause, she said: “I do, Mr. Goodey. I am J.B.’s sole beneficiary. I now own this estate entirely, as well as the rest of our property.”

“I had thought of that,” I admitted, “but who is really going to benefit? You’re going to sign this place over to The Institute, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” she said, positively enough. My silence must have been pretty eloquent, because Emma Carter felt the need to explain further. “Quite aside from my implicit faith in the honesty and sincerity of Hugo Fischer, Mr. Goodey, he has given me back my son. I suppose you know that Tommy spent the greater part of the last forty years in institutions?”

“Yes. J.B. told me. But he wasn’t so sure that Fischer or The Institute deserved much of the credit.”

“Well, I am sure,” Emma said with determination. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but there is something about the environment of The Institute which has greatly helped Tommy. I doubt very much that he will ever be any better, but he is at home and among people who love him. I can’t ask for any more than that. To ensure that Tommy will always have a home, perhaps for many years after I am dead, I am going to give this estate to The Institute.”

“Before the killer of your husband is found?” I asked, just to give the seed of doubt a little nourishment if it was there.

Emma was thinking over my question. That was something. “Even if I wanted to,” she said, “I couldn’t do it immediately. Not before the sheriff’s investigation is finished and J.B.’s will goes through probate.” I don’t know what she read into my expression, but Emma then said: “Mr. Goodey, you seem to have involved yourself in my business quite a bit so far. Do you think you could go further and find out who killed J.B.?”

“That’s not what I’m down here for,” I said. “It may sound hard, Mrs. Carter, but it’s none of my business. I came here to find out who killed Katie Pierce…”

“Do you think you could make it your business for five thousand dollars?”

“You don’t have to pay me,” my unbelieving ears heard me say, “I’ll do whatever I can.” That’s the trouble with having been on the public payroll for so long, it dulled your commercial instincts. I was trying to think of some way to qualify that bit of altruism when Emma Carter said:

“No, Mr. Goodey, it would be worth more than that to me to find out who killed my husband. I’m a very rich woman, you know, even without my husband’s estate.”

“That’s not what’s bothering me,” I said. “I’ll be happy to accept your money, Mrs. Carter, if I’m successful. But are you sure that you’ll be ready to accept what I find?”

She chewed that over for a minute and then looked me in the eye. “I’m sure, Mr. Goodey,” she said. “Whatever you find out. Is it a deal?” She held out a graceful old hand toward me.

“It’s a deal,” I said as I took it.

15

When I came out of hiding with Emma Carter, Grenby and Harry Shearer grabbed me and hustled me into yet another small room, this one a former cloakroom. I was getting to know the mansion a lot better than I wanted to.

Shearer was in favor of breaking out the thumbscrews without a lot of time-wasting formalities. But Grenby was one of those new-breed cops who liked a little chat first. Besides, he was probably afraid of catching hell from Fischer if he splattered my blood on the floor.

With a bit of encouragement, I told them about my little visit with J.B. the night before. Neither of them wanted to feel the bump on the back of my head. Even words of sympathy were in short supply. So much for the mythical brotherhood of the law.

Despite the fact that I was probably the next to last person to see Carter alive, Grenby and Shearer didn’t seem to be very impressed with the information I had to give them.

“You don’t think it’s even remotely possible?” I asked Grenby. “Remember that, from the cliff in front of his cave, J.B. had an overview of the roof. He may have seen something.”

“Yeah,” said Shearer, “and I may be the mayor of San Francisco. If Carter had known anything that might have pinned the Pierce thing on somebody here, he’d have been down at headquarters singing like six canaries. He didn’t know anything.”

“Did you talk to him after Katie was killed?” I asked.

“Talk to him?” said Shearer. “As soon as he saw a uniform, he came storming down here prepared to swear to anything that would put Fischer and his flaky folk out on the curb looking for a home.” If Harry was aware that Grenby was less than happy with his description of Fischer and The Institute, he didn’t let on.

“But he didn’t know anything?” I asked.

“Hell, he knew everything,” Grenby said, “but what we wanted to know. If you listened to Carter, Fischer was Jack the Ripper, Al Capone and the guy who nobbled Judge Crater all in one. He knew so much, that if I’d had my way, he’d have been a star boarder in a laughing academy.”

“Maybe you should have had your way,” I said. “He’d be alive now, anyway.”

Grenby cleared his throat to indicate that he hated to break up our intellectual conversation and then sent Harry out to make sure that his boys hadn’t forgotten to pack anything for the trip back to Monterey. Harry said, “So long, Joe,” but didn’t break down at the prospect of leaving me. Then it was just Grenby and me in that cloakroom.

“Do I get the impression,” I asked, “that Harry is going?”

“That’s right,” said Grenby. “Harry is going back to Monterey. When I need him, I’ll send for him. Why?” Grenby looked at me keenly, and I don’t think he was trying to guess my weight.

“I just wondered,” I said. “Harry may be a bit cynical, but he’s a pretty good detective.”

“So am I, Mr. Goodey,” Grenby said. “I have a feeling that you think that I sent Harry away so that I could lose this case in some way, just sweep it under a convenient carpet until everybody forgot it. Is that right?”

I raised my eyebrows—I hoped not too expressively—and stayed mum.

“If you do, you’re totally wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t think there’s anybody here who wants to find out who killed J.B. Carter more than I do. And I am going to find out.”

“No matter who it is?”

“No matter,” said Grenby positively. “I’d take Hugo himself out of here in cuffs if it turned out to be him.”

I didn’t believe him, and apparently neither did my face.

“You don’t have to believe it,” Grenby said without anger. “It’s true. Goodey, neither you nor Shearer can understand what’s happening here at The Institute. Hugo started it all, and he’s the motivating force, but it’s much bigger than even Hugo. There is something here, Goodey, that changes people’s lives. I don’t know what it is, but it certainly has changed mine. There’s something almost magical here, Goodey, something precious.”

“That could be, Lieutenant,” I conceded, “but it seems to me that that’s all the more reason for you to protect The Institute, even if it meant sliding over the little matter of who put an end to Katie Pierce and J.B. Carter.”

He looked at me with more sorrow than anger. “It just doesn’t work that way, Goodey,” he said. “The Institute is built on truth, not lies and cover-ups. I did my best to find out what happened to Katie, and I’ll do the same on this case. I have to. If I found out something and tried to hide it, it would be the same as trying to destroy The Institute.”

He paused, pushed his glasses back in place with a forefinger and continued. “Besides,” he said, “even if I wanted to bury this one, I couldn’t. While you were talking with Emma, I got word that Sheriff Dominguez is taking a personal interest in this case. Apparently, Crenshaw got to him in some way. God knows how.”

“Maybe he promised to get him elected governor of California. Or president. Or pope.”

“Could be,” said Grenby seriously. “But however he did it, my job—and my future—is on the line. Goodey, I’m an ambitious man. I always have been, but since I’ve been exposed to The Institute, my ambitions have changed. I believe that by using what we have here, the world can be changed for the better—on a large scale. And I can help do it. But it’s not going to help me if Dominguez ties a can to me for allegedly protecting The Institute’s good name. I’ve got to find out who killed J.B., Goodey, and I don’t want you getting in my way. If you do, I’ll take Hugo’s advice and send you out of here in handcuffs.”

“I’m sure you could,” I said. “But I hope you won’t have to. I seem to have picked up another job here. Emma Carter has hired me to find out who killed her husband.” That really surprised him.

“Why, for Christ’s sake?” he nearly shouted.

“Maybe she wanted a second opinion,” I said. “She can afford the best, you know. But don’t worry. I’ll stay out from under your feet. I still haven’t made a lot of headway in finding out who zapped Katie Pierce.”

“You just stick to that one, Goodey,” he said, “and we’ll all be a lot better off.” He turned and walked out of the cloakroom.

I followed him out, but by the time I got to the foyer, Grenby was off in a corner kissing Harry Shearer goodbye, and nobody else seemed very interested in my existence. I considered looking Rachel up for a chat about old times, but after the confrontation of the night before, it seemed better to let the radioactivity count drop a bit first. I was wandering in the general direction of my room with the idea of staring at the ceiling for a while from a horizontal position when I heard my name called.

I turned around and Jack Gillette was coming my way with an amused expression on his face. “Well, Goodey,” he said. “You seem to be making a lot of friends around here, but are you influencing people?”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” I said. “But you seem to be bearing up pretty well under my lack of success.”

“I do my best,” he said.

“Tell me, Jack,” I said, “do you still think I’m barking up the wrong guru? Do you subscribe to the theory that J. B. Carter bashed his own skull in and jumped off the cliff?”

“I don’t believe in theories,” he said. “Only answers. Are you coming up with any?”

“I’m working on some. What do you think of Rudolph Verrein?”

“As what? A suspect?”

“No, just in general.”

“Rudy was all right,” Jack said. “He just tried to go a bit fast and found that somebody had cut the ground out from under him. He got the idea that this is a social movement.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Nah,” he said, “it’s a nut house. Rudy forgot that.”

“Is that why he got thrown out? I got the idea that it might have had something to do with Katie Pierce.”

Gillette shrugged. “You get a lot of interesting ideas.”

“You’re not being a hell of a lot of help, Jack.”

This accusation didn’t seem to gnaw at his very being, but he said, “Tell you what, you seem to have a lot to think about, right?”

“You could say that.”

“If it will help any, I’ll tell you where I do all my best thinking.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the sauna. Downstairs in the basement. It’s absolutely magic. As the sweat pours out of you, all your worldly problems dissolve. Everything becomes crystal clear. You’ll probably come out of the sauna with the name of the murderer on the tip of your tongue.”

“You guarantee it?” I asked.

“Double your money back,” he said.

I remembered seeing a sauna bath during the tour the day before, and it didn’t take me long to find the basement again. Actually, I just followed the steamy haze until I got to its source. It was the old-fashioned kind, constructed of stripped pine and made up of several airtight compartments, each with a separate door. Across the tile-floored hall was a shower room with a door to one side leading out to the deep end of the big swimming pool.

The little square windows to each of the compartments were opaque with steam, but the compartments all seemed to be empty. I stripped, hung my clothes on wall hooks, and took a thick towel from a pile on a slatted bench. The floor was cold and slightly gritty under my bare feet as I chose a compartment at random. The hot air hit me as I opened the door. I began to wonder if this were such a good idea, but pushed into the steamy fog and pulled the door closed behind me. Nearly blinded, I groped slowly across the wooden-slatted floor until my knees touched a bench.

As soon as I’d sat down in a blanket of tropical fog, I began to realize that Gillette had been wrong. A sauna bath was the last place I’d go for a nice, quiet think. Only someone with a frozen brain could think at all in such heat. Not to mention the boredom. It suddenly occurred to me that there’s nothing to do in a sauna bath but sit and sweat. I could do that anywhere. I got to my feet and was reaching down for the towel when a voice from the burning mists in a far corner said: “Can’t take it, eh, Goodey?”

I didn’t have to strain to discover who my sauna mate was. It had to be Hugo Fischer or the devil, and I didn’t think the devil could have taken the heat.

“Not at all, Mr. Fischer,” I said, pretending to adjust the towel and sitting back down again. “I was just wondering whether the heat in this thing had gone off.” I didn’t want that pompous old fart to think that he could take something that I couldn’t. Besides, I wasn’t bored anymore.

I sat quietly just feeling the sweat trickling off me and wondering what would happen when all the liquid was gone. In the misty reaches of the sauna I could make out a dim shadow of Fischer. I think he looked his best in a thick fog.

“You think I’m just an old prick, don’t you, Goodey?” he said. “Isn’t that right?”

I couldn’t resist saying: “You’re not so old,” but his snort told me he didn’t think that was funny.

“Well, then,” he asked, “what do you think?”

“I think you woke up one day and decided that you were God and have been trying to live up to the reputation ever since.”

Deep inside his cloud, Fischer gave a divine sigh of mingled regret and disgust. “You know,” he said, “you’re all alike, you cops and reporters. You’re so afraid that you’ll believe in something, you close your tiny minds up like fists. Nothing can get in, and sure as hell nothing is going to get out.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “Grenby’s a cop, and to hear him tell it you’re the Messiah come to lead us all out of Egypt.”

“Ah!” said Fischer, in modest triumph, “that’s because Mike is no longer a policeman. He doesn’t quite know it yet but he’s on the verge of growing right out of that uniform. That gold badge is beginning to shrink, and it will go on shrinking until it completely disappears.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He just told me that he’s prepared to lead you out of here in steel bracelets if that’s the way the investigation goes. That sounds like a cop to me, not a disciple.”

He thought that was funny, and he laughed through his nose at me.

“You were right to stop being a policeman, Goodey,” he said. “You’ve got too much imagination, wrong-headed as it may be.”

“I didn’t jump,” I said. “I was pushed. Like Katie Pierce.”

He snorted again. He should have had that seen to. “For Christ’s sake, Goodey,” he said. “Are you still humming that old tune? You don’t really think I had anything to do with Katie’s death, do you? At the risk of sounding immodest, I don’t kill people, I create them. Hell, I hardly knew Katie Pierce was around until she caused all this damned fuss by throwing herself off the roof.”

“That was inconsiderate of her,” I said.

“It sure as hell was,” he said, stepping over my sarcasm.

“And now J.B. Carter hits himself over the head and throws his body off the cliff. I think he did it just to spite you. Is that what you’re going to tell Grenby to find out?”

“J.B. Carter.” He said the name ruefully. “You know something, Goodey? No matter how hard you try, there are some people you just can’t help. J.B. was one, and I think you’re another. It’s a sad thing.”

“I don’t want your help any more than Carter did,” I said. “Since I got here yesterday, I’ve seen what it did to Lennie and Barbara and Jack Willis. I can’t afford that kind of help.”

He seemed to think about that for a moment. All I could think about was how hot it was in that hellbox. It might have been my imagination, but I’d have sworn it was getting even hotter. Or maybe I just wasn’t good sauna material. I could feel my mouth getting drier and drier, and my speech was slurring a bit. But I was determined not to say anything about the heat before he did, even if it did feel as though someone had set my face on fire.

“Jack Willis,” Fischer said. Either my ears were melting or he was slurring his words a bit. “Shall I tell you a little bit about Jack Willis, Goodey?” I felt too weak to resist, so he rolled on. “Jack Willis first came down here as a hotshot newspaper reporter. To write about The Institute—about me. He thought he knew everything, but you know what, Goodey?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out but steam. My pulse was trying to escape through my head, and I was thinking more about several gallons of beer than about Jack Willis.

“Willis,” Fischer went on, but slowly, “wasn’t here for more than forty-eight hours before…before he knew that his life was a…fraud, Goodey. A f-fraud. And he literally begged—begged me to let him…to let him…join…that is…move into….whew…” Fischer made a painful swallowing noise. I couldn’t have agreed more.

“You know, Goodey,” he said, “it’s getting very…getting very…in here…” The bench squeaked as he heaved his considerable bulk from it. “I think I might just open the…” He gave a deep sigh and then hit the floor like two hundred pounds of wet baloney.

It dimly occurred to me that perhaps there was something going wrong. Either Fischer was a masochist, or this sauna bath had taken a wrong turn. Putting both hands on the bench at the sides of my legs, I gave a shove. Nothing happened, except that my wet hands slipped off the boards and I nearly joined Fischer on the floor. I didn’t want to join Fischer on the floor, so the next time I pushed a bit more carefully, and after more effort than I thought possible, found myself standing on my feet. At least I think they were my feet. They were down there in the fog somewhere, and when I leaned toward the sauna door they reluctantly came with me. But very slowly.

I couldn’t make a voice, but I mentally urged my legs, one at a time, to carry me all the way over to the door with the square little window. At that point, I was close enough to fall to the door, but I knew that if I did, I’d never get up to open it. So I waited for my legs, which waited for my feet, and finally we all got to the door and deputized my right arm to turn the knob. It did, and we all pushed on the door together, but it didn’t budge. At first, I thought I just didn’t have the strength left to push the door open. So I laid my head against the window for a bit of a rest—the comparative coolness of the glass was like a Caribbean cruise. Eventually, my eyes stopped rolling long enough to see that Tommy Carter was on the other side of the glass leering at me with idiotic good nature. His face was flattened on the window, further distorting his rubbery features, and his big shoulder was squarely against the outside of the door. I pushed with all my reduced might against the door but it was like leaning against a mountain. I tried shouting at Tommy, but all that came out was a gasping shriek that couldn’t do justice to my well-chosen invective. I resorted to making menacing faces at him through the window, but that only inspired Tommy to screw up his face even more and press harder—if that were possible—against the door.

I gave up my efforts for a moment and just leaned against my side of the hot door, listening to my heart laboring like an oil pump sucking on a dry hole. With each stroke, a progressively constricting pain pythonned itself around my chest, making even shallow breathing not much fun. I felt as though someone was piling manhole covers on my chest one by loving one.

I looked through the little window again, hoping not to see Tommy anymore, but there he was. He hadn’t changed a lot, and he was apparently still having a swell time. I thought about pushing on the door again, but was finding it hard enough just to keep my legs—which had somehow turned to rope—from collapsing. Soon, I found that the door was the only thing holding me up, and I clung to it like a vertical life raft, my cheek separated from Tommy’s distorted face by only a sheet of glass. I began to fantasize that we were dancing cheek to cheek, and Tommy was leading.

Then my lolling, desperate eye caught on to something moving in from the side. The something turned into Jack Gillette floating toward Tommy as if in slow motion, then hitting Tommy’s massive frame and bouncing awkwardly away like rubber on rubber. Nice going, Jack, I prayed. Try again. Jack got to his feet, but didn’t make another rush. For a heartbeat I thought he’d given up a bad job. But then, after what seemed like an eternity, Gillette raised a clenched fist with deliberate slowness and launched it at Tommy’s head. I watched the punch every inch of the way, and felt—rather than saw—it land squarely on Tommy’s ear. The squashed face suddenly slid off the glass, and the door seemed to dematerialize as I fell through it onto the ice-cold white tiles outside.

I looked up several miles and saw a gigantic Jack Gillette standing over me sucking on the knuckles of his right hand. In a far corner, Tommy crouched with both big hands over his wounded ear. From his wide open mouth came the piercing, blubbery scream of a child in pain.

16

There was a hell of a lot of excitement after that. The basement suddenly got very full of people, with Don Moffitt in the middle of the mob shouting orders. Somebody kindly stacked me on a bench in the corner so I had a front-row view as about four of them lugged Fischer out of the sauna. They carried his naked bulk with great concern and caution, but Fischer was already beginning to struggle.

“For Christ’s sake,” he said. “I’m not dead yet. Let me down, you fools, let me down.”

The boys looked a bit disappointed, but they put him down, and Fischer bobbed and weaved a bit to get his balance. He was flushed like an overcooked lobster, and in comparison his birthmark had paled. Somebody handed him a terrycloth robe, and Fischer was putting it on as he crossed the corridor and loomed over me. I didn’t say anything, but just sat there shivering uncontrollably and feeling a bit silly because I was naked. I noticed that nobody handed me a robe.

“You know, Goodey,” Fischer said, trying to control his own shivering, “you may not be as crazy as I thought you were. What the hell happened here?” he snapped at Moffitt, who was hovering at his shoulder.

“My God, Hugo,” Moffitt said distractedly, “I don’t know. Gillette was on the way to his office and saw Tommy holding the door to the sauna shut and making a lot of noise. There was steam all over the fucking place. When he got closer, Jack saw that Goodey was trying to get out. He had to slug Tommy, and when he opened the door, Jack saw you collapsed on the floor. Apparently, Tommy turned the heat up as high as it could go. I—”

“What kind of a house are you running here, Moffitt?” Fischer cut in. “You claim you want real responsibility but when I give it to you, what happens? The village idiot just sort of drifts down here and tries to murder me. In my own house. Do you call that…?”

“I hate to tamper with your illusions, Mr. Fischer,” I managed to say, “but how do you know it wasn’t me that Tommy was trying to parboil?”

The thought had never occurred to him. I could see that. Fischer was turning it over in his mind like a curious gem, and he didn’t like the idea of sharing the spotlight with anyone. Fischer would have tried to upstage the corpse at a funeral.

“You think so?” he said. Then without waiting for an answer, he snapped at Moffitt: “You find out what did happen. Get Grenby down here. And lock that moron up somewhere.” Tommy had stopped howling and sat passively in the corner holding his ear and looking sorry for himself. Relieved to have something concrete to do, Moffitt bounded away, shouting orders at his minions.

By the time they rounded up Grenby, I was dressed again but still feeling pretty weary. I gave him what little information I could and left him in the basement doing some preliminary sleuthing. Grenby suggested that I get Carey to look me over. Apparently he was up in Hugo’s quarters doing the same to the great man, but I gave it a pass. A little time flat on my back, I thought, would make a new man of me.

My room hadn’t improved any, but the narrow bed had never looked better. Kicking off my shoes, I lay down and was preparing to hibernate when I became aware of a faint scratching at my door.

“Come in,” I called. “If you have to.” The door opened just a crack and in slid Genie Martin.

I was too tired to be very surprised.

“Well,” she demanded, tiny hands on not-so-tiny hips, “aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Genie,” I said, “I’m absolutely delighted. Ecstatic. But I’ve just been steamed alive. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t jump up and dance around the room.”

“Yeah, I heard,” she said, sitting down on the bed beside my legs. “You and the old man. That nut Tommy should have kept him in there until he melted away to a little spot of grease.”

Here was candor I hadn’t expected. I’d gotten so used to hearing Fischer’s praises sung that my ears were ringing.

“Is that right?” I asked. “What would you and Old Man River do for a living then? Scratch for worms with the sparrows? Without Fischer, this place would fold up like a beach umbrella.”

“I wish it would. Sometimes this place is worse than the slammer. Pops doesn’t need it. There’s a rich guy up in San Francisco who’s been begging to set Pops up in his own drug-rehab joint. Pops is a charis-uh-charisma-type guy, you know. He’s got personality.”

“Sure,” I said. “If I’m ever short of a book end, I’ll keep him in mind. But tell me, what do you make of Tommy Carter? Has he ever tried to hurt anybody before?”‘

“That dummy?” Genie said. “Nah. Oh, he’s strong enough. He could hurt you without trying. But he’s usually so dopey that he just wanders around mumbling to himself. Occasionally, you know, he gets a bit wild, but it never lasts long. Somebody in the house just puts the arm on him and calls Jim Carey. Before too long, Tommy is just as happy and jerky as before. Sometimes I wish I was that happy.”

“You’re not going to make anyone happy hanging around up here with me. You’re taking big chances, even if you did get away with it last night. Didn’t Pops wonder where you’d been?”

“Yeah,” she said, running an idle hand up my leg, “but it was no big problem. I shot him that line you told me about waking up before he did, and he bought it. He wasn’t all that happy, but he didn’t have much choice.” She looked very young and very smug.

“Maybe not, but you’re pushing dumb luck a bit far. What do you want to do, help me commit suicide? If Pops is so charismatic—”

“That’s the word!”

“—why aren’t you somewhere bathing in his ruby-red glow instead of up here risking my health?”

“That’s not exactly what I’m looking for,” she admitted girlishly, at the same time walking her fingers up my leg to my groin and getting a good grip.

I raised my head slightly to watch the action. “I’m pretty sure you’re wasting your time there,” I said. “I don’t think anybody’s home.” A little bird told me that that wasn’t strictly true, and something seemed to hint the same thing to Genie.

“Let’s just see,” she giggled, clutching at the pull on my zipper.

The zipper came down just as Rachel Schute came through the door of my room. Without knocking.

“Joe,” Rachel began, “I just wanted to…”

She stopped to take in the pretty scene on my bed. I was looking as nonchalant as a man with a gaping fly can, and Genie had set a new record for the sitting broad jump and was poised like a cat at the foot of the bed. When she saw that it was Rachel, and not Pops, her expression veered from terror to malice. To her warped little mind this constituted a woman-to-woman confrontation with Rachel.

Rachel pretended that Genie wasn’t there. “I was going to ask if you were okay, Joe,” she said. “But I guess I don’t have to now.” She slipped me a meaningful look.

“Sure, I’m fine, Rachel,” I said. “I just got a bit overheated.” I then blushed, and Rachel couldn’t keep from smiling. “Thanks for being concerned. You shouldn’t have bothered.”

“I know,” she said crisply. She started to go but then turned back. “By the way, Hugo’s holding a memorial service for J.B. on the lawn in ten minutes.” Then, as an afterthought, Rachel gave Genie a direct look and said: “In case you’re interested, Genie, your husband is looking for you.”

Then she was gone. Genie followed her without even offering to zip up my trousers. I lay back down on the bed. But somehow the urge to sleep had fled. I was feeling restless. I could always go to the memorial service, but it occurred to me that this might be a good chance to get a more thorough look at that area around J.B.’s cave.

I took some caution to slide around the crowd forming for the memorial service and the security guards, who seemed to have suddenly increased in number, but once I had gained the woods I made very good time. My super sauna with Fischer didn’t seem to have had any lasting effect, but nonetheless I was puffing heavily by the time I got to the cliff near the cave and had to stop and wait for the knot in my side to relax its death grip. While I waited, I cautiously peeked at the memorial service, which had begun by this time. Even from that height, I could make out the figure of Hugo Fischer, in the middle as usual, and hear snatches of a slow, mournful song.

The mouth of the cave had been completely uncovered by Grenby’s men, and they’d removed J.B.’s meager hermit’s gear. There was nothing but a bunch of trampled shrubbery and a hint of lingering B.O. to suggest that he’d ever been there. What a way for a millionaire to end. But maybe J.B. would have preferred to go that way to spending his dotage on Fischer’s lap. He’d been a gutsy old man even if he did hit from behind.

After poking among the rubble on the floor of the cave and coming up with nothing more interesting than mummified orange peel, I stepped back out into the dying sunlight and tried to get the big picture. It didn’t prove very enlightening at first. There’s something so blank about an empty cave. It doesn’t tell you a lot. I knew I should have stayed awake in geology class.

But then I saw something on the left-hand side of the cave mouth that brought me closer—a shallow egg-shaped notch about as high as my chest. It could have been a natural formation, but something made me doubt it. That same something left me climbing among the branches of a squat pine growing hard by the right side of the mouth of the cave. There, behind the thick-needled branches, I found what I hadn’t had enough sense to be looking for. That old son of a bitch, I thought, and climbed out of the branches. There didn’t seem to be anything more to do there, so I began walking along the cliff toward the mansion.

By the time I got back down to the lawn, the memorial service was breaking up, and I joined the crowd drifting toward the mansion. I was about to go into the mansion when a big car pulled into the parking lot. It was a brand new Lincoln Continental, as white as an albino snowman, with a blue light on the roof. More law.

But not just any law. Painted on the car door in flowing script beneath a big gold star was: Luis de Redondo y Dominguez, Sheriff of Monterey County. The mountain had come to Mohammed. This was something I wanted to see.

But so far the back doors of the Continental were still shut, and no Sheriff Dominguez had emerged. I strained my eyes but couldn’t penetrate the black one-way glass of the car’s window. I knew he could see me all right, but I didn’t think he was bothering. And there was no Hugo Fischer in sight, either. What there was, was Don Moffitt, looking very rock-jawed, marking parley with a sheriff’s sergeant in a skin-tight gabardine uniform, a muscular giant who could have worn Moffitt for a watch fob. But just then the sergeant was leaning on the half-opened driver’s door, eyeless behind mirrored sun glasses, and explaining that his boss man wanted to have a little chat with the head man of this-uh-organization.

Moffitt started bristling like a kicked Doberman, but just then the great man himself swept up, flanked by Dr. James Carey and Pops Martin. Mike Grenby was of Fischer’s party, but once he saw Dominguez’s car, he started detaching himself and looking professional. Sensing that he was the perfect emissary between these potentates, Grenby moved forward to powwow with the sheriff’s pet tiger.

I didn’t hear what Grenby said, but it won him the right to stoop down and talk with somebody in the hidden back seat. He couldn’t have said a lot, because in about twenty seconds, Grenby backed away, and the sheriff’s driver was diving into the breach and pulling the back door open with a flourish.

And out came Luis de Redondo y Dominguez, Sheriff of Monterey County. There should have been a roll of drums, blare of trumpets, but there wasn’t. It’s hard to slide out of a car with a great deal of dignity, but Dominguez came close. The sergeant mentally lifted him to the ground without daring even to touch his sleeve. It wasn’t until the sheriff was standing beside the car that I realized how tall he was. Or how small. He looked like a mummified Boy Scout, a little brown man with mestizo features ravined with about seventy years’ worth of deep furrows running down to a faultless khaki shirt collar. In place of a tie he had about half a pound of silver-mounted turquoise on a leather thong. An ivory-gripped .44 Magnum in a tooled holster gave him a permanent slope to port.

Dominguez was interesting enough, but then Frederick M. Crenshaw followed him out of the car with an expression of worried triumph on his face. He glanced at me defiantly, as if I told him he shouldn’t be there—which he shouldn’t—and stood looking around at the mansion grounds as if he’d just bought them.

I’d half expected Fischer to order Dominguez and Crenshaw thrown into the moat, but instead he shucked off Carey and Pops and beamed in on the sheriff with hand outstretched and a smile he’d never shown me. I hadn’t missed much. I drifted along to one side, eager to witness this historic confrontation.

I was just out of earshot, but I didn’t have to read lips to make out Fischer’s message: Dominguez was more than slightly welcome at The Institute. The sheriff accepted that intelligence without blinking, let his old monkey’s paw be swallowed up by Fischer’s hands, and indicated with a twist of his head the presence of his good friend, Fred Crenshaw. Fischer wasn’t quite so effusive with Crenshaw, but he took it like a man, and with a sweeping gesture indicated that Dominguez and his party should accompany him up to the ranch house for the non-alcoholic equivalent of a shot of red eye.

Dominguez scotched that suggestion with very few one syllable words, gave Crenshaw a dry handshake and was burrowing back into the Continental before Fischer even knew he’d been given the bird. The big sergeant closed the door after him as if shutting a jewel casket and leapt for the driver’s seat. The Continental turned in a little over its own length and was gaining speed when it suddenly stopped. One smoky rear window slid down about three inches, and Dominguez’s wrinkled mug appeared through the crack. Grenby sprang to the car and lent an attentive ear. The window zipped up, and the car spurted ahead leaving Grenby with his head still cocked.

Fischer picked up his jaw, gathered the folds of his tattered dignity around him, and hot-footed it for the mansion with Moffitt, Carey and Pops in close pursuit.

I asked a distracted Grenby: “What did the generalissimo want?”

Grenby regarded me bleakly: “Results. Right now.” With that he took off for the mansion at a near run, probably to try to do something about Fischer’s dented self-esteem. I couldn’t imagine there had been any permanent damage. It would take more than a snub from an ancient Spaniard to pierce that horny hide.

That pretty much left me and Crenshaw alone in the parking area. Crenshaw looked a little less sure of himself now that the Godfather had left him on his own.

I wandered over to where he stood. “You know how to pick your transportation,” I said. “How much did that little ride cost you?”

“That’s none of your business,” Crenshaw snapped, showing that there was still a bit of pop on his fast one. “What progress have you got to report?”

“Not much,” I said. “As Dominguez probably told you, there was somebody else killed here last night. J.B. Carter, the owner of this place. That sort of interests the sheriff’s department in The Institute again. But I’m not much closer to finding Katie’s killer. Maybe the sheriff’s man will tumble over him in the dark.”

“That’s what I’m paying you for, Goodey,” he said. “Do you know whether Fischer knows about Katie’s new will yet?”

“If he does,” I said, “he hasn’t mentioned it to me. But he might to you, now that you’ve decided to drop in like his.”

Crenshaw shifted his weight from one leg to the other. I knew damned well that he didn’t know what to do next, and I wasn’t in a hurry to come to his rescue. I didn’t much like the idea of Crenshaw coming down to lean on my shovel. I didn’t think his presence was going to help my relations with Fischer. If anything could.

“Listen, Goodey,” he said, looking about as wretched as he knew how, “I know I shouldn’t have come down here. I couldn’t help it. Last night I got word that Dominguez would talk to me if nothing more. I met him this afternoon, and when he offered to bring me here personally, I just couldn’t refuse.”

“Well,” I said, unrelenting, “you’re here now. What are you going to do that I can’t? Maybe you’d like me to check out so that you can go it alone. What kind of detective do you think you’d make, Mr. Crenshaw? I don’t know why you bothered to hire me in the first place.” I didn’t go so far as to offer him his money back.

“Christ,” I went on, “you could have come back here anytime, don’t you know that? They’ve been dying to get their hands on you to try to convert you to The Institute’s way of thinking. Don’t think that riding down here on Dominguez’s shirttails has done you any lasting good. Especially after your padrone just stomped all over Fischer’s blue suede shoes.”

“I really didn’t think…” Crenshaw started, but I decided to exercise some of my famous compassion.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go into the house and see if we’re still welcome.” It was near dark by then, and the old mansion was lit up and seemed inviting compared to the cool sea mist that had started rolling in.

Nobody tried to bar our way at the front door, and when we got into the big room hung with all the slogans, a crowd of residents swarmed around the large bulletin board. Jack Gillette stood to one side with a knowing look on his face. He took in Crenshaw’s presence without comment.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“See for yourself,” Jack said. “I hope you’re feeling strong.”

Intrigued, I muscled my way through the gawkers and found what had gotten them so excited. It was a notice, freshly typed:

Hugo has called a megathon for 2400 hours tonight. The below listed will appear in the Horizon Room at that hour:

Lenore Fischer

Pops Martin

James Carey

Harold Fischer

Don Moffitt

Jonah Goodey

Rachel Schute

Genie Martin

Emma Carter

Susan Wallstrom

Mark Kinsey

Aileen Moffitt

Michael Grenby

Frederick Crenshaw

The notice went on to list a large number of lesser beings who weren’t included in the megathon but who apparently had some function to perform. One of the few names I recognized was that of Jack Gillette.

When I walked back over to him, Gillette was smiling broadly.

“Do you know what a megathon is, Joe?” he asked.

“I’ve got a general idea,” I said. “And I’m going to catch some sleep.” I turned to Crenshaw, who was looking bemused. “Jack will find you a room,” I told him. “See you at midnight.”

17

I was suddenly wide awake. My watch on the bedside table told me that it was five minutes to midnight. No sooner had I swung my feet to the floor than a peremptory knock hit the door, and two characters in shapeless blue gowns came in and turned on the overhead light. They were a couple of mugs I’d seen hanging around downstairs, and in the gowns they looked like they were going to a Mafia Halloween party. But they seemed to be taking the whole thing very seriously.

I reached for my trousers, but one of them said: “You won’t need those.” The other one held out his arms, on which was folded something of purest white.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Your robe.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No,” he said. “All participants in a megathon wear these robes. It’s part of the ritual.” He shoved the robe toward me.

I shrugged, took the robe from him and slipped it over my head. There was no mirror in the room, but I imagined that I looked lovely. The other one held out a pair of Japanese-style sandals and I put them on.

“What,” I said, “no turban?” But neither of them even cracked a smile.

I started to put on my watch, but one of them said: “Leave it. You won’t need it.” For some reason, I obeyed.

“Follow us, please.”

I did. And as we came out into the half-darkened hall, I saw another white-robed figure turning ghostlike down the stairs. I couldn’t tell who it was. I followed my guides down the stairs to the same room to which I’d been summoned the night before. But the Horizon Room had changed. For a start, the lights were out, and the room was dimly lighted entirely with tall, white candles. All the furniture had been removed, and a circle of large cushions left in place of it. Most of the cushions had white-robed figures on them, but in the dimness it wasn’t easy to make out who they were.

My attendants led me to a cushion on the side of the circle near the door and indicated that I should sit down. Then they stepped back against the wall. The cushion on one side of mine was empty, but the other was occupied by Aileen Moffitt. She was sitting in a modified lotus position and seemed to be communing with the verities with little spare time for neighborly chitchat.

I turned my head to see Rachel sitting down on the empty cushion to my left. I whispered, “What’s the schedule?”

“You’ll find out, Joe,” she said, in less than a whisper. “Just relax and let it happen.”

Since I didn’t have much choice, I took her advice. The gaps in the circle were filling in. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see that Pops Martin and Genie had come in and taken places across the room, leaving only two empty cushions directly across from my position. I had an idea who these were for.

Then all the white-clad figures were standing up, some more gracefully than others, and, not to be a spoilsport, I joined them. All eyes in the room seemed to turn in my direction, but I knew they weren’t looking at me. By turning my head slightly, I could see that Lenore Fischer had entered the room and was heading for one of the two empty places. She stopped behind a cushion with her eyes riveted on the door behind me.

I could have turned and watched the door, but instead I watched Lenore Fischer’s face. It seemed totally blank, but then, at once, her face took on life, and, almost as if it were a mirror, I could see reflected in it Fischer’s presence in the doorway. Her eyes followed Fischer as he slowly walked around the circle to my left and stood behind the only remaining empty cushion. He took Lenore’s hand, and as if on command, all of the rest of us in the circle joined hands with those on either side. I didn’t will my hands to move; they just did. Rachel’s hand was warm—and slightly damp. Aileen’s was as dry and cool as marble. In his white robes, Fischer took on Olympian stature. There was dignity in his flawed face that was not assumed. There was no question who was in command in that room. His robe was no different from any of the others, but he wore it with absolute authority. I couldn’t say that I liked the feeling. Sitting there in my underwear in that unaccustomed garment, I felt very vulnerable.

“Let us sit, friends,” said Fischer, and we did. My knees cracked loudly, and Rachel gave me a cautionary look as if I’d fired them off on purpose.

As we sat, the blue-robed functionaries blew out most of the candles and disappeared. The door closed behind the last of them, and it was as if the room, and all of us in it, were cut off completely from the rest of the world. As if there were nothing but a void on the other side of that door. I didn’t much like the feeling.

Out of the near darkness, Fischer’s voice, deep, mellow and somber, said: “As those of you who have attended a megathon will know, we always begin with a period of total silence to empty our minds, to cleanse our faculties of outside influences. Let the silence begin.”

And it did. Not that it had been all that noisy before, except for a certain amount of restrained coughing and clearing of throats. Now complete silence fell over the room, and I was afraid of even swallowing too vigorously for fear of making someone fall out of a trance. The others may have been emptying their minds, but I was busy trying to figure how I could turn Fischer’s megathon to my own advantage. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what he was out to accomplish. It was probably to get me and Crenshaw off his back and somehow help Grenby satisfy Dominguez. That was a tall order even for a megathon, and I was going to be watching with interest.

But I suspected that I was going to be more than an observer at this clambake. With the knowledge I had picked up at J. B. Carter’s cave, I figured I could at least enliven matters a bit if they threatened to get dull. I had a feeling that this was going to be an unusual megathon.

I got a bizarre image of J.B. at the megathon in which he’d starred, sitting perched on one of those cushions with his white beard jutting out over those flowing robes like a renegade monk. He must have been as full of anticipation as I was at that very moment. The mandatory silence wasn’t very exciting, but I wasn’t exactly eager to have it end.

“Somebody is not concentrating,” Fischer rapped out, and I wondered if I’d involuntarily let out a snort at the mental image of J.B. under the gun. A barely audible but impatient sound coming from Rachel’s direction gave me the idea that maybe I had. I silently vowed to be a better boy in the future, but I couldn’t help looking around the circle.

It wasn’t easy to make out much in that light, but most of them seemed to be sitting and staring blankly into the near darkness. I was finding it a bit hard to keep my own eyes open and to stifle the yawns that came rolling up from my throat.

I tried to fight them off by mechanically moving my eyes from one person in the circle to the other. Genie was at Pop’s left, and the white robe made her look more like a depraved pixie than ever, although it wasn’t nearly as becoming as the sweet nothing she’d worn to my room.

I wondered whether Fischer could detect impure thoughts during a megathon.

Across the circle from Genie, Emma Carter sat with all the serenity of the lead soprano in a hard-shell Baptist choir. It seemed pretty obvious that she was drawing considerable support from Fischer and the others, but I found it hard to believe that J.B. wasn’t dominating her thoughts no matter what Fischer said. It would be interesting to see whether Fischer had the chutzpah to bring up the matter of signing over the estate during the megathon.

Before I could move my survey to the next cushion, the lights of the room began to grow brighter like a false dawn. Pops Martin jumped as if someone had stuck him with a pin. I looked around at a few faces, and I imagined that I wasn’t the only one who felt a bit disoriented. I noticed that the anti-Hugo graffiti had been covered with a sheet.

“Friends,” said Fischer, winning all our attention, “for the purposes of this megathon, I want you to forget all about time. The megathon is timeless and so, for as long as you are in it, are you. I shall establish the time reference that we will use. And it is now time for breakfast.”

The door opened and a squad of blue-robed minions under the direction of Jack Gillette came into the room bearing large covered trays. One rolled a cart loaded with plates and metal serving dishes. In a very short time, we were all eating bacon and eggs and chatting with our neighbors as if it were 9 A.M. and not the middle of the night.

Rachel seemed to have declared a truce with me.

“This is my first megathon, Joe,” she said, with the shining eyes of a girl at the junior prom.

“Me, too,” I said, a bit fatuously. “Rachel,” I said, “will you tell me something?”

“Of course, Joe,” she said sincerely.

“What are you wearing under your robe?”

I shouldn’t have done that. Rachel’s mouth went as tight as a triple bigamist’s schedule. “Joe,” she said piercing me with scornful eyes, “you’re impossible,” and dove back into her coffee cup.

I finished my breakfast trying to look penitent. Before I could ask for a second cup of coffee, the dishes had been whisked away, and Hugo Fischer had a vise-grip on our attention. There was no question who was running this séance.

“Although not always successful,” Fischer said, “the period of silence with which we traditionally begin a megathon is intended to purge the mind of inconsequentials, to scour it of the petty concerns of everyday life. In cases where there is a rational faculty,” he said with a slightly sardonic smile as he raked the circle with his powerful eyes, “it is often beneficial.” Some sycophant chuckled, and I allowed myself a grim smile.

“But what of the soul?” Fischer said, in the rising tones of an orator. “How shall we cleanse it? How, indeed?”

This wasn’t a question that had kept me up nights, but my fellow megathoners were taking it to heart. Nobody said anything. I don’t think they were meant to. I certainly didn’t raise my hand.

“Howwwww?” Fischer ululated the word at the ornate ceiling like a fleshy wolf. If I’d known, I’d have been glad to tell him, if only to get him to stop doing that.

When he was finally pretty sure that he had all our attention, Fischer said: “Nobody knows? I’ll give you a hint. Did not the Apostle James say ‘Confess ye, one to another’?”

If he did, he didn’t say it to me, but the rest of our company bobbed their collective chins up and down like a bunch of drinking birds. I tried to look noncommittal. I glanced at Crenshaw, and he looked bewildered by the entire proceeding. Perhaps symbolically, he still had a bit of egg yolk on the sides of his mouth.

“Well, then,” Fischer said, “suppose we have a little session of true confessions just to steam-clean those psyches, shall we?” He looked around the circle with a faintly predatory eye. “Who will start?”

This was more like it. I looked around the room as eagerly as Fischer did. Right. Let’s have it. One or two confessions of murder, by the numbers. At last, Fischer and I were in accord. All we wanted was a teensy-weensy confession, and we could all go back to bed. I imagined that was what Grenby wanted, too.

But we were all disappointed. Nobody said anything. Not a word. Somebody was not cooperating.

“Well?” demanded Fischer, and he spoke for both of us, “doesn’t anybody have anything to confess? Nothing? Am I living, among saints? Have I died and gone to heaven. Do I—”

Fischer stopped short because Aileen Moffitt had silently gotten to her feet and was standing in front of her cushion. Her eyes were on the floor.

“Yes, Aileen?” Fischer said, and his voice was suddenly the essence of gentleness. Don Moffitt looked stricken; his eyes were locked on the slim form of his wife.

“I have a confession to make, Hugo,” she said in a mechanical monotone. She was still looking at the carpet. “I want to confess. I want to confess to—to…”

She paused as if weighed down by our eyes, but I don’t think she was aware of anyone but Fischer. He said nothing more, but waited patiently for her to continue. Slowly, Aileen raised her eyes until they were on Fischer’s face. Her expression was tense, controlled.

“I’ve been ungrateful, Hugo,” she continued. “To you, to The Institute, to all my brothers and sisters. I have been trying to make Don leave The Institute. I wanted a home of my own, all the stupid little things people in the outside world have. I wanted them.”

Aileen looked down as if she were finished, but soon raised her eyes again. “But I wanted more than that,” she went on. “Much more. I wanted Don to leave here…to leave you…to get out because…because you are killing him. Killing him as a man!”

Moffitt flinched but said nothing.

“It’s true, Hugo,” she continued, apparently not so much confessing as justifying her heresy. “When he’s in your shadow, Don’s not a man. He’s a boy—a child in your house. You call him the vice-president, but there is no vice-president of The Institute. Because there is only one man here, and that’s you, Hugo, just you. The rest of us are only children.”

An amazed silence settled on the circle. Even Fischer didn’t seem to know what to do with this accusation which had crept up on him disguised as recantation. He looked at Don Moffitt, but Moffitt seemed to be waiting for the meaning of Aileen’s words to soak through his skull to his brain.

Aileen saved him the trouble.

“But I forgot,” she said, continuing as if there had been no pause. “I forgot these.” She raised her hands palms up, and the flowing sleeves of her robe fell back, revealing the insides of her elbows. She was talking about the ghosts of ancient needle tracks on the veins of her dead-white inner arms.

“I forgot that when I came here,” she said, “my whole life—my whole death—was shooting poison into these as fast as I could find a vein. I forgot that I was turning tricks with anybody Don could find so that we could get more dope. I forgot that when I came to your door even the baby I was carrying in my body—little Donny—had been poisoned by the shit I was sticking in my arm. He was born a hype.”

She said this impassively as if she were talking about somebody else’s life. As if she were telling a story. “I forgot,” she continued, “that if it weren’t for you, I’d probably be dead now. And Don, too, or at least in prison. And there would be no Donny. We owe you our lives, Hugo. Our lives. I forgot that. And I’m sorry.” Aileen lowered her arms to her sides. She took an uncertain step toward Fischer and began to cry. Her thin face vas like a crumpled mask, and tears left little streaks of mascara on her flat cheeks. She took another step.

With a strangled sound in his throat, Moffitt jumped to his feet. I wondered if anyone else noticed Fischer catch his wrist in a powerful grip and hold him back. Most must have been watching Aileen as she took a third step, stopped and started to sway. Even I started to unwind from my cushion, but before I could, Fischer was up—with Moffitt at his shoulder—and had caught Aileen before she could fall. Gently, he took her weight on his arms and let his thick legs bend until they were both kneeling with Mofitt poised over them just half a step too slow.

“It’s okay, Aileen,” Fischer said, stroking her hair. “I understand. Hugo understands.” Shifting her weight to his left arm, Fischer reached back and pulled Moffitt to a kneeling position, too. Moffitt put his arm around Aileen’s shoulders. The three were frozen in the middle of the circle like figures out of an illustrated Bible: God forgiving the sinners.

I won’t say that mine were the only dry eyes in the room, but all of the women were having hanky trouble, and some of the men looked suspiciously moist. Even old Crenshaw looked as though somebody had hit him with a sneak punch.

Eventually, Fischer stood up over the kneeling figures of Don and Aileen as if about to announce his next miracle. Then Moffitt helped his sobbing wife over to his cushion, and Fischer completed the circle again. His face said that he had things back under control.

A heavy silence fell over the room, broken only by Aileen’s muffled whimpers. Soon, even those subsided, and tension began to build up again. I wondered who would be the next turn.

Close to the last thing I expected to hear was Rachel’s husky voice say: “Hugo, I have a confession to make, too.” I turned, noting her calm expression and determined eye. She went on, ignoring me: “I have failed in my responsibility to the house and to my brothers and sisters.”

I thought I detected a minute glance in my direction before she said: “Hugo, I failed to tell you that this afternoon, when I went up to Joe Goodey’s room, Genie Martin was there. And I’m pretty sure she was there last night, too.”

18

Have you ever had the feeling that somebody had snuck up behind you and quick-frozen your brain? Mine was thirty degrees below zero and getting more numb by the second. Hundreds of little men were busily packing it with dry ice and whistling while they worked.

Everyone else in the happy circle seemed to be feeling the same. Rachel’s bombshell had frozen us where we sat. Years from then they would find us, fifteen skeletons in a circle of rotted cushions, and would wonder what evil demon had bewitched us. But then, Fischer, like the wizard he passed for, broke the spell by swiveling his great head, first toward Genie, then toward me. Then back to Genie.

I wasn’t sorry. With perhaps typical chauvinism, I was perfectly happy to sacrifice Genie to win a little time. Besides, I wasn’t paying too much attention to either Fischer or Genie. My eyes were on Pops. I’d suspected him of dozing slightly through Aileen Moffitt’s histrionics, and even now he was a bit slow coming to life considering the magnitude of the cat that Rachel had just let out of the bag. But I suspected that he’d come roaring back, and I wanted to be ready to jump the right way.

Fischer saved us both the trouble.

“Genie,” he boomed, “is what Rachel says true?”

Genie’s sharp little face was a maelstrom of emotion as she obviously weighed the options available to her: deny, cry, confess, run for it or come out counterpunching. Something whirred behind her bright eyes as she chose one.

Genie all but flew up from her cushion as she zeroed in on Rachel. “You’re just jealous,” she spat. “You pitiful, dried-up old moneybags. You couldn’t get him (meaning me) even with all your fucking cash, but you keep hanging around like a bitch in heat. You’d better get Rachel a real man,” she advised Fischer, “before she rapes a snake.”

That wasn’t exactly the reaction anybody had been expecting, but it was effective. That overdose of truth venom sent Rachel scrambling up the nearest tree. She just wasn’t in the same league with Genie when it came to gutter fighting. It even set the others back for a moment, but not for long. Before Genie had time to savor her victory a storm of abuse broke over her head.

I won’t bother to catalogue the different kinds of whore Genie was called. It tended to get a bit repetitious after the first few minutes, anyway. But surprisingly, this cascade of denunciation seemed to affect Genie about as much as the confetti had at her wedding. When the mob paused to refill their quivers of invective, she jumped back into the fray with both stack-heeled little feet.

“What the hell did you expect?” she demanded, turning on Pops, who’d said hardly a word. I think he was genuinely surprised and even hurt. “You’re nothing but a broken-down old phony who couldn’t even get it up on the Fourth of July. You lay around here trying to letch off all the chicks, but those days are gone, grandpa. You’d better stop thinking you can suck up youth from me or any other young chick, because you can’t.”

Then Genie compounded the heresy by switching her attack to Fischer. “But it’s not really Pops’ fault,” she cried, “it’s yours, Hugo. You’re so grateful for his loyalty you’d do anything to keep Pops happy. Even pimp for him. Pops likes young girls? Okay, here’s the message: Hey, girlie, you want to serve The Institute and Hugo? Go throw a fuck on Pops Martin. It’s no big thing. Nothing is too good for Pops, right?”

Genie pivoted around the circle as if we were all going to jump her. That wasn’t the most remote possibility I could think of. She was slinging unvarnished truths around like hand grenades, and the impact wasn’t much less shattering. Pops sat there looking destroyed. He couldn’t bring himself even to look at his young bride. Fischer, who wasn’t even supposed to be at a loss for words, couldn’t seem to find the right ones just then.

“Bullshit!” Genie cried. “I crawled in here out of the gutter, but I’m not a slave. I’m not a thing, a gift, you can give your old pal, Pops. I may have been a whore, but I’m not anymore, and even if I was I’d decide who I’d sell myself to.” She turned to face Fischer defiantly. “And if you don’t like it, Hugo, you can go fuck yourself!”

She balanced there staring into Fischer’s face as if she expected to be struck by lightning. Fischer didn’t say anything, just raised his flushed face and stared at her impassively. She held his gaze for perhaps thirty seconds, but then broke and bolted through the circle to the door.

We all stared at the door as it slammed behind her. But only Lenore Fischer got up from her pillow and started to follow.

“Let her go,” said Fischer peremptorily, but Lenore kept moving. Soon she had her hand on the doorknob. “Lenore,” said Fischer. Then more sharply: “Lenore!” But she opened the door and was gone. The door closed gently behind her, but the click rang like a gunshot in the stillness she left behind.

Then Fischer swiveled his big head toward me and said, as if none of the last ten minutes or so had happened: “Mr. Goodey, how is it that you choose to return our hospitality by trying to rape one of our young women—and her on her honeymoon, too?”

This was about the last thing anybody expected him to say, and after a massive intake of breath, there was a thunderclap of shocked laughter. It wasn’t really that funny, but the relief from tension was so great that they sat there and roared. It was more hysteria than laughter. I wasn’t even involved with The Institute, but I’d found Genie’s little revolt a disturbing experience. Fred Crenshaw seemed to be having the same reaction, only more so. His face was ashen.

Finally, after several spasmodic resurgences, the laughter died down, leaving in its wake a little pool of exhausted calm, broken only by the occasional stifled titter or gasp. Fischer seemed content to let the vacuum exist for a while, but it seemed to me that this might be my moment.

“I wonder,” I said as offhandedly as I could manage, “whether any of you would be interested in knowing how J.B. Carter died?”

Cousin Harold let out an unintentional shout of laughter, but then all was silence. Twenty-four eyes were trained on me. And serious.

“That’s not very funny, Goodey,” Fischer growled. “You ought—”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” I said. “I meant just what said. I know how J.B. died.”

“What the hell do you think you’re trying to pull off?” demanded Mike Grenby, suddenly realizing that he was the law around there and that I was treading deep into his territory. “If you’ve got information—”

“Let him speak, Mike,” said Emma Carter quietly.

“I probably should have told you this in private, Mrs. Carter,” I said, “but I won’t try to keep you in suspense. As Lieutenant Grenby would probably have discovered tomorrow anyway, your husband wasn’t murdered. He was caught in a booby trap that he had set at the mouth of that cave of his.”

I’d expected them to be surprised, and they didn’t let me down. Even after the recent emotional bombardments, my revelation could be considered more than mildly interesting. I watched especially Emma’s face. There were tears in her eyes, but her predominant expression was one of relief. That may sound strange, but I think she’d been genuinely worried that one of The Institute’s muscle heads had killed J.B. in a burst of misguided loyalty to Fischer.

“Are you sure, Mr. Goodey?” she asked me.

“As certain as I can be,” I said. “Was J.B. a very strong man?”

“For his age,” she said, “yes he was. He’d worked hard all his life.”

“I thought so,” I said. Grenby was getting more and more curious and impatient. Fischer didn’t look like he’d wait much longer, either, so I decided to just spit it out. “What happened,” I said, speaking to the group, “was that J.B. was afraid that someone from down here would sneak up on him while he was sleeping. As a deterrent, he pulled a resilient tree limb across the mouth of the cave and fixed it into a shallow notch in the stone. The idea was that if anyone started messing around with the camouflage, it would spring back at them.”

“J.B. told you this?” Grenby asked.

“No. But after I talked him into untying me, and we’d left the cave, he seemed to be taking a lot of time and effort doing something at the mouth of the cave that he didn’t want me to see. And puffing and blowing as if it were fairly heavy going. I didn’t think of that again until I went up there this afternoon during the memorial service.”

“And you discovered something that Mike and his men missed, is that right, Goodey?” Fischer asked. He wanted to get back into the act, even if it was only as the straight man. And he didn’t mind calling attention to Grenby’s lack of efficiency, either.

“That they’d missed so far,” I said modestly. “Tomorrow they’d probably have discovered a long, whip-like branch on the pine beside the mouth of the cave. It’s about as thick as my wrist and almost without foliage from being pulled about. J.B. apparently got a bit careless with the trap, and it caught him. The blow was hard enough to turn him and send him reeling over the edge of the cliff.” Emma stiffened and recoiled from my words. I felt a tinge of guilt, as if my words had killed him. Fresh pain invaded her face, shattering the stoic calm she’d shown so far.

Instinctively, most of the members of the circle moved toward Emma to comfort her, Hugo in the lead. Nobody had to announce a recess in the megathon. Seeing that Emma was surrounded, Grenby came over to me. I wondered if I looked as silly in that white robe as he did. I led him through a pair of double doors to a small balcony overlooking the misty sea.

“You should have told me earlier, Goodey,” he said with a baleful expression on his clean-cut face.

“I didn’t get a chance,” I said. “Don’t be ungrateful. I would have told Dominguez while he was here, but you wouldn’t have liked that much. Besides, this way you get all the credit. You said Dominguez wanted results. Besides, think of the hell you can give Shearer for not finding that booby trap. You’ll have him under your thumb for life.”

A shadow of uncertainty passed over Grenby’s features. “Goodey,” he said, “are you sure about this? Are you positive it was the limb? You couldn’t be wrong?”

“I could be,” I said, “but I’m not. It’s all there. The limb with dried blood near the business end and even a few of the old man’s hairs. Everything but fingerprints. I didn’t touch it, but when you bend that limb back to the cave, you’ll find that its end will fit neatly into a notch J.B. chiseled into the rock. If you like, I’ll take you up there right now and show you.”

“No,” he said. “Tomorrow morning will be soon enough. What made you suspect a booby trap?”

“I didn’t—at first. I thought one of Fischer’s not-so-reformed dopers clubbed J.B. and put him over the cliff. But then I saw the notch. J.B. did a neat job, a bit too neat to blame on nature. And I looked for something that might have fitted into it. This could have made a very nice murder. The branch that clubbed J.B. disappeared completely into the foliage.”

“I underestimated you, Goodey,” Grenby said, a bit ruefully.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Most people do, and they’re usually right.” I glanced through the doors to where Hugo and the others were comforting Emma. The break had become more or less official, and coffee had appeared from someplace.

“Tell me, Grenby,” I said cautiously, keeping my voice low, “now that I’ve figured out how J. B. Carter died, would you say that you trusted me a bit more?”

He thought for a moment, probably wondering what hook I had hidden in that question, then said, reluctantly, “I suppose so. Why?”

“When this megathon starts rolling again,” I said, “do you know what’s going to happen?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t say that I do. It’s been full of surprises so far.” He gave me a look that said he was talking about my encounter with Genie. I don’t think he approved.

“I do,” I said. “If you’ll back my play, I’m going to try to find out who killed Katie Pierce.”

“That again?” he said, his look putting me back among the loonies.

“Yes, that again.” I was getting tired of his skepticism. “Look,” I said, “was I right about J.B.?”

“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “I suppose so, but…”

“No buts. I was right. And I’ve done you a lot of good. You owe me something for that.” I added: “Would you rather I asked Dominguez to back me?”

He didn’t have to answer that. He wanted me to do that about as much as he wanted bleeding piles. “Look, Goodey,” he said, in a reasonable tone of voice, “what’s the point of beating a dead horse? I keep telling you that the Pierce case is a dead issue.”

“So you keep saying. Crenshaw doesn’t think so. Neither do I. We’re probably going to be up all night playing Fischer’s silly games, anyway, so why shouldn’t we play my game for a few minutes? Nobody’s got a thing to lose, except the murderer, if there is one. If I’m wrong, nobody loses, and maybe Crenshaw is satisfied. He looks like he’s weakening a bit already. Everybody goes home happy. Even me. I get paid whether I succeed or not.” I didn’t mention the money Emma Carter had promised me. I wondered whether she would pay it.

“All right,” said Grenby, more out of weariness than conviction. “What do you want me to do?”

I told him, and the tiredness in his face was replaced with an expression of sheer outrage. “No,” he almost shouted. “You’re crazy, Goodey. And I don’t want anything to do with you. Christ!” He turned to walk back into the room, but I grabbed his arm. Grenby tried to wrench away, but I dug in and got a good grip.

“Listen to me, Grenby,” I said. “You haven’t any choice. You do as I say or I will get Dominguez out of bed right now and screw you up for fair. And I’ll tell him about my little scheme. He’d support me, and you know it. You make a decision right now. Do I make that telephone call?” Grenby wasn’t pulling away anymore, so I let go of his arm. He was staring at me with a combination of incredulity and disgust. I wouldn’t be invited to his birthday party. I had the feeling that he was going to tell me to telephone Dominguez and be damned.

Before he could, I said: “Grenby, you may not look very much like it right now, but you’re still a policeman. To you, Fischer may be the reincarnation of Jesus H. Christ, but you still get paid by the Sheriff’s Department of Monterey County. You can turn in your badge in the morning, but right now you’re still the law. You can at least help me do your job.”

I don’t know which part of that harangue got him, but Grenby kept his eyes nailed to mine and said: “You’re a son of a bitch, Goodey, but I’ll do it. God help you—and me—if you’re wrong. Which you are. God help us if you’re right, too.” He did an about-face and stomped back into the room.

I followed him, hoping that he would keep his promise.

19

“Well, Mike,” Fischer said, glowering at Grenby, “now you can tell Dominguez to go tie a knot in his tail, right? And to stay the hell away from The Institute.”

Fischer was full of bonhomie. He’d reconvened the megathon and was back in the catbird seat. Emma had left the room, I imagined to nurse her grief in private. Lenore had returned with Genie, who perched warily next to Pops as if expecting any minute to be throttled. But Pops seemed hardly to realize that she was there, or that any of us were, for that matter.

“I suppose so, Hugo,” Grenby said, without much enthusiasm.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Fischer asked good-humoredly, “You’re not sulking because Goodey found out how J.B. died, are you?”

“No, it’s not that,” Grenby said, and I was afraid that he’d go on to spill the beans. But Fischer didn’t give him a chance.

“Don’t worry, Mike,” he said. “I’m sure that Goodey won’t be greedy with the credit.” Fischer looked over at me. “Will you, Goodey? You wouldn’t be a glory hog, would you? Our friend Fred Crenshaw must be paying you pretty well for conducting his wild-goose chase. Isn’t that right, Fred?”

This was the first time that Fischer had acknowledged that Crenshaw was alive, much less sitting across the room. Crenshaw seemed to be profoundly disturbed and bemused by the events of the megathon so far. He started to respond to Fischer’s question when I cut him off.

“No, I don’t mind, Mr. Fischer,” I said. “Grenby can have all that credit.” I saw Grenby tighten his jaw as I went on. “I’m going to be busy taking bows for solving the murder of Katie Pierce.”

Perhaps it was the emotional overkill of the megathon so far, but my bombshell, instead of exploding, turned over on its side and quickly sank beneath the surface of a deep and nearly universal indifference. Only Fred Crenshaw seemed very interested, and he gave me a look that I couldn’t quite decipher.

Fischer laughed indulgently, obviously dealing with the village idiot. “Are you still beating that old drum?” He turned toward Crenshaw. “Honestly, Fred, you’ve got to stop sending these sleuths down here to waste my time.”

“You didn’t understand me, Mr. Fischer,” I said, loud enough to guarantee his attention. “I’m saying that I know who killed Katie Pierce. You did.” I didn’t do anything corny like point a bony finger at him.

That woke him up. Even Pops came out of his funk and reacted as though I’d set his robe on fire. But it was Don Moffitt who looked as though he wanted to break me in half like a wishbone. Fischer said nothing, just put on an offended expression and sat back in mute appeal at my effrontery.

After a sharp intake of breath, the true believers came after in full cry, their voices overlapping in a barrage of abuse that labeled me at least a son of a bitch and probably a Communist spy. The uproar was still growing when a sound cut across it like a bullwhip.

“Shut up! Shut up! All of you. Now, listen to me.”

It was Mike Grenby, and from the swollen redness around his gills, he was deadly serious. I’d been wondering when he would make his play. Under the last of his voice, the babble died quickly, and all eyes turned toward Grenby. Especially Fischer’s. His bushy eyebrows were flying high.

Once Grenby had everybody’s attention, he looked a bit embarrassed and uncertain, but he plowed on. A promise was a promise. “I don’t have to remind you,” he told them, “that the file on Katie’s death is still open. Now, this man has made a serious—if incredible—accusation. He must be heard. So, just shut up and listen. All right, Goodey,” he told me. “You’ve accused Hugo of murder. Back it up.” Most of the rest looked tame enough for the moment, but Fischer was giving Grenby a look that wanted handling with asbestos gloves. His expression suggested that Grenby was very close to being a traitor. Now that I had the floor, I had to do something, even if I ended up flat on it.

“To begin with,” I told Fischer, “I have J. B. Carter’s statement that he saw you push Katie Pierce from the terrace of this building.”

That set off another brush fire, but Fischer put it out with a sharp gesture. “Be quiet, all of you,” he said, without taking his eyes from my face. They were extraordinary eyes when applied like that. I had an uneasy feeling that they were reading my mind. It was as if Fischer sensed what I was up to, yet was letting me go on. That was interesting in itself.

“Go ahead, Goodey,” he said. “Tell us all about it.”

“As you know,” I said, “from the cliff up there in front of J.B.’s cave, he could look down on the terrace at the seaward side of the building.” I felt more like a student giving an oral report to a stern teacher than a man making an accusation of murder. Fischer nodded curtly as if to say: Get on with it, boy.

“J.B.’s eyesight wasn’t so sharp, but he had a pretty good pair of binoculars, which he used to spy on you people down here.”

“The nosy old bastard,” said Moffitt, but Fischer stifled him with a glance.

“Last night,” I went on, “J.B. told me that at just about midnight on last December 20th he’d been having a last peep at the mansion before going to bed when he saw you and Katie come out onto the terrace. That was enough to make him stick around a while and watch, despite the bitter cold.”

It was enough, too, to make Fred Crenshaw turn toward Fischer with a look of keen, if ambiguous, interest. I don’t know if I was convincing anyone, but I had their attention. Even Grenby had lost some of his doubtful look.

“J.B. said that for some time you seemed to be doing most of the talking, and Katie was just listening, almost as if you had her hypnotized,” I told Fischer. “But then Katie suddenly stopped listening and started doing the talking—or, more likely, shouting. J.B. said it looked to him as if she were getting a bit hysterical, and then she shoved you away from her and ran toward the front of the terrace toward the sea.”

Everyone was listening now, like small children hearing a fairy tale. I forged on before I lost them.

“By this time,” I said, “Katie was at the edge of the terrace, with you right behind her. You sprang toward her and then…”

“Stop!”

It was a hell of a loud shout for such an apparently frail old man, and it stopped me cold. Pops Martin was on his feet looking like the ghost of Jimmy Cagney. His creased old face was straining at the seams, and he was trying to get my attention. The revolver in his right hand told me that. It was the same .38 police special I’d handed over to Fischer for safekeeping. And he had it pointed at me in a very determined manner. How he got it out of his flowing robes, I’ll never know.

“If you say another word, I’ll blow your fucking head off,” he said. I believed him.

Mike Grenby was on his way to his feet when Pops turned in his direction. Genie had her head down and was trying to crawl under her cushion.

“Sit down, Mike,” Pops ordered, “and you won’t get hurt.” Grenby eased himself back down with wary grace. “You,” Pops said, giving me all his attention, “you think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

I know a rhetorical question when I hear one, so I kept my mouth shut. I allowed myself a slight shrug just so he wouldn’t think I was being unresponsive.

“Well, you’re not,” Pops said to nobody’s surprise “You’re so dumb you make me sick. If you think—if you think this man,” he said, turning to look toward Fischer but keeping me under the gun, “could—”

Pops was getting choked up, and the hand holding my gun was none too steady. He took a deep breath and started again. “If you think this man could kill anyone—could kill a young girl—you’re just—just—oh, damn you!” he nearly sobbed, raising the revolver and putting the sight between my eyes. “You fucking…”

“Pops,” said Fischer quietly, but he didn’t move.

Pops closed his pale eyes tightly as if trying to concentrate. His flaccid old chops went rigid from the strain. I thought about rushing him, but then his eyes opened again.

“I don’t care what that loony old bastard said he saw,” Pops went on. “He didn’t see Hugo on the terrace with Katie that night. It was me!”

“Pops,” Hugo said warningly. “Don’t—”

The old man gestured with his free hand. “Don’t worry, Hugo,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ve got to do it. I’m just sorry that—” He put his hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry, Hugo, I really am. I—”

“All right, old fellow,” Fischer said soothingly. “Take it easy.”

“I’ve got to tell it, Hugo,” Pops continued. “I have to. I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest since—but now—I’ve got to tell it. I want you to know the truth.” Pops was talking to Fischer, but the gun told me that I hadn’t been forgotten.

“Go ahead then, Pops,” Fischer said. “Tell it the way it happened. Take your time.” Fischer didn’t seem to mind that the revolver was pointed at my sternum, and I didn’t like to mention it. Pops turned back toward me with an angry face. “Don’t think you’ve got any credit coming, Goodey,” he said. “I would have had to cop out eventually. I couldn’t have held my mud forever. Not on something like this. Listen,” he said loudly, glaring around the room. “I want to make it clear that I didn’t murder anybody. Nobody!” He gave me a hard squint as if I were going to argue with him. No chance.

Pops put his hand to his forehead again. His face was flushed with exertion. “Let me tell it just exactly like it happened,” he said, almost pleading.

I was beginning to wonder if he ever would—before he shot me, that is.

“I admit that I was hot for Katie,” Pops told us. “A lot of guys were.” He gave Mark Kinsey a look. “And she liked me, I know she did. But then things began to go wrong just after I asked her to marry me. She began to pull away from me, said she had to have more time to decide. Then she started hanging around more with that asshole Verrein. I got rid of him,” he said with some pride, “but things still weren’t right. It was almost as if she was running from me. I couldn’t even talk to her. But I tried. Christ, I loved her.

“Finally,” he went on, “that night—it was after the Saturday night open house—I caught up with Katie. I had to have it out with her. I was going nuts. At last, she said she’d talk to me. That’s all I wanted to do—talk to her. Honest to God! After the guests left, we came up the stairs to the terrace. It was freezing out, so we had our heavy coats on. Maybe that’s why J.B. thought it was Hugo, but it wasn’t. It was me!”

He shouted this last part at me, and I wasn’t going to disagree with him. It didn’t look like Fred Crenshaw was, either. He was watching Pops with more pity than anger on his face.

“Anyway,” Pops continued, “Katie was very quiet, but I figured maybe she was just thinking. I don’t know what I thought. I was just trying to tell her that I loved her, that she shouldn’t be afraid of me. She wasn’t arguing, so I thought maybe…”

Pops’ face had been almost calm, but there was pain in it as he went on. “But then she turned on me, real nasty like, and said: ‘All right, old man, what do you want?’ And suddenly, in the bright moonlight, I got a look at her eyes. Katie was loaded. Absolutely. Christ, I didn’t even suspect, and I can smell a doper a mile away. I didn’t know what she was using, but it was really messing with her mind. I only wanted—honest—” He shot a look at Fischer, “to get her off that damned terrace. I reached out to grab her, but she got scared and started running away from me. She was like a goddamned moth flitting all over the place.”

He stopped for a moment and looked at Fred Crenshaw. “On my life,” he said, “I didn’t know what to do. I know now that I should have left her and got help, but—I said, ‘Katie, now be sensible, Katie. Let’s go downstairs.’ But she wouldn’t listen. Every time I took a step toward her, she backed away, getting wilder by the second. I stopped, but she kept backing toward the edge. Suddenly, she was right at the edge of the terrace, and she started to fall. She must have tripped. I reached out to grab for her, to pull her back. I got her coat, but she was twisting—she ripped right out of my hands—” his voice dropped—“and she was gone. Gone. She didn’t make a sound. It was so dark below, I couldn’t—she was gone.”

Pops stopped, looked at Fred Crenshaw and then at Fischer. “God, Hugo,” he said softly, “I’m so sorry—so…”As if with a will of its own, the revolver swung up in his hand until his arm was doubled, and the barrel vas pointed toward his head. With a jerky motion, Pops shoved the muzzle into his mouth, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

The snap of the hammer striking the empty chamber wasn’t loud, but it was the loudest sound in that room. Before Pops could pull the trigger again—if he’d planned to—Mike Grenby was up on his feet and had taken the revolver from his hand. Pops didn’t resist, just opened his eyes with surprise at finding himself still alive. I was glad that my first weapons instructor had advised me to always keep one empty chamber. Nobody likes to get splattered with blood, brains and bits of skull bone.

Pops collapsed like a tired, old balloon, and Grenby had to catch him to keep him from falling. “Help Pops to his cushion, Mike,” Fischer said gently.

“Give Goodey his gun, Mike,” Fischer said after Pops had been resettled. “He’s leaving now.”

I took my revolver. There didn’t seem to be any place for it in my flowing robes, so I just let it dangle gracefully from one hand.

Fischer turned from me as if I’d just vanished. “Well, Fred,” he said almost conversationally, “you’ve got what you wanted. We’re in your hands. You can destroy The Institute now—if that’s what you want to do.”

He paused as if expecting an answer, but Crenshaw looked as though he were having too much trouble dealing with recent revelations to know how to respond. Fortunately, Fischer didn’t mind taking up the slack.

“Yes,” he went on, “all you’ve got to do is tell Dominguez what you’ve heard in this room tonight, and we might as well close up our doors for good. Pops will most likely die in prison, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up there, too. Fortunately,” he added dryly, “I’ve been in prison before, so it won’t be much of a hardship. But it will be a hardship to many of my people if you throw them out on the street before they’re ready. Many will die. Is that what you want, Fred?”

“No, but…”

“You have every right to want somebody to pay for the senseless death of your granddaughter. I believe in vengeance. And if that’s what you want, I’m your man.” He held up his hands as if ready for the nails.

I was willing to go get Crenshaw a hammer, but his troubled expression said that he was too busy dealing with the unexpected.

“It’s not easy to admit,” Fischer went on, “but we failed Katie. I failed her.” Protests bubbled up around the circle, but Fischer wasn’t in the mood to share Crenshaw’s attention. “It’s true,” he said strongly, “and it’s about the greatest tragedy we’ve had here at The Institute. I’m going to do my best to see that it doesn’t happen to some other child. But you can do a lot more than I to make sure of that.”

That roused Crenshaw from his trance, all right, and it interested me, too. I was watching Fischer as a batter does a good junk-ball pitcher, just to see what he’d come up with next. This was a change-up neither Crenshaw nor I had expected.

“Oh, I don’t mean whether or not you blow the whistle to Dominguez,” Fischer continued. “I’m talking about what you decide to do with the three million dollars Katie left The Institute in her will.”

“You know about that?” Crenshaw managed, but it was an ordeal.

“Of course,” Fischer said modestly. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“But nobody’s ever said…” Crenshaw began in a puzzled voice.

“No, and we never would have. As much as The Institute needs money, we wouldn’t want to get it that way.” Crenshaw looked as though he might want to believe Fischer, but I had my doubts. “Of course,” Fischer said, “my lawyers could bump heads with yours for a few years, and we might end up with some of the crumbs they leave, but that will never happen. Whether or not Katie wanted us to have her money, Fred, it’s all yours. We’ll never bring that will to the light of day.”

To my coarse ear, this sounded like a bribe, but Crenshaw didn’t seem to be taking it that way. Fischer’s words seemed to sink into him without a trace. I couldn’t have told you what he was thinking.

“But,” Fischer said, “I don’t mind telling you what we could have done with that money, Fred.” Here it comes, I thought, the old curve ball. “We could have started a whole new facet of The Institute, a program specifically for troubled youngsters like Katie. So that boys and girls like her would get the special care they need.” Fischer had Crenshaw’s whole attention then, and he dropped the bomb. “And I think it would have been fitting to have named that program after Katie’s father. He was Frederick M. Crenshaw, Jr., wasn’t he, Fred?”

Fischer had to ask that like I needed to be reminded that Aristotle was a Greek. This was all getting a bit strong for me. “Wait a minute, Mr. Crenshaw,” I said. “Don’t let his…”

Fischer turned his great head back toward me. “Get out of here, Goodey,” he said flatly. “You’ve done what you came here to do.”

“Not quite, Mr. Fischer,” I said. “There is the little matter of where Katie Pierce got the barbiturates. Or don’t you think that’s important?”

Before Fischer could answer, a voice came from a completely unexpected quarter: “I don’t think that matters very much anymore, Goodey,” said Fred Crenshaw. “Go back to San Francisco. I’ll send you a check for the rest of your fee.”

“Doesn’t matter?” I asked. “Sure it matters. Pops would never have chased Katie off the terrace if she hadn’t been high on barbiturates. She got them here in this haven of mental health and clean living, and I can prove it. The pills that killed your granddaughter, Mr. Crenshaw, came from James Carey,” I said, pointing at him, “this wonderful organization’s own Dr. Feelgood.”

I don’t know who was more surprised—Fischer or Carey.

“Jim,” demanded Fischer angrily, “is there any truth in what he says?”

“No!” Carey’s flush of indignation was genuine. “For Christ’s sake, Hugo. You know I’d never have given Katie—”

“I didn’t say you gave the pills to Katie,” I cut in. “I just said that they came from you—by way of Tommy Carter.”

The truth has a ring to it that can’t be ignored. It was as if I’d snapped my fingernail against the lip of a fine crystal goblet. “The fact is, Carey,” I said, pursuing my advantage, “that you have been keeping Tommy manageable by judicious—if not widely publicized—doses of barbiturates, isn’t that so?”

“There’s nothing illegal about that,” Carey shot back, “I’m Tommy’s doctor. I—”

“No, not illegal, Carey,” I said, “but it made it easy for Katie—when the pressure Pops was putting on her got too intense—to wheedle a bit of painkiller out of Tommy.” I turned back to Crenshaw. “I think that’s about all you’ll need, Mr. Crenshaw,” I said. “Whether or not Grenby can bring himself to put the county’s interests before The Institute’s wellbeing, I don’t know, but I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with them.”

“I told you before that it doesn’t matter, Goodey,” Crenshaw said. “You can go now.”

I got the distinct impression that I was being dismissed. Crenshaw was less than embarrassing with his gratitude, but that’s one thing a cop learns to live without. “All right,” I said. “Nice working for you.” Nobody stood in my way, but before I could get through the door, Crenshaw said something that stopped me like a sheet of plate glass.

“Hugo,” I heard him say, “there is something I have to explain to you about the money due to you from Katie’s estate.”

I spun faster than the average tight end. “You what?” I said, none too quietly.

“I’m going to tell them what I’ve done with the three million dollars,” Crenshaw told me in a none-of-your-business tone of voice. He turned back toward Fischer as if I’d just left the room. “I—”

“Wait a minute,” I insisted. “Just hold on.” Crenshaw turned toward me, but he didn’t do it gladly.

“After all you’ve learned here tonight about Katie’s death,” I said, “you’re going to—” Then it dawned on me. “Hell, you’re going to give them that money, aren’t you, Mr. Crenshaw? With all that I found out for you, one of your good, crooked lawyers could tie that estate up for decades. But you, you’re going to make them a gift of it, aren’t you. I’ve just been wasting my time here.”

“You’ll be paid in full,” Crenshaw said coldly. “The rest of it is none—”

“Christ!” I said. “You’ve fallen for Fischer’s bullshit, too.” I shook my head. “Mr. Crenshaw—”

Fischer cut in. “Jack—” Gillette materialized at my side. “Please show Mr. Goodey to his room to change and then escort him to his automobile.” There was triumph in his voice.

Gillette moved through the open doorway and waited for me to follow. But I wasn’t quite ready. “Wait,” I said, and I turned back so that I could take in the entire group. They sat there in an unbroken circle, and I was on the outside. I noticed that one of the flunkies had even removed my cushion. Rachel and Aileen Moffitt had shifted closer together to fill the gap. Their eyes were turned in my direction, but nobody saw me. They were just waiting for the door to close. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Fuck it,” I said, and walked through the doorway. With the click of it shutting, I heard Fischer’s voice, faintly but distinctly, begin to welcome Crenshaw to the fold.

20

Gillette was walking half a step behind my right shoulder, ostentatiously just seeing me off the premises.

“You know, Jack,” I said chummily, “for a man who did what he came here to do and accidentally figured out how J.B. died, somehow I don’t feel like a winner.”

“You’re not,” he said. “You never had a chance.”

“How do you figure it?” I asked. “How could Crenshaw fall for Fischer’s bullshit—after all he’s seen here?” Then it occurred to me that perhaps Gillette wasn’t the best person to ask. “Sorry. I mean, it could cost him at least three million dollars and probably a lot more.”

“The money doesn’t seem to have done a lot for him so far,” Gillette said. “Your guess is as good as mine. Everybody comes here for something different. Don’t overwork your brain.” We were walking up the broad staircase. “You’re not going to be around long enough to worry about it.”

He was right, but I couldn’t help wondering. Gillette waited in the doorway while I removed the flowing white robe. “I can’t say it hasn’t been a weekend full of surprises,” I said as I dressed. “There have been very few really dull moments.”

“We like to keep things lively.”

“By the way,” I said, tying my shoelaces, “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for getting me out of the sauna.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’m just sorry that I had to give Tommy a thick ear.”

“I’m not sorry,” I said. “As a figure of harmless fun, Tommy Carter leaves a lot to be desired.”

“He’s okay. Tommy’s just that little bit too eager to follow suggestions from a good friend. An old, good friend like Pops who—” Gillette looked at me sharply. “Hey, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I?”

“Of course not,” I lied. “But maybe I ought to go tie a knot in that old bastard’s tail.” I stepped toward the door.

“Maybe you’d better not,” said Gillette, filling the doorway.

“But don’t you think I ought to be just a little bit sore?”

“Who at?” asked Gillette. “I told you this was a nut house.”

“Yeah. I forgot.” I looked around the little room. It no longer contained anything of mine, and I couldn’t work up any nostalgia about leaving it. I hadn’t had that many good times there.

“Come on,” I said to Gillette. “You were supposed to be throwing me out. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot.”

“How do you figure it will all work out?” I asked him as we walked down the stairs.

“What’s that?”

“Well, The Institute is okay on J.B. Grenby can go to town on that one, even if a few nigglers might think it odd that a millionaire had to hide out on his own estate and set booby-traps to ensure his privacy.”

“Let ‘em wonder,” Gillette said. “It’s good exercise.”

“But Katie Pierce is a different matter,” I said. “Whether or not he meant to, Pops did chase her off the roof. And she did get high on drugs provided by Carey. That could be a bit sticky, what with Grenby still wearing the sheriff’s uniform and all.”

“I don’t think so,” Gillette said blithely. “Grenby may still be a cop—technically—but he’s more Hugo’s man than he is Dominguez’s. And with Crenshaw not creating any more fuss, Katie’s death is going to stay a sad, unexplainable accident.”

“And Katie’s three million bucks?”

“Hugo will put that to good use,” Gillette said. “You can count on that.”

“And he’ll take Crenshaw along with it?”

“Always room for another old geezer—uh, elder statesman—at The Institute,” he said.

“Do you think Fischer will keep his word and start that new program he was selling to Crenshaw?”

“Probably. He’s been wanting to do something like that anyway. This way, he can name it after Crenshaw Junior, and everybody will be happy.”

“Especially Fischer.”

“Especially Hugo,” he said. “I believe you’re beginning to understand how this place works.”

“Just barely,” I said. “But what if some use for that money comes up that Fischer thinks is more important? Do you think he might change his mind a little bit?

Gillette cocked his head at me. “I’d better get you out of here before you understand too much.” We were then on the second floor landing.

“How about you, Jack?” I asked as we descended. “Do you plan to stay snug in the bosom of St. Hugo?”

“Until something better comes along. If something ever does.”

By then we were standing in the marble foyer under Rudy Verrein’s majestic portrait of Fischer. Gillette was about to open the door when Rachel Schute came out of the darkness toward us.

“Joe?” she said. She had a piece of paper in her hand. “It’s okay, Jack,” Rachel said. “You go back to the megathon. I want to say goodbye to—to our guest.”

“Okay, Rachel,” Gillette said, turning to walk into the darkness.

“So long, Jack,” I said, but he either didn’t hear me or didn’t bother to answer.

“Here,” said Rachel, shoving the piece of paper into my hand. “Emma asked me to give you this.”

I looked at the check. It had the right number of zeroes. I put it quickly into my pocket. “Thank her for me.”

“Do you think you earned it, Joe?”

“Did you earn yours?” I asked, perhaps a bit unkindly. Rachel flushed. That would always be her enemy. “Nobody asked Emma to offer the money,” I said. “Do you think she wants it back?”

“No.”

“Goodbye, Rachel,” I said, turning toward the door.

“Tell me something, Joe,” she said as if she hadn’t heard me. “Did J.B. really tell you that he’d seen Hugo and Katie on the terrace?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” she said seriously.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“No,” she said, and I knew that she wouldn’t.

“J.B. didn’t tell me that he’d seen anything on the terrace,” I said. “In a careless moment, he did claim that Fischer had killed Katie, but that was just loose talk. I made the rest of it up.” I hoped that didn’t sound too much like bragging.

For a time, Rachel didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with somber eyes, a dark turquoise in the dim light. “Are you proud of yourself, Joe?” she said at last.

“I did the job I was hired to do,” I said. “Two jobs.”

“Do you think it was worth doing?” She obviously didn’t.

“Crenshaw had a right to know how his granddaughter died,” I said. “Or don’t you think it was important?”

“At what cost, Joe?” she asked. “At what cost? Would you do anything, say anything, just to do a job?”

There was no answer to that question. “I’ve got a long drive ahead of me, Rachel,” I said.

But she wasn’t ready to let me go. Not yet.

“Just like that?” she said, her usually soft voice getting shrill. “Don’t you even know what you tried to do here tonight? Thank God you failed.”

“You tell me.”

“You tried to destroy The Institute,” she said, “just to solve a murder that never was. Just to earn your blood money, you were willing to destroy all that Hugo has spent over ten years of his life building. Not that you could, of course. It would take a lot bigger man than you could ever be.”

“Then what are you complaining about?” I asked. “Goodey has shot his best shot, and The Institute remains in all its monolithic beauty.”

“What bothers me, Joe,” Rachel said seriously, “is what you tried to do. The despicable methods you used. You were like some digging animal turning up rocks to see what was under them, not caring what harm you might do in the process. For all you cared, all the lives The Institute has saved could have been lost. If Mike Grenby wasn’t…”

“In Fischer’s pocket?” I said, finishing her sentence in a way that I’m sure Rachel hadn’t intended. “Yeah, he could blow this place up with all he learned tonight. It’s a good thing for Fischer that Grenby is a good boy who has his priorities right.”

Rachel’s eyes were full of scorn. “Joe,” she began.

“No,” I said, deciding that I wasn’t too tired to get pissed off, “you’ve had a good time telling me what a rat I am, Rachel. Now, let me give you my version.”

Rachel started to turn away from me, but I got her arm in a strong grip and turned her around. “You just listen,” I said, “then you can go back to your playmates.” Her eyes said they didn’t think much of me, but I let go of her arm anyway. She didn’t move.

“All right,” I said, “you don’t like my methods. But I was pretty sure that if I pushed Fischer hard enough, the right man would surface, especially if he was already carrying a heavy burden of guilt. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Pops didn’t murder…”

“No,” I said, “that’s just the point. A jury might beg to differ, but Pops wasn’t responsible for Katie’s death. That responsibility belongs right up there in Hugo Fischer’s fat lap.”

“You’re—”

“Hear me,” I said, forcefully enough to make Rachel shut her mouth in a thin line. “The responsibility—and the guilt—has to ride with Fischer because he’s set himself up as God around here. He makes the rules and he breaks them if it suits his whim. There are no drugs allowed at The Institute—unless it suits his purpose. The Institute is a haven for disturbed young girls like Katie, unless God’s horny old right-hand man decides to prey on them. Everyone must bend to Fischer’s grand scheme or get out—even if it’s J. B. Carter, and he owns the place. It was just Fischer’s bad luck that this combination accidentally cost two lives. But I imagine that he—and the rest of you—figure that is a small price to pay for the survival of The Institute.”

I stopped to give Rachel a chance to butt in, but she stood there looking at me with alien eyes. Finally, she asked: “Are you finished?”

“Not quite. I’m not saying that Fischer isn’t a pretty good social mechanic with energy—and ego—to burn. In a tin-pot sort of way, he’s a real dazzler, and he’ll probably go on gathering followers like blue serge picks up lint. Look at the way he bundled up Crenshaw tonight. I still can’t believe it. If he wanted to, he could make you True Believers think that night was day and Jesus was a Dutchman.”

“You’re jealous,” Rachel shot, her eyes regaining some of their fire.

“Sure, I’m jealous. If I had some of Fischer’s talent, I wouldn’t have to do jobs like this one. Jobs where everyone wins but the Katie Pierces and other casualties of The Institute’s big meat grinder. Where everything comes out but the truth.”

“You could still go to the police yourself,” Rachel said.

“Sure I could, but that’s not my job. Don’t mistake me for a moralist, Rachel. You know better. I’m just an ex-cop scuffling after enough money to stay alive and operating. If some justice gets done in the process, that’s fine. It makes the client feel better about paying. But I won’t lose much sleep because the truth about Katie Pierce’s death will never come out. What is the truth? That she got chewed up and spat out in a minor malfunction of Hugo Fischer’s social movement? If Katie Pierce is remembered at all, it will be as a kooky pill head who brought Fred Crenshaw and a lot of money to The Institute. And what about J.B.? He’s just a casualty of progress, like the rabbit that gets buried under the concrete of a freeway. Nobody’s to blame; it just happened. Who was it that said that you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs? Too true. But just once in a while, Rachel, you might want to take a good, close look at the omelet as you step over the broken eggshells.”

I’d said all I had to say, but Rachel didn’t respond. She was still standing there when I closed the big door behind me.

It was even darker in the parking lot when I climbed into the Morris, put the key in the ignition and pulled the starter. Nothing. I pulled again. Double nothing. I let my head fall forward and slumped in the seat. Opening my eyes, I thought about trying to push the car to a start. I thought about going back to the mansion and asking to use their telephone to call a garage, but somehow that didn’t appeal. I thought about picking the car up and carrying it over my shoulder.

Fishing my suitcase out of the back seat, I gave the fender of the old car a vicious kick and began trudging up the steep drive. About half way up to the tree line, I looked back at the mansion. One light at a corner of the big building was ablaze, and I tried to imagine what was happening in that room. It was too much work.

I didn’t know what had happened to the security guards, but there was nobody manning the mined barrier. It was just as well; we probably wouldn’t have had much to say to each other. When I got to the highway, I crossed over to the northbound lane. I sat my suitcase down, put what I hoped was a confidence-inspiring expression on my face and stuck out my right thumb just as a set of high beams came barreling out of a turn about a hundred yards down the road.

Blinded by the light, nearly deafened by the roar of too much horsepower, I listened hopefully for the screech of tires. I didn’t hear it. When vision returned to my light-saturated eyes, all I could see was two ruby taillights doing their best to disappear in the first faint shadows of dawn.

I turned around and stuck my thumb out again. It was going to be a long morning.

THE END

Fighting Back

When Harry Castor opens a bar to support his family, no sooner do the doors open than local gangster Charlie Rizzo waltzes right through them, demanding a cut of the action. With his entire life's savings invested in the bar, Harry Castor can’t afford to pay Rizzo protection.

But Harry can’t afford not to, either.

Out of options, Harry concocts a desperate plan to fight back against the vicious mobster. But as the stakes escalate and the men's duel becomes more violent, both Harry and Rizzo realize that their thirst for vengeance and retribution could cost them the one thing they swore to protect—their families.

1

Harry Caster pushed a bottle of crème de menthe two inches to the left, back an inch to the right, and then stood back with a smile of satisfaction on his round, friendly face. Everything looked right—the gleaming mirrors behind the rows of liquor bottles, the quiet glow of indirect lighting on the curved, rubbed mahogany bar, the casual but careful arrangement of small tables and booths. The intimate sound of soft music came from hidden speakers.

Even the smell was right—a rich, dark, comfortable odor of relaxation and companionship—and, Harry hoped, success. He had sunk nearly every cent he could raise into the Lamplighter, and everything depended on its catching on in the well-to-do little river town of Parker’s Landing.

Open just over three months, the Lamplighter began to look like a winner, although early on this Monday evening in October business was slow. At that moment, only one young couple sat at the bar talking quietly with Marco, the regular bartender. The only other customer in the place moved his bottle of beer several feet down the bar toward Harry and said:

“You Harry Caster, the owner?”

“That’s me,” Harry said, shifting his attention to a man who until that moment had been no more than a stick figure at the bar. From habit, he took a quick reading of the man who now sat close to the spot where Harry leaned on the bar.

The clothes were good—high quality, maybe even sharply elegant—but they didn’t go with the man. They were soft, understated; he was sharp, quick, a little tense but cocksure at the same time.

“This is a nice place you’ve got here,” the stranger said.

Harry slightly revised his first, harsh judgment. The man had taste in something besides clothes.

“Thanks,” Harry said with genuine pleasure. “We only opened in July, but I think it’s going very well.”

“Can I buy you a drink?” asked the man. “And could we sit over there in a booth for a moment? I’ve got something I’d like to discuss with you. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

He’s selling something, Harry told himself, but I’m not buying. Sullivan Street and Little Italy rang clearly in the man’s voice, although it was cloaked with something smoother and suburban.

“I’ve got a drink, thanks,” Harry said, picking up his short glass of straight whiskey. “And I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on.” He half-turned to show his disinterest in any deal this sharpie might have to offer.

“Let it go for a while.” This was more an order than a suggestion, and it turned Harry around with reluctant interest. “And let’s sit over there where we can be more comfortable, okay?” the stranger added in a tone of deliberate appeasement which made it obvious to Harry that the other had been an order.

“Okay,” said Harry cautiously, “let’s do that.” As he ducked to get from behind the bar, he gave himself a mental slap for getting too complacent about good fortune. What could this schlemiel want?

When they were seated in the dark, tall-backed booth, Harry asked flatly: “What do you want?” He’d brought his drink, but now he ignored it, keeping the palms of both hands flat on the table as if in readiness.

“Like I said, this is a very pretty little bar you’ve got here. And I hear you’re getting the kind of customers that just about guarantee success. The quality people of Parker’s Landing.”

“So?”

“So, I like what I see so much that I want a piece of it. I think you could use a partner. A silent partner, of course. You run things; you’re the operator.”

Harry relaxed a little. He felt like laughing in this guy’s face. “Partner?” he said. “I’ve got a partner. The Chase Manhattan Bank. They own every stick in this joint. Sorry, fella, I don’t need any more partners. What I need is customers.”

The stranger didn’t seem very discouraged. “I dunno,” he said easily, “a guy can always use another partner. How about it?”

“Look,” said Harry, getting very tired of this conversation, “I’ve told you, Mr.—”

“Rice. Charlie Rice.”

“—Rice. I don’t need another partner. I don’t want another partner. I’m doing fine without one. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll think over your proposition. Now, me, I guess a half interest in this place is worth”—Harry reached for a ridiculous figure—”ninety thousand bucks—no, make it a hundred grand, cash. I can’t see a penny less. What sort of money were you thinking of investing?”

“Nothing,” said Rice.

Harry gave a short, very humorless laugh. “You’re a real comedian, Mr. Rice,” he said, getting halfway up from his seat, “but the joke is over. I’ve got things to do. So, if you’ll excuse me—”

“I won’t,” Rice said quietly but so definitely that Harry froze. “Sit back down and listen to me, Mr. Caster. I won’t keep you long.” Without consciously commanding his muscles, Harry sank back into the booth and sat staring at Rice. His glass of whiskey was forgotten in his right hand.

“Listen to me carefully,” Rice went on. “I’m not going to repeat myself. I’m going to be your new partner in this bar. I’m not going to put up any money, but I’m going to take half of the profits. That’s the deal I’m offering. Take it or leave it. But the only way you can stay in business and stay healthy is to take it.”

Harry said nothing.

“You think it over, Mr. Caster,” Rice said in a friendly tone, “and I’ll be in touch with you in a day or so. But think real hard. If you come up with the wrong answer, it’ll be bad for both of us. But I can promise you it’ll be much worse for you than for me.”

Rice slid easily out of the booth and stood before Harry. Harry didn’t look up. He continued to stare at a point somewhere between the man’s eyes and the tabletop.

With an expressionless nod to Marco, now alone at the far end of the bar, Rice walked out of the Lamplighter into the street.

For a long moment, Harry remained motionless. Then he drained his glass unthinkingly and rose from the booth. Feeling only marginally in control of his legs, Harry moved to the bar, slumped to a stool and shoved his empty glass toward Marco.

“Same again,” he said, and when he had the glass back between his hands, Harry sat looking at it, not drinking and not talking.

Marco went back to squinting at his paper in the dim light of a beer sign. He was twenty-five years old, tall and good looking, with a lantern jaw that narrowly saved him from being handsome. Harry liked Marco, but he kept telling him he was wasting his life as a bartender and ought to go back and finish college. Marco always listened quietly, smiled and said, “I’m a bum. I like this business. It suits me.”

Harry looked up from the untouched glass in front of him. “Marco,” he said with careful control, “do you know the guy I was just talking to?”

“I don’t know him,” Marco said, folding his newspaper, “but I’ve seen him around a lot. He calls himself Charlie Rice.”

“Calls himself?”

“Yeah. But his real name is Carlo Rizzo. He lives in Guinea Gulch a couple of blocks from my aunt.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Not much. He’s not big-time, but he’s got a hand in lots of action in Hudson County and a reputation as a very hard man.”

For a moment Harry was silent. Then: “Would you say he gets what he wants?”

“Usually.”

“Thanks, Marco,” Harry said, adding, “Look, there’s nothing happening here tonight. I think I’ll go home. If things are slow around midnight, close up early. Just throw the cash box in the safe. We can sort it out tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Marco, watching Harry get his coat from the rack between the cigarette machine and the front door. As Harry was about to go, the bartender said: “Harry—”

Harry turned in the doorway.

“If I can help you in any way,” Marco said, “just let me know. I mean it.”

“Thanks, Marco,” Harry said. “I’ll keep it in mind.” He turned and left the bar.

But Harry didn’t go home. He walked to the side parking lot, got into his three-year-old convertible and sat thinking in the dark. The situation seemed real enough. He’d heard of such things. But Harry couldn’t seem to get his mind to bear on it. Too many things kept intruding: Hildy, Lizzie, the baby, the big house on Elgin Street which seemed to gobble money by the shovelful. And the sweat he had gone through to open the Lamplighter.

All these thoughts seemed so much more real than the fact that a stranger—some hoodlum in a $300 suit—was threatening to take it all away from him. Such things didn’t happen to unimportant little people like Harry Caster, he thought. There must be some mistake.

Harry backed the car out of the parking lot, headed it into Parker Street, and drove away from the Lamplighter. He didn’t know where he was going, but any motion seemed better than doing nothing. Without consciously directing the car, Harry drove the length of the small shopping district past butcher shop, hardware store, boutique, launderette—all the shops he’d been in scores of times. They occupied a line of mid-Victorian houses, once the best homes in Parker’s Landing but now gingerbread-dripping relics modernized with plate glass.

“Why not one of you?” Harry asked the blank windows, all dark but the launderette and the liquor store. “Why not you, Matt?” he asked the owner of Riverbank Liquors, now sitting at home at dinner with his family while old Henry Taubman watched the store. “Why me?”

Facing the shops was the Penn-Central train station, the lifeline of most of the commuting residents with jobs in New York City. And behind that the riverfront park with deserted bandstand and tattered, multicolored summer awnings that should have been taken down weeks ago.

Harry turned right on Pier Avenue and headed up the gently rising slope away from the river. It wasn’t a big town, and before long Harry was parked on Hudson’s Bluff overlooking all of Parker’s Landing and a long stretch of black river.

From the bluff, Harry could see his own neighborhood. Parkland, one of the town’s oldest areas. Some of his neighbors were still uneasy to find a family of Jews living among them, but most had accepted the idea in the last five years. He could also see Guinea Gulch, as the locals called the slightly indented area where an enclave of Italians lived. It had started out fifty years before as a barren piece of land occupied only by the shack of an Italian caretaker of one of the old estates. But now the thinly treed land was dotted with low-profile modern houses which hugged the brown earth. In recent years, more and more of the new houses built in Guinea Gulch had adopted eight-foot-high fences and offered only flat concrete walls to the outside world.

Somewhere behind one of those little dots of light, Harry thought, lives Carlo Rizzo, alias Charlie Rice, my would-be new partner.

2

At that moment, Carlo Rizzo was arriving at his low, pale-green house. Moving with a light step, he pushed open a door leading from the basement garage and started climbing well-carpeted steps. But before he’d gone far, he was waylaid by a six-year-old girl in pink pajamas who clung to his leg and made him haul her bodily up the rest of the stairs.

“Maria,” said Angela Rizzo after giving her husband a kiss, “what are you doing? You’ll break daddy’s leg.” She was a short, stocky woman in her early thirties with a pretty, broad-nosed face and spreading hips.

“I don’t care,” said Maria. “I want to. I want to break daddy’s leg in a million pieces.”

“I’ll break you in a million pieces,” Rizzo said, detaching his daughter gently, kissing her hair and tucking her under his left arm. As he walked into the kitchen with his squealing, upside-down burden, Angie was putting dinner on the plastic-topped kitchen table. Rizzo put Maria down and sat down at the table eagerly. “Where’s Bobby?” he asked, beginning to spoon soup rapidly.

“He’s at night football practice,” Angela said. “He won’t be home until just after nine o’clock. I gave him an early dinner.” After Maria had been sent upstairs to get into bed and pick a story to be read to her, Rizzo leaned back at the littered table and lit a cigarette. “A great meal, Angie,” he said. “Nobody cooks lamb like you do.”

Angela sat down at the table with her own cup of coffee. “You’re in a good mood tonight. Carlo,” she said. “Is there some word from Abe Montara?”

Rizzo’s face darkened. “No. Nothing. Not a word. He’s still sore, I guess. But listen, Angie, I’m onto something that I think could take the place of some of the money I’m losing since Montara has been down on me.”

“Oh, what is it?” Angie asked like a big-eyed child.

“You know that new bar on Parker Street—the Lamplighter? The one Vince said was pulling in the big-shot commuters. Well, it looks like your Carlo is going to be a partner in that bar. I don’t want to talk too soon, but it just could be.”

“That’s wonderful,” said his wife, “but, Carlo, do you know anything about running a bar?”

“I don’t have to,” said Rizzo. “It’s run by a smart Jew named Caster who seems to be doing a very good job. All I’ve got to do is give him a hand now and then and draw my share of the profits.”

“Give him a hand?”

Rizzo laughed. “I’m going to be Caster’s adviser, his partner. I know a thing or two about business, you know.”

“Well,” she said, frowning, “I hope it works out all right.”

“It will, baby, it will. Let’s go read that story to Maria. There’s some boxing I want to watch on TV.”

* * *

It was getting late and cold, but still Harry didn’t want to go home. There was something that wouldn’t let him. He had to tell somebody about this, somebody who would care and maybe have some ideas. So he decided to go see his oldest friend, Arnold Gerstein, a commercial artist he’d known since high school in the Bronx. Harry rehearsed how he’d tell the story all the way on the half-hour drive up the river.

“Harry! Come in,” Gerstein said when he found Harry on the doorstep of his large comfortable house. “Adele,” he shouted, “Harry is here.” He turned back to Harry. “Is Hildy with you?”

“No, Arnie,” Harry said, “I’m alone, and I’ve got to talk to you about something serious.”

Gerstein, a slight, bald man with the face of an animated basset hound, responded immediately to Harry’s urgency. “Sure,” he said, “we’ll go up to my studio where it’s quiet.” He led the way up to his attic workroom. And there, perched on a stool and surrounded by unfinished illustrations, Harry told him about Rizzo’s visit.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not,” Harry said. “Arnie, I’ve never been so serious in my life.”

“Then this Rice or Rizzo or whatever he calls himself has got to be a joker. He’s been watching too many gangster movies. He can’t just move in on you like this.”

“He thinks he can,” said Harry, “and I’m not so sure myself.”

“Well, I’m sure he can’t. Have you been to the police?”

“Arnie, it happened less than a couple of hours ago. Besides, what am I going to go to the police with? My word that Rizzo is trying to deal himself half of my bar? They’d think I’m crazy.”

“You’ve got to do something,” Gerstein said. “When did this guy say he was going to get back in touch with you?”

“A day or two,” he said.

“It’s your problem, Harry,” Gerstein said, biting on a drawing pencil, “but if it was me I wouldn’t wait. This schmuck is convinced that you’re his pigeon, that you’re so scared that you’ll just lie down and let him run right over you. You’ve got to let him know right away that he can’t. Here, I’ll tell you what you ought to do. You ought to pick up this telephone and tell him that it’s no soap.”

“But Arnie, this guy belongs to the Mafia.”

“How do you know? Did he say so?”

“No, and it wasn’t engraved on his business card, either. But I believe it. Marco, my bartender, all but came out and said it.”

“Yeah,” said Gerstein, “and it’s to this gonif’s advantage for you to believe it. If this Rizzo can get even fifty bucks off you with this scare tactic, he’s ahead of the game. Here, I’ll look up his number. Rice . . . Rice—here it is: 232 Bedford Grove, Parker’s Landing. Do you want to dial or shall I?” Gerstein offered Harry the telephone.

“What the hell am I going to say to him, Arnie? Lay off or I’ll have my friend Arnold Gerstein rub you out? For Christ’s sake!”

“No, stupid, all you’ve got to do is be very cool and businesslike about it. Just get him on the phone and tell him you’ve considered his proposition but you’re not interested. As simple as that.”

“Don’t I wish.”

“Get yourself ready. I’m dialing.”

Rizzo had turned the television off in the fifth round of a very dull fight and was worrying over some figures in a big black ledger when Angie answered the telephone.

“Carlo,” she said from the hallway, “it’s somebody asking for you. A man. He asked for Charles Rice.”

“Let me have it, sweetheart.” As soon as Rizzo recognized Caster’s voice, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to his wife: “Honey, could you make me a cup of coffee?” When she’d gone, he said: “Sorry, Mr. Caster, I was interrupted. You were saying?”

Rizzo listened to Harry Caster with a perfectly impassive face. When the voice on the other end of the line ended, he didn’t say a word for nearly thirty seconds.

“Yes, I heard what you said, Mr. Caster. I heard you very good. But I think you’re making a bad mistake. I’m offering you a good deal, and I’m sure you’ll be sorry if you turn it down.” He held the receiver away from his ear. “There’s no reason to shout, Mr. Caster,” he said in a reasonable voice. “You’d better do some more thinking. Good night.”

“Who was that, Carlo?” Angela asked, coming into the room with a cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.

“Nobody important,” Rizzo said, and he looked at his watch. “Hey, it’s getting late. I thought you said Bobby was going to be home about nine. It’s nearly ten o’clock.”

Rizzo drank his coffee and ate the cake silently. Not long after he’d finished, he stood up abruptly. “I feel like having a beer,” he said. “I think I’ll run down to Aldo’s for a while.”

“All right, dear, don’t be late.”

“I won’t. And if Bobby isn’t home in ten minutes, call up the Swensons. He’s probably over there playing Halford’s records.”

At Aldo’s Club, near the Hudson Road, Rizzo nodded a greeting to the bartender and stepped into a telephone booth. After making a short call, he sat down at a back table with a beer and waited.

* * *

Harry Caster was still holding the silent receiver to his ear. “Rice…?” he said. “Are you still there?” He put the telephone down.

“He says I better do some more thinking,” he told Gerstein. “A lot of good that did. Now that he knows I’m not going to give in without an argument, he could be dangerous.”

“Don’t be silly. He couldn’t have expected you to hand over half of your business just like that. Without an argument.”

“Oh, no? I think that’s exactly what he expected.”

“If you’re really worried,” Gerstein said, “you’d better go see the police tomorrow. Just for safety’s sake.”

“Yes,” Harry said, “maybe I will.”

As Harry unlocked his front door, Hildy Caster looked up from the television set. “Is that you, Harry?”

“No,” Harry said, “it’s the Boston Strangler.”

“We don’t want any. We take from Jack the Ripper. What are you doing home? I’ll bet Marco threw you out for cramping his style with the stewardesses.”

“There was nothing much doing, so I thought I’d come home. The stardust sisters are asleep, I presume.”

“Yes, thank the Lord. Whatever you do, don’t disturb the sleeping monsters.”

At forty-two, Hildy Caster was thin, still pretty, and deeply cynical. The unplanned birth of the baby Sophie the year before had done nothing to temper her habitual misanthropy, lightly disguised by a flippant manner.

“What’s on?”

“Robert Taylor and Greta Garbo in Camille,” Hildy said. “He’s just asked her to give up the mad social whirl for a country cottage with painted scenery. Just like you and me.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “well, tell her not to do it.” He joined Hildy on the couch. His conscious mind took in the love story, but at the same time he was trying to come to grips with his own more unbelievable situation.

Later, in bed, Harry turned from his sleeping side onto his back. “Hildy,” he said.

“What?” groaned Hildy, snatched back from the brink of sleep.

“Do you remember a movie where a gangster demands money from a small businessman with the threat of breaking the place up?”

“I remember a hundred movies exactly like that. Why?”

“Well, I was wondering what the businessman usually does in that sort of situation.”

“Did you interrupt my elopement with Robert Taylor just to play Cinema Quiz Time? Let me ask you one: In what obscure home movie is the husband brutally murdered for waking his lovely wife with silly questions?”

“No,” Harry insisted, “I’m serious. What does he do? Does he pay the money? Does he call the cops? Or what?”

Hildy was silent so long that Harry thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she spoke. “This is just a generalization, mind you, but he usually refuses to pay at first, and then the gangsters break a few windows and arms until he sees reason. Then he pays off for a while until he decides that a man has to make a stand somewhere.”

“And then what happens?”

“Usually the mobsters bump him off,” said Hildy nonchalantly, “as an object lesson to the rest of the business community. But then the good guys get outraged and rub out the bad guys.”

“That’s not much help to the businessman, is it?” Harry asked. “I mean the one bumped off.”

“No,” Hildy admitted, “but they pass the hat and collect enough money for a classy tombstone and to send his kids to a good military school.”

“That’s nice.”

“Any more questions, Mr. Quizmaster?”

“No. Your prize will be delivered within seven days by a famous mystery star himself, right to your own doorstep.”

“Goody,” Hildy said, and she was asleep.

Sleep did not come so easily for Harry Caster, but it came.

3

The next morning just before noon, Harry was in his tiny office at the Lamplighter making up a new liquor list when he heard an odd noise from out on the street. It sounded like the small explosion heard when you wait too long to light a gas oven—sort of a smothered bang.

Then he heard a crashing sound in the main room of the bar and a boy’s voice shouting, “Mr. Caster! Mr. Caster! Quick!” Ernie, the errand boy from the liquor store, came lurching into the doorway of the little cell. “Your car!” he gasped.

“What’s happened?” Harry asked, getting up.

But Ernie just repeated, “Hurry, hurry, your car!” and ran back the way he had come, sending more chairs flying in his wake.

“What the hell!” Harry hurried after the boy, nearly tripping over a fallen chair. When he got to the street he saw nothing, but Ernie was standing at the corner of the building gesturing frantically.

As he came around the corner, Harry saw that there hadn’t really been any need to hurry. There in the Lamplighter’s parking lot his car was solid mass of flames. From the tires to the soft top, red and orange flames were in total possession. Paint blisters rose in big patches, and the leather steering-wheel cover curled up as if in final salute. There was no question of saving the car.

Around the parking lot stood a silent fringe of shoppers and merchants watching the fire with solemn appreciation.

“Has anybody called the fire department?” Harry asked nobody in particular.

“I did,” said Ernie, “as soon as I saw the smoke.”

Harry never heard the sirens, but a red fire van soon appeared, and firemen were pushing onlookers back so that they could get near the car with their fire extinguishers. The extinguishers released a flood of white foam, and the automobile was all but lost in a cloud of smoke and steam. The stench of burning rubber, fabric and chemicals descended on the remaining crowd, and most of them began to cough and splutter and hurry away.

In just a few minutes the fire was out, and Harry’s car was a steaming, gap-windowed, stinking hulk resting on four half-melted tires. All that remained of the convertible top was a tangle of metal supports.

“How did this start?” a chubby young fire lieutenant asked Harry.

“I don’t know. I heard a funny noise, and Ernie Hollister came running into my office yelling. I came out and saw this.”

“We’ll finish off here,” the fireman said. “You’d better notify your insurance company and arrange to have it towed away late this afternoon. Christ, it sure stinks, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does.”

Harry became aware that a policeman was standing at his side listening. “I’ll be writing this up, Mr. Caster,” the policeman said. “Will you be at your bar for a while?”

“Yes,” Harry said, “I’ll be there.”

Before Harry got to the door of the Lamplighter, he heard the telephone ringing, and he knew who was calling. The telephone shrilled persistently as he walked back to his office.

“Hello, Mr. Rice,” Harry said as he picked up the receiver. “I was expecting to hear from you, but not quite so soon.”

“Hello, Harry,” said Rizzo. “Have you been doing like I said, thinking over the proposal I made to you?”

“It’s ‘Harry’ now, is it?”

“Well, we’re going to be partners, aren’t we? You call me Charlie.”

“Are we?” asked Harry.

“Yes, I think so,” said Rizzo. “I really think so. I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

“Yeah, there’s something about a burned-out car that really brings two people together. Don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, Harry, but what about our deal?” Harry was silent.

“Hello?” said Rizzo with the beginning of an edge to his voice.

“You’ve got to give me more time to think,” said Harry. “I need more time. Everything is so sudden.”

“Okay,” said Rizzo, “okay. But don’t take too long about it. I want to get this deal settled before something happens.”

“You mean something else, don’t you?” Harry asked, but the line was dead.

* * *

Roy Beddell, the Chief of Police of Parker’s Landing, slumped in his scarred wooden desk reading studiously from an FBI report on interstate automobile theft. His lined face was wrinkled with concentration, and periodically he ran a thick hand through stubble-short, prematurely white hair. A pair of black-framed reading glasses perched unfamiliarly on his bony, vaguely Indian nose.

Chief Beddell’s major experience of the West had been a two-week vacation in Arizona several years before, but he had a curiously Western look about him. In his ten years as Chief, the force’s uniforms had changed from New York City blue-black to a crisply pressed, sage-colored gabardine and a high-crowned Stetson. And the majority of his men copied Beddell’s highly polished tan boots.

The men the Chief played poker with on Friday nights were sometimes allowed to refer to him as “Cowboy,” especially if he was winning. But the few persons who had tried to use the expression to ridicule him soon found that this was a dangerous practice in Parker’s Landing.

Beddell looked up with annoyance as Vern Hodges, his assistant, entered with a knuckle rap on his office door. “There’s a citizen name of Caster here,” Hodges said. “Says he wants to talk to you.”

“What’s he want?”

“He won’t say. Says it’s very important, and he has to speak to the Chief himself.”

Beddell knew Harry. He knew everyone who’d been in town for more than a year or so. The Chief knew Harry as a relatively new resident, one of the few Jews in town and a reputable and potentially successful businessman. But they’d never done more than pass a few polite words. They’d never had any reason to be acquainted professionally.

“Okay, Vern, send him in. But for Christ’s sake, come back in a few minutes so I can get rid of him.”

Harry walked into the Chief’s office with the diffidence of a man with a natural aversion to the police and police stations.

“Hello, Mr. Caster,” Beddell said, gesturing to a curve-backed chair in front of his desk. Before Harry could quite sit down, he asked: “What can I do for you today?” Beddell’s manner was cordial but brisk, and Harry knew that the Chief of Police didn’t want him to linger.

But Harry didn’t know how to start. To him, the problem was simple: to get Rizzo off his back and behind bars if possible. But how could he say this to Beddell? The Chief sat looking at him with quizzical impatience, and Harry had to start somewhere.

“You’ve probably heard that about an hour ago my car burned up in the parking lot of my bar,” he began.

“Yes,” said Beddell. “Sergeant Shaw called it in, but I haven’t seen his report yet. That’s a hell of a thing. I hope you’re insured.”

“Yes,” Harry said. And then he decided that he might as well plunge right in. “But it wasn’t an accident. Somebody deliberately destroyed my car.”

Beddell didn’t say anything, and Harry was disappointed at the lack of response. But then the Chief spoke with deliberation. “You say someone burned your car on purpose?”

“Yes,” said Harry. He looked nervously around at the opaque glass walls of the office and asked, “Do you mind if I close the door?”

“Go ahead.”

When he returned to the chair, Harry felt a little more at ease. But he tensed immediately when Beddell said in a hard voice, “Now suppose you tell me what this is all about, Mr. Caster. You claim that someone has set fire to your automobile. I think we’d better get an official statement from you.” He pushed a button on the edge of his desk.

“Well, look,” Harry said in a rush, “do you know a man who calls himself Charlie Rice?”

At the name, a slight but definite change came over Beddell’s open face. It was as if a transparent shield had fallen over his features, giving them a frozen wariness. Before he could speak, a middle-aged woman in a white, frilled blouse gave a token rap on the door and came into the office. She carried a stenographer’s pad.

“Yes, Chief,” she said, looking at Harry with benign disinterest.

“Sorry, Shirley,” Beddell said. “False alarm…We won’t need you for the moment.”

With no change of expression, the secretary swiveled and left the office, closing the door firmly behind her. Beddell watched her broad back until the closing door blotted it out. Then he turned his pale eyes back to Harry Caster.

“You said something about Charlie Rice,” he said flatly.

“Yes,” Harry said, “do you know him?”

“I know him. He’s been living in Parker’s Landing for several years, and his boy Bobby plays on the Police Athletic League baseball team. He’s the best pitcher we’ve got.” He looked very deliberately into Harry’s face. “But what has Charlie Rice got to do with this situation?”

Harry knew he had to come out with it eventually. “Do you know the name Carlo Rizzo?”

“I don’t believe I do,” said Beddell, and his face didn’t alter from the flat, neutral expression he’d worn since Harry mentioned Charlie Rice. “What about this Carlo Rizzo?” His voice was wearing thin with barely concealed irritation.

At this point, Vern Hodges knocked and stuck his head into the office. He started to say something. “Not now, Vern,” Beddell snapped, “later!” The policeman pulled the door shut as if it were electrified.

“What about this Carlo Rizzo?” Beddell repeated.

“That’s Charlie Rice’s real name,” Harry said. He decided that he might as well go all the way. “And it was Rizzo who burned my car this morning, or at least had it done.”

Beddell said nothing to this, and Harry sat feeling foolish. So he stopped talking. Finally, Beddell said: “Go on.”

“Well,” Harry said, “right after it happened, Rizzo called me at the Lamplighter and—”

Beddell cut him short. “Mr. Caster,” he said, “you’d better go back to the beginning. I think we’re both getting a bit confused.” Harry didn’t feel at all confused, but he went right back to the night before when Rizzo had approached him at the bar. It wasn’t a long story, but he told it step by step, trying to stick to the facts and not get sidetracked or long-winded.

The Police Chief listened to Harry without comment, like a teacher hearing a nervous recitation. When Harry had finished he felt both glad to have it all out and anxious about what would come next. Beddell sat silent, as if letting the story sink in. Then he said: “Well, Mr. Caster, what do you want me to do about all of this?”

This was the last reaction Harry had expected. He’d been fully prepared to be disbelieved or even expected that his sanity would be questioned. But Beddell seemed to accept his story completely. “You do believe me, don’t you?” Harry asked, just to make sure. Beddell didn’t answer the question. But after resettling himself in his old leather chair, he fixed Harry with his eyes and began to speak.

“Mr. Caster, when I came on this police force nearly thirty years ago, Parker’s Landing was a much different place. It was a small town, much quieter and much more simple. We had crime, all right, but it was a different sort of crime: a few drunks, the occasional fight, cars stolen now and then by high-school kids, a few petty burglaries. We even had a genuine murder in 1940. Fellow stabbed his eldest son at the dinner table. Quite a messy business.” Harry started to say something, but Beddell stopped him with a gesture that was also a command.

“But as I say, it was a small town. A cop not only knew everybody in town, he knew most everything about them: families, school records, any little quirks about them that might bear watching. More to the point is that you soon got to know the few new people who came into town. You got to know them real well. You know,” Beddell gave the practiced smile of the storyteller who is calling on an old favorite, “one of my own ancestors came here with Jedediah Parker’s second boat, but some people hereabouts still think of my family as newcomers.”

Harry knew he was expected to react, so he smiled weakly. But he wondered what all this had to do with Rizzo trying to muscle in on his business.

“But things are different now, Mr. Caster,” Beddell said. “Parker’s Landing is not the same town. The war brought a lot of changes. Some people left and never came back. And after the war, a lot of new people came in. Some very good people, mind you. Did you know that Mayor Frost’s people came here only in 1946?”

Without waiting for an answer, Beddell went on. “But it was a different sort of people coming in—city people, people with a lot of money and fancy jobs, people with foreign names. Poles, Italians, Jews.” The Chief cut off his narrative, and Harry could detect a hint of slyness in his manner. “You’re Jewish, aren’t you, Mr. Caster?”

“Yes,” Harry said, “I am.”

“You know,” said Beddell, “it used to be we hardly had any foreigners in Parker’s Landing. Oh, there was always a family or two of bohunks somewhere around—I had a cousin married into them— but after the war we began to get a real mixture of people. Nowadays white, home-born Anglo-Saxons are the real minority in Parker’s Landing.”

Beddell paused again, and Harry decided to wait him out. He had a feeling that whatever the Chief was working around to was going to show up quite soon.

“Take Charlie Rice, for instance,” the policeman continued. “As new residents go, he’s a pretty old-timer. He’s got a damned nice kid, and so far as I know he’s a solid citizen. But I don’t really know much about him. All I know is that he’s never been on my blotter. You say his name is really Carlo Rizzo. A lot of people change their names.”

Harry knew what was coming.

“You, yourself, Mr. Caster,” the Chief continued. “Caster’s not a Jewish name, is it? Didn’t your family originally have some other name?”

Harry cursed his grandfather’s ambition and pretensions as he answered, “Yes, Kastransky. My grandfather—”

“There you are, Mr. Caster,” Beddell broke back in, “times change, names change. Rice may very well be Rizzo, but that doesn’t necessarily make him a bad fella.”

Harry came back sharply: “It’s not Rizzo’s name that bothers me. It’s the fact that he’s trying to take over my business and seems ready to use violence to do it. And I’ve come to you for help. This is the police department, isn’t it?”

Chief Beddell drew himself up behind his desk, and when he spoke again it was not with easy informality. “Yes, it is, Mr. Caster,” he said. “I’ll be very happy to take an official complaint from you on your allegations against Mr. Rice. Nothing could be easier. But my advice—both personal and official—is to keep in mind that libel is a very tricky business. You are accusing him of intimidation and conspiracy to commit arson, two very serious charges. If you fail to make them stick, you’ll find yourself in some very deep water. But if you like, I’ll just ring for my secretary again, and she’ll take down your complaint.”

The Chief’s hand moved toward the buzzer, and Harry watched with nervous fascination to see if he really would push it. But just as Beddell’s finger got to the button, Harry lost his nerve.

“Wait,” he said, and he cursed himself as he saw the hand jerk to a sudden stop. Perhaps if I’d waited, he thought, he wouldn’t have rung for the secretary. But Harry also knew that he was no match for the Chief of Police in a battle of nerves. “Look,” he said, “I know what I’m saying is true, but I can’t prove it.”

“You have no witnesses,” the Chief said rather than asked. Harry thought he said it a bit too readily.

“No,” Harry admitted, “no witnesses.”

“Mr. Caster,” Beddell began, and Harry could sense that he was relaxed and confident once more. Harry knew that he was about to be brushed off. “My best advice to you is to go home and think this all out very carefully. The situation you have brought up—as you describe it—is a very serious one and should not be proceeded on lightly. Sergeant’s Shaw’s report will tell us what caused the destruction of your car, and I’ll be studying it very carefully. It could have been only a short in the wiring, you know.”

Harry said nothing.

“And,” continued Beddell in an easy manner, “if it will make you feel any better, we’ll have a friendly word with Charlie Rice and—”

“No,” Harry said with alarm. “If he finds out I—”

“Never fear,” said Beddell soothingly, “what has passed between us in this office will go no farther than these walls. I’ll just see that Rice knows we’re taking official notice of what happened to your car. If it was other than a freak accident, he’ll know that we know all about it. I think he may find this information worth having.” Beddell got to his feet, continuing: “Don’t worry, Mr. Caster. We may be just a sleepy, small-town police force, but I think you’ll find we do a pretty good job for our citizens.”

Harry knew he’d been dismissed, and there was nothing for him to do but to get up and leave. “If anything else happens,” the Chief said, shepherding Harry out of his office door, “you get on the phone directly to me. I’m sure that between us we can sort this thing out.” He forced his big, firm hand on Harry and raised his voice slightly. “Thanks very much for coming in, Mr. Caster. Damn shame about your car. I’ll get back to you as soon as I get my sergeant’s report. Goodbye.”

Harry found himself on the steps of the police station no more comforted than when he had gone in. He was more worried, if anything. Harry felt he could expect no help from Beddell, unless it was after Rizzo had wiped out his business and perhaps his family. In his imagination, he could see the Chief on the telephone at that very moment telling Rizzo all that had happened in his office. The image gave Harry a sick feeling in his bowels.

Chief Beddell was not on the telephone to Rizzo, but before Harry had been in the Chief’s office five minutes, Rizzo knew about it. His informant wasn’t able to tell Rizzo what had passed between Harry Caster and the Chief, but he could guess. Thanking his friend at the police station, Rizzo put down the telephone with a frown of concentration. He took up a golf club and practiced a few putts on the living-room carpet. But Rizzo’s thoughts were miles away from the little white ball.

4

No more than an hour later, Harry was on the Hudson Expressway in a rented car headed for Manhattan. It was like going back nearly thirty years to be running to his brother for help. He felt like a sixteen-year-old high schoolboy again going to see his brother at Columbia University. Not Milton, the Hebrew scholar, but by then Mickey Caster, fraternity man, athlete, seducer—or so he said—of incredibly beautiful gentile girls. Rich gentile girls.

And then when the war came, Harry enlisted in the Army Air Corps to be a pilot and ended up painting signs at Fort Carson, Colorado. Mickey—you didn’t dare call him Milton any more—waited until he got drafted into the infantry. And this came only after an unsuccessful appeal to a higher court—Ruth Fineman, a congressman’s homely daughter who couldn’t quite believe Mickey’s sudden love for her.

But once the Army was inevitable, of course Mickey had to become a hero. Harry came back from the Army a paint-stained technical corporal, but Mickey emerged a twenty-five-year-old captain with a Distinguished Service Cross, two Purple Hearts, and a general’s daughter for a wife.

Harry had drifted into a series of small businesses and semi-successful bars which had led him to the Lamplighter. For Mickey, law school hadn’t exactly worked out. But some of the best companies in New York opened their doors gladly for Mickey Caster, and Mickey started a climb which had some twists that Harry still didn’t fully understand.

Harry didn’t see his brother more than three times a year. But there were always birthday presents from Uncle Mickey, and at odd intervals and even odder hours, Harry got used to receiving long telephone calls. Mickey seldom bothered to say hello.

“There are only two possibilities,” Harry heard one morning at three o’clock when he answered the telephone: “either I buy Kurtzman out or he buys us out. And I’m a son of a bitch if I’ll be bought out by that mealy-mouthed…” Finally, Mickey would wind down. “Good to talk to you, kid,” he’d say. Then he’d hang up.

Sometimes he’d ask Harry’s advice and listen carefully to it, then hang up without comment. Several times over the years, Harry was surprised to see in the newspapers that his advice had been taken. He realized that he could have made a considerable amount of money by acting on the information he gleaned from these late-night calls, but he never did. And, without making a conscious resolution, Harry had never gone to his successful brother for financial help.

But it wasn’t money Harry was seeking now; nor was it something he felt safe talking about on the telephone. On Manhattan’s East Side, Harry pulled the rented car into an expensive-looking parking garage and surrendered the car to an attendant who looked like a bank manager. I can’t wait to see his reaction to a quarter tip, Harry thought as he left the garage.

Mickey’s building was a large, old house with no external signs that it was anything but an expensive private residence. The building had no external numbers, and until Harry saw the 66s sewn on the doorman’s Confederate-gray collar, he thought he’d passed it.

As Harry set foot on the thick, plum-colored carpet of the foyer, a woman in her late thirties with gray-rinsed hair challenged him. “May I help you?”

Harry told her who he was and she led him to a narrow door which was nearly invisible in the elaborate molding of the walls. She opened the door and ushered Harry into a tiny elevator lined with silvered glass. Pushing an unnumbered black button, she closed the door again, and the elevator began to rise.

When the elevator door opened again, Harry found his brother facing him.

“Kid,” said Mickey Caster, “it’s good to see you. Come on in. You’ve never been to this office before, have you?”

A stranger seeing Harry and Mickey together would probably realize that they were related, but he’d be hard pressed to say how he knew. The similarities were many, but they added up to two distinctly different men.

Both were just below average height, but Mickey was fine-boned whereas Harry was round-headed and slightly pudgy. Mickey, too, had begun to lose some hair, but instead of Harry’s growing bald spot, his thinning hair, artfully molded by a cunning barber, only enhanced the translucent fineness of his features. Face to face, the brothers were like prince and peasant, related by some quirk of ancestry.

“No, I haven’t,” said Harry, taking in the outer room of the office. It had the unworn look of a parlor which through no fault of its own is largely unused. Harry didn’t know furniture, but he sensed that the few pieces in the room were worth more than his houseful.

“Come inside,” said Mickey. He led his brother into a large, rectangular room with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides opening onto a narrow terrace. A small Regency desk littered with papers stood at the far end of the room.

A slim, blonde girl rose from a smooth-fabric sofa as they entered the office. She seemed to be in her mid-twenties, mature yet youthfully resilient. She looked, to Harry, as expensive as the room.

“Harry,” Mickey said, “this is Alison, my secretary.” He put an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Ally, this is my kid brother.”

“How do you do, Mr. Caster,” she said in an accent as English as the best finishing school in New York could make it.

“Alison,” Mickey said, “we’ve got some important things to discuss, and I won’t need you for a while. Will you pour us a couple of drinks—Scotch okay with you, Harry?—and take my calls in your place?”

Alison put two cut-glass tumblers of Scotch and ice on a low tubular steel-and-glass table in front of the sofa and with a soft smile at Harry went through a door in the side wall.

“Alison lives here,” Mickey explained, seating himself on the couch and picking up a glass. “It’s convenient. Now, sit down, kid, take a swig of this ten-year-old poison and tell me what this is all about.”

On the telephone, Harry had said only that he was in trouble and had to talk to Mickey right away. Mickey had immediately said come right in and had canceled the rest of his schedule for the day. Now, Harry told him in full detail what had happened from the moment Rizzo had spoken to him to the time he’d left Beddell’s office.

“And,” Harry finished, “that bastard Beddell says if anything else happens—if I get my head blown off, I suppose—I’m to let him know right away. And he’ll give Rizzo a good talking to.”

Harry was disappointed that Mickey showed so little emotion at the story he’d told him. There was no question that Mickey believed him, but he just poured them each another drink from the decanter.

“Harry,” he said after a long swallow, “how much do you know about this Rizzo character?”

“Not very much. Only what the cop told me. And Marco. Rizzo’s been living in Parker’s Landing for some time, he wants the Lamplighter handed to him on a platter and isn’t too particular what he has to do to get it. Marco, he says Rizzo’s very likely a member of the local Mafia family, but not much of a big shot.”

“Look, kid,” Mickey said, “don’t jump all over me because I ask this, but could you make a go of it if you gave Rizzo half of the action?”

“Give him half?” Harry shouted. “What are you talking about? This is advice from a brother? Thanks very much. I think I came to the wrong place.” Harry started to get up.

“Harry, Harry,” Mickey said gently, putting a wiry hand on his brother’s arm. “I asked you not to jump in my face. That was a theoretical question, not advice. Of course, you’re not going to give him half of the joint. But—now think a minute—could you, theoretically, that is, and still make a go of it?”

Harry settled back, but he didn’t have to think. “Give him half of what? My debts? I went into hock up to my eyeballs to get that place, and every cent that comes in over bare expenses is going against the debt.”

“I thought so,” said Mickey, “but I wanted to make sure. In business, Harry, you’ve got to consider all of the possibilities, no matter how insane they seem. And from a strictly hypothetical point of view, letting him have half is one solution if it’s financially possible. That’s quite aside from the moral side of the question.”

“You may be able to get aside from the moral side of the question,” Harry said, “but I can’t. Do you suppose I could stand to stay in business knowing that I was handing half of the profits over to a gangster?”

“Plenty of people have, Harry boy,” Mickey said softly, “but that’s beside the point. On to the next possibility. Could you sell out of the Lamplighter and go into something else?” He quickly held up a small, well-kept hand. “I’m not saying you should. I want to know if you could.”

“No. A year from now, maybe. But I haven’t yet proved I can make a success of it. I couldn’t get enough from the Lamplighter to open up a hot dog stand.”

“Harry,” Mickey said cautiously, “you know I’d be happy to—”

“No,” said Harry sharply. “Dammit no, Milty”—the old nickname popped out—”you know how I feel about that.”

“Okay, okay,” said his brother with regret, “that’s out. Do you think you could buy this Rizzo off with a lump sum—say a grand?”

“A thousand bucks!” exclaimed Harry. “Why—”

“No, I suppose not,” said Mickey. “Since when could you scare off a shark by giving him a leg to nibble on?”

Both brothers were silent for a while.

“So, Harry,” Mickey broke the silence, “what are you going to do?”

“That’s what I came here to find out,” said Harry hopelessly.

“Har, there’s one possibility we haven’t considered. I don’t even know if it’s a possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“Fighting back. Not letting this guinea get away with it.”

“Fight back?” asked Harry. “How? What am I supposed to do— go over and let the air out of his tires? I wouldn’t know how to blow up his car. How could I fight a thug like Rizzo?”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Mickey said. “If you’re really serious, I think I know where you could get some help. There are people who know about such things.”

“But how could they help me?”

“By scaring Rizzo off. Convincing him that he’d be better off if he left you and the Lamplighter alone. He could be made to see reason.”

“There wouldn’t have to be any violence, would there?”

“Kid, I just don’t know. Look, apparently you’ve got two choices. Either give in to Rizzo and go on the breadline or fight him. Which is it going to be?”

Harry thought for a long moment. “I won’t,” he said, “I can’t— give in to him. I’ve got too much tied up in that place. I guess I’ll have to fight. But what about Hildy and the girls? You know how the Mafia is supposed to operate. What about them?”

“I don’t know,” said Mickey, “but the important decision has been made. You want to fight Rizzo. Now, I’ve got a lot of telephoning to do and I need some privacy.” He got up and knocked loudly on the door at the side of the sofa. “Ally, I’ve got a new gin rummy pigeon for you. He’ll be in in just a moment, so make sure you’ve got something on.” To Harry he said: “Beat it. Go take some of Alison’s money. I’ll come and get you when I’ve got some things sorted out. Then we’ll go and have a good dinner if you’ve won enough money.”

Harry shrugged and walked through the doorway into the secretary’s apartment.

5

Alec Hoerner sat on a stool in a dark corner of Finlay’s Knockout Bar on Eighth Avenue, watching the front door. At not quite nine in the evening, only a thin scattering of tourists and regulars clung to the long, curved bar, drinking and gawking at a hundred years of boxing history stuck on the big back mirror or hanging from the high, dirty ceiling on ancient cords.

At first glance, one might think Hoerner had once been a boxer himself—a lean, thick-shouldered light-heavyweight more noted for cunning than brute force. Or sitting there in an anonymous suit with an equally forgettable hat pushed back to reveal dark hair and a narrow forehead, he might have been a plainclothes cop. The eyes—translucent buttons of pale jade in the neon-reflected light—were impersonal enough.

And so he was—in a way. Alec Hoerner was a private detective. The detective part came from spending six and a half years in Vietnam with the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps, followed by nearly two years with the New York Police Department. Hoerner had spent the last six months as a freelance, calling himself Hoerner Associates, and he’d been on the receiving end of one of Mickey Caster’s many telephone calls that afternoon.

At the time, Hoerner had been in Central Park enjoying the mild autumn sunshine and keeping an eye on a very foolish bank vice-president for his suspicious wife. The banker’s foolishness came in the form of a childlike blonde stewardess, and Hoerner was carefully noting just how justified the wife’s suspicions were when his pocket receiver buzzed.

From the corner telephone booth, Hoerner could still see the romantic couple when a strong voice came on the line: “Mr. Hoerner.”

“Mrs. Meltzer,” said Hoerner, watching the banker light two cigarettes in his best Charles Boyer style.

“A call for you,” said the manageress of Hoerner’s answering service. “Just a few moments ago. I would have waited until you called in if it hadn’t sounded important.” He could hear dollar signs in her voice.

“And if I didn’t owe you so much money, eh, Mrs. M?”

“Mr. Hoerner,” she said sternly yet lovingly, as if he’d just come into her living room with muddy shoes but carrying a bunch of roses, “you know that I don’t care about your outstanding account, but Mr. Blavatsky…”

She made the firm’s accountant sound like Attila the Hun out of Simon Legree. But Hoerner knew he was a twenty-seven-year-old business-college graduate with a hollow chest and a bad wheeze from too much early-morning bird-watching in Greenpoint Park.

“Is he picking on you again, Mrs. M?” Hoerner asked with mock solicitude. “You just say the word and me and my pals will…”

Mrs. Meltzer sighed deeply and expressively. She was about to say something when Hoerner noticed that the banker was helping his ladylove from the park bench.

“Sorry,” he said, “it looks like my rabbits are making a run for it. What was that call, Mrs. M?”

“A Mr. Mickey Caster,” she said, all business again. “He called himself, and he said he wanted to talk to you most urgently.”

Hoerner knew the name immediately. And he knew what it could mean. “Give me the number quickly, Mother M,” he said, totally unconcerned that the banker’s pin-striped back was disappearing into the taxi into which he’d just lifted Miss TWA. “Thanks,” he said, hanging up and beginning to dial the number at the same time.

Hoerner’s telephone conversation with Mickey Caster was not a long one. He played it cool and distant until Caster explained what he wanted. Those hot-shot businessmen could smell eagerness like they could smell money. He listened without comment until Caster mentioned the name Rizzo.

“Which Rizzo is that?”

“Carlo Rizzo,” Caster said. “He calls himself Charlie Rice. He lives up in Parker’s Landing near my kid brother and has some small rackets.”

“I know the one,” Hoerner said. Once he’d made the connection, data about Carlo Rizzo assembled around the name—the Speranza family, Abe Montara, the Lower Hudson Alliance. And his voice told Mickey Caster that Hoerner had lost interest in the proposition before hearing very much about it.

But before Hoerner could kiss Caster off with a “Thanks very much for calling, but…” Mickey mentioned a figure and a name. The figure wasn’t high enough to scare Hoerner off, but it was enough to make him stop and think. The name was only a name, but to Hoerner it offered vistas of opening doors that had been shut tight before.

“Just talk to my brother, Hoerner,” Mickey Caster said. “He’ll give you all the dope, and then you can decide. From what I’ve heard about you, I think you can handle the situation, and I won’t forget it.”

“I’ll have a talk with him,” Hoerner said, and a date was made for him to meet Harry that evening. Hoerner stepped out of the booth and twenty minutes later was sitting back in his rickety desk chair staring at a two-year-old Playboy calendar without seeing it. Hoerner’s “office” was a cubicle with a half-translucent door at the back of an unsuccessful certified public accountant’s suite of offices. Little by little, the CPA had rented off more and more space until he no longer had a room there himself. The only time the subtenants saw him was on the first of the month when he lurked in the outer hall trying to collect rents.

Frowning, Hoerner unlocked the cylindrical metal lock on the telephone dial and spent the afternoon making calls. At first what he heard confirmed what he already knew, and it was all bad. The situation sounded even tougher than it had seemed at first. Hoerner was tempted to call Caster and tell him the meeting with his brother was off. But something—mostly the knowledge that if he didn’t come up with some real money soon, he’d be in trouble—made Hoerner keep telephoning contacts.

In turn he called friends, street contacts, a couple of guys he still kept in touch with at police headquarters. Hoerner collected a few unpaid debts in the form of bits of information, put himself in debt here and there for a bit more; working the slow but fruitful circuit that was the lifeline of anybody—on either side of the law—who had to know what was happening.

Finally, as things looked progressively less hopeful, a contact casually let it drop that Rizzo was in the shit with Abe Montara. He had been for weeks, and it didn’t look like Abe was going to kiss and make up very soon. With this bit of information in his pocket, Hoerner found the rest easy. Within an hour, just as it was beginning to grow dark, he had most of the story. He knew where Rizzo stood with the family—or at least with Montara, and that was what counted—and now Hoerner had to make up his own mind. He sat working out the possibilities in his mind, not even bothering to turn on the light or respond when the last office tenant, a small-time music publisher, shouted his usual goodbye. Hoerner sat silently until the luminous dial on his watch told him it was time to get something to eat and meet Harry Caster.

Hoerner spotted him the moment Harry walked into Finlay’s and stood blinking with stranger’s eyes. The detective let him get seated in the appointed booth but not settled before he moved in. “Mr. Caster,” he said, “your brother said I’d find you here. I’m Alec Hoerner. Let’s order drinks before we start to talk.”

The glow of satisfaction lent by a very expensive dinner had already begun to melt away while Harry was driving to the West Side. Now it was almost entirely gone. Neither man spoke while they waited for the drinks. Each was studying the other.

“I’m a private detective, Mr. Caster,” Hoerner began when the sore-footed waitress had departed. “Your brother says you’ve got a problem, and I’m here to see if we can help you.” The “we” was deliberate. Hoerner had found that it made clients feel more confident if they thought he had an organization behind him. “It will help if you give me all the information you have. Why don’t you start at the beginning and take it step by step to this moment?”

Once again, Harry went over the account, which had begun to sound like fiction, even to him. It was hard to believe that it had all started only the night before. The moment that Rizzo had first spoken to him seemed a long time ago. “…and so,” he concluded, “Mickey said someone would meet me here just after nine o’clock this evening.”

Alec Hoerner sipped his drink and studied the man in front of him. He wondered if Caster had any idea what he was getting into. He doubted it. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself and your family, Mr. Caster? Just anything that comes to mind. It might be useful.”

With the unself-consciousness of a man with great problems, Harry began to speak of Hildy and the girls. Unknowingly, he revealed more of his true feelings and worries to Hoerner than he’d confided to anyone for years. Despite his hard appearance, Hoerner turned out to be an easy man to talk to. It wasn’t only the professional manner; Hoerner seemed to be really listening.

When Harry stopped talking and took a quick, embarrassed sip from his glass, Hoerner made no comment. He had a delicate situation here and he knew it. Hoerner wanted the Caster job—needed it if he was going to keep going, much less get into the big time—but Harry Caster had to know what he was getting into. Hoerner thought he could take Rizzo, but there was a good chance that things could turn nasty, and he wanted that clear up front.

At last he spoke. “How much do you know about Carlo Rizzo?”

“Not very much, except that he’s some kind of crook.”

“And does he frighten you?”

“You’re damned right he frightens me,” Harry said with a nervous laugh. “Wouldn’t he scare you?”

Hoerner ignored the question. “Mr. Caster, let me put you exactly in the picture about Rizzo,” he said. “Aside from the suddenness and intensity of your brush with Rizzo, he may not seem much different from a lot of other people in your town. But he thinks a lot different. He’s spent twenty years in an organization with no more respect for your life, your family and your business than you have for an ant you step on in the street.

“You saw how he reacted to your first resistance, as mild as it was. He had your car destroyed. Just like that. No warning, no preliminaries, no second chance. If he hadn’t needed you for his scheme, you might have been in the car when it was blown. It would have been nothing to Rizzo.”

Hoerner paused, but then went on when Harry said nothing. “This doesn’t mean that Rizzo is inhuman. He’s not. He loves his wife and kids just as much as you love your family. But this means nothing when it comes to dealing with you. You’re not family. You don’t count unless he can use you. You’re one of them—the big outside world that exists only to be exploited by the Carlo Rizzos.

“As long as Rizzo thinks you’re likely to go along, he won’t harm you or your family. But once he gets the idea that you’re going to seriously resist him, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to convince you that it would be better to go along. He’s in a lot of trouble now with his bosses, but Rizzo’s not alone. He’s still got a few friends willing to give him a hand.”

“You make it all sound marvelous,” said Harry sourly. “I may as well slit my throat right now and save Rizzo the trouble. Did Mickey hire you to come here tonight and scare me to death? He should have saved his money.”

“Your brother hasn’t hired me to do anything,” Hoerner said seriously. “It’s up to you whether you want to hire me. I don’t care either way. But I’m not going to kid you that if you do hire me it will be easy. It won’t be. If you decide to fight Rizzo, my organization will back you all the way. But I warn you that once we start, we’re going to have to be faster and harder and meaner than Rizzo to beat him. We’ll be playing by Rizzo’s rules, not yours. There’s going to be no stopping until we win. And we do mean to win.”

“But what will you do?”

“I can’t tell you that. If you decide to retain my organization, you’ll have to put yourself in our hands completely. We’ll tell you what to do, and you’ll do it. You will have no choice. And it won’t be cheap. Our basic fee is a thousand dollars: half when you retain us, and half when the job is done.” Hoerner didn’t tell Harry that this was only a fraction of the sum Mickey had mentioned earlier.

“That’s a lot of money,” Harry said.

“Yes, and it could buy you something you don’t want.” Hoerner leaned back and took a drink from his glass.

Inwardly, Hoerner smiled sardonically at his own speech. He was deadly serious, but Hoerner had no more “organization” than Harry Caster did. Money could buy technical assistance and manpower, but for the most part Hoerner relied on Hoerner. He was deadly confident that he could take Rizzo. And he was willing to take big risks to satisfy Mickey Caster. There was more than one Mr. Blavatsky looking narrowly at Hoerner’s growing debts.

In Harry’s mind, a whirl of possibilities and considerations was battling for his attention. He’d come to the city seeking help, but he’d found even more complications.

Hoerner looked at that round, harmless, baffled face and took pity. “Don’t give me an answer now,” he said. “Go home and take some time to think it over. It’s not an easy decision.” Hoerner knew he wasn’t taking any chances by giving Caster a little bit of line to run with. He didn’t want to press too hard and scare him into surrendering to Rizzo. He wrote a telephone number on a blank card. “If you’ve made up your mind or want to reach me for any reason, call this number. Call any time, but don’t give this number to anyone else, and don’t write it down with my name.”

Harry put the card carefully into his wallet.

6

When he’d said a worried goodbye to Hoerner and left the bar, Harry was surprised to find that it was past eleven o’clock. Checking his car out of a parking lot, he began driving north toward the Hudson Expressway. But as he neared the 125th Street on-ramp, he thought that he’d better call Hildy and let her know he was coming. He should have called before.

“Hello?” said Hildy’s unsleepy voice, and Harry knew that she’d been watching television. It was a safe guess.

“Hildy,” he said, “it’s me.”

“Who’s me? Your voice sounds vaguely like somebody we used to have around here, but he left ever so long ago. No telling when he’ll be back.”

“Very funny,” said Harry. “How’s everything?”

“How is it ever? Utterly fantastic. And the boy business mogul, Mickey? I expect he’s still prospering in his crooked little way.”

“He’s richer than ever,” said Harry. “As much as I disapprove, I forced myself to eat the food at the Four Seasons.”

“How come you never take me to the Four Seasons, or even to the Three Seasons?”

“You wouldn’t like it,” Harry said. “The food is great, the service is superb, and they sneer at you if you don’t eat things like snails and caviar.”

“Let them sneer,” she said. “Me they sneer at in the Burgerama on Hudson Boulevard.” Her tone of voice changed. “Harry, something strange happened today.”

“Not Clark Gable again.”

“No, seriously. It was a man I don’t know. He said his name was Rice. Charles Rice. And he did act peculiar. You know him, don’t you?”

“Slightly. What did he want?” Harry asked carefully.

“I really don’t know. He said he’d just dropped by to see you about something concerned with the bar. But even after I told him you were gone for the day, he kept hanging around. I finally had to offer him some coffee. What’s he have to do with the Lamplighter?”

“Nothing much. He’s been around offering me some kind of a business deal. But I don’t think I’m interested. What did this Rice have to say?”

“Oh, things like what a shame it was that your car accidentally burned up this morning. And what a nice house we have. I should have offered to sell him the place. He made a really big deal over the baby and Lizzie’s picture. Wanted to know how old they were, all about them. Fairly gave me the creeps, I can tell you. He was nice enough in an oily way, I guess, but even I don’t like our kids as much as he claimed to.”

“Anything else?” Harry asked.

“No. I finally got rid of him by starting the vacuum cleaner. But as he left, he said to give you his best and that he’d be getting in touch very soon. Who is this charming person, anyway?”

“Just a local guy,” Harry said. “He’s some sort of a businessman. Don’t bother yourself about him.” He paused. “Hildy, go to bed. I’ve got a few more things to do, and I might be home very late.”

“All right,” Hildy said, “but I want you to tell me just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’re not coming back, I want fair warning so that I can rent your room. I’ll put up a little sign in the front window: ‘Lonely grass widow seeks young, handsome boarder. Good eats.’”

“Just hold off on the sign for a couple of hours,” Harry said. “I won’t be home that late. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“If you’re lucky,” said Hildy. “Good night, sweetheart.” She put down the telephone and walked back to the television set.

Harry fished Hoerner’s card from his wallet. A sleepy girl’s voice answered the telephone. “Oh-two-oh-four.”

“I’d like to speak to Alec Hoerner, please.”

“At this hour?” the girl said. “It’s nearly midnight, you know.”

“I know,” said Harry, “but I still have to speak to him. Is he there, please? He gave me this number.”

“No, he’s not actually here. But hold on and I’ll try to reach him.” The girl put the telephone on hold and dialed another number. She listened to the harsh rasp of a busy signal. From experience, she knew what this meant: Alec Hoerner had taken the receiver off its cradle for the night. She pursed her thin lips with disapproval. “I’m sorry, but I’m unable to reach Mr. Hoerner at this time,” she told Harry. “Could you call back in the morning?”

“No, I really couldn’t. It’s very important that I reach him tonight. I know it sounds corny, but it could be a matter of life and death. Can you try again?”

“I could,” said the girl, “but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do any good. This is only his answering service.” Her voice became confidential. “You see, he’s taken the phone off the hook at his apartment. I can’t reach him at all.”

“Well, where does he live, then?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you that. I couldn’t. It’s the first rule: never give out a client’s address. Mrs. Meltzer would murder me.”

“Mrs. Meltzer?”

“The boss. The manager,” the girl said. “The last time a girl gave out anybody’s address, it was to his ex-wife’s lawyer, and Mrs. M nearly had a coronary. She practically turned blue. Oh, I couldn’t risk it even if I am quitting next week to get married.”

“Congratulations.”

“What?”

“About getting married,” Harry said. “That’s very nice.”

“Oh, thanks. I won’t be sorry to leave here, I can tell you. Working from eleven at night until eight in the morning is no joke.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” said Harry as sincerely as he could. “But listen, Miss, I don’t sound like anybody’s lawyer, do I?”

“Well, no,” she admitted reluctantly, “but…”

“Look,” Harry insisted, “less than an hour ago I was sitting in a bar with Mr. Hoerner. He’s working for me. I’m his client. And he gave me this number and said to get in touch if anything came up and I needed him. Well, something has come up, and I’ve got to get in touch with him right now.”

“It can’t wait until morning?”

“No, it really can’t. I told you it was a very serious matter. And it is.”

“You say you saw Mr. Hoerner tonight?”

“Sure. He’s a tall guy, sort of thin but strong-looking with a narrow face and strange, greenish eyes.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said. “I’ve only talked to him on the phone, but he sounds a bit weird to me. You wouldn’t believe some of the messages he gets. I could tell you…”

“I’ll bet,” said Harry, “but really, I’ve got to get in touch with Mr. Hoerner right now. Can’t you just give me his address? Your boss won’t know, and next week you’ll be gone anyway.”

“Well, all right,” said the girl, “but I hope you’re telling me the truth.”

“I am,” said Harry. “I am.”

She gave Harry an address in the West Forties, and Harry thanked her profusely.

“Oh, sure,” said the girl, swallowing a yawn. “G’bye, now.” She disconnected the telephone and picked up a thick historical novel.

Before she’d finished a page, Harry was back in his car and retracing his path toward midtown Manhattan. The 500 block of West 45th Street was a bleak, forgotten line of large warehouses and dirty brownstone tenements untouched by the force-fed glitter of Broadway to the immediate east. Cutting in behind a late-model Buick in the final stages of disintegration, Harry carefully locked the car and climbed a tenement stoop squeezed between squat warehouses. Inside, the narrow stairway was littered with a week’s refuse, and a man, ragged with age and hard use, lay sleeping on the first landing, knees and forehead pressed against an apartment door.

On the third floor, Harry stopped in front of a thin door with the tin letter G hanging by a nail from its peeling, green surface. One of those fish-eye peepholes was placed slightly off center about chest high in the door. Harry stood for a moment shifting his weight and then raised his right arm as if it didn’t belong to him. He laid his knuckles on the green door gently in a light knock. There was no answer. He rapped again, a bit harder, and the door resounded hollowly.

After a long pause, a girl’s voice, thin and peevish, answered: “Who is it? What do you want?”

Harry cleared his throat and said, “Is Mr. Hoerner there? This is Harry Caster. I’m sorry to come so late, but—”

The girl giggled. “He’s not here. Go away.”

Harry didn’t know what to do or say.

“You still there?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “Mr. Hoerner—”

“Go away. There’s no—”

The girl’s voice was cut off sharply, and Alec Hoerner, wide awake, said, “The door’s open, Mr. Caster. Come in.”

Harry turned the knob and pushed into the darkened room. He felt a light cord brush his face.

“Turn on the light,” said Hoerner’s voice from a black corner. With a jerk of the cord, a naked bulb overhead threw the small room into cruel illumination. Single-windowed and wallpapered, the room was nearly filled with a gigantic bed in which lay Alec Hoerner and a very young blonde girl. The air in the room was warm and stale, and the girl lay on her back covered only to the top of her prominent hip bones by a sheet which looked to be satin or silk. Her full, elongated breasts hung over discernible ribs. Unblinking eyes in a sharp face never left Harry’s face.

“Hello, Mr. Caster,” said Hoerner. “I’m surprised to see you so soon.” He lay back propped up against two black-covered pillows.

“I tried to call,” Harry said, seeing at the same time the telephone receiver off its hook on a small linoleum-covered table. “I had to reach you. Rizzo—”

Hoerner stopped him with an upheld palm. “Maureen, honey,” he said, “why don’t you take a little walk? I’ve got to take care of a little business.”

“Hoerner,” she protested, “you said all night. You promised!”

“Move.” Hoerner cocked a leg and pushed the naked girl out of the bed into a passive heap on the floor. For a moment she lay there with sprawling dignity, looking not at Hoerner but at Harry’s confused face. Then, as if she were alone, the girl got to her feet, walked to the door and opened it.

“What about your clothes?” asked Hoerner.

The girl closed the door behind her without a word.

“One of the neighbors,” Hoerner said. “We’re mostly swinging singles in this building. And very friendly.”

Harry didn’t say anything. The contrast between the Hoerner he’d met just a few hours ago and this one he saw in bed before him was confusing. His eyes, not knowing where to look, darted about the small room, taking in the shapeless furniture, the rutted linoleum on the floor, and came to rest on a large clear-plastic clothes bag on the wall across from the bed. In the bag was apparently Hoerner’s entire wardrobe, as if it weren’t really in this down-at-the-heels room. At one end hung an Army officer’s dress uniform, complete with medals and ribbons.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” said Hoerner, watching Caster with some amusement while lighting a cigarette from the scarred bedside table.

“I tried to call,” Harry repeated.

“Don’t tell me,” Hoerner said. “That stupid broad at the answering service gave you my address. I’ll have her ass out on the street first thing in the morning.”

“It won’t do any good. She’s leaving next week. Says she’s getting married.”

“Well, bad luck to some poor bastard.” Hoerner changed his tone. “You found me, so what’s happened?”

“I called home,” Harry said, still standing and feeling nailed to the spot by the naked light of the hanging light bulb. “Rizzo was at my house this afternoon asking my wife questions. About our family—the girls. Admiring the house. I think he meant it as a warning to me.”

“No doubt,” said Hoerner, leaning back on one elbow and letting a thin wisp of smoke flow to the ceiling.

“What shall I do?”

“I can’t tell you, Mr. Caster. Only you can make that decision. But have a seat.” He indicated a rickety, straight-back chair in the corner. “Throw my robe onto the bed.”

Harry sat down and was silent for a long moment. Then he said quietly: “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?” asked Hoerner, keeping his eyes on Harry’s face.

“Yes,” said Harry with a firmness he didn’t feel. “As sure as I am of anything right now. I’ve got to do something. What happens next?”

Hoerner was completely changed. Gone was the languid, joking manner. He grabbed up the black silk robe and slipped it over his naked body as he got out of bed. Knotting the belt, he turned to Harry and he was all business.

“Mr. Caster, do you know any place you could send your wife and children for a short while, perhaps a week or two? Someplace that only you know about?”

Harry couldn’t think of a single place. But then it came to him. Hildy’s uncle had a cabin in a remote area a couple of hours’ drive up the river. It would be empty this late in the year, and he knew where the key was kept. He told Hoerner about it.

“That sounds all right. Now, does your wife go shopping on Wednesday mornings?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“She’s going to go tomorrow at just about mid-morning. Have her and the children leave the house as if they’re going on a normal shopping trip. They’re to take nothing unusual with them—no suitcases, no extra clothes—to indicate that it’s anything but a routine visit to the shops. Have her go to the usual stores and buy enough groceries for two weeks. But not enough to raise suspicion. Then I want her to drive around town for at least half an hour, making various stops. Just about noon, your wife is to drive onto the Expressway and go directly to the cabin.”

“Hildy’s not going to like that,” Harry said.

“That’s too bad. It’s what she has to do. You see that she does it. One more thing: If she suspects that she’s being followed, she’s to try to lose the follower. If she fails, she’s to return home. But once she gets to the cabin, she stays there until you contact her. Is there a telephone in the cabin?”

“There wasn’t the last time I was there.”

“Then she’ll have to stay there until you come to get her. Make sure she understands that. Have you got all that?”

Harry asked a few questions, but soon they had it all worked out.

“Okay,” Hoerner said, “go home now and get some sleep. In the morning go to your bar and wait for me to call. If Rizzo gets in touch, or there are signs of him or his friends getting active, call my answering service. I’ll get back to you fast. If Rizzo calls or comes in, stall him.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“I don’t know. Tell him anything, but stall him. Play dumb. Don’t raise his suspicions. If he gets really tough, agree in principle to the deal but put him off as long as you can. Give us some time to get moving, and we’ll keep Rizzo so busy he won’t have time to bother you.”

“How?”

“Leave that to us,” Hoerner said. “Now, go home, and I’m going back to bed. Get all the rest you can tonight. You’re going to need it.”

All the way back to Parker’s Landing, Harry mulled over the consequences of what he had just done, but he couldn’t see them clearly. Nervous as he was, he felt relieved that at least he had some help. He had taken action of some kind. Harry still didn’t know what to think of Alec Hoerner.

7

It was past 2 a.m. when Harry got home. Letting himself in the front door, he stood in the darkened hallway listening to the silence of the house. Despite the late hour, he wasn’t sleepy. His mind was too busy trying to sort out the jumbled events of the last two days and wondering what was to come. Instead of climbing the stairs, he walked through the narrow passageway into the kitchen at the back of the house. Without switching on the light, he sat down at the big round table and tried to think.

The kitchen light was switched on.

“What!” Harry cried with fright. Then he saw Hildy in her ragged terrycloth robe.

“What indeed,” she said. “What are you doing sitting down here in the dark?”

“Nothing much,” said Harry. “I thought I was hungry, but I’m not.”

“Well, I am,” she said, opening the big refrigerator and peering into it. “And while I’m getting something to eat, do you think you could tell me what is going on?” She began to pull small plates of leftovers and covered plastic bowls out of the refrigerator. “It’s obvious,” Hildy continued, “that something very strange is happening. And it’s very likely connected with that nice Mr. Rice who came visiting today.”

She settled herself with her food across the table from Harry. “What sort of a protection policy is he trying to sell you? Don’t you think it’s about time you told me all of the pertinent details? Like exactly how soon we can expect to get blown up like your car?” Hildy had figured out so much that Harry found it fairly easy to tell her the rest. To his surprise, she didn’t seem very frightened. “It’s exactly like Shadow of the Mob,” she said, “except you ought to be a restaurant owner, and I ought to be a young and beautiful redhead. I could dye my hair if that would help any.”

“There’s nothing funny about this, Hildy,” Harry said. “If Rizzo finds out I’ve hired Hoerner, you and the girls will never get out of town in the morning.” He quickly told her Hoerner’s plan.

“Do you mean to say that you’re going to send me off to that rat-trap while you have all the fun here?”

“That’s exactly what I mean to say. You and the girls. Now, let’s get to bed.”

* * *

As soon as the last light went out in the Caster house, the curtain of a darkened window of a neat house across from their backyard was closed, and a little woman verging on old age nervously dialed a telephone number.

“Hello, Mr. Rice?” she said. “It’s Mrs. Costello. You asked me to call.”

“Yes, Mrs. Costello,” Rizzo said, sitting in his small office in pajamas and robe. “Thank you very much.”

“I’m sorry to call so late, but they just went to bed a minute ago. I thought they were going to sit in the kitchen talking all night.”

“That’s okay, Mrs. Costello. I understand. Thank you very much for staying up so late to call me.”

“It’s nothing, believe me. After all you done for my Stanley, it’s the least I can do. I’d have stayed up all night if need be.”

“I appreciate that, Mrs. Costello.” Rizzo fought a yawn and looked at his watch.

“I almost called an hour ago when Mr. Caster got home. I thought he’d gone right up to bed, and I was just about to call you when the light went on in the kitchen and I saw him and Mrs. Caster talking.”

“What time was that?”

“I wrote it down here. It was just 2:05 a.m.”

“Could you see anything else?”

“Well, Mrs. Caster was eating something. I can’t be sure what it was exactly, but—”

“Never mind, Mrs. Costello, you’ve been very helpful.”

“I try to be, Mr. Rice, especially after all you did—”

“I only wish it could have been more, Mrs. Costello,” Rizzo said shortly. “It’s late, and I think—”

“Mr. Rice? I don’t mean to be nosy, but the Casters…” Her voice trailed off.

“Yes?” said Rizzo a little impatiently.

“You see, they’re very nice people and good neighbors, and I hope—I just hope there’s nothing wrong. I mean, because of my calling you like this.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Costello,” Rizzo said in a warm, sincere voice, “it’s just a business matter. You know how business is.”

“I suppose so,” she said, although she didn’t know.

“There you are,” said Rizzo. “You just go to bed and forget all about this. And one of these days soon I’ll see if there’s something else I can do for Stanley. He’s a nice boy. Would you like that, Mrs. Costello?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well then, we’ll just see. I’ll say good night, Mrs. Costello, and thank you again.”

After hanging up, Rizzo sat for a while smoking. He picked up the phone again, made a call, and then went to bed.

“Carlo,” Angela said as he climbed into bed, “is something wrong? It’s not like you to sit up late.”

“It’s nothing,” Rizzo said, sliding his arm under his wife’s shoulders and pulling her to him. He kissed her worried mouth, and Angela’s doubts disappeared in a warming response.

* * *

At mid-morning the next day, the Caster family shopping expedition was about to begin. Hildy had assembled eleven-year-old Lizzie and the baby in the front hallway and was checking to see that everything was ready.

“Lizzie,” she said, “you may carry the laundry bag, and I’ll bring Sophie in her carrycot.”

“The laundry bag is too heavy,” said Lizzie, a thick-bodied girl with a lively face and light-brown pigtails. “I can’t carry it.”

“You will carry it,” said Hildy, “or I’ll cut your head off.”

“I might be able to carry it.”

“Do your best,” said Hildy. “Get going.”

“What’s with the laundry bag?” asked Harry, coming down the stairs. “Hoerner didn’t say anything about doing the laundry.”

“It’s not laundry. It’s diapers and clothes and silly things like that which people like you and Hoerner don’t think about. If you think we’re going to sit in that cabin for a week or two in the clothes we’re wearing, you’re crazy. Don’t worry. It just looks like we’re going to the launderette, a perfectly normal thing to do. Millions of decent people do it every day.”

“Do what every day?” Lizzie asked, returning from Hildy’s battered old car.

“Beat their daughters named Elizabeth until their ears whistle.”

“They do not,” said Lizzie.

“Wait and see,” Hildy said menacingly. “Go wait in the car.”

“I want to kiss Daddy goodbye,” Lizzie whined.

“Go.” Lizzie trudged out the door as if going before a firing squad. “All right,” said Hildy, “we’re off. I’ll call you at the Lamplighter from the service station just before we turn off on the dirt road to the cabin. Then we’ll wait at the cabin until you come and get us. Or the gangsters do.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Harry said.

“Don’t worry. Uncle Herman has a shotgun in the cabin. If anyone but you comes around, I’ll give them both barrels—whatever that means.”

“For God’s sake, just go out there and wait. Read books, eat until you burst, but don’t start getting heroic. I’ve got enough to worry about.”

“Okay,” said Hildy, “no heroics. And that goes for you, too. You’re not much, but you’re all we’ve got.”

From the front room, Harry watched Hildy drive her old car down Elgin Street and then turn right toward the shopping district. The last thing he saw was Lizzie hanging out of the window blowing him kisses. What he didn’t see as he walked upstairs to dress was a gray Ford sedan pull away from the curb a hundred yards up the block and follow Hildy’s car at a discreet distance.

Unaware that she was being followed, Hildy drove directly to the Sav-O-Mart and parked in the large, half-empty parking lot. Leaving Lizzie to mind the baby, she went into the market to shop for their enforced stay at the cabin.

By then the gray car was also in the parking lot and had come to a stop about fifty yards away. The driver, a slender youth with a wispy blond moustache and mottled blue eyes, got out of his car and leaned carelessly against a front fender for a moment. Then he remembered that he was supposed to telephone Rizzo at Mrs. Caster’s first stop. He looked around for a telephone booth and saw one just about twenty feet from Hildy’s car where Lizzie was reading a comic book and jiggling Sophie’s carrycot with her foot.

Casually, the boy walked past Hildy’s car and stepped into the booth. “Hello,” he said, “Mr. Rice? It’s me, Joey. I’m in the Sav- O-Mart parking lot on Bouton Avenue. Mrs. Caster went in about a minute ago.”

“Is there anybody with her?”

“Yeah. A little girl and a baby in her car.”

“Did you see Caster this morning?”

“No, just Mrs. Caster, the girl and the baby. About ten minutes ago the girl came out of their house with a big blue bag and—”

“What sort of bag?”

“Could be a laundry bag,” said Joey.

“Maybe,” said Rizzo. “Joey, you keep an eye on them until they get back home, you understand? Even if it takes all day. Don’t let them out of your sight. And call me if anything unusual happens. You got that?”

“I’ve got it,” Joey said.

After feeling to see if his dime had come back, Joey opened the accordion door of the booth and stepped out. Humming a tune that had been bugging him all morning, he walked past the car where Lizzie sat, without a glance in that direction.

“Hey!” Lizzie said, but Joey kept walking.

“Hey, you!” Lizzie yelled again in her husky-shrill voice. “You! Boy in the black jacket.”

Joey now knew that she meant him, but he still pretended not to hear. Lizzie leaned far out of the car window and screamed: “Yoo boo, yoohoo! You there in the black jacket and white pants.” All eyes were now turned their way, and Joey could hardly keep pretending not to hear.

“I think she’s yellin’ at you, bud,” said a fat old farmer.

“Me?”

“Nobody else.”

Joey turned toward the car where Lizzie still leaned awkwardly out of the window. “What do you want?” he demanded, keeping his distance.

“Come here.”

“What for?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“What about?” Now Joey saw that a small, amused crowd was forming to listen to this long-distance conversation, so he walked over to the car. “What do you want?” he asked in a cross whisper.

“I want to ask you something,” said Lizzie as the other people moved away.

“What is it?”

“You live on Elgin Street, don’t you?”

“Nah.”

“You don’t? But I saw you there this morning.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did!” insisted Lizzie. “You were parked in front of the Hokansons’ house in a light-gray Ford, license plate CAY 090. I noticed because I just learned what a cay is. Do you know what a cay is?” Joey was embarrassed that he’d been spotted.

“It’s a very small island, and very low,” said Lizzie, “also known as a key. I looked it up in my dictionary. Do you have a dictionary?”

“No. Look, I got to—”

“If you don’t live on our block,” Lizzie interrupted, “what were you doing there?”

“I was—oh—visiting a friend of mine. A friend of mine who lives there.”

“What’s his name?”

“You wouldn’t know him. He doesn’t talk to little girls. Goodbye, I got—”

“It isn’t that awful Wayne Bastable, is it?” exclaimed Lizzie. “Ugh. He’s horrible, always covered with dirt and oil from that crazy motorcycle of his and—”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“But—” Lizzie began.

At that moment, Joey glanced up and saw Hildy Caster coming out of the supermarket pushing a loaded shopping cart. “Look,” he said urgently, “I have to go.” He hurried away from the car. “Wait,” Lizzie called, but then she saw her mother coming.

“How was Sophie?” Hildy asked.

“Fine,” Lizzie said. “She didn’t make a peep.”

Hildy loaded the groceries into the trunk and pushed the empty cart to a collection point.

“Did you get anything I like?”

Hildy got into the car. “Yes, five pounds of frozen pig’s noses and a jar of chocolate-covered ants.”

“Ugh,” said Lizzie.

Hildy then began the series of local stops suggested by Hoerner. With each move, Joey was carefully behind. At the launderette, Hildy washed some clean underwear and packed it, Lizzie, and the baby into the car.

“Just one more stop,” Hildy said aloud to herself as she pulled away from the curb, “and then—”

“Mom,” said Lizzie, “did you know we were being followed?”

“Followed?” asked Hildy, fighting an urge to freeze. “Just what do you mean by that, child of my heart?”

“A boy in a gray Ford. He’s been following us since we left home. He said he wasn’t when I talked to him at the supermarket, but I know he is.”

“Why don’t you tell Mommy this kind of thing?” Hildy searched the rear-view mirror. She saw no gray Ford.

“I forgot,” said Lizzie. “Besides, he wasn’t very nice, really. He says he’s a friend of Wayne Bastable’s, but—”

Hildy saw that a gray Ford had pulled behind them at a distance. “Don’t let him see you turn around, Lizzie, but sneak a look and tell me if you see your friend in the gray car.”

“Yes,” said Lizzie positively.

“That’s wonderful,” Hildy said. “For that you get a prize.” But she was thinking: What do I do now? What did Barbara Fane do in Masked Vengeance?

Hildy continued driving automatically, not really knowing where she was headed. And Joey stayed a discreet few cars behind, congratulating himself for being a highly skilled tailer. He didn’t imagine that Lizzie was paying any attention to him and lapsed into a daydream about a carhop he’d met in Tarrytown the weekend before.

For no particular reason, Hildy made a left turn. A few blocks later she turned right. Joey followed these turns automatically, but then something prodded him. The image of the carhop receded slightly.

Hildy leaned over to Lizzie and said: “Fasten your seat belt, kid.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, they’ll be scraping Lizzie off the windshield. Mommy is going to be doing some very interesting driving in a few minutes.”

“You mean fast?”

“Very likely,” said Hildy.

“With lots of twists and turns and skidding and like that?”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“Goody.” Lizzie pulled her safety belt tight.

“Keep a tight hold on Sophie’s cot,” Hildy said. “Pretend you don’t see your friend.”

“Can I stick my tongue out at him?”

“Certainly not. You’re not supposed to even see him.”

Hildy had blundered onto a street running parallel to the Hudson Expressway. At intervals on the right side of the street were on-ramps to the Expressway. Carefully keeping to the left lane, Hildy drove along the crowded street. She saw that Joey had crept up to two cars behind her in order to cut down the chances of losing her.

Helplessly, Hildy passed two on-ramps, but there was no way to get on them, much less lose Joey at the same time. Then, nearly a block ahead, Hildy spotted a possible chance. The traffic light was green, and in the closest oncoming lane a big silver bus sat patiently flashing its left-turn blinkers at the unyielding stream of cars in Hildy’s lane.

Just past the intersection on the right side of the street, gaping invitingly, was another entrance to the Expressway. Checking on Joey’s position, Hildy was surprised to find him right at her back bumper looking bug-eyed and trying to be invisible.

Gritting her teeth, Hildy started her left-turn blinker and slowed slightly at the edge of the intersection. The bus driver, with a slight salute, started pulling slowly out into her lane. Joey, still stuck to her bumper, also signaled for a left turn.

But as soon as she entered the intersection, Hildy whipped the steering wheel all the way around to the right, pushed on the horn button and jammed the accelerator pedal to the floor. “Hold on, Lizzie,” Hildy said as the old car lurched, found its balance and shot directly across the path of the bus. Hildy saw the bus driver’s face go white, and she pushed even harder on the horn, hoping that somehow the noise would keep the narrowing gap open.

Somehow it did. The car on Hildy’s right shot up and over the curb, giving her a vital couple of feet, and with a hurried twist to the left Hildy snaked her car around the stalled bus and gunned it up the on-ramp.

“Sorry. Whoops. Excuse me. Beg pardon,” Hildy muttered to the drivers behind her as she roared onto the Expressway.

At the intersection, Joey had wakened to the danger far too late and had tried to follow Hildy’s kamikaze charge. But in a split second the hole she had squeezed through closed, and Joey found himself jammed to a stop against the massive bumper of the bus and rammed on the left rear fender by an elderly station wagon. From each of these vehicles, an angry and frightened driver had emerged and was heading toward Joey as a poor substitute for the madwoman who had escaped.

“Jeez,” Joey said to both attackers at once, “I got to make a phone call.”

Once she was on the Expressway and sure that Joey hadn’t followed, Hildy pulled into the slow lane. Her hands began shaking so violently that she couldn’t steer, and she weaved into the first lay-by.

“Are you okay?” she asked Lizzie. Sophie still slept.

“Sure,” said Lizzie. “That was fun. Do you know what I did?”

Hildy, still shuddering with fright and watching her hands as if they belonged to someone else, didn’t answer.

“Just as we got onto the on-ramp,” said Lizzie, “I stuck my tongue out at that boy. But do you know what?”

“No,” said Hildy automatically.

“I don’t think he saw me.”

8

On his drive to the Lamplighter late that morning, Harry imagined that he was a perfect target caught in the crosshairs of a high-powered rifle. He fully expected every moment to be his last. But nothing happened. It was a warm morning full of sunshiny autumn haze, and the most sinister thing he heard was the cry of a wood pigeon.

Automatically, he set about cleaning the bar and setting up for the night’s business. Marco had worked alone the night before, and there was much to do. Harry lost himself in the trivial tasks behind the bar, but all the time his mind was with Hildy and the girls. But then, after Harry had begun washing a sinkful of glasses, three telephone calls came which put his mind in new, more complicated channels.

The first was from Marco. “Hello, Marco boy,” Harry said. “You must have had a good night here. Every glass in the joint is dirty.”

“Sorry I wasn’t able to get them cleaned up, Harry, but something came up right at closing time.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “I’ll bet. Has she gone home yet?”

Marco ignored the intended joke. “Harry,” he said in a serious voice, “I’m not going to be able to come in to work.”

“I think you’re getting old, kid,” Harry said, still joking. “Why—”

“Harry,” Marco cut in, and the obvious urgency in his voice stopped Harry cold, “I’m serious. I can’t come in.”

“That’s okay,” Harry said easily. “You take care of yourself, Marco. If you’re not feeling well, maybe you better stay in bed for a couple of days. If it gets too busy, I’ll give Hank Sherman a call to come in and help me out. When do you think you’ll be back in?”

“I’m sorry,” Marco said, “but I can’t work for you anymore. I just can’t.”

“Can’t work? I don’t understand. Why? What’s wrong, Marco?”

“I can’t talk any more right now,” Marco said in a strained voice. “I just can’t work for you, so find somebody else. Goodbye.”

“Marco?” But Marco was gone, and Harry put the receiver down with a baffled look on his face.

But Harry had little time to ponder this strange call. The telephone rang immediately. “Lamplighter.”

“And about time, too,” said Hildy. “What have you been doing—telephoning matrimonial agencies? You’ll be interested to hear that we made it.”

“Where are you?”

“I’d rather not say. You-know-who or God-knows-what might be listening in. Besides, you know very well where we are. Where did you tell me to telephone from?”

“Of course,” said Harry. “But what happened? Did you have any trouble getting out of town?”

“Certainly not. Except for a pimply young man who insisted on trying to join our party. Lizzie spotted him in the supermarket parking lot, and he followed us all over town. But I lost him on Broderick Boulevard near the Expressway. The last time I saw him he was busy discussing motoring etiquette with a big bus driver.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, but Lizzie’s bored stiff already. She wormed it out of me that the cabin doesn’t have a TV set. Sophie’s still sleeping, but if she knew what she’s been through, what little hair she has would be snow white. And the old banger is wheezing something terrible. I think I killed it.”

“Hildy,” Harry said, “go right to the cabin and stay there until I come to get you. Funny things are going on. Marco just called and said he can’t work here anymore. God knows what will happen next.”

“Okay.”

“And take care of yourself.”

“You, too, Harry,” she said and hung up.

Harry tried to call Hoerner, and his answering service said they’d have him call back as soon as possible. Then he went back to his work. A half hour passed, and he was scooping a mound of squeezed-out oranges and lemons from a utility sink when the telephone rang again. He knew the voice immediately.

“Caster,” demanded Carlo Rizzo, “what the hell are you playing at?”

“What do you mean, Mr. Rice?”

“You know what I mean. Your wife, this morning. She almost got one of my boys killed and then she disappeared on the Hudson Expressway.”

“Does that mean you were having her followed?” There was no answer. “I wouldn’t say that was a very friendly thing to do.”

“Caster,” Rizzo said in a too-calm voice, “this is not a joke. If you think this is a game, you’re going to find out that I can play very rough.”

“I’m sure you can.”

“Well then,” Rizzo said, “what’s your answer to my business proposition?” When Harry didn’t respond, Rizzo insisted: “I want an answer.”

“I need more time,” Harry said. “This is a complicated proposition.”

“There is no more time, Caster. I want an answer right now. What is it?”

“What choice have I, really?”

“None.”

“All right, I’ll go for your deal.”

“Now you’re being smart. I’ll be right over.”

“No,” Harry said, “make it tonight. Come around—come around just before closing time. Say a quarter to two.”

“Why not now?” Rizzo pressed. “I’m coming over.”

“You do and I won’t be here,” said Harry firmly. “This is still my business, and I’ve told you when I want you to come here. At one forty-five tonight. I’ll talk to you then.”

“Okay, okay, Caster,” Rizzo said good-naturedly, thinking that Harry was trying to save a little face in defeat by sticking at a small detail, “you’re the boss. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” said Harry, sweating in the cool darkness of the bar as he put the telephone down.

The twenty minutes which passed before Hoerner returned his call seemed like hours, but then Hoerner was on the line.

“Hello, Mr. Caster. What’s happening?”

“Everything,” Harry said. “Rizzo called a little while ago. He’s getting edgy and he pushed me for a decision. He wanted to come over right then, but I was able to put him off.”

“How long?”

“Only until tonight,” Harry said glumly. “A quarter of an hour before closing. He said he’ll be here, and I don’t like the way he said it.”

“Christ,” said Hoerner, “that’s not much time. Couldn’t you do any better than that?”

“No. It was tough enough getting that much time. I still can’t help expecting him at any moment.”

“Just hold on,” said Hoerner. “I’ve got a hell of a lot to do today, but you’ll be seeing me about midnight tonight. Don’t sweat the rest.”

“But what’s going to happen tonight?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Hoerner said. He had only a vague idea himself. “I assume Mrs. Caster got out of town safely this morning.”

“Yes, she did,” Harry said, “but just barely. Rizzo had some kid following her, and she had to lose him before she got on the Expressway. Rizzo was mad as hell.”

“Too bad. That means Rizzo may be getting the idea that something is up, that you’re not just lying down so that he can walk over you. And it changes things a bit.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you tonight. In the meantime, you go to the bank and draw out five hundred bucks in fifties. I’ll want it when I see you.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“No,” said Hoerner. “Just take it easy today and be ready for anything tonight. We’re going to need your help.”

“My help? What doing?”

“You’ll find out. See you tonight.”

The receiver in Harry’s hand went dead and he looked at it questioningly before returning it to the holder. With a sigh, he went back to work behind the bar.

9

It was the prime of the evening, and the Lamplighter was well stocked with customers. Hank Sherman, the relief bartender, was doing most of the work while Harry chatted with the drinkers.

But Harry’s mind was far from the Lamplighter that evening. He had no idea what Hoerner was up to. He only hoped that whatever it was would help rather than make the situation worse. And what the hell was going on with Marco?

Harry kept up his usual light banter with the drinkers, gossiping, throwing dice for drinks, settling disputes from his set of reference books near the cash register. And the clock wound around to midnight. At that hour, the bar was packed, and Harry was caught up in a furious game of liar’s dice with Doc Schenley when he glanced up and saw Hoerner looking over his opponent’s shoulder.

Accidentally letting a die escape from the box, Harry recaptured it and said to Hoerner: “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“No hurry,” said Hoerner easily. “I’ll be over in the corner booth.”

After losing the game, Harry excused himself and went over to Hoerner.

“Good evening, Mr. Caster,” Hoerner said. “Have you heard from Rizzo this evening?”

“No,” said Harry, “but I forgot to tell you something this afternoon when you called.” He quickly filled Hoerner in about Marco’s curious telephone call.

“That doesn’t sound promising,” said Hoerner, “but we’ll handle it.” He looked at his watch. “Rizzo is due in about an hour and a half. There’s a back door to this place, isn’t there?”

“Yes. It leads to the alley out back. We take deliveries there.”

“Show me where it is and the rest of the layout.”

Harry led the way through a narrow corridor piled high with liquor and soft-drink cases to the back door. Hoerner inspected the high-walled alley and came back inside.

“Okay. Have you got an empty room back here?”

“Just the liquor storeroom,” Harry said. “What do you want it for?”

“Let me take a look at it,” said Hoerner, ignoring the question. Harry switched on the light in a small, white-painted room half-full of cases of liquor. The room was about ten-foot square and windowless.

“Can some of these cases be moved somewhere else?” Hoerner asked.

“Yes, I’ll put them in back near the door.”

“Never mind,” Hoerner said. “We’ll take care of that. You get back to your customers. When Rizzo shows up we’ll know. Stall him until closing time, lock up, turn off the front lights and lead him back here. Then I’ll take over.”

“But—”

“Mr. Caster, you hired me to do a job. I’ve already started. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Okay,” said Harry, and he returned to the front of the bar.

“What’s up, Harry?” asked a regular customer. “Got a buyer for the joint?”

“I should be so lucky, Burt.”

After one in the morning, the crowd began to thin out. People who had to work the next day slowly began to leave. Only the hardcore of light sleepers and non-workers were left huddled around the bar. A little later, Harry told Hank he could go home and then was left with a small knot of mid-week drinkers who didn’t want to go home until they absolutely had to.

Unencouraged by Harry to stick around, even these began to slide off their stools and make their way to the front door. Finally, only Jimmy Allgood, a retired Army sergeant, was left hugging the curved bar with a glass of rye whiskey in his hand. And then Rizzo was in the doorway. He was alone, but his big, cream-colored car was parked out in front with someone sitting in the darkened front seat.

“Hello, Harry,” said Rizzo, easing onto a stool. “Hi, Jimmy.”

“Hello,” Harry said reluctantly, his eyes returning quickly to the glass he was washing. Allgood didn’t return the greeting.

“Bourbon and water,” said Rizzo. Harry gave him the drink and then retreated to the sink again. “Business good tonight?”

“Fair,” said Harry.

“It’ll get better. You ready to have that little talk now?”

“As soon as I close up,” Harry said. “Jimmy—”

“In Hudson County, the State of New York,” said the old sergeant, “establishments which are licensed to serve alcoholic beverages are allowed to serve such beverages until two a.m. It is now one-fifty a.m. I’ll have another rye, Harry. A double.”

With a look at Rizzo, Harry poured the drink.

“Thanks,” said Allgood. “Now you’re going by the book. It’s a good policy. In thirty-eight years of soldiering, all I had to do was take a little look in the book and any problem was solved.”

“Yes, Jimmy,” said Harry, not really listening.

“Any problem. In ‘43 I had a problem with a wop kid in our outfit in England. He was a real cute little fellow who could use his fists like razor blades; flyweight champion of the division, he was. He could have been a champion. He was some cute little guinea.”

“Jimmy—” Harry said warningly.

“No,” said Rizzo, “I want to hear. What happened to the little wop, Jimmy?”

“Got too cute for his own good. We had a West Point captain, a miserable bastard but a good soldier, and Peruchio, that was the wop, Pfc. Peruchio, took a fancy to this captain’s wife. She was a tall blonde from Cleveland. She encouraged the boy to a certain degree.”

“Encouraged him?” asked Rizzo.

“Took off her panties and climbed into the back of the captain’s staff car with him,” said Allgood. “The captain found them all twisted up like a pair of wet overalls.”

“What happened?” asked Harry in spite of himself.

“Court-martial. Got out my little book of U.S. Army regulations. Absent without leave, conduct prejudicial to discipline, undue familiarity and failure to obey a direct order. Got three years at hard labor. The captain got his head blown off by a booby trap in France. Don’t know what happened to the blonde. Probably went back to Cleveland. Just goes to show you: Always go by the book and things will turn out all right.”

“Right,” said Harry, “it’s now two o’clock and the book says it’s time for you to go home.”

“Correct,” said Allgood. He downed the dregs of his drink with a gulp and started to push himself away from the bar. “Uh-oh, Harry,” he said, “I think you’ve poisoned me. Legs won’t work. Look, they’ve gone as limp as a bishop’s pecker.”

“Tell you what, Jimmy,” said Harry, coming around the bar, “I might be court-martialed for doing it, but I’ll give you a hand to the door.” Putting the old soldier’s arm over his shoulder, Harry tried to hoist him from the barstool. But Jimmy’s two hundred pounds sagged limply, and his legs flailed.

“Here,” said Rizzo, “we can do it together.” Taking Allgood’s other arm, he helped pull the old man from the stool.

“It’s a miracle,” said Allgood. “I can walk again.” With ramrod back and rubbery legs, he allowed Harry and Rizzo to pilot him to the door. “I can make it home,” he said.

“Good luck, Sarge,” said Harry, shaking his hand.

“You’re a white man, Harry,” said Allgood. “It’s an honor to serve with you.” He looked at Rizzo. “You, too, Mr. Rice. I’m sorry about that story. I mean about the wops and all.”

“That’s all right,” said Rizzo. “Everybody’s somebody’s wop.” With military formality, the old man saluted them both and walked stiffly into the chilly night.

“So much for that,” said Harry, bolting the front door and drawing the drapes at the front windows.

“Now we can have that talk, eh?” said Rizzo.

Harry hadn’t forgotten, but it was still a shock to find the moment upon him. “Look,” he said in almost a pleading voice, “can’t you just—”

“No,” said Rizzo sharply. “No more fooling around, Caster. I mean business.”

“Okay, Rizzo,” Harry was surprised to hear himself say calmly, “as soon as I douse the lights out here, we can talk in my office.”

Rizzo leaned against the bar, watching Harry go around the room switching off the old converted oil lamps. One by one they died until the big room was lit only by a neon globe behind the bar.

When the last light was extinguished, Rizzo said impatiently: “That’s it, right?”

“That’s it,” said Harry. “This way.” He started toward his cubbyhole office. Rizzo fell in behind him.

Harry looked neither to left nor right as he walked slowly in the near darkness. He imagined his heart was louder than his footsteps. Behind him, Rizzo was humming a tune he didn’t recognize.

Abruptly the humming stopped.

“Hey!” Rizzo cried as a dark figure closed in from each side. The larger one gripped him around both arms while the other pulled an eyeless black hood over Rizzo’s head. “What is this?”

“Shut up.” Hoerner shoved the barrel of a pistol against the bump in the hood which was Rizzo’s nose. Lifting Rizzo off his feet, the big man Harry had never seen before wrestled him swiftly into the storeroom and set him down in a straight chair. The light went on revealing a small projector set on an up-ended whiskey case.

Not knowing what else to do, Harry followed along and stood aimlessly in the doorway as the big man swiftly tied Rizzo to the chair with his hands roped behind him. The stranger was dark haired and blocky with a dime-sized purple-black birthmark at the corner of his nose. His face was expressionless.

Hoerner, with a short-barreled black revolver in his hand, motioned Harry into the room and into a corner behind Rizzo’s left shoulder. Finished with the tying job, the big man straightened up and remained looming over Rizzo, who sat faceless and silent. Rizzo had remained mute since his first cry of surprise, partly because of Hoerner’s threat and partly because his mind was a whirl of half thoughts he kept plucking up and casting down like playing cards. He cursed himself for being stupid enough to come into the bar alone; he cursed that useless bastard, Pete, sitting in his car on the street listening to the radio. He’d just been too confident, too sure that Caster was an easy mark.

“Is your name Carlo Rizzo?” Hoerner asked softly.

Rizzo said nothing, only gave his hooded head a stubborn shake.

“Hit him,” said Hoerner, and the big man cocked his fist.

Rizzo jerked his head back as if he had been hit. “My name is Charles Rice,” he said, “and my business is with Harry Caster. It’s nothing to do with you.”

At a nod from Hoerner, the big man landed a stinging backhand blow to Rizzo’s right jaw which snapped his head back violently. Slowly Rizzo lowered his head. Harry put a hand to his own jaw, and the big man silently sucked his knuckles. Harry started to say something, but Hoerner cut him off with a sharp gesture.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Rizzo,” Hoerner said. “It’s everything to do with us. Someone very interested in Mr. Caster’s welfare has hired us to see that you leave him alone. We know everything that has happened since Monday night as well as you do, and some things better than you do.”

He paused, but Rizzo remained silent.

“It’s in your interest,” Hoerner continued, “to end this matter right here, tonight. But it’s even more in your interest, Rizzo, to drop this business right now and leave it dropped. We know you’re in bad with Montara. If you get in trouble, Rizzo, the family is not going to raise a hand to help you as long as you’re on Abe’s shit list.” Hoerner paused again. “And you are in trouble. Carlo, real trouble.” He gestured to Harry. “Lights.”

The room went dark, and Rizzo felt the hood being untied and lifted from his head. But he could see nothing. Then from behind he heard the same voice say: “Okay, roll it,” and a square of light burst out on the white wall in front of him. Rizzo tried to turn his head, but a big, hard hand gripped the back of his neck firmly.

“Eyes forward,” Hoerner ordered.

Then a string of garbled letters and numbers flashed on the improvised screen, followed by a blur which slowly focused into a black-and-white image of a low, modern house with a sloping lawn and a basement garage. It was some seconds before Rizzo realized that it was his own house. At first it seemed to be a still picture, but then a starling flew into the frame and perched on a telephone wire.

“What the hell—”

“Shut up, Rizzo. I’ll do the talking. I think you’ll recognize this scene.” The camera zoomed in on the front door. It opened, and Angela Rizzo, wearing a flowered apron, came out and stood, hands on ample hips, on the sheltered porch.

“This is Mrs. Angela Rizzo, known locally as Angela Rice.” Hoerner fell into the narrator’s deadened tones. “She’s waiting for someone.” The camera’s eye switched to a distant corner, closed in on that corner and hung there until Rizzo wanted to scream. Finally, the figure of a small girl turned the corner, and the camera slowly backed up into a long shot showing Angela Rizzo waiting on the porch and the girl slowly—so slowly—walking beside a tall wooden fence.

“This is Maria Rizzo, aged six,” Hoerner continued tonelessly, “who also goes by the name of Rice.”

“You son of a bitch,” said Rizzo, but he felt the hard hand tighten on his neck.

“Every afternoon at shortly after three o’clock, Maria Rizzo leaves All Saints Elementary School,” Hoerner said, and the scene turned to the exterior of the grammar school and the camera singled out Maria walking away from a group of friends. Rizzo watched with fascination as his daughter, looking even smaller and more vulnerable than she was, moved along, step by step, with childish preoccupation. He wanted to shout: “Faster, Maria, faster!”

“Most afternoons, Maria walks home from school alone. It takes her approximately eleven minutes to cover the two and a half blocks if she doesn’t stop along the way.”

The film cut to the girl stopped in the middle of a block petting a large calico cat sitting on a cement-block fence. The camera lingered on the girl and the cat until Rizzo knew he had to jump up and stop it. He strained against the rope but stopped when he felt the muzzle of a pistol pushed into the soft indentation where his head joined his neck. Rizzo sank back but did not relax.

With relief, he saw that Maria had begun to walk again. But then something dark and bulky caught his eye at the extreme of the patch of light. Harry Caster saw it, too, and sucked in his breath audibly. That dark something was a big car, purposely out of focus, that had turned the corner behind the traipsing child and was closing in with the inexorable pace of a cruising shark. Rizzo and Harry watched in horror as the big car pulled alongside the girl and seemed to match its pace to hers. Rizzo was glassy-eyed with anticipation; Harry could hardly keep his eyes open.

To their great relief, the film cut once more to the front of Rizzo’s house. Maria had just come through the gate and had turned to fix the latch. Angela Rizzo had taken a step toward her daughter. Maria turned toward her mother and started running up the path, her arms out-flung and her hair flying. She hurled herself at her mother’s arms, and there the picture froze with Maria’s sweet, joyous face nearly filling the small screen.

The projector cut off, plunging the room once more into total darkness. “Have you seen enough, Rizzo?”

Rizzo opened his mouth, but at first he couldn’t speak. When his voice came, he didn’t recognize it. “What are you guys playing at?”

“We’re not playing at anything,” said Hoerner firmly. “We’re just telling you that if you don’t lay off Caster—from this moment on—you and yours will suffer. Someone is going to get hurt, Rizzo, and it’s going to be you. And those very close to you.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You think so? Show the man a little more film.”

In rapid progression Rizzo saw, flashing on the screen, images of his family: his son Bobby in a line waiting for a bus; his father in his tobacco shop on Prince Street; his mother, stubby and gray-haired, examining a cauliflower at a street stall; his brother Steve, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, coming down the steps of the building where the Rizzos lived in lower Manhattan. The frame stopped with Steve’s foot in mid-air.

“Turn it off,” Rizzo said involuntarily, shutting his eyes.

“Okay,” agreed Hoerner, “anything to oblige.” The projector went dark. “Put the hood back on, and let’s have some light.”

The naked bulb revealed Rizzo, hooded once more, in the straight-backed chair. He looked unreal, as lifeless as a manikin. The three men stood silently watching him for several minutes. When Hoerner spoke his voice was soft, but Rizzo jerked as if he’d been touched.

“Rizzo,” he said, “if we wanted to, we could kill you right now and solve our problem. I don’t think many people would miss you. The river is deep enough to hide a thousand small-time punks like you.”

At first Rizzo was silent, and when he did speak it was not to his anonymous persecutor. “Caster,” he said hoarsely, “are you there?” Hoerner shook his head peremptorily, and Harry shut his mouth again. He realized that he was wringing his hands, and they were wet with sweat.

“It’s got nothing to do with Caster now, Rizzo,” Hoerner said. “You’re dealing with us, not him. You’d better make up your mind. We’ll give you a minute’s silence to think things out, but then I want an answer. The right answer.”

A thin, sour silence fell on the room, and inside the hood Rizzo struggled to swallow. Without waiting for the minute to end, he croaked dryly, “Look—”

“Take the full time. Carlo. Make sure it’s what you really want to say. Get our friend a drink from the bar,” he said to Harry. “Bourbon and water, isn’t it, Rizzo?”

Harry silently left the room. But instead of going behind the bar, he crept over to the Lamplighter’s front window and peeked out at Rizzo’s car parked half in the arc of a street lamp. A dark figure was still hunched behind the steering wheel, and Harry thought he could hear the thin strains of pop music coming from the car. He dropped the corner of the dark drape and ducked behind the littered bar. Carefully, he poured out a tall glass of bourbon and water and took a little slug from the bottle himself. The ice cubes gently clicked as he walked back down the dark hallway.

Alec Hoerner pulled the hood up over Rizzo’s mouth so that he could drink. Rizzo took the drink greedily, not stopping until the ice clinked against his teeth and the bourbon and water was gone. A sigh escaped him.

“That was good, eh?” Hoerner took the glass away and let the hood fall again. “I’m getting thirsty myself, so let’s get this over with. What’s your answer, Rizzo?”

Rizzo slumped in the chair, falling against his bonds as if he had no backbone.

“Yes,” he said, “yes. I’ll lay off Caster.”

At a nod from Hoerner, the big man plucked Rizzo from the chair, his hands still bound behind him, as if he were a baby. Hoerner opened the door to the hallway, and Rizzo was hustled out of the room toward the alleyway. Harry stood where he was for a moment and then hurried to follow.

“Wait!” cried Rizzo. “No, I told you—you win. I’ll lay off. I really will. Help!”

Hoerner smoothly brought the butt of his pistol down on the back of Rizzo’s hooded head, and his small body slumped in the big man’s arms. Rizzo’s expensive shoes dragged along the rough concrete floor. In the alley, Rizzo was thrust into the far corner of the back seat of Hoerner’s black BMW sedan. The big man turned to Hoerner as if expecting further orders, but Hoerner reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and handed him a folded banknote.

“Okay,” Hoerner said, “that’s it. You did well. Disappear.”

The big man took a quick peek at the note and slipped it into his pocket. “Thanks,” he said, turning and walking with urgency toward the darkness at the end of the alley. In a few steps he was gone.

Hoerner turned back through the rear entrance of the Lamplighter. Harry met him in the hall.

“Christ!” Harry said. “What a show. Those movies—where’s Rizzo? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine, Mr. Caster.” Hoerner smiled. “Rizzo’s taking a little nap in my car back there. But we’ll be taking him for a little ride in just a minute or two.”

“You will?” Harry asked. “Hey, you’re not going to— to—”

“No,” said Hoerner, “not right now, anyway. But I’m not going to take Mr. Rizzo for a ride. We are. You and me. And right now.”

“Me?” said Harry. “What about him—the big guy?”

“Oh, my friend had a very pressing date someplace, so I paid him off. And speaking of money, weren’t you going to have five hundred dollars for me tonight?”

“Oh, yeah.” Harry pulled a thick envelope of banknotes from the side pocket of his coat. “It’s all there.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Hoerner. “And now I’ve got something for you.” He reached into a side pocket and came up with a chromium- plated revolver much like his own. He thrust it at Harry butt first. “Do you know how to handle one of these?”

“I—I suppose so,” said Harry, reluctantly taking the revolver in both hands. “But I haven’t fired one since the Army. What do I need it for? I’m not—”

“You probably won’t need it, but it won’t hurt you to carry it. You may be glad to have a gun before this is over. Let’s get going. Rizzo’s not going to nap out there forever.” He turned and started down the hallway.

Harry followed him involuntarily. “But, where…?”

“I’ll explain later,” said Hoerner, “when we’ve got more time.”

They had reached the car. “I’ll drive. You sit in back with Rizzo and keep an eye on him. But don’t speak. The less Rizzo knows of your personal involvement in this little adventure, the more off-balance he’s going to be. If he stirs, let him know you’ve got that gun.”

“How?”

“Use your imagination,” said Hoerner, walking around the car and slipping behind the steering wheel.

Harry locked the back door of the Lamplighter and got in back with Rizzo’s slumped form. There was no sign that he was conscious yet. Harry hefted the revolver uneasily in his right hand as the car began moving slowly down the dark alley.

10

Rizzo regained consciousness shortly after the car left the alley, but he remained huddled in the corner without moving, pretending to be still knocked out. His hooded face was pressed into the corner of the door and car seat, and his hands had begun to lose feeling. Rizzo’s brain, beyond the sharp ache, was a confusion of questions: Who are these guys? What’s their game? If they’re going to kill me, why the song and dance with the films? Who are they?

He racked his memory. Rizzo hadn’t caught even a glance at their faces, and he’d heard only one voice: that of the boss, the heavy. He’d never heard that voice before, but he’d know it if he ever heard it again. But he drew a blank now. Except for the deep sound of the engine and the whir of the tires on the road, all was quiet. Rizzo could sense that someone was in the back seat with him. That made two in the car. Was there a third?

His eyes now adjusted to the darkness, Harry sat in the opposite corner watching Rizzo’s inert form and wondering if he were really unconscious. He hefted the compact weight of the revolver. It was strange but comforting to have it in his hand. The safety was on, and out of curiosity he swung open the cylinder to see how many shells were in it. All six chambers were full. With a flick of his wrist, Harry swung the cylinder shut again.

To Rizzo, the soft, oiled click was as loud as a door slamming. He jerked involuntarily, and Harry caught the movement. He started to say something, but then remembered he was supposed to stay silent. He looked down at the gun in his hand and then instinctively reached out and shoved it against the side of Rizzo’s head. A little too hard.

“Ow!” Rizzo said without meaning to. He could have bitten off his tongue.

“So Carlo’s awake, is he?” said Hoerner. “Take it easy, Rizzo. It won’t be a long ride.”

Harry pulled the revolver away from Rizzo’s head as he felt the captive’s body go limp.

“Not talking, eh?” said Hoerner. “That’s okay. I can’t stand a lot of begging and pleading anyway.”

“You’re a funny man,” said Rizzo in spite of himself. “I don’t know what you guys think you’re doing.” His voice was muffled from the hood and from the way his face was shoved into the corner.

“We’re just doing a little job, that’s all, Rizzo,” said Hoerner. “For somebody who doesn’t like your business methods much.” Abe Montara. The name flashed through Rizzo’s mind. But Abe wouldn’t do this. The freeze-out was bad enough. Speranza wouldn’t let him go this far. Hiring outsiders.

Just then, Rizzo felt the car leave the smooth highway for the roughness of a secondary road. The tires didn’t whisper now; they muttered and grumbled at the resistance of the roadway. He sensed that they were approaching their destination.

“Hey,” he said, trying to sound casual, “where are we going? Look, let’s talk about this. I mean, Caster’s place doesn’t mean anything to me. What do I want with a small-time joint like that?”

“You keep thinking like that, Rizzo,” said Hoerner, “and you’ll live a lot longer.”

They rode a few minutes more in silence while Rizzo searched for something to say, some argument that would carry weight. Harry felt mingling apprehension and a sense of power over the man who had been his tormentor. The car slowed to a stop, and Rizzo imagined that his heart stopped, too. But after a few seconds the car started again, turning onto what felt like a dirt road. On one bump Rizzo bounced so hard that his head hit the window ledge with a sharp rap.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” said Hoerner coldly.

The car jolted to another stop, and Hoerner killed the engine. Rizzo went rigid as stone.

“Get him out,” he heard the driver tell the gunman in the back. The other door opened and slammed, and Rizzo waited like a man on a hanging scaffold. The door opened and Rizzo fell like a sack of flour into a soft bank of fallen leaves. He didn’t move.

“Up you go,” said Hoerner, jerking Rizzo up by the coat and making him stand on tiptoe. Rizzo tottered unsteadily on muscles stiffened during the ride.

“Walk him.” Rizzo, at the reluctant prod of Harry’s pistol, began to shamble forward at a blind man’s hesitant, hurtling pace, fearful at every moment of running into something.

“Hey, take it easy,” he complained.

“You’ll have a long time to take it easy, greaser,” Hoerner said. He brought Rizzo to a rough halt by the rope around his hands. “Untie his hands.”

Harry fumbled at the tight knots for a moment and then undid them and unwound the rope from Rizzo’s hands. Rizzo’s arms moved out from his sides involuntarily, and he felt the fizzy pain of the circulation returning.

“Whoever you are,” he said, “be reasonable. I—”

Hoerner cut him off. “Okay,” he said, “waste him.” At the same time he brought his revolver up next to Rizzo’s head and squeezed the trigger once.

Rizzo was engulfed by the roar, felt the sting of pain in his face and sensed that he was hurtling through space. He gathered breath to scream, but then the black inside the hood was filled with blinding light, and he lost consciousness.

Hoerner started back to his car and then noticed that Harry had stayed behind looking down into the blackness that had swallowed Rizzo.

“Come on,” Hoerner said.

“You’re just going to leave him there?”

“That’s right. Come on; we’re leaving.”

Harry followed Hoerner silently to the car. But as they got moving on the bumpy back road, he burst out: “Christ, I never saw anything like that before.”

“You didn’t do so badly yourself, Mr. Caster,” said Hoerner with a hard smile. “The way you were handling that gun in the back seat, I thought you were going to cool Rizzo and put me out of a job.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“You did the right thing.”

“I don’t know. Rizzo’s not badly hurt back there, is he?”

“He’ll be all right,” said Hoerner.

“How’ll he get back to Parker’s Landing?”

“That’s his problem. Our problem is what he’s going to do once he gets home. If he jumps the wrong way, we may be in a bit of trouble.”

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“If he’s sensible, he’ll nurse his hurt feelings for a while and then go off to find somebody else to lean on. If tonight didn’t convince him that we mean business, he’ll have to learn his lesson an even harder way. What you mean, Mr. Caster, is what are we going to do. Don’t think that you’re going to be able to just sit back and cheer from the sidelines while Rizzo and I cut each other up. I didn’t give you that gun tonight just for show. If worst comes to worst, you’ll have to use it.”

“Me?” said Harry, all innocence. “I hired you to—to…”

“To what, Mr. Caster? To fight Rizzo? To put a bullet through his guinea head so that you can go back to your peaceful little bar? Is that what you thought you hired? A murderer?”

“No, of course not.”

“No,” agreed Hoerner, wheeling the car back on the highway, “you hired me to help you fight back against Carlo Rizzo. To help you protect yourself, your family and your property.”

“But your organization…”

Hoerner laughed shortly. “My organization consists of exactly two people—you and me.”

“But those movies, and that big guy at the Lamplighter tonight. What about them?”

“Yeah. What about them? The movies were a favor by a documentary filmmaker I know who’s not working now. And the geek with no forehead was casual labor who needed a fast twenty. I never saw him before tonight, and with luck I’ll never see him again. So you see, like it or not, it boils down to you and me. Mostly me, but you’ve got to understand I may need backing up.”

“Christ,” said Harry. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Of course, if you’re not satisfied, just say the word and I’ll drop the case right here and let you hire somebody else.” Hoerner took one hand from the wheel and reached for his inside breast pocket. “I’ll just give you your money back and…”

“No, no,” said Harry. “I don’t want that.”

“It’s a good thing, Mr. Caster,” Hoerner said, “because I’ve already spent a big piece of it, and if I didn’t have the rest tomorrow, the finance company would be driving this car and I’d be walking.”

“You mean,” Harry asked, “that you’re a phony? That you’ve been running a big bluff?”

“I’m no phony,” said Hoerner angrily, unconsciously stomping down on the accelerator pedal. “Don’t get that idea. I may be running a bluff, but I mean every word I say. I can take Rizzo. I know it. You’ve got to believe that, Mr. Caster, or we’re through before we start. You don’t know how many agencies your brother went through before he got to me. I’m your only chance, Mr. Caster, and you’ve got to know it.”

“I believe it,” said Harry without too much certainty. “I don’t see that I’ve got much choice. All right, let’s say that you—that we can take them. Now what? To begin with you can knock off the Mr. Caster stuff. Call me Harry. What do I call you?”

“Suit yourself. Call me Alec or Hoerner. It doesn’t matter.”

“All right, Hoerner, what next?”

“We wait,” said Hoerner. “And we hope that Rizzo learned something tonight. We hope he stays off your back.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Well,” said Hoerner, “he can’t do much alone. Like you, he needs some help to fight this kind of war. Unless my information is terribly wrong, he’s not going to get much joy from the Speranza family.” He told Harry how Rizzo stood with Abe Montara, the real power in the family, and why.

“But what if Montara does forgive Rizzo?” Harry asked.

“Then we’re in the shit, Harry. Up to our pretty little necks. But it won’t happen. Believe me. I wouldn’t have jumped into this situation just for the sake of getting smashed by Abe Montara. I’m not that crazy.” They were entering the scattered outskirts of Parker’s Landing. “I’ll drop you at the Lamplighter, right?”

“Yes,” said Harry, “my car is there. But what about Rizzo’s friend? The one he left sitting in front of the place in his car.”

“It’s after four in the morning. If that monkey is still sitting there, Rizzo’s going to be an easier touch than I thought.”

The street in front of the Lamplighter was empty.

“Thank God for that,” said Harry. “I wonder where he is.”

“He’s wondering the same thing about Rizzo. I wouldn’t want to be him when Rizzo gets home. You go home and get some sleep now, Harry. If I’ve figured Rizzo right, he’s going to be closed up tight and licking his wounds for a bit. I don’t think you’ll be hearing from him immediately. Don’t forget, he thinks he’s up against some pretty tough operators. He’ll be seeing a gunman around every corner for a while.”

“So will I,” said Harry. “Call me tomorrow morning just to check. If I don’t answer the telephone. I’m dead. Rizzo got me.” He got out of Hoerner’s car and watched the detective drive smoothly away. He was very conscious of the weight of the gun in his pocket.

11

It was the cold, damp and insinuating, that woke Rizzo. He fluttered his eyes and then opened them to the shock of total darkness. Then he remembered, and his first thought was, why am I not dead?

With impatient, cold-stiffened fingers, Rizzo ripped off the hood, and the light of a full moon attacked his eyes like sunlight after a long tunnel. When he could see again, Rizzo found that he was at the bottom of a sharp fifteen-foot slope jammed against the thick trunk of a squat tree.

Except for a terrible ringing in his ears and the pain in his head, Rizzo seemed to be in one piece and unharmed. Gingerly, he felt his body for broken bones and then put his hand to his smarting face. It came away black with blood.

Rizzo looked at his hand and felt sick. Then the smell of gunpowder and burnt cloth came to him, and he knew what had happened. The gunman had fired very close to his head but missed him —either on purpose or by mistake—and the blast of the gun had scorched the hood and peppered his cheek with tiny bits of powder. He picked up the hood and found it charred and bloody. Rizzo carefully patted the singed side of his head and felt burned hair fall away.

Patting his face with a handkerchief, Rizzo leaned back against the tree that had stopped his fall. He could see nothing at the top of the slope. Through the shattered crystal his still-running watch told him it was a quarter after four. Listening carefully, he could hear only the rustling of branches and the sound of an occasional night bird. He felt better. His head still ached, but his cheek seemed to have stopped bleeding.

Home seemed the answer, so slowly and stiffly Rizzo edged up the steep slope. He feared, almost expected, at any moment to hear voices or feel the impact of a bullet. Nothing happened. Rizzo got to the dirt road and found nothing but darkness and silence. He trudged warily up the dirt road wondering where the hell he was.

Soon he found the rough macadam road and turned onto it without thinking. But then there was a flash of lights and a screeching of brakes.

“You trying to get yourself killed, mister?” asked a loud voice from a pick-up truck which had slammed to a stop just a few feet behind him.

Rizzo was blinded by the headlights until he got past them to the driver’s window. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t see you.” He tried to keep the right side of his face away from the driver. “I’ve had some trouble with my car. Are you going toward Parker’s Landing?”

“Part way.” The driver was dressed in the rough clothes of a farmer and wore thick, round glasses. “Get in. I’ll take you as far as I go.”

Rizzo gratefully eased himself onto the plastic-covered seat and closed the door. They had driven in silence for about five minutes when the driver spoke. “You’re bleeding.”

Putting his handkerchief to his face, Rizzo said, “I had a bit of an accident back there.” He wondered if the farmer believed him. “Look,” said Rizzo, “I feel lousy. Could you drive me clear into Parker’s Landing? I’ll pay you.”

The driver said nothing.

“I could pay you five dollars.”

“Make it ten,” said the farmer.

“Okay,” said Rizzo, sinking gratefully back into his worrying thoughts.

Rizzo had the farmer let him out a block from his house and paid him. As he turned the corner, the first thing he saw was his car parked in front of his house with Pete sleeping behind the wheel.

Rizzo raised enough strength to rip open the car door, causing Pete to nearly spill out into the street.

“Wha—” Pete grabbed for the steering wheel to save himself and reached for the gun inside his jacket at the same time. Then he recognized Rizzo. “Mr. Rice. Where did you go? I waited in front of that bar for hours.”

Rizzo raised his hand but then let it drop futilely. “Go home and get some sleep, Pete,” he said. “I want you here at eight-thirty to take my kids to school. Bring Ernie with you, and come prepared to stay for a while.”

“What’s up, Mr. Rice?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. Go now.”

Rizzo limped up the walk and opened the front door quietly. Behind him the first gray of predawn was showing. As the door swung open, the flash of a large white envelope on the hall carpet caught his eye. Stooping stiffly, Rizzo picked it up and carried it into his small den. Switching on a shaded light over the expensive, carved desk, he ripped open the envelope and a large photograph slid out and fell face down on the desk.

Rizzo turned the photograph over and found that it was an enlarged frame of the film he’d been shown that night at Caster’s bar. It was a full-face photo of Maria, eyes downcast with childish preoccupation. Slightly soft and out of focus, the picture emphasized the girl’s delicate features and vulnerability. Superimposed on her face was the spider-web sighting of a telescopic sight. The effect brought flaring back to Rizzo’s mind all of the shocks he’d been through in the last few hours. He started to rip the photograph up, but couldn’t do it. He shoved it quickly under the desk blotter. The envelope was blank except for “Rizzo” scrawled on the front.

Crumpling the envelope and throwing it at the waste basket, Carlo Rizzo embarked upon a series of miscalculations and errors of judgment. First, he remembered only the humiliation and pain he’d suffered that night, discounting the cool efficiency and deadly seriousness of his captors. He was no longer grateful to be alive. Rizzo knew only that he’d been had, and for that someone was going to suffer terribly. He had only contempt for those who’d had his life in their hands and let it slip.

Second, Rizzo refused to accept that they could seriously hurt him and his family. The lesson of the night was already fading away. It was others who were hit, who were punished, who felt the pain.

They were the victims, the suckers, the fish—not Carlo Rizzo. He dealt out the fear; they bent under it. Helped by his family, his friends, his bosses, his subordinates, Rizzo could take on these lucky amateurs—they had to be amateurs—that Caster had foolishly called upon for help. They’d see who would win.

At once more relaxed, Rizzo walked through the darkened house to the bathroom at the rear. In the mirror he looked like a man who had been shot at and very nearly hit and then pushed off a cliff. Stripping off his ruined clothes, he showered and did what he could to doctor the side of his face. Then, taking blankets from a cupboard, he bedded down on the couch in his den to try to sleep the dawning hour.

Only a couple of hours later, Angie Rizzo woke in their big bed and reached out to touch her husband. Finding herself alone, her plump face clouded with worry and she got up and slipped on a robe. The children were still asleep. There was a cold, gray light outside, but the house had the stillness of night.

Angie padded down the stairs to Rizzo’s den. Carefully she opened the door and saw his blanket-shrouded figure on the sofa. She walked into the room until she stood over her sleeping husband, drawing back slightly as she saw the raw and blackened cheek above the satin-edged blanket. She placed her hand next to but not touching Rizzo’s injured face as if to draw the hurt from it into her own body.

Later, after Pete had taken Bobby and Maria to school, Angie heard the bathroom door shut and the sound of running water. Shortly, Rizzo emerged as dapper as ever except for the white bandage on his cheek and a smudge of soft black which escaped the bandage.

“Good morning, Carlo.”

“Morning.” Rizzo sat down at the kitchen table and took up the morning paper.

“Would you like some bacon and eggs?”

“No, just coffee. I’m going right out.” Rizzo put the paper up as a barrier to unspoken questions and worried looks. As he sipped his nearly boiling black coffee, Rizzo felt an urge to tell Angie everything. But he couldn’t. The pull of custom was too strong. A wife could share only so much.

After his coffee, Rizzo kissed Angie goodbye. “Stay in today,” he told her, “and when the kids come home, keep them in. Tell Bobbie I said so. Pete and Ernie will be with you all day, and Pete will pick up the kids after school.”

Angie nodded silently and stood in the doorway watching Rizzo speak briefly on the sidewalk with Pete and Ernie. After watching her husband’s car disappear around the corner, she turned back to her kitchen, her pleasant face taut with worry.

12

Baptiste Speranza was in his garden treating aphids on a tall, late-flowering rosebush when Kathy told him that Rizzo had arrived. “Ask him to wait a few moments,” he told his auburn-haired granddaughter.

Kneeling heavily before the ailing plant, Speranza was a man at peace with the world. His long, once-powerful limbs were weighted down with flesh which seemed to pull him toward the earth he had come to love so much in the last few years. Once a rich and flashy dresser, he now wore a pair of baggy overalls, a blue denim work-shirt and a maroon cardigan with one unraveling cuff. Pushed back from his thick, gray hairline was a very old straw hat nine-year-old Kathy had found someplace and had insisted that he wear. Speranza found that it suited him. Once, coming unexpectedly upon a mirror, for a second he had thought he was seeing his father as he had been in the last few years of his life.

In those days, Baptiste, then in the full strength of maturity, had felt fond contempt for the old man and considered him a failure for plugging away at his flower shop while others who had come to America at the same time had carved fortunes out of the raw years of the twenties. But now he understood, and Speranza could see the same look in the eyes of his sons.

They and the others were respectful toward him—at least to his face—but Speranza knew he no longer wielded any real power, and it didn’t bother him. Somehow, living here in Parker’s Landing with Carmen, his widowed daughter, to look after him, it didn’t matter. It was power enough for him to doctor this beautiful plant, to see it bloom again, a strong deep yellow, next summer. Wishing that Rizzo wasn’t in the house waiting for him, the old man gave the rose plant a few more bursts from the spray can with the absorbed expression of a physician lost to all else but the needs of his patient.

In the living room of the big, modern house, Rizzo waited with impatience tinged with foreboding. He sat on a blocky leather sofa and unconsciously ran the toe of his shoe against the nap of the thick, wheat-colored carpet, watching its color change to dark gold.

Kathy came back into the living room. “My grandfather asks if you’ll wait a little while,” she said. Rizzo saw that she was staring at the bandage on his cheek. Embarrassed, Kathy pulled her eyes away. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yeah,” said Rizzo, “please. Black with no sugar.”

The girl went to a high mahogany sideboard and poured Rizzo a large cup of coffee from an electric pot.

“Is it hot enough?”

It wasn’t; it was lukewarm, but Rizzo drank it. “Just fine.”

“I’m out of school sick today,” Kathy told him. “I had an earache when I woke up and Mother thought—”

“Hello, Charlie.” Rizzo looked up and saw Gino Speranza, the old man’s younger son, in the doorway of the front hall. He was a squat, curly-haired man in his mid-twenties wearing glasses with a very light green tint. “What are you doing here?”

“Uncle Gino!” said Kathy, turning around.

“Hiya, Kath,” said Gino. “Why aren’t you in school?”

“Earache,” explained Kathy, putting a dirty hand to her left ear. “Shall I tell Grandpa you’re here?”

“Sure, I guess so,” said Gino, flopping heavily on the other end of the leather sofa and putting a moccasined foot on the dark, oval coffee table in front of it. When Kathy had gone, he repeated: “What are you doing here, Charlie?”

“A little business, Gino. A little business.”

“I think you’ve come to the wrong address, Charlie boy,” said Gino. “These days business is generally conducted over on Ramona Way.” Abe Montara lived just over two miles away.

Rizzo shrugged.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Gino asked. “It looks like you’ve been standing too close to a blast furnace. Don’t tell me Abe is getting that tough over a few bookkeeping errors.”

“I had a little accident. Nothing serious.”

“If you say so.”

To change the subject, Rizzo said: “I thought you were supposed to be up at that business college in Syracuse. You on vacation?”

“Yeah,” said Gino. “Permanent vacation. I graduated myself a little early and told them to stick it.” He warmed to the subject. “Charlie, you wouldn’t believe—”

“Gino.”

Baptiste Speranza was standing in the doorway with his gardening gloves in his hand. Anger showed on his face.

“Hello, Papa,” said Gino, taking his foot off the coffee table in spite of himself, “I—”

“In a minute,” said the old man. “I’ve got business.” He turned a welcoming but wary smile on Rizzo. “Hello, Carlo, you wanted to see me?”

“Uh, yes,” Rizzo said stiffly, “I did. But if you’re busy—”

“This is a good time,” said Speranza. “Come. We’ll find a place to talk.” He looked at his son. “Gino,” he said, “we’ll talk in a little while, eh?”

“Sure, Papa.”

Rizzo followed the old man down the hallway. Speranza stopped at a green metal door and put his hand on the doorknob. “We can have some privacy in here,” he said.

Rizzo followed, and a blast of warm, moist air hit his face.

“Make sure you close the door tightly,” cautioned Speranza. They were in a small greenhouse crowded with plants. Only a walkway of latticed boards was free of foliage. A small heater in the corner exuded a steady blast of warm air.

“Look at this, Carlo,” said Speranza, cupping a delicate green-veined, peach-colored orchid, “Orchis morio. It’s probably the only specimen in New York State. And look, more buds. They don’t live long, the flowers, but they’ve got a beautiful aroma. Smell.”

Impatiently, Rizzo bent to sniff the delicate flower. It smelled distinctly of vanilla.

“Very nice,” he said.

“Yes,” agreed Speranza, “very, very nice.”

There was silence for a few moments. “Carlo,” said Speranza, “what have you come to see me about? Are you in more trouble?”

“No,” said Rizzo. “Yes—I mean—Don Baptiste, I need help.” The whole story of the night before came out in a rush. Even through the embarrassment at telling such a story, Rizzo could see that despite himself Speranza was becoming more and more interested. At first he listened silently, but then he began to interrupt with questions and comments.

“Motion pictures,” Speranza said. “They sound very professional. You didn’t see them at all?”

When Rizzo had finished, Speranza was in deep thought. Then he spoke. “This Caster, how much do you know about him? Was he—” Then the animation which had risen in the old man’s face seemed to die. Once more he was an old man in gardening clothes. An old man who knew he was retired and had resigned himself to it. “Carlo,” he said, “you’d better see Abe Montara about him. He’s the one who can help you.”

“I can’t, Don Baptiste. Abe won’t even talk to me, not since—” He didn’t have to finish the sentence.

“Yes,” said Speranza, rubbing his smoothly shaven chin, “it’s a very bad situation. But I can’t help you, you know. You’ll have to see Abe. Tell him I told you to come see him. He’ll listen. You’ll see.” Rizzo found that Speranza was leading him out of the little greenhouse and along the hallway. When they re-entered the living room, Gino was nowhere to be seen. Rizzo noticed the old man looking around for his son, and then they were on the doorstep and Speranza had taken his hand.

“Thank you for coming to see me, Carlo. You go see Abe; he can help. And give my love to Angie and the little ones.”

“Sure, Don Baptiste,” said Rizzo hopelessly. “I’ll do that.”

The big oaken door was closed. There was nothing Rizzo could do but walk down the flagstone path to his car. He started the car and began driving without any real idea where he was going. But not to Abe Montara.

After less than three blocks, Rizzo heard the blast of a loud horn immediately behind his car and saw in the mirror, dangerously close to his back bumper, a black Thunderbird. His first reaction was panic, and Rizzo started to step on the accelerator. But then he recognized Gino Speranza’s grinning face behind the wheel of the big car.

Rizzo pulled over to the cub, and in seconds Gino was in the front seat beside him.

“Scared you just a little bit, didn’t I?” Gino said.

“What do you want?”

“I want to help you.” When Rizzo looked puzzled, Gino cocked a leg over the other knee and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “What my old man doesn’t know,” he said, “is that from my old room on the second floor you can hear everything that goes on in that precious greenhouse of his.”

“You heard—”

“Everything. Every word. You’re in trouble, Charlie. And it sounds like bad trouble. But I’m going to help you out of it.”

“You help?” Rizzo asked incredulously. “How are you going to help me if your old man won’t?”

“Can’t, you mean,” Gino said. “My old man is past it, Charlie. He’s only good for tending his garden while Abe runs the Speranza family action.”

Rizzo didn’t agree or disagree.

“But I don’t see it that way,” Gino continued. “I don’t see why Abe Montara should take over anything.”

“And you’re going to stop him, eh, Gino?”

“I just might.”

“All by yourself?”

“I’m not alone,” said Gino. “I’ve got my friends. What’s the matter? Don’t you want any help? Are you going to back off just because they got the jump on you? I don’t see how you can afford to do that. The way I hear it, your finances aren’t all that good these days.”

“No,” Rizzo admitted, “they’re not.”

“Well, then. Montara’s got you in a hole and is in no hurry to let you out. If you let these imported heavies put you down like this, you might as well pack it in. You’re through. Nobody can help you. Not my father. Nobody.”

Rizzo couldn’t deny that he was boxed into a corner.

On the other hand,” said Gino, “if you buck these guys with my help and take over that bar, it’s all yours. You don’t owe Montara a thing for it. And Abe will come around sooner or later. He’ll make a lot of noise, but Abe’s a realist. Right now he thinks you’re just a punk he can make or break.”

“What’s in this for you?” asked Rizzo.

“Me? Well, you might want to do something for me now and then—just to show your gratitude. But mostly I’ve got a little reputation. I show I’ve got a bit of muscle, that I can do a job. And then maybe my old man and my brother will stop trying to make a college graduate out of me and let me in on some of the action Montara is keeping to himself. God knows, Dom Speranza, the original paper tiger, isn’t going to buck Abe, so I guess it’ll have to be me.”

“That’s a big job,” said Rizzo, half-amused and half-impressed by Gino’s cool confidence.

“I know. But I can do it. What do you say—is it a deal?”

Rizzo didn’t have to ponder long; he could see no other way out. “It’s a deal,” he said.

13

After a night of little sleep, Harry Caster felt like a man on a frayed rope. He was tempted to lock up the house and the Lamplighter and head for the cabin and Hildy.

But fear and stubbornness kept him in Parker’s Landing. Rizzo would know he had left, and then what would happen to the Lamplighter? And how could he come back? There was no point in starting all this just to run away and have everything destroyed. So, after fixing himself breakfast, Harry went down to the Lamplighter and spent the day aimlessly cleaning, taking stock and trying to pass the dragging hours. The call from Hoerner never came, but with every move he made, Harry felt the compact presence of the gun Hoerner had given him.

Harry didn’t hear from Marco, so he asked Hank Sherman to come in again. The weekend was coming on, and business would be good. Hoerner finally called late in the afternoon to try to bolster Harry’s confidence, but he failed to ease Harry’s mind.

Just after six o’clock that evening, Harry was in his small office when Hank called him. “Harry,” he said excitedly, “the telephone.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said, “but hurry. Something’s wrong.”

Harry threw down his pencil and moved swiftly to the telephone behind the bar. “Hello,” he shouted into the speaker, “this is Harry Caster.”

The line was silent. The call hadn’t disconnected, but he could hear nothing.

“What did it sound like?” he asked Hank.

“It was like somebody gasping for breath. It was a man, I think, calling your name, and it sounded like he was in pain. I don’t—”

Harry cut him off with a gesture as a sound came on the line. It was a gasping, choking noise he’d never heard before. Then something that almost sounded like his name: “Har—Har—” The line went silent again, and Harry heard the dial tone buzzing loudly in his ear. He put the receiver down.

“Who do you think it was?” Hank asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear enough to—Marco!” Harry was certain. “It was Marco. I know it was. Take care of things here, Hank. I’ll be back.”

Ripping off his apron, Harry grabbed his coat and ran out to the parking lot. Marco didn’t live far away.

Marco’s cottage, small and dirty white with a sagging red-tile roof, was nearly lost in the drooping branches of willow trees. Harry skidded the car to a stop in front of the cottage. He could see that some lights were on inside it. At the screened front door, Harry knocked and shouted: “Marco! Marco! It’s me, Harry. Are you okay?”

There was no answer, but the doorknob turned easily, and Harry pushed into the white-walled living room of the cottage. The room was empty, and Harry pulled back slightly, feeling like an intruder. “Marco?” he said in a quieter voice. Still there was no answer. Harry had his hand on the knob ready to leave, when he turned to have a better look around. The lights had been on.

Harry pushed against the kitchen door, but after a couple of inches it stopped and would go no farther. It stopped with a soft, slightly giving feeling, as if it was held by something heavy but pliant.

“Damn,” Harry said, giving the door a heave with all his strength. It haltingly opened enough for him to stick his head into the dark kitchen. At first, all he could see was that something white was on the floor blocking the door.

Then recognition came. It was Marco, dressed only in underwear and wedged between the door and a tall cabinet against the wall. “Marco,” Harry said, but he got no answer. He stopped trying to force the door and quickly retraced his path out the front door. Pushing open a half-sprung gate, he ran through the side yard to the kitchen door. Flicking on the overhead light, Harry saw that Marco was lying on his stomach wedged headfirst into the corner behind the door. The receiver of the telephone dangled at the side of his head. His shorts and T-shirt were startlingly white against the worn linoleum. Marco’s naked, hairy legs were a bluer shade of white in contrast.

Harry was surprised at how big and soft Marco looked. Grabbing him by the shoulders, Harry tried to turn Marco over and get him out of the corner. But Marco’s weight and the close quarters defeated him. He was forced to fall back and pull Marco out by his stocking feet.

When he managed to get the youth turned over, Harry saw his face and gave a grimace of shared pain and sympathy. To Harry, Marco’s face looked like a burst fig. The predominant color was a painful purple with swelling black pouches where the eyes should have been. The mouth was split and hung as slack as a slashed innertube. A broken tooth hung on his lower lip by a strip of skin, and another, shattered to a peak, stood out sharply in his black and bloody mouth. One eyebrow, red and furry, hung down over a closed eye.

Afraid to touch Marco, Harry grabbed for the dangling telephone receiver and frantically tapped on the cut-off switch until he got a dial tone.

“Parker Hospital,” said a woman’s middle-aged voice that soon assured Harry that an ambulance was on its way. Then he dialed Alec Hoerner’s home number.

Hoerner was trying to read a newspaper and keep an eye on two frying pork chops on a hot plate when the telephone rang.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“It’s Marco,” Harry said, “my bartender. He’s been very badly beaten up.”

“Where are you?”

“At Marco’s cottage in Parker’s Landing. He called me at the bar, and I came over here and found him.”

“Is anybody else there?”

“No,” Harry said, “but I called an ambulance.”

“Stay there until it arrives. Then go back to your bar and stay there until I contact you. If Rizzo gets in touch, stall him as much as you can. I’ll see you or call you later tonight.”

“What are you going to do?” Harry asked.

“I think Rizzo needs a little more convincing,” Hoerner said, and he was gone.

Harry sat down at the kitchen table across from Marco. He could hear Marco’s breathing—deep but ragged, as if something inside were torn and flapping. He became conscious of every breath. With nothing else to do, Harry sat in the darkness—he’d cut off the bright light—and the seconds dragged. There was no denying the certain knowledge that what had happened to Marco was all his fault. Or the premonition that this was just the beginning of a very bad time.

This thought was broken by the dying howl of a siren at the front of the cottage. Out front Harry found a beige ambulance parked across the street, and a man in a white hospital jacket standing looking in the wrong direction.

“Over here,” Harry called, but hardly any sound came from his throat. He tried again, and the ambulance driver turned to face him. He was a young black with hair like dirty yellow wool. From the waist up he was dressed in hospital-issue with a fine stipple of rust-brown spots across one shoulder. But below the waist, he was strictly war surplus. Marine Corps green trousers fell over high-zippered jump boots.

“You called for an ambulance?”

“Yes.”

Another attendant emerged carefully from the ambulance. With streaked gray hair and a face nearly the same color, he looked like an unsuccessful abortionist just out of jail. By the time he got around to the back of the ambulance, the driver had pulled out a long stretcher and was headed toward Harry. The older man grabbed the back of the stretcher as it was going away.

“Where’s the victim?” asked the driver.

“In the kitchen at the back,” said Harry, trying to lead the ambulance men and stay out of the way at the same time. “I’ll hold the gate for you.”

“Never mind,” said the driver, plunging on and continuing an old monologue to his partner. “Yeah—so I told the first sergeant…”

His voice trailed off into the side yard of the cottage. This left Harry out front not knowing what to do next. He supposed he ought to see Marco off to the hospital.

But then a big four-door Dodge with an outsized aerial like a deep-sea fishing rod pulled up at the curb and Chief Beddell got out. He leaned against his car, looking at Harry Caster.

Before Harry could speak, the two ambulance men came back through the gate with Marco strapped to their stretcher. The older man was now the motivating force with the stretcher poles slotted into hands like piston guides and his head down. The driver, who floated easily at the head of the stretcher, was still talking; “…picks up this bar stool and flings it through a winder. Well, naturally….”

Beddell stopped them with a gesture. He looked down at Marco’s ruined face with seeming indifference. “How is he?”

“Hurtin’, man, hurtin’,” said the driver. “Somebody tried to grind his head off. But my man here gave him a jolt of sodium pentothal, and he’s feeling no pain.”

Marco was no longer writhing and gasping, but lay death-still with only a slight raggedness of breath.

Beddell turned his eyes to the other attendant. There was an almost audible click as he put this new fact and face in his memory. “That right?”

“Yes.” The attendant still looked down at his hands.

“All right,” said Beddell, “get him out of here.”

Harry and the Chief of Police watched silently as they shoved the stretcher bearing Marco into the ambulance, and the older man slowly got in with him. The ambulance rolled off down the street with siren moaning.

The few neighbors who had come out to watch receded, leaving Harry and Beddell alone on the sidewalk. “Let’s take a drive,” the Chief said, motioning to his car. He saw Harry look over at his own car and added: “I’ll see that you get back.”

They rode silently for a while, and Harry realized that Beddell wasn’t heading for the police station. He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. Finally Beddell spoke.

“That was a nasty thing that happened to young Carradino. His mother’s going to take it hard.”

“Yes, Marco’s a good kid.”

“We don’t get many crimes of violence in Parker’s Landing. You got any idea who might have done it?”

Harry had no stomach for further fencing, so he answered: “You know I do. It had to be Rizzo or some of his hoods. Rizzo thinks that by beating Marco up he can scare me into going along with him.”

“Is he right?”

“No. He’s not right. He’s not right at all. I…”

“Go on,” prompted Beddell. “You were saying?”

“Nothing,” Harry said. “Just that I’m not going to turn half of my business over to Carlo Rizzo.” Harry knew now that Beddell knew he was telling the truth. “You tell me something, Chief. You know that Rizzo really is trying to cut himself in on my bar, don’t you?” Harry felt very bold.

“Mr. Caster,” Beddell began slowly, “there are some very plausible elements to your story. My sergeant tells me that your car was set on fire with a homemade phosphorus grenade. That makes it arson, and I’m drawing up a report of the incident. But that doesn’t mean that Charlie Rice had anything to do with it. Rice was at home at the time—with guests. That’s a pretty good alibi, and it could be tough to prove that he hired somebody else to torch your car.”

“And I suppose he’ll have an alibi for tonight, too?” Harry asked.

“He probably will, but you can be sure that we’ll check it out.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Harry, emboldened, “but how is that going to help Marco? And how is it going to help me when Rizzo decides it’s time to get really rough?” Harry felt his gorge rise as an image of Marco’s face flashed into his mind.

The Chief of Police aimlessly but carefully threaded the darkened minor streets like an airline pilot in a holding pattern.

“Your family, Mr. Caster,” he said, ignoring Harry’s questions, “where are they right now?”

“Somewhere safe,” Harry said, surprising himself.

“Safe from Rizzo?” Beddell asked, dropping the name Rice for the first time.

“Yes,” said Harry, “and from anybody else if Rizzo’s too busy establishing an alibi to do the job himself.” He suddenly became aware of the revolver in his coat pocket, and for the first time he felt comforted by its presence. He knew Beddell would have him if he knew about it. But he didn’t. And he didn’t know Harry Caster quite as well as he thought he did.

Beddell knew that in his timid, chickenshit way Harry Caster was challenging him. But he didn’t feel angry; he only felt tired and longed for retirement and a pension as, after a hard day, he longed for his soft bed.

The policeman also knew that he could jerk this little Jew down to the station and in a very short time have the whole story out of him: where his family was, what the hell he was up to. It would all come out. Beddell knew that Caster was up to something. He was still scared, but there was a hardening core beneath his soft exterior. Something was propping Caster up or he wouldn’t be talking as he was tonight. He’d be running.

But Beddell didn’t want to—couldn’t afford to—know what Harry was doing. In twenty-nine years on the police force, he’d been a man who had built up a complicated web of ties and interdependencies. Debts and credits. A favor done; a benefit received. The complexity of Beddell’s particular situation didn’t allow him to interfere actively in the affairs of the Speranza family. And he’d never had reason to.

He didn’t like the situation, but he’d grown to accept it. Beddell honored the restrictions as much out of a sense of obligation as out of fear. He made good his debts. So Beddell ignored Harry’s comment and sealed his mind to the more unpleasant possibilities of the situation.

“Well, Mr. Caster,” he said with conscious finality, “you know what you’re doing. I think we’d better go to the station and get a statement from you about Marco Carradino. It won’t take long, and I’ll have a squad car take you back to your automobile.”

Now Beddell was driving differently. No longer aimless, his style was direct, crisp and economic. In a short time the car was in his parking bay at the police station. Harry followed Beddell into the depths of the station to make a statement, true as far as it went but false at the same time. Harry knew the Chief wouldn’t ask him whom he suspected. And if he did, Harry would lie. The lie was as necessary as the truth seemed to be a couple of days ago. Harry knew his part and he would play it.

14

“I know, Mama, I know,” Rizzo said into the telephone. His sallow face was pale. “I said I’ll be there, and I will. But I’ve got some things to do here first. Mama, don’t cry. I told you—I’ll be there in just a little while. I won’t be long. But let me talk to Papa now, please. Yes, please go get him. That’s right. I’ll see you soon, Mama.”

Rizzo sat under the pale yellow light of a standing lamp in his living room waiting for his father to come on the line. A gentle knock sounded on the hall door.

“Yeah?” Rizzo said.

Angela Rizzo pushed open the door uncertainly. “Carlo,” she said, “Gino Speranza is here to see you. He’s got two men with him. Gino said you called him.”

“Yes,” said Rizzo, holding his hand over the speaker of the telephone, “tell them to wait, Angie. I’ll be right with them.”

Angela pulled the door shut, and Rizzo spoke again into the telephone. “Papa? Yes. Look, Mama is going crazy. You’ve got to calm her down. Where the hell are Sylvia and Carmela? Well, if they’re there, what are they doing—feeding their fat faces? You tell them if they don’t take care of Mama, they’ll be sorry. All right then. I’ll see you in maybe an hour. What? You tell that goddamned priest he can just wait. Okay? Okay. Goodbye, Papa.”

When Rizzo went into the kitchen, Gino Speranza and two young guys were sitting at the table drinking coffee. Neither of Gino’s men could have been much over twenty-one years old. One was darker than Gino with a big, high-bridged nose and shiny black hair combed straight back from a bulging forehead. The other was big, blond and soft-looking, with southern handsomeness. His head was large for even his big body, and his hair bulged out under a narrow-brimmed black hat like curly straw.

“Come on in,” Rizzo said to Gino and turned and walked back into the living room. Gino and his men gulped their coffee and followed, chewing the last of the raisin cake. When they were all in the living room and the door was closed, Rizzo turned on Gino. “It took you long enough to get here.”

“Easy, Charlie, easy,” Gino said calmly. “I know you’re upset about your kid brother getting cut down like that, and I’m sorry. But don’t take it out on us. We’re on your side.”

“Are you?” asked Rizzo sharply. He glanced at the other two men. “Yeah,” Gino said. “This is Injun”—he indicated the dark one— “and Ruby.” The big man raised a pale hand, but Rizzo ignored him.

“They look like kids to me,” he said.

“Maybe,” said Gino, “but they do the job. Okay, we’re here. What’s on your mind?”

“You know damned well what’s on my mind. You and your red-hot pistoleros got my kid brother nearly killed tonight.” Gino said nothing. His refusal to deny the accusation made Rizzo even more angry. “Your guys were supposed to rough Carradino up,” he said, “not tear his head off.”

“He got difficult,” said Ruby.

“Shut up,” ordered Gino without anger. “Look, Charlie, this just won’t wash. You told me to give Caster something serious to think about, put a shot near enough to scare him. And you agreed that Carradino was right for the situation. So we did the job. It was heavy, I admit, but my boys are young and eager. They want to make good, and maybe they lack a little finesse. But are you claiming that because Carradino got hurt bad, the muscle behind Caster hit your kid brother on the street in Manhattan on the same night? Within two hours?”

“Who else?” Rizzo asked. “Who else do you think would have run my brother down like a dog?”

“Abe?”

“No, I don’t believe it. Abe’s mad at me, sure, but to hit my brother like this, right out of nowhere—he wouldn’t do it.”

“Maybe he heard you were over to see my old man this morning,” Gino said. “And he didn’t like it. Have you asked him?”

“I don’t have to.” But Rizzo didn’t tell him that he’d tried to call Montara as soon as he’d heard about Steve. Montara had refused to take the call, just as he’d refused to talk to Rizzo since the trouble had begun last spring. “There’s no point. It’s got to be those guys who jumped me last night.” Unthinking, Rizzo put his hand to his bandaged jaw. “It can’t be anybody else.”

“If you’re right,” said Gino, “we’re up against some very tough boys. You sure you want to go on with this thing, Charlie?” Gino didn’t think there was much chance of Rizzo quitting, but he wanted a definite commitment for the whole ride.

“Go on? Of course I’m going on. Do you think I’m going to fold up now with my brother in the hospital and maybe could die? I’m going to make those bastards regret they ever threw in against me.”

“The way these guys are working,” Gino said, “we’d better get cracking. The next hit could be right at your family here. These guys mean business.”

“So do I,” said Rizzo. “Now listen. I’m going into the city to get my folks straightened around. I’ll be back very late tonight. After I leave here, this house is buttoned up tight. Nobody gets in or out. My boys will see to that. Your job is to stay with Caster. Where he goes, you go. But don’t touch him. Not yet. Even if he runs for it, stay with him. He could lead us to his wife and kids. Check in with me here early tomorrow. And no more screw-ups, okay?”

“Sure,” said Gino, getting up. “You’re the boss.” He started for the door with Ruby and Injun following him. He paused at the door. “Only one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You go ahead and square things with your people in the city, but when you get back, I say we’d better get into some action. Doing nothing could be dangerous.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get action. I just hope you can handle it.”

“We can handle it,” said Gino, and he and the others left.

Rizzo went into the kitchen where Angie was ironing clothes. “Angie,” he said.

Angie looked up from her work with the frowning expression she always wore when she was worried. Rizzo crossed the linoleum floor and put his hands on her shoulders at the base of her neck.

“Angie,” he said again, “stop it. Just stop worrying. There’s no need. Just do as I said earlier, and everything will be all right. All we’ve got to do is sit tight for a few days, stay close to home. Is that so hard? Just keep Bobby and Maria home from school starting tomorrow. A few days off won’t hurt them. I’ve got to go see Mama and Papa now, but I won’t be long. We’ll all be here tomorrow and—I’ll tell you what, we’ll send over to Guichi’s for a big pizza for lunch. The kids will like that. It’s going to be like a picnic.”

“All right,” said Angie, trying to stop frowning. “Only, Carlo—”

“What is it?”

Angie hesitated.

“What is it?” His voice was a bit more edgy.

“Bobby’s football game. It’s tomorrow night, and it’s the big game against Grosmont Tech. Will he be able to play?”

Rizzo had completely forgotten the football game despite his efforts to keep up on the kids’ activities. He was proud that Bobby was doing so well as an athlete. This wasn’t going to win him any points with Bobby.

“No,” he said very definitely. “I’m sorry. It’s just not possible.” Rizzo was stuck. He couldn’t emphasize the danger to their son in going out to the game without frightening her even more. He tried to put all of the words he couldn’t say into his refusal. “Tell him I’m sorry, but he’ll have to miss this one. He’s not the whole team.”

“Can Bobby talk to you about it?” Angela asked, biting her lower lip. “I told him I’d ask you.”

Rizzo felt himself being driven into yet another corner. “Oh, shit—I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “It won’t do any good. We’ll just both lose our tempers. I have to go right now. Mama is climbing the walls. Do as I say. Be a good girl.” He pulled his wife to him and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’ll make it up to Bobby, you’ll see.”

Angela Rizzo sighed, returned her husband’s kiss and then walked with him to the door. As he drove away, she let the curtain fall and then went upstairs to console her waiting son with the feeble prospect of pizza for lunch tomorrow.

15

After an egg-shaped, silent policeman dropped him at his car in front of Marco’s cottage, Harry decided to go by Parker Hospital on the way back to the bar.

Harry hated being a patient in a hospital, but he found entering the brightly lit, timeless atmosphere of these corridors very exciting. In his fantasies, he imagined Harry Caster, M.D., stalking the waxed floors, stethoscope dangling carelessly, short, a bit pudgy perhaps, but all the same poised to use his steel nerves and sure hands to save lives.

But now, Harry entered Parker Hospital with a feeling of dread and fear that they’d tell him that Marco was dead, that his defiance of Rizzo had cost an innocent life. At the reception desk, a nurse who looked no older than Lizzie told him that nobody could see Marco until preliminary examinations and tests were finished. She couldn’t think of any reason why Harry couldn’t wait a while.

The waiting room was empty except for a gaunt, gray-haired woman of about fifty who sat leafing through a women’s magazine without seeing the pages. After a glance at her, Harry sat down across the room on a cold, red plastic couch to wait.

Then it hit him. The woman’s face. It was Marco’s face, finer, more strained and infinitely more marked by time, but the same handsome-beautiful face. Harry was reminded again of the responsibility for Marco’s being beaten and for her presence in this plastic-and-chromium-steel room. He considered avoiding her, burying himself in a magazine, but he couldn’t.

Harry walked carefully over to where the woman sat and stood silently waiting for her to notice him. After half a minute or so, the woman raised her eyes to his face hopefully, somberly, in confusion. Her eyes were a soft, mixed color like violet-speckled china. They showed no sign of redness or crying.

Prompted by her questioning look, Harry said, “You’re Mrs. Carradino—Marco’s mother?”

“Yes,” she said, and she stood up. She kept rising until Harry’s eyes were level with her nose.

“I’m Harry Caster,” he said. “Marco worked”—he couldn’t help the past tense sneaking out—“for me at my bar, the Lamplighter.”

“I know,” she said. Her voice was neither cold nor warm. It fell in a nether region of non-commitment.

“I’m very sorry,” Harry began.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Carradino, cutting Harry off with those two unforgiving words and dismissing him to the world of those who are sorry but no more than that.

Harry felt like going away, but didn’t know how. He couldn’t even figure out how to get back to the neutrality of the cold red couch.

“Has there been any word?” he asked, breaking off the silence that was building up.

Before she could answer, Harry heard clicking footsteps behind him and saw Mrs. Carradino’s eyes come nearly alive with recognition. He shifted his weight to look toward the door of the waiting room.

It was a girl. Twenty-two or twenty-three, with long, slightly wavy black hair falling over her shoulders. She wore faded jeans and a thin, blue work-shirt but still managed to look womanly and somehow properly dressed for a hospital. Wooden-soled sandals were making the clicking noise.

The girl’s eyes slid over Harry without pausing and met Mrs. Carradino’s. Then she was standing at his side, her thin shoulder reaching exactly to his.

“Is there any word?” Mrs. Carradino asked.

“Not yet, but the ward nurse says the doctor should be able to tell us something any time now. She thinks he’ll be out soon.”

Mrs. Carradino hauled her attention back to Harry. “This is my daughter Sandra,” she said. “Sandra, this is Mr. Caster, Marco’s employer. It was he who found Marco and called the ambulance after”—Mrs. Carradino paused deliberately—“what happened.”

“Hello,” said Sandra. She didn’t have to raise her eyes to look into his, and Harry saw in her face curiosity mixed with youthful disinterest. To him, her look said: “You exist because of your connection with my brother, but other than that you’re a zero.”

“Hello,” answered Harry blankly. Despite his concern for Marco, Harry couldn’t say that he cared very much for his family.

The three of them stood in a little triangle saying nothing but held together by unanswered questions. Harry was about to break away and return to his side of the room when the door opened and an elderly nurse with a tiptoe walk came in.

“Mrs. Carradino,” she said. Marco’s mother answered with an eager look. “Dr. Burns says you may see your son for a few minutes. If you’ll just come with me.”

Marco’s sister would have followed, but the old nurse stopped her. “I’m sorry, but Dr. Burns thinks it best that only your mother sees the patient at this time. He’s very weak, and we don’t want to tire him further.”

Sandra opened her mouth to protest but glanced sideways at her mother and shut it again. “All right,” she said. “I’ll wait here for you, Mother.”

Mrs. Carradino obediently followed the nurse. Sandra threw herself into the nearest chair and snatched up a fashion magazine. She tossed it back on the table with a snort of impatience.

Harry began to return to his couch, but her voice stopped him: “Do you really think a jealous husband did this to Marco?”

He turned and faced the girl, who was looking at him with bored curiosity. “I don’t know,” Harry said. He remained standing with most of his weight on his pivot foot.

“Don’t stand there in the middle of the room,” Sandra ordered. “Sit over here. I hate hospitals. All these white uniforms and hushed voices give me the creeps. They’re inhuman. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Harry repeated, sitting down a chair away from Sandra and not really listening.

“Maybe not,” she said, looking directly into his face, “but I think you do know more than you’re saying.” Harry was certain that the fear he felt showed plainly on his face. “Don’t worry,” Sandra said. “You won’t be giving away any secrets. I know what a lover boy Marco is. Everybody knows, except Mother, and she won’t let herself know anything ‘distasteful.’ Almost every time I’ve called Marco’s cottage, a different woman’s voice has answered: drowsy, slutty voices fresh from the hot little bed of Marco Carradino.”

Harry didn’t answer, didn’t say anything. He just looked at the girl’s scornful face and felt his fear being replaced by relief and mild curiosity about this family of Marco’s. His relations with Marco had been confined to the tight little precincts of the Lamplighter. “Look, miss,” Harry said with force, “don’t think—”

“Don’t call me miss. My name’s Sandra. It’s a crappy name, but it’s all mine. And yours is Harry. I know that from Marco. He thinks you’re a good old boy even if you do bug him too much about wasting his life. I know—”

What she knew was interrupted by Mrs. Carradino’s return to the waiting room. “I’ve seen Marco,” she said, “and he looks awful. But the doctor says he’s getting stronger.”

“May I see him?” Sandra asked.

“Not tonight, dear,” her mother said. “Dr. Burns says you may visit tomorrow if he continues to make progress. And, dear, the doctor says that he can find a bed here for me tonight if I want to stay. I’d like to in case Marco needs me. Would you mind going home alone?”

Harry considered offering the girl a ride but decided against it. Before the girl had a chance to answer, he cut in: “In that case, Mrs. Carradino, I’ll be going. I’ll call in tomorrow to check on Marco. It was nice meeting you,” he finished lamely, and looked at Sandra as if to include her, too.

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Carradino said absently. “Thank you very much for coming.” She extended her ringless hand, and Harry clasped it gingerly and let go. As he walked away, Harry heard Sandra asking if her mother would need anything from home for her night’s stay in the hospital.

As he drove slowly along the hospital’s tunnel-like exit road, he noticed a figure standing under a bright street light at the end of the drive.

It was Sandra Carradino.

Harry reluctantly pulled up beside her and rolled down his window.

“Can you give me a ride?” Sandra asked. “The goddamned taxi office said it would be at least forty-five minutes before he could get a cab here.”

“Okay,” Harry said, “get in.” He reached over and cracked the other door open for her.

Sandra slid into the front seat, settling not very close to Harry, yet not hugging the door.

“Which way?” Harry asked.

“Just go up Cutler Boulevard, left on Schumann and I’ll tell you from there,” she directed. “This isn’t too much trouble for you, is it? I don’t want to make you late for anything.”

“You won’t,” Harry said, and he pulled the car out into the deserted street in front of the hospital.

Harry drove in silence, determined not to make polite conversation with this girl. But in truth it was no inconvenience. He’d never felt so lonely in his life as in these last few days. He was glad of any company, even this cool, almost hostile girl.

Sandra broke the silence. “Do you know what I think? I think Marco wasn’t beaten up by a jealous husband at all.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Harry lied, keeping his eyes on the gently sloping dark street.

“But don’t you have any idea at all?” she asked. “I mean, you see Marco a lot more than we do. You must have some idea what he’s been doing. Who he hangs around with. There are some pretty shady characters who hang around bars. It could be some of them.”

If you only knew, little sister, Harry thought. We’ve got shady characters, all right. I’ll introduce you to a few sometime. “What do you mean by shady characters?” he asked, to avoid telling any more lies.

“You know,” Sandra insisted, “crooks, gangsters, that sort of person.”

“Oh,” said Harry in a nasty voice, “you mean like me?”

To Harry’s surprise, Sandra didn’t react defensively. Instead, she was silent for a moment and then said thoughtfully: “No, not like you. I don’t think you’re a crook or a gangster, Mr. Caster.”

Harry didn’t know what to say.

“But,” Sandra continued, “neither can I really believe that Marco was beaten so viciously by some jealous husband or boyfriend. Marco’s a big boy. He’s not as bright as I wish he were, but he can take care of himself. This is something else, and I’m going to go to the police tomorrow and ask some questions.”

“You’re going to see Chief Beddell?”

“Yes. Or whoever is handling the case. That’s what the police call it, isn’t it—a case?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Have they asked you any questions yet about how you came to find Marco this evening?” she asked.

“Some,” said Harry. “I was at the police station talking with Beddell just before I came to the hospital. He asked me what I knew, and I told him.”

“And what was that?” Sandra persisted.

“Very little,” Harry said, annoyed to be questioned and even more to have to lie again. “I told him about Marco’s telephone call to the bar early this evening and that I went to the cottage and found him there. That’s all.”

“But—”

“This is Schumann Boulevard,” Harry said. “Now what?”

“Take the second left after this signal. Then left, right at the third block, and our house is the one with the big lantern out front.”

“Okay,” Harry said, pretending to concentrate on his driving, but he couldn’t shake the girl off.

“But,” she continued, “if the Chief of Police is so interested, doesn’t that mean there must be something important? He doesn’t get involved every time some bartender gets beaten up, does he?”

“I haven’t any idea,” Harry said. “I stay away from the police. I’ve only talked with Beddell twice in my life.” The second Harry said that he knew it was a mistake.

“What was the other time?”

Harry was saved for the moment by the fact that they were approaching the Carradino’s house. “Is this it?” Harry asked, pulling to the curb in front of a large house with a lighted lantern out front. He didn’t turn off the ignition.

But before Sandra could either say something else or get out of the car, the door on her side was snatched open and a long-haired blond youth in a sheepskin jacket was leaning into the car.

16

“Where the fuck have you been?” the youth shouted into Sandra’s face. Harry recognized the rotten fumes of half-digested alcohol. He’d spent half his life across the bar from that stink.

“Lenny,” Sandra started to say, but the boy grabbed her by the arm and pulled her so violently out of the car that she left a wooden-soled clog behind. Once he’d gotten the girl out of the automobile, Lenny found her too hard to manage and dropped Sandra heavily onto the grass strip between the curb and the sidewalk.

“Come on, bitch,” he said, beginning to pull the struggling girl across the grass.

“Stop it, Lenny,” Sandra said, fighting to get free. “Listen to me, stop it!”

But Lenny continued to pull at her arm and shoulder, too drunk to move her effectively but strong enough so that she couldn’t break loose and regain her feet. In the struggle, her denim shirt rode halfway up her naked back.

Christ, thought Harry, what’s this? But at the same time he switched off the ignition and slid out of his door of the car. Harry reached behind the car seat and came up with a lug wrench. Nearly twenty years of handling drunks had taught him that you couldn’t do it barehanded.

Moving quickly around the back of the car, Harry found that the youth had succeeded in dragging Sandra to the sidewalk and was laboriously tugging her along on her knees.

“C’mon, you fucking bitch,” he muttered. “I want to talk to you.” Despite the cool night, the boy was sweating heavily, and a thin white shirt was plastered to his slim body.

Without saying a word, Harry reached out and gave the boy a firm crack on the left forearm with the lug wrench. It was very painful, but not hard enough to break the bone.

“Ow!” Lenny cried, letting go of Sandra’s wrist and falling back onto the sidewalk in front of her. “My arm. You broke it, you bastard. My fucking arm is broken!” Clasping the injured arm to his chest, the boy began to rock and croon in pain and outrage, not trying to get up from the sidewalk. Nearly at his feet, Sandra still knelt soundlessly with her hands over her face. Harry saw tears dripping from the heels of her hands onto her shirt.

“Come on,” Harry said softly, pulling Sandra up by her shoulders. She was light for a tall girl, and under her hands her arms and shoulders felt fragile, almost brittle. Under the strong lamplight, Harry could see that the right knee of her jeans was ripped open and the knee had been scraped raw. He began to lead her toward the white-latticed front of her house.

“My purse,” Sandra said, “it’s in the car…my keys.”

“I’ll get it,” Harry said, continuing to shepherd her toward a long porch and finally depositing her on an old-fashioned porch swing.

“He’s really a very nice boy,” Sandra said, trying to wipe the tears from her face with the sleeve of her shirt.

“I’m sure he is,” said Harry. He gave Sandra his handkerchief. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

When Harry got back to the sidewalk, Lenny had gotten to his feet and was rhythmically kicking the rear fender of Harry’s rented car with a sneaker-shod foot. He still clutched his wounded arm at the elbow, but it didn’t seem to impair his kicking skill. The hollow booms rolled out like slow drumbeats.

“All right,” said Harry, touching the boy’s right shoulder.

Then Harry’s world turned black, shot with purple and yellow sparks. With the pure science of drunkenness, Lenny had whirled and caught him across the bridge of the nose with a perfect, if unintentional, karate chop. A wave of intense pain hit Harry between the eyes, and his hands went instinctively to his face. He felt his dinner coming up and amidst waves of dizziness fought to keep it in his stomach.

Lenny stood watching Harry struggle with pain and nausea. Then the boy made a murky connection between some action of his and Harry’s current state, and his young face parted in a boozy smile of self-congratulation.

“That will teach you,” he told the back of Harry’s hands, “to go around hitting innocent people with steel bars. How do you like it?”

Harry heard this as if from a long distance through a faulty connection. Then he heard, a little bit clearer: “You’re getting blood all over yourself.”

The cloud that had been hanging around Harry’s head cleared enough for him to see that Lenny was right. The front of his suit coat and shirt were polka-dotted with wet, shiny blood, and he had its unmistakable taste in his mouth. Harry reached for his handkerchief but couldn’t find it.

“Here,” said Lenny, and Harry felt a crumpled handkerchief shoved into his hand. But Harry, even at that moment wondering how clean it was, didn’t know quite what to do with it. He didn’t want to put it to his face, and it wasn’t much good to brush at the blood on his clothes. He compromised by trying to get some of the blood off his hands.

The pain had largely gone now except for a deep throb at the front of his brain, and Harry stood wondering what to do with Lenny.

“Is that a wash-and-wear suit?” Lenny asked.

“No,” Harry said, standing bent forward to avoid dripping any more blood on himself, “it’s not.” Reluctantly, he tried to stop some of the blood with the handkerchief and felt it quickly becoming saturated.

“It’s probably going to stain, then,” said Lenny with serious concern. “Unless you soak it pretty soon in cold water. That’s what my mother says.”

“Lenny,” Harry said, bored, tired and impatient, “thanks very much, but why don’t you go home? It’s getting late.” It was hardly ten o’clock, but to Harry it felt very, very late.

Lenny then remembered what he was doing there. A mean, petulant look came on his face. “I want to see Sandra,” he said sullenly.

“No,” Harry said, stepping in his way.

“I’ve got a right,” insisted Lenny. “Sandra’s my girl. I want to see her.” His face turned soft as if he were going to cry.

Harry felt so weary that he didn’t want to waste a single word on this drunken boy. “Lenny,” he said with as much menace as he could summon, “if you don’t go home, I’m going to get that lug wrench and I’m going to bend it over your head.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“Sandra wants to see me,” Lenny said, changing the subject.

“No, she doesn’t,” Harry said, feeling like the oldest sixteen-year-old boy in the world. He tried to take the boy’s arm to lead him to his car, a much-dented Mercedes painted a silvery gray. But Lenny shook off Harry’s hand and once more gripped his injured arm.

“My arm still hurts,” he said as he walked to the car.

“I’m sorry.” Harry shadowed the boy until he half-fell behind the steering wheel.

“You should be.” Lenny fumbled in his pockets. “I’ve lost my keys,” he said, trying to climb back out of the low sports car.

“They’re in the ignition.” Harry pushed him back into the bucket seat.

Lenny batted the rabbit’s foot dangling from the keys and looked up sincerely at Harry. “Will you take a message to Sandra?”

“Sure.”

“Tell her she’s a lousy lay,” Lenny said, switching the Mercedes to a loud roar. Blinking his eyes to get them to focus, he said, “I’m not going home.”

Then he popped the clutch, floored the gas pedal and peeled away from the curb, narrowly missing Harry’s car. Halfway down the block, the car backfired thunderously, and at the corner, Lenny, still running dark, took the turn on two wheels and was gone.

17

Harry threw the lug wrench into the back of the car, picked up Sandra’s purse with his two least-bloody fingers and walked slowly up the walk to the house. His nose had stopped bleeding.

Sandra met him at the foot of the steps.

“He’ll kill himself.”

“Good,” said Harry, stepping out of the dark shadow of a squat oak that dominated the front yard.

“My God,” said Sandra, “blood everywhere.” She stepped toward him. She’d felt indifferent, even hostile, toward this man since she’d met him at the hospital. But now, despite his ludicrous appearance, Sandra felt herself drawn to him. Maybe it was because he looked ridiculous and yet somehow wasn’t ridiculous at all, just human. She reached out a hand to touch his arm. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Harry said, feeling as if bleeding were in bad taste.

“You ought to put your clothes in to soak,” Sandra said, “or the blood will stain them.”

“That’s what Lenny said. If you two ever get back together, you’d make a fortune in the dry-cleaning business.”

“Come inside,” Sandra said, taking a key from her purse and leading Harry up to the big front door and into an impressive foyer. The house had been built in the mid-twenties when Wall Street money was hitting New York suburbs in great waves. When it receded it left a number of similar monuments to easy money and hard reality.

“Wow!” Harry said, staring up at the acres of rich woodwork. A delicately carved staircase began directly across the foyer and spiraled gently into the upper reaches of the house.

“Yes,” Sandra said, “the glory that was Rome. I’ll tell you all about it, but now you better do something about getting that blood off you. I haven’t a delicate stomach, but you look like an atrocity victim. The bathroom is the third door on the right at the top of the stairs. Put everything especially bloody into the bathtub to soak, and I’ll get you a robe to wear. In the meantime. I’ll make some coffee. Or would you prefer a drink?”

“Coffee,” said Harry as he started to walk up the faded blue-carpeted stairway. A few minutes later he was standing in his underwear watching his bloodstained clothes swimming soggily in the giant marble bathtub and slowly turning the water pink. Harry shoved the revolver Hoerner had given him into one of his shoes and stuffed his handkerchief in after it. There was a rap on the door, and a hand reached in holding a dark-blue robe.

“Coffee in the small drawing room in two minutes,” said Sandra through the door. “Just follow what’s left of your nose.”

Harry’s fingers discovered that the robe was soft, thick velvet with worn satin edging. He looked at himself in the gold-veined mirror and saw that the fit wasn’t bad. Over the breast pocket was an elaborate monogram Harry made out to be ALW.

Something subtle bothered his nose, and Harry sniffed deeply, bringing back a wave of dull pain which made him blink his eyes and vow not to do that again. It was perfume: rich, yet dry and clean-smelling. Harry took one more look at the bruised bridge of his nose—it seemed as though he wouldn’t have black eyes after all—and left the big bathroom.

Halfway down the stairs he saw Sandra waiting for him at the bottom. “Very fetching,” she said, and Harry felt himself going red. “I was afraid that with the damage the mighty Lenny did to your nose you might not be able to smell the coffee, so I came to lead you.”

Sandra couldn’t help smiling at the picture Harry presented, but mixed in with the amusement she felt a growing warmth. Watch it, Sandra, she told herself, you’re about to demonstrate yet again your absolutely rotten taste in men. This thought only made her smile more broadly. And, she rationalized, he did win me in fair combat.

Harry followed her through darkened rooms to a set of double doors which Sandra opened with mock ceremony. They stepped into a smallish room with a beamed ceiling and a curbed rosewood marble fireplace in one wall. The furniture was like the robe Harry wore: worn but well preserved.

“This is the only downstairs room I can stand,” Sandra said. “I think it used to be reserved for intimate gatherings of the very best people.” She gestured Harry to a plush-covered sofa facing the fireplace and gave him a big cup of coffee.

“This robe,” Harry asked, “it’s not Marco’s, is it?”

“God, no,” said Sandra, “it’s a remnant of the wardrobe of the late Alvin L. Wishart, the man who built this monument to capitalism. That’s his picture beaming down in the foyer. You’d be lost in Marco’s robe. Old Alvin was a squat little devil.”

“Thanks very much,” Harry said, taking a sip of the coffee. “How did you know I like my coffee black?”

“All civilized people drink black coffee.”

“He may have been no giant, but Wishart used a very nice perfume,” Harry said. He cautiously sniffed a lapel.

“Oh, that’s mine. I confiscated the robe years ago when I found a trunk full of his clothes in the attic. Mother wanted to make me put it back, but Daddy let me keep it.”

“This guy’s clothes are still up in the attic?” Harry asked. “Who was this Alvin L. Wishart, anyway? He’s not still up there, too, is he?”

“Not exactly. Wishart was something very money-making on Wall Street; probably a crook. Grandpa was his gardener. Somehow, during a week of extreme frenzy, Grandpa ended up the legal owner of this monstrosity, and Wishart got all Grandpa’s cash. The old boy didn’t play the market, so he had some.”

“Clever him.”

“Yes, clever. They nearly starved on Spode china.”

“What did Wishart do with the money?”

“The last thing Grandpa heard was a cryptic postcard from Buenos Aires.”

“Clever him, too.”

“My dad was about fifteen years old at the time, and he used to love to tell us kids all about Alvin L. Wishart. Mother thought it was sacrilege.”

“Your father,” Harry said, “he’s—uh—”

“That’s right. He’s dead,” Sandra said. “Someone had the bad taste three years ago to drop several tons of scrap metal on him at the yard. I think that’s why Marco won’t work there.”

Sandra threw her black hair and gave an equine laugh. “This is a cheerful conversation. Bankruptcy, death. Can’t we find something more cheerful to talk about?”

“How about Lenny?” Harry asked. “He says he’s your boyfriend. Is he?”

“No,” said Sandra, “that’s not more cheerful. And no, Lenny’s not my boyfriend. Not any more. Lenny’s just a rich, very crazy boy I once made the mistake of falling in love with.”

“But not anymore?” Harry asked out of real curiosity.

“Uh-uh,” Sandra shook her head. “I’m a masochist, but I’m not that much of a masochist.”

“Tough on Lenny.”

“Not so tough,” she said. “I can’t do anything for him that a bottle can’t. And he knows it. That little show tonight wasn’t unrequited love. Lenny just didn’t have anything to do for a while and thought he’d come over and pick at a few old wounds.”

“He could be dangerous.”

“I don’t think so,” Sandra said, ruefully examining her skinned knee and torn jeans. “He always ends up crying and goes away quietly in the end after making as much fuss as possible.”

“He didn’t go away quietly tonight.”

“Ah, but that’s because he had a new audience. You were here to add spice to the script. Besides, drawing blood on you gave him a shot of adrenalin. You can’t begrudge the boy his moment of triumph. Speaking of triumph, how’s your nose?”

“Okay,” Harry said. He waggled the tip gently between thumb and forefinger. “You really despise him, don’t you?” Harry felt the protective empathy of kind for kind.

“Not really,” she said. “That’s bitterness speaking. Frustrated hopes, thwarted expectations, shattered dreams. All that stuff. But I’m tired of talking about Lenny. Tell me about you—no, better yet, tell me about your wife.”

“Hildy?” Harry was shocked to find that he hadn’t thought about Hildy for hours.

“Yes, if that’s her name. Is she sitting faithfully at home waiting for your lordly step at the front door? What’s she going to think when you come home wet, rumpled, smelling of my perfume and with a slightly damaged nose? I suppose she’s used to that. Will she hit you with a rolling pin?”

“No,” said Harry, “Hildy’s out of town with the girls—my daughters.”

“How many? Daughters, I mean.”

“Two. Lizzie is eleven and Sophie, the baby, is eleven months.”

“A baby at your age,” Sandra said with a smile. “You should be ashamed of yourself, you devil.”

“It was nothing, really,” Harry said, feeling his ears go red. “It was a cold winter.”

“What’s Hildy like?”

What was Hildy like? It may seem a standard husband-wife joke, but Harry couldn’t answer that question. Would it do to say that she was short, dark, loved old movies and would rather live in fantasy than in the real world? That was part of what she was like, but it didn’t sum up Hildy.

“I’d rather tell you about me,” said Harry. “I’m forty-five years old; I’m a high-school graduate; I never got to be a fighter pilot, and I scratch out a living selling liquor to people with too much money and too little sense. Very likely, somebody much like me is pouring a drink for Lenny right now.”

“No, you don’t,” Sandra said. “You’re not clever enough, Harry, to turn this non-conversation back onto Lenny—and thus back onto me.”

Harry noticed that this was the first time she’d called him by his first name. “Maybe not, Sandra,” he said, “but I thought I’d try.” Sandra finished the rest of her coffee and shuddered at the bitter, cold taste of the dregs. She looked at him.

“Are you going to spend the night?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Harry, forgetting Hoerner, forgetting the Lamplighter, forgetting everything, and at the same time he felt the slightly cool softness of her hand on his. Harry put out his other hand and encountered the animal thinness of her rib cage. With an easy pull, Harry’s mouth was on her young lips. It was not a passionate kiss but one of searching tenderness.

“But more later,” said Sandra, breaking the kiss but remaining in Harry’s arms. As tall as she was, it was hard to say who was in whose arms. “First, I think we’d better sort out somebody’s gory clothes. Unless of course you want to go home in a pair of Alvin L. Wishart’s golf knickers or his tuxedo.”

“No,” said Harry, letting his hands drop easily to her soft-hard hips, “I don’t think I could live up to them.”

Sandra rose from the sofa but let her hand linger on the pudgy curve of Harry’s jaw. “Right, then, follow me.”

Harry followed her back up to the baronial bathroom where his clothes lay in what looked like a pool of weak strawberry soda. “I’m a pretty good bleeder,” he said.

“Yes,” Sandra said, sitting on the thick edge of the bathtub and pushing the sodden clothes around with her hand. “Help me wring these out and we’ll put them in the dryer. I’ll see what I can do with a steam iron in the morning.”

The suit, shirt and vest were slowly tumbling in the big-eyed clothes dryer when Sandra closed the laundry-room door behind them.

“And now?” Harry asked.

“And now,” she said, “I live up there.” She pointed at the ceiling. Once again, Harry followed her, this time to a narrow, sharply rising staircase in the corner nearly hidden in shadows. As they climbed, Harry watched the creasing and straining of the jeans over her small, rounded bottom and thought about taking them off her.

18

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, lying beside her in the dark.

“Don’t be,” Sandra said. She lay under his outstretched left arm. She picked up his other hand and placed it on her breast. At the touch, Harry felt again the intense excitement which had so recently failed to translate itself into action. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“I suppose you’re used to failures.”

“Failure and success,” she said. “There’s not much difference.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m new at this sort of thing,” Harry said, hating himself for saying it. At first, in the fresh humiliation of his failure, Harry had tried to move away from the girl. But in the Spartan narrowness of her bed there was nowhere to go, and she clung to him with surprising strength. “Like when a girl loses her virginity,” he added.

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “When I lost mine I couldn’t stop giggling. No trauma at all. Poor Lenny.”

“I’ll kill him,” Harry said, but he felt better.

“No,” Sandra went on soberly, “I don’t think you’re suffering from first-infidelity nerves. I think you’ve got something much more serious on your mind, and that’s what went wrong with our little love scene.”

“You’re right,” Harry said. Then he told her everything. About Rizzo and Hoerner and why Marco was lying in the hospital. Sandra didn’t say anything, just listened. As he talked with a fluency he didn’t know he possessed, Harry could feel her soft breathing and see the shadows of her face. All she said was: “Poor Harry, poor Marco.” Her thin arms snaked around his waist and pulled Harry to her fiercely.

When he had finished telling, they made love with a ferocity Harry didn’t recognize in himself. Just before she fell asleep, Sandra told him drowsily: “You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Harry boy.” Shortly after, Harry felt his mind dissolve into nothingness.

Their sleep was short. In the blackness a telephone was ringing with short, persistent bursts of annoyance, and Sandra fumblingly put on a nightlight and picked up the receiver. It was just after midnight.

“Yes?” she said sleepily.

Harry reached over to cup Sandra’s breast from behind, but she shook off his hand with an unconscious convulsion. “Mother,” she said. “Yes, I’m awake. What’s happened?” She listened for a few moments and then said: “I understand. Mother. How are you? Good. I’ll be right there.” Sandra replaced the receiver and turned to face Harry.

“Marco’s dead,” she told him. “He died a few minutes ago. A blood clot in his brain.”

Harry couldn’t say anything. He was grateful when Sandra slipped back into his arms and clung wordlessly for a long moment. He felt her tears on his chest. Then she broke free and kissed him. Her kiss was a wordless release from blame.

“I’ve got to get to the hospital,” Sandra said, sliding out of bed and beginning to dress swiftly. From behind, her waist looked as thin as a child’s, and her shoulder blades stuck out like little wings.

“I’ll drive you.” Harry reached for the old velvet robe.

“Okay. But hurry. Your clothes must be nearly dry now.”

They were—nearly. Harry pulled them on quickly, shuddering at the feel of the damp, wrinkled cloth. Putting the revolver back in his coat pocket, he walked back to the vast bathroom to wash his face. He looked like a corpse that had been washed up on a beach. A not very high-class corpse badly in need of a shave.

Sandra was waiting for him in the hallway looking as if she’d never been to bed. She had put on a plain blue wool dress, and her hair was caught up in a loose braid at the side of her head. When she saw Harry, Sandra couldn’t quite stifle a smile.

“I know,” Harry said, “I know. Let’s get going.”

They drove in silence, each aware of Marco lying cold and dead in the hospital ahead. Harry hadn’t yet said anything to Sandra about her brother. He sensed—he hoped—that she knew what he wanted to say: how guilty and responsible he felt. Harry wished he’d accepted Rizzo’s offer in the first place. Marco would be alive. It could have been worked out somehow, Harry thought.

He parked in a dark, shadowy spot within sight of the brightly-lit hospital entrance. An ambulance stood in front of the entrance with its blue top-light rotating slowly. A white-uniformed attendant leaned against its pale side carefully smoking a cigarette. Harry wondered whether its passenger was coming or going—alive or dead.

“I’ll let you out here,” Harry said. “If anybody saw me like this, they’d throw me down and give me artificial respiration.”

“Okay.” But she didn’t move.

“Sandra,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I know. Don’t say it, Harry. There’s no need. I think I understand. I want to understand.” Again, tears ran down her face. Quickly, without noise, like beads of condensation on a window. She wondered if they were really for Marco or for her mother. Her mother would expect them. Mother wouldn’t cry; no, she’d be drier than ever. But she would expect tears of others. What was death without tears?

“I have to go in,” she said, kissing Harry’s stubbly chin with dry lips. “Go home; get some sleep.”

“When will I see you?” He felt foolish and very young.

“You’ll see me,” Sandra said. “As soon as you hear that Marco is dead, you’ll come around to see us.” She showed her teeth. “God, what a charade.”

Harry watched the girl click out of the darkness into the antiseptic glare of the hospital lights and disappear through the front door under the blank gaze of the ambulance attendant. She didn’t look back.

He continued to sit in the darkened car. Harry was tired, uncomfortable, wrinkled, slightly damp in spots, bruised and, above all, confused by the events of the week and especially that night. None of it fit. Time was necessary to sort it all out, but time was what he didn’t seem to have.

Wearily, Harry slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. He headed for home.

19

As his front door closed behind him, Harry remembered Hoerner. He was supposed to have gone back to the Lamplighter and waited there for a call from Hoerner. Harry looked at his watch. One o’clock. Just over six hours ago he’d talked to Hoerner. It seemed like six days. Harry dialed the number of the Lamplighter.

“Hank,” he said, “Harry. Have there been any calls for me this evening?”

“Have there? Only about a dozen. Say, what happened to you? And what was with Marco? I thought you were coming back soon.”

“It’s a long story, Hank,” Harry said. “I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now I can’t face it. Who were the calls from?”

“All the same guy, Harry. And he’s here now waiting for you. He came in about an hour ago.”

“Is he a tall, sort of mean-looking guy?”

“That’s him. I wouldn’t want him mad at me. Do you want me to call the cops or something?”

Harry laughed. “No, thanks all the same. But, Hank, close up tonight at the usual time. Can you work tomorrow night?”

“Sure, but—”

“Okay,” said Harry. “I’ll ring you tomorrow. Now let me talk to my friend.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Hoerner demanded. His voice was tight with tension.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Harry said. “Look, Hoerner, I’m tired of talking on the telephone. Why don’t you come over here to my house? You know the address.”

“See you in ten minutes,” said Hoerner. “I’ll come in the back way.” In just over that time there was a tap on the back door, and Harry admitted Hoerner to the dimly lit porch.

“Come in here,” he said, leading Hoerner into the living room and switching on a floor lamp.

“Christ,” said Hoerner, getting a look at Harry, “what happened to you? You look like you’ve been run over by a street sweeper—twice.”

“Nothing serious,” said Harry, dismissing the question. “Marco is dead.”

Hoerner said nothing.

“He died maybe an hour ago at the hospital from the beating Rizzo’s thugs gave him.” After another silence, Harry said, “You don’t seem to care very much.”

“I don’t,” said Hoerner. “I never knew him.”

“He was a good kid,” Harry said, “but that’s not the point. What I’m saying is that Marco is lying in the hospital stiff room with his head half-torn off. And all because I decided not to knuckle under to Rizzo. His mother and sister are wondering why he’s dead. He was alive yesterday.”

“They’re not the only ones,” Hoerner said. “There will be some grieving going on at Rizzo’s place tonight, too. After you called me this evening, I decided it was time to put a little heavy pressure on our friend Carlo. His little brother Steve had an accident tonight.”

“Accident?” said Harry. “What do you mean?”

“If you have to know the details,” Hoerner said, “a big, white Cadillac ran up over the curb on Sullivan Street tonight and knocked him over a stoop railing. Last time I saw him, he wasn’t looking too healthy.”

“Jesus!” said Harry.

“It had to be done, Harry,” said Hoerner. “You saw yourself tonight that Rizzo means business. He apparently didn’t learn anything from last night’s experience, so he’ll have to learn the hard way.”

Harry looked at Hoerner with unbelieving eyes.

“You don’t seem to understand, Harry,” Hoerner said, “but we’re fighting a war, you and I. In wars, people get hurt, people get killed. If we don’t hit them, they’ll hit us. It’s as simple as that. They hit Marco Carradino, and he died. It’s a damn shame. And so we had to hit back. Rizzo’s pulled back into his shell; he’s hard to get at. But his kid brother wasn’t. So he was the target.”

“Just like that,” said Harry. “Like you’d swat a fly that buzzed around your head. What kind of person are you, Hoerner? I don’t understand you at all.”

“I guess you could say I’m sort of a soldier,” Hoerner said mildly. “I’m hired to do a job, and I do it the best I can. It’s not always pleasant, but then most of the jobs you get hired to do are the dirty jobs people don’t want to do themselves. It was the same in Vietnam. I—” Hoerner abruptly changed the subject. “Look,” he said, “there’s no way of telling how Rizzo is going to react to what happened to his brother tonight. I’m moving up here until we see which way he’s going to jump.” He gave Harry a telephone number. “More likely, I’ll be getting in touch with you.”

“But what are you going to do next?”

“Right now,” Hoerner said, checking his watch, “I’m going to get some sleep. I’ll come by your place tomorrow morning just to see how things are going.”

“But what about Rizzo? What if he gets back in touch with me?” asked Harry. “What the hell do I say to him? Apologize for having his brother run down? Blame him for killing Marco?”

“Do nothing like that,” said Hoerner. “You don’t know anything about that. Be reasonable but firm. Give him a chance to back down. You’re going to have to play him, Harry, because you’re his only point of contact. If he’s willing to do the smart thing, you’re going to have to help him save face. If you don’t, this thing is liable to blow wide open. And even killing Rizzo might not stop it because he’s not alone anymore.”

“Not alone? What do you mean?”

“You may as well know, Harry. Gino Speranza, old man Speranza’s youngest boy, has thrown in with Rizzo. Gino hasn’t much of an organization, but he’s a dangerous man all by himself.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Harry.

“Yes, isn’t it,” Hoerner said. “But there’s nothing to worry about yet, Harry. Rizzo is still under control. He’s sore as hell about his kid brother, but he also knows that we’re serious, that we’ll do what we say. That’s important. He’s got to fear us a little.”

“And he fears us a little, does he?” Harry asked wearily.

“Yes, I think he does. At least, he’d better. I’m going now. If you have to, you can reach me at that number.” Harry followed Hoerner to the back door.

As Hoerner reached for the door, he turned back to Harry. “By the way, there’s a couple of bozos in a black Chevy sitting across the street keeping an eye on this place. I passed them on the way in. One of them looks like he’s sleeping, and the other one is listening to the radio. They look like a couple of kids. I could have zapped them both.”

Harry blurted before he could stop himself: “But you didn’t?”

“No,” said Hoerner, “it’s been a hard night. It’s obvious that they’re only keeping an eye on you or they’d have moved before this.”

Hoerner opened the door, but Harry asked: “What are we going to do about them?”

“Let ‘em sit,” said Hoerner. “It will do them good. It’s up to you, Harry. There are some things you’re going to have to handle yourself. I’m tired.” He slipped out of the half-opened door.

Left alone in the screen porch, Harry stood in the dark and thought for a moment. The idea of Rizzo’s men keeping watch on the house all night gave him the creeps. He took Hoerner’s revolver out of his pocket and looked down at it. Then he put it away again.

He walked into the front hallway and took up the Hudson County telephone book. Harry dialed a number and listened to the ringing of a telephone.

The voice that answered was bright and unnaturally cheerful. “Police. Sergeant Dennison speaking.”

“Hello, police?” Harry said, not having to try to sound nervous. “There are some burglars outside my house. Come quick.”

“What’s your name, sir? And your address?

“Never mind that,” said Harry. “There’s a couple of very suspicious looking men sitting in a black Chevrolet in the middle of the 200 block of Elgin Street, and I think they may be armed. You’d better get over here quick.”

Harry put down the telephone and turned to climb the stairs. In a few minutes, from the little window at the end of Lizzie’s room, he watched a green-and-white prowl car come sliding around the corner and advance down Elgin Street swinging its spotlight from side to side. Then it stopped, and the car’s white doors flew open like wings, releasing two patrolmen with drawn pistols.

He watched with satisfaction as one cop opened the driver’s door and plucked Injun out like a winkle from its shell. Ruby came out more slowly, sleepily. At the sight of the cops, his big hands went up and up until he could have grabbed a handful of acacia leaves.

Ruby and Injun were ordered to lean with outstretched arms against their car while the smaller cop made sharp expeditions into their pockets and came out with interesting objects. One of these was Ruby’s outsized pistol, which in the policeman’s small hands looked like a cannon. Soon, still protesting, Ruby and Injun were prodded into the wire-caged back of the squad car. With a last twirl of the spotlight, the police car quickly covered the rest of the block and turned the corner.

Harry thought he’d never be able to sleep, but a minute after his ruined clothes hit the floor he was in a deep, dream-streaked sleep.

At one point, he was in bed with Sandra; her slim back was to him. Harry tried to turn her around, but the harder he pulled the more immovable she became and the higher his desire rose. With all his strength, Harry pulled at a shoulder like pliant marble, and slowly Sandra began to turn around. He pulled her close to his body and pushed his face to Sandra’s.

But then the face was Marco’s—bloody, battered, lifeless. Henry closed his eyes in terror, but he couldn’t stop seeing Marco’s face, and he couldn’t pull away. The body against his was hard and stiff. Paralyzed, unable to recoil, Harry desperately tried to look away, and finally Marco’s face began to fade—to change—until he was Hildy. Smiling her hard, edgy, sardonic smile.

“Hello, Harry,” Hildy said. “This is some movie, isn’t it?”

Then, inches from his eyes, Hildy’s face began to swim in meaningless shapes bearing all the faces he’d ever known. One face began to form from the confusion. Sandra’s face. She was Sandra now— real, warm, alive. Timidly, Harry waited for further change, mistrusting his senses.

But it was Sandra, all right. Every inch of him could feel her body. She was as solid as she’d been a few hours before.

“You’re real,” Harry told her.

“Of course. I’m real,” Sandra said, holding him in that strong-soft embrace he remembered. He felt every point of contact with vivid intensity, and he waited for the hunger to well up again within him.

But it didn’t come. Nothing. It was as if he were the dead one, not Marco. It was more than impotence. Finally, Harry gave up and let his arms relax from around her.

“It’s okay,” she said.

But Harry didn’t answer. He was looking at his own reflection in her eyes and watching heavy, glycerin tears pour down his expressionless face. Then they were both gone.

20

Hoerner was standing at the split and peeling door of a cottage near the Hudson River. It stood in a short row of similar buildings, more than shacks, not quite houses and all in an advanced stage of surrender to time and gravity.

Pounding on the weak door with a clenched hand, Hoerner shouted: “Come on, you scroungy bitch—open up!” When there was no immediate response, he added counter-rhythmic kicks to the bottom of the door. Under the double assault, the door buckled like the cheap plywood it was but didn’t break.

Hoerner stopped banging, and he smiled when he heard the rusty heave of bedsprings inside and the shuffling pad of naked feet across linoleum. The door opened as far as a green-painted chain would allow, and the opening filled with dull blond hair, a pale, half-made-up face and sallow shoulders stuffed into a thin beach robe.

“Who is it?” asked the girl, looking up into Hoerner’s face from a distance of two feet.

“Who is it?” Hoerner said. “Unlock that chain, Joy, or I’ll rip off this door and throw it—and you—into the river.”

“I can’t, Alec,” Joy said. “My husband is home.”

“Your husband is the same place he was six months ago and the same place he’ll be this time next year. Doing three to six on Riker’s Island.”

“He escaped.”

“I’m going to escape in about a second, Joy, all over you and this shack, and there’s not going to be much left of either of you.”

“I really can’t, Alec,” she whined. “There’s somebody here with me.”

“Who?”

The girl looked up at his face, and her eyes were no longer soft and focusless. They were defiant and as hard as eyes like hers could manage. She jerked her sharp chin up. “My father,” she said. Joy looked down at the burglar chain as if studying its mechanics.

“For Christ’s sake,” Hoerner said, not loudly but with so much force that the girl’s hand grabbed for the chain and dropped it. She nearly fell as she stumbled back into the room at the same time.

Hoerner pushed the door, not worrying that he might hit her with it, and saw a dark-haired, under-chinned man sitting in T-shirt and trousers on the big, swaybacked bed, pulling on long, blue socks.

“It’s all yours, kid,” he said. “I got to get to work.”

“O’Brien,” Hoerner said, “when you go to work I’ll start going to church. And when you stop humping your stepdaughter, I’m going to run for pope. What do you think Mae is going to do when I tell her you’re at it again?”

O’Brien looked up at Hoerner with black eyes with a hint of something half-wild and scared in them. He continued to tie the laces of shiny black, perforated-toe shoes that had cost Joy’s mother forty-five dollars. His rounded, slightly twitchy face suggested a sophisticated rabbit. He was thirty-nine but looked a youthful forty-five.

“You know,” he said, hastily jamming an arm into the wrong sleeve of a pin-striped shirt, “that Joy is like a daughter to me, Alec.” He wrenched the arm out and tried to get it into the other sleeve.

“Yeah,” said Hoerner, “you just fuck her to protect her reputation.” He stepped back and opened the door which had bounced shut. “Finish dressing outside, shit-heel,” he said, “or I really will tell Mae, and she’ll cut your balls off. If you have any.”

O’Brien gave up trying to button his shirt and dragged a suit jacket and tie from the bedside chair. “Sure,” he said, “sure. I’ve got to be going.” With his eyes fixed on Hoerner’s face, he walked a long arc to the door and paused for a split-second. “See you, Joy,” he said.

“Scram!” Hoerner yelled, slamming the door so fast it caught O’Brien on his right heel as he hopped clear of the doorway. Outside he knelt and tried to smooth the bruised leather with a spit-moistened forefinger.

Putting the chain back up, Hoerner turned back to Joy, who was leaning back against the grease-spattered stove watching him. Her limp robe had fallen open revealing a sagging, bruised breast with a tiny, pubescent nipple and below a scattered patch of sandy pubic hair.

“You staying long?” she asked.

“Long enough,” said Hoerner. “If Jack O’Brien is waiting around for me to leave, he’ll have a long wait.” Joy shrugged. “The sheets,” Hoerner said, gesturing to the bed. “Get them off.”

“But, Alec, I just put them on yesterday morning.”

“I don’t care if you put them on tonight,” Hoerner said. “I’m not sleeping on sheets used by that miserable little shit.” He snatched the bedding to the floor. “And pillow cases, too.”

With a shrug, Joy began rummaging in the bottom drawer of a warped bureau. As she sloppily remade the big bed, Hoerner watched her with weary eyes.

“Okay,” he said, “that’s good enough.” Quickly stripping naked and hanging his clothes on a wooden hanger, Hoerner slipped into the far side of the bed facing the wall. The cheap sheets felt cool and clean.

Without turning around, he said, “Set your alarm clock for ten o’clock and don’t mess up.”

As he ordered his mind for sleep, Hoerner heard the girl winding the noisy clock and then felt her weight slip into bed behind him. The bedside lamp clicked the room into darkness. He felt her knee at the back of his thigh and a soft breast touching his back.

“Alec,” she said, “is there anything you want?”

“Yes,” he said, “some fucking sleep.”

The girl moved back from Hoerner, not sharply or angrily, but as if she’d expected no better answer. She lay there watching him fall asleep.

21

It was nearly noon before Gino Speranza found out what had happened to Ruby and Injun. He was just entering his apartment when the telephone rang.

“Yeah?”

“Gino?” a voice said.

“What’s up, Vern?” he asked.

“It’s Bonino and Carelli,” the policeman said. “We’ve got them down here.”

“What do you mean?” Gino asked, his voice rising.

“They were picked up, Gino,” Vern said evenly, “over on Elgin Street early this morning. A citizen’s complaint. Our men found them sitting in a car at close to two a.m with a loaded, unregistered pistol. They brought them in, and Dennison booked them.”

“Booked?” Gino asked, genuinely surprised. “How booked, Vern?”

“You know, Gino, things are changing around here. New men. Dennison’s even made sergeant, and he was on this morning. He booked ‘em.”

“Is the Chief there? Let me talk to him.”

“He’s here, Gino, but he says you better come on in and see him. He wants to talk to you.”

“Talk to me? Vern—”

“Sorry, Gino,” Hodges said. “I’m doing you a favor by calling.”

“I’ll be there,” said Gino, dropping the telephone.

As he drove to the police station, Gino’s mind was clashing, trying to sort out this thing that had happened. All he could figure out was that his men had been fingered by somebody, probably one of the guys who had taken Rizzo for a ride. Maybe the boss, the hard man Rizzo talked about. Gino’s mind conjured up this man as a shadow, dark and commanding. The image brought to Gino memories of his father from the early days of his childhood.

When he appeared in the nursery, Baptiste Speranza had seemed like a superman to his youngest son. A dark, strong-smelling hero with powerful arms and a pocket full of silver coins. No matter how much the older kids clamored and hung on their father, Gino was never left out. Instead he was in the middle, caught up in the strong arms and pressed against a sandpaper cheek which left him with a glowing reminder of his father’s presence long after he’d gone away.

That’s how he remembered his father when Gino was sent, at the age of eleven, to that military academy in Ohio. Gino pretended not to remember the name of the academy. That was the same time his father had “gone away” for five years. Gino had known almost from the first that Speranza was in a federal prison. He’d been ashamed and proud at the same time, and had nobody in the world to talk about it with.

His father had been released just in time to see Gino—a short, rebellious, no-stripe cadet with too-long hair and nicotine-stained fingers—graduate with his class. There was a reunion with a gray old man in an expensive but ill-fitting suit who seemed only a weak shadow of his father.

Roy Beddell was sharpening a new pencil with a bone-handled jackknife, carefully dropping the shavings onto his spotless blotter, when Vern Hodges led Gino, looking very tight and controlled, into his office.

“Hello, Gino. Have a seat.”

Gino sat down silently and watched the Chief bring the pencil to a needle point.

“Vern said you had a little problem,” Beddell said, looking up at Gino.

“Vern said you wanted to see me.” There was a silence.

“Yes, I did,” the Chief admitted. “I understand we’ve got some friends of yours here. A couple of young fellows called”—he picked up a sheet of paper from his desk—“Bonino and Carelli. You know them, do you?”

“I know them,” said Gino, not giving an inch.

“Okay, Gino,” Beddell said, putting the paper into a manila file, “that’s all I wanted to know. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about? If not…” Beddell left the rest of the sentence hanging.

“Chief,” said Gino, bending, “what are you trying to do to me?”

“I’ll tell you,” Beddell said. “I’m trying to head you off from making some serious mistakes. I’ve a rough idea what you’re up to, but there are some blank spots. Shall I tell you what I know so far?”

“Run it,” said Gino, but he’d relaxed considerably.

“All right, I will. First, I know Charlie Rice is trying to move in on a fellow named Caster who owns a bar down on Parker Street. That was fairly obvious from the beginning. Charlie’s not particularly subtle. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt. However, something happened last night that throws an entirely different light on his little operation. A young guy named Marco Carradino got himself badly beaten up—very badly beaten up.”

“That’s too bad,” said Gino.

“So badly,” the Chief went on, “that about midnight last night Carradino died at Parker Hospital.” The policeman was watching Gino’s face. He got no reaction, but he waited for Gino to say something.

“That’s too bad, too.’

“It’s more than too bad,” Beddell said. “It’s murder, or at the very least manslaughter. But the really interesting thing is that Marco Carradino was working in the same bar that Charlie Rice wants to take over. That’s quite a coincidence.”

“Seems to be,” agreed Gino.

“And then, a couple of hours after the Carradino boy died, your friends are found sitting in a car across the street from Caster’s house. At two o’clock in the morning. And Bonino is carrying a gun. They couldn’t seem to come up with a convincing reason for being there, and Bonino was very embarrassed about the gun. I wasn’t around, and neither was Vern, so Dennison did the only thing he could. He booked them.”

“I know,” said Gino. “Dennison is very keen.”

“Yes, he is. But then he’s new, you know.”

“But you’re not, Chief,” Gino said, leaning forward in his chair. “You go back a long way in Parker’s Landing. Back to days when you were a young cop struggling to raise a family on a hundred bucks a month, and we were the new wops in town.”

“You don’t have to remind me of the old days, Gino. I know them too well to forget. And I haven’t forgotten what your father did for me. You should know that. And you should know, too, that my debt is to him, not to you. I don’t owe you a damned thing, but we both owe the same man a hell of a lot. That’s why I’m talking with you this morning. That’s why I called your father this morning.”

Gino tensed. “You called my old man? You lousy—”

“Cut it! You’re not talking to one of your punks. Damned right I called your old man. Just as I did a few years ago when you put that ‘borrowed’ car through the front window of Egmont’s Dairy. And kept you from going to reform school instead of that prep school upstate; have you forgotten that?”

Gino didn’t answer, but Beddell could see that he remembered. “Gino,” he continued, “you don’t owe me a damned thing. But you’re causing that old man a lot of worry, and it looks like you’re set to cause him a lot more. If you’ve thrown in with Charlie Rice, you’re buying yourself a lot of trouble. And your father will pick up the bill.”

“What did he say—the old man?”‘

“He wants to see you. He still thinks he can talk you into going back to college.”

“That’s funny,” Gino said.

“No it’s not, it’s sad. And it’s going to get sadder unless you use your head.” His voice became harder, more official. “Now, get out of here, Gino, and keep clean. Don’t think we won’t be watching you. Obligation only stretches so far.”

“What about my boys?”

Beddell sighed. “If I was a true friend to your father, I’d put you in with them and throw away the key. But I can’t. Take them away; I don’t want them stinking up my jail.”

“Good,” said Gino, standing up and turning toward the door.

“There’s a price, Gino.”

“Yeah?” Gino turned back.

“You’re in luck there, too. Judge Ortiz wasn’t hung over this morning so he allowed them bail. Five hundred for the gun-packing baby and two-fifty for the midget. He thought they were bargain prices; I think you’re getting robbed.”

Gino gave the Chief a bleak look and walked out of his office. He wondered whether to slam the door or leave it open. Instead, he shut it gently and went to retrieve Ruby and Injun.

22

Alec Hoerner woke up late. The first thing he saw on opening his eyes was Joy’s back. She was doing something at the sink, still wearing that sleazy robe.

“Coffee,” said Hoerner, and he closed his eyes again. He remembered vaguely the tinny clanging of the alarm clock.

In a couple of minutes, Joy padded over to the bed and placed a cup of coffee on the paint-peeled bedside table. He could smell it. Then Joy perched herself on the very edge of the bed, ready to flee if necessary.

Alec pushed himself up against the pillows into a sitting position and took a sip of the hot, black coffee. Joy waited until he’d drunk nearly half of the cup.

“Alec,” she said at last, “we go back a long time, me and you, don’t we? I mean since I was just a kid on Forty-Seventh Street.”

“Yeah,” Alec said in a neutral tone, not angry or scoffing, “I guess we do.”

Joy was encouraged. “Don’t get mad or anything,” she said cautiously, “but you’ve changed a lot. I mean from what you used to be before you went in the Army. I’ve noticed it a lot since you’ve been back. What is it—three years you’ve been home?”

“Closer to four,” said Hoerner. “What do you mean I’ve changed?”

“Well—” Joy hesitated, and Hoerner smiled ruefully to himself. Having people scared of you was very convenient sometimes. It saved a lot of argument. But it could be overdone. Sometimes it was like living in a cage full of nervous hamsters.

“Go ahead, Joy baby,” he said soothingly. “Say anything you want to. I won’t bite your head off. I’m saving my strength for what could be a very wearing day.”

“You sure?” she asked, looking up at him out of lowered eyes.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then,” Joy said, gathering resolution and sticking her weak chin out, “you have changed, Alec, you know you have. On the block, you know, you were always a tough guy. Hardly anybody was tougher, not between Forty-Fifth and Forty-Ninth Street, anyway. But…”

“You mean I’m not tough anymore, Joy,” Hoerner said mockingly. “Is that it? You think I’ve gone soft. You think old Alec, the terror of the West Side, has turned pansy, is that it? I’m very hurt, Joy, I really am.”

“No,” she protested shrilly, “it’s not that, Alec, and you know it.” Joy was relieved to find Hoerner in such a good mood and was almost sorry she’d started questioning him. But she resolved to plow on. “What I mean, Alec, nobody’s saying you’re not still tough. If anything, you’re tougher than ever. But that’s not what I’m saying.”

“So what do you mean?” Hoerner asked, finishing his coffee and setting the cup on the bedside table.

“I mean,” Joy said, looking into his mocking eyes, “inside you’re different, Alec. You’ve gone all hard. It’s as if—as if something in you that used to be sort of tough and springy is all gone hard and brittle. Like you were under some kind of terrific pressure inside.” Joy stopped and looked away from Hoerner in embarrassment.

“Go on, Joy,” Hoerner said, and she could tell from his voice that he meant it, that he wasn’t angry with her. But she couldn’t bring her eyes back to his, so she continued talking while looking away from Hoerner. Her hands picked at the frayed beading on her robe.

“Well, when you came home from Vietnam in uniform with all the medals and ribbons and all,” she continued softly, “it seemed as if you hadn’t changed much. But you had. You were all restless and moody, as if you were hunting for something, something that maybe didn’t exist. Everybody noticed it, and they said so, too. Behind your back.”

“What did they say, Joy?”

“They said something had happened to you in Vietnam,” Joy said. “Something bad. And Johnny Fahey from over on Eighth Avenue said he’d heard things about you when he was in Vietnam.”

“What sort of things?” asked Hoerner, lighting another cigarette.

“Johnny’d never really say. He just used to whistle, low like, and grin and say he was glad he wasn’t no Vietnamese when you were around. Once, he said that the Army was happier to see you leave Vietnam than the Viet Cong were. I don’t know what he meant by that.”

“I can imagine,” said Hoerner. “Go on, Joy. What else?”

“Well, then when you went for a copper. I couldn’t believe it. Nobody could. There wasn’t anybody in the neighborhood who could imagine the old Alec Hoerner in a cop’s uniform. And me neither.”

“But I did wear one, didn’t I, Joy? For nearly two years,” he said. “You saw me in it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I saw you, Alec,” Joy said, “but not much, because about that time Mom married Jack, and I came up here to live with them. But I heard a lot about how you weren’t kidding, how you really were a cop, and how everybody around was nervous about you.”

“Nervous about me?” asked Hoerner, genuinely a little surprised. “Just because I wore a cop’s uniform? People scare a lot easier than they used to.”

“No,” said Joy, “not afraid of the uniform, Alec. Afraid of you. The uniform really had nothing to do with it. It was just you. What you’d become.”

“What had I become?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” Joy said. “That’s what’s got me puzzled. But you can tell me something—that is if you will.”

“What’s that?”

She looked down again; “What really happened with those two kids under the pier?”

Hoerner looked at the girl, his eyes blank. She was talking about the incident that had made the New York Police Department decide that Hoerner, despite his excellent record and prospects, was just a little too hot to handle. After Hoerner had won three citations in Harlem, they’d put him back on the West Side, and all had gone well. Crime had dropped considerably on his beat. But then at three one morning a cab driver reported a hot gun battle under Pier 86. When a squad car got there they found Hoerner on his feet but in a daze. Lying near a pier column were two local boys, members of a West Side gang, dying of bullet wounds.

One of the kids had a homemade pistol in his pocket, but it had never been fired. Hoerner couldn’t or wouldn’t explain what had happened, so the department relieved him from duty and waited for the storm to hit. The shooting had come too late for the morning papers, and by that afternoon the evening papers were all tied up with an international plane hijacking. The Pier 86 story got lost among the underwear advertisements. A local youth worker and the mother of one of the boys tried to keep the matter alive, but nobody else was much interested. A couple of months later, Hoerner was quietly asked to resign, and it never made a ripple.

Hoerner relived it all in his head in a few seconds, and when he looked at Joy again it was with an expression so mild and unguarded that she hardly recognized him.

“You know,” he said, “that’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since that night. The department didn’t believe me, but I don’t know what happened. You know who those kids were. They called themselves the Apaches. Well, a bit after two-thirty I busted four or five of them going in through the top of a Cadillac convertible on Forty-Sixth Street. They cut out for the piers, and the last I saw they ran into the darkness, and I went in after them. And then—I think—somebody started shooting at me. Several shots came out of the darkness under the piers. I remember pulling my gun and going in. And that’s all.”

“I never knew that,” said Joy.

“I never told anybody,” Hoerner said, “except the police department shrink, and I don’t think he believed me.”

“I believe you, Alec,” Joy said so sincerely that Hoerner laughed.

“You would, Joy,” he said. “You would.” When Joy stiffened and started to turn away, Hoerner reached out and took her thin wrist. “Come on,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Joy held back stiffly and looked Hoerner searchingly in the face. “Don’t laugh at me, Alec,” she said. “Please, don’t.” Her wrist between his fingers felt like a satin-smooth stick, and she still pulled away.

“I won’t,” said Hoerner, and he relaxed his grip on her arm. But instead of pulling out of his reach, Joy seemed to collapse on the bedcovers over his legs until she was lying nearly full-length with her cheek against Hoerner’s abdomen. He felt her arms go around his waist and clutch tight. “I won’t,” he repeated, touching her badly-dyed hair.

23

Harry Caster was lying in bed staring at the ceiling and trying to get up the energy and courage to rejoin the world when the doorbell rang. Harry lay very still. If he didn’t move, perhaps they’d go away. No murder today, thank you. But the insistent ding-dong that Harry had hated since they’d moved into the house continued relentlessly. Even being shot was a little better than lying listening to that bell. Harry got up and crept to a small window overlooking the front porch.

Sandra Carradino was standing on the doorstep with her finger pressed firmly on the bell. Harry dropped the curtain, ran down the stairs, opened the door and jerked Sandra inside.

“Good morning to you, too,” Sandra said, smoothing her clothes. “Do you always greet callers this way? I wouldn’t want to be the Avon lady in this neighborhood.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” Harry said, leading her into the living room to the tattered leather sofa. “Some very strange things are happening on this street. There were two hoodlums sitting in a car across the street at two this morning keeping a watch on this house. One of them had a gun.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw the cops take a gun—a very big gun—off one of them. I called the police—anonymously—and told them there were burglars on the street.”

“You’re a very clever man,” Sandra said. “But what’s this business about my getting shot? Do you have a gun?”

“Yes,” Harry admitted, and he told her how Hoerner had given it to him. “But I don’t think I’d ever use it. There’s something about shooting people that’s so final.”

“There is that,” agreed Sandra.

“What I want to know,” Harry said, “is what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be with your mother?”

“I was,” said Sandra, “all night.”

“Was it bad?”

“Yes, pretty bad,” she said. “Have you ever been with someone who was terribly sick and wanted to vomit but just couldn’t do it, just couldn’t get anything up? That’s my mother. Only with her it’s tears that won’t come. Thank God the clan has started arriving.”

“The clan?”

“The clan Carradino,” Sandra said, “every loving one in the tristate area. They don’t just come and say vague things; they make a picnic of it with kids, dogs and vast amounts of food. My goofy cousin Leon even brought his football—he’s thirty-seven, the fat slob—and right now he and his equally slobby kid are probably throwing it around in our garden.”

“What does your mother think of all this?”

“She loves it. Now she’s got somebody to organize, to boss. Besides, eventually my aunts, the dread Ferrara sisters, will make her cry. They’ll work on her until she cracks, and I don’t want to be there to see it.”

“But won’t they miss you?” Harry asked.

“Probably not until the funeral Sunday, and then only because it says in the book that the deceased’s sister sits in such and such a place. But if they miss me, they miss me.”

“And how are you?” Harry asked very seriously.

“I’m okay, Harry,” she said. “I really don’t believe it all yet, but I’m okay.” She put a hand on his. “But right now, I’m very tired. Have you got a bed someplace in this palace where a person could lie down?”

“Sure,” said Harry. “Alone?”

“Not necessarily,” she said.

24

It was well after noon by the time Hoerner pulled up across the street from Harry Caster’s house. He saw Caster’s rented car in the driveway and knew he ought to go in and check with him, find out if anything new had happened. But instead he sat there in the car. Absentmindedly, he lit a cigarette and thought about that morning at the cottage by the river. You’re getting soft, Hoerner, he told himself. All the same, it wasn’t a bad feeling. Hoerner tipped his hat down over his eyes a little and slid back into reverie.

* * *

“Stupid,” Gino Speranza was saying. “I never heard of anything so stupid in my fucking life.” He’d just bailed out Injun and Ruby and was driving them back to Harry’s street to their car.

“Somebody narked us,” Ruby said from the seat next to him. He hadn’t shaved, and blond stubble lay like golden powder on his cheeks. Injun sat in the back seat immobile and silent. His dark eyes burned into the seat back in front of him.

“Shut up,” Gino snapped. “You’re some operators, you are. I wouldn’t send you out to heist a lollipop. Jesus, is Rizzo going to laugh when he hears about this. I provide him with a couple of men—good men, I tell him—and they can’t even watch a house for one night without getting busted.”

Ruby started to say something but closed his mouth and gritted his teeth. This was wise, because Gino was wound tight to the explosion point. The humiliation of his interview with Chief Beddell was eating away at his self-control like strong acid.

“Okay,” Gino grated as the car turned onto Harry’s block, “where is it?”

“Over there,” said Ruby with a vague gesture of his hand.

“Over where, for Christ’s sake?” Gino screamed, taking his eyes from the street to glare at Ruby. At that moment, the big Thunderbird swerved and hit the back of Hoerner’s parked car with a crunch of collapsing metal. A hubcap popped off the Thunderbird and rolled erratically across the street.

Hoerner grunted with pain as he collided with the steering wheel of his car. The gun under his arm gouged into his armpit. “Shit!” he said, whirling out of the driver’s seat onto the street to see who had hit him. Then he recognized Ruby’s big blond head as it came back up over the dashboard. He didn’t recognize the driver, but he knew the stabbing motion of his right hand toward the inside of his suit jacket.

Gino cleared his revolver first, but it struck the top of the half-open door he was leaning on and jarred out of his hand. Before the pistol could settle again into Gino’s palm, Hoerner put two shots through the glass of the window into his pale mauve shirt front. Two red blotches appeared instantly, and Gino fell to a kneeling position in the street behind the door and stuck there, his hanging head leaning against the red-leather door panel. His gun clattered to the pavement and spun into the middle of the street.

Hoerner came swiftly around the door, saw that Gino would be no more trouble, and stuck his gun into the car, covering Ruby and Injun.

“Up!” he commanded. “Up. Grab a piece of the headliner.”

Ruby and Injun silently did as they were told, keeping a wary eye on Hoerner’s gun. The shots hadn’t been loud, no more than two sharp cracks, but Hoerner knew he had to get moving before a crowd gathered. “Who’s he?” He snapped his head toward Gino’s body.

Neither spoke, so Hoerner arced his pistol across the back of the front seat to the point of Ruby’s jaw. It connected with a sharp sound. Tears of pain appeared in Ruby’s eyes, and he started to bring his hands down.

“Up,” Hoerner ordered. He turned his eyes to Injun in the back seat.

“Gino Speranza,” said Injun flatly, looking Hoerner in the eye.

On the street, a few faces had begun to appear at windows.

“Okay, crybaby,” Hoerner said, turning to Ruby, “get over in the back with your buddy.”

Ruby started to bring a hand down to open the door, but Hoerner stopped him.

“No,” he said. “Over the top. You get in the far corner,” he told Injun.

Hoerner watched as the big man struggled onto his knees on the front seat. Awkwardly, Ruby shifted his weight, threw a knee over the back of the seat and began to climb over.

At the same moment, Hoerner pushed the automatic gear lever of the still-running car down to reverse and jumped back. Slowly, the automobile lurched to a start and began moving backward. The open door pushed Gino’s body to the street, and a front tire ran over his out-thrown hand. With the first motion of the car, Ruby lost his balance and fell heavily, trapping Injun with his broad shoulders.

Before Ruby stopped falling, Hoerner was halfway to his car. He jumped in and started the engine. At the same time, in the rearview mirror, he watched Gino’s Thunderbird scrape along the side of a pick-up truck and keep going. As Hoerner wheeled around the corner, he heard the car hit a lamp standard with a crash and a shower of glass.

This new sound of impact brought Harry and Sandra to the window along with half of the housewives on the block. But few were looking at the automobile and the small, dark man struggling to get behind the steering wheel. Most eyes were on Gino’s body where it lay face down a car and a half’s width from the curb. They were momentarily distracted when Injun finally got into the front seat, shifted the Thunderbird into low and roared past Gino’s body without a pause or a look.

“Who is that?” Sandra asked, looking at Gino’s body. She stood unconcernedly naked at the window beside Harry. “Is he hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said, struggling with the sleeve of his robe, “but I wish you’d put a little something on.”

“I’ll use some of yours,” Sandra said, untangling the arm of the robe and slipping inside with Harry. Her naked hip, so warm in bed a few minutes before, was cool, and he felt her bare foot lightly on his.

“That’s a little better,” he said. “Now all I have to do is explain to the neighbors what I was doing sharing my bathrobe with a beautiful, naked young girl.”

“It will do wonders for your reputation,” she said. “Business at the Lamplighter will probably double.”

“If there is a Lamplighter.”

A black gardener from across the street walked out into the street and knelt beside Gino’s body. Gingerly the gardener turned him over on his back. His whole chest was stained a bright red, but Gino’s dark-jowled face was untouched. Even the tinted glasses were still in place.

Sandra clutched Harry’s wrist. “I know him,” she said, shrinking back from the window. “It’s Gino Speranza. I met him at a dance last year. His father is supposed to be head of the Mafia around here.”

“And I know where else I’ve heard that name,” Harry said. “Hoerner said that Gino Speranza was working for Rizzo.”

“Do you think so?”

“What else would he have been doing on this block with a gun? Not paying a social call. Anyway, I’m not going to stick around to find out. I’m getting out of here.” Harry drew her away from the window.

“Where will you go?” Sandra asked.

Where will I go, Harry thought. Where do you run when you don’t know what you’re running from? “The city, I guess,” he said. He thought of his brother Mickey.

“I’ll go with you.”

“No,” Harry said. “I’ll take you home. It could be dangerous with me. Besides, your mother may need you more than you think.”

“I’ll go with you,” Sandra said.

Seven minutes later, the neighbors who crept out to the sidewalk to stare at Gino’s corpse were surprised to see Harry Caster come out of his house with a young girl and drive away rapidly. This added considerable piquancy to the most exciting day Elgin Street had ever seen.

* * *

Hoerner drove automatically, his only goal to put distance between himself and Elgin Street. He thought no more about Gino Speranza. Then he realized that he was retracing his path back to the river, going back to Joy’s place. Hoerner shrugged. It was someplace to go.

He parked the car across the rutted tarmac road from the little house and strode to the front door. As he knocked, Hoerner smiled at the contrast between his arrival early that morning and this one. There was no answer. Hoerner knocked a bit louder. “Joy,” he called. “Joy, it’s me—Alec.”

“You’re wasting your time, son,” said a voice not far from Hoerner’s elbow. “Nobody’s home.”

Hoerner looked into the next yard and saw no one.

“Down here,” said the voice, and he saw that it belonged to an old woman, not much higher than the leaning green fence. Gray puffs of hair stood out from her head like explosions of rusty steel wool. She wore an ancient gingham dress tied around with a patch-pocket apron into which her hands were jammed.

“Where is she?” Hoerner asked.

“Couldn’t say,” the old woman said, squinting up at him. “She left about twenty minutes ago with that rabbity, dark-haired fella who’s always hanging around. She was carrying an old suitcase, and it looked heavy.”

“You don’t miss much, do you, Granny?” Hoerner asked.

“Nope,” she said. “There’s not much else to do on this block but spy on the neighbors. Not that they’re that interesting. Best show we’ve had in months was when you got here last night.”

“Glad you were amused,” Hoerner said. “I’d have thought you’d be mad because I woke you up.”

“I can sleep any time,” said the neighbor. “Is he really her father?”

“Stepfather.”

She looked a little disappointed. “If you want to get in,” the old woman said, “my key fits. They’re all just skeleton keys.”

“I don’t want to get in,” Hoerner said as he turned and kicked his way through the hanging gate and onto the ruined sidewalk.

“Son—” Hoerner turned and looked back. The little woman was on her porch now, a twin to Joy’s. “Take an old woman’s advice, boy,” she said. “Don’t—”

“Stuff your advice, Grandma,” said Hoerner, and he walked back to his car. The old woman was smiling as she turned to go back into her house.

Once in his car, Hoerner didn’t know where to go next. With Gino Speranza cold and dead in front of Caster’s house, everything had changed. No longer was it a case of preventing a war. Now the important thing was to win.

The thought of cutting and running, of leaving Harry Caster to sort out his nasty little problems himself, crossed Hoerner’s mind. But he couldn’t do that. He needed the rest of the money Mickey Caster had promised, and he knew Caster wouldn’t pay for a half- finished job. No, the last thing Rizzo would expect would be another attack so soon, but that was what he was going to get. Only this time Hoerner was going to hit him so hard that Rizzo would be glad to call it off. How he was going to do this, Hoerner had no idea. But he knew where he had to be: at Rizzo’s. And as soon as it grew dark, that was where he was going to be.

Then he felt hungry, and Hoerner knew he had some time to kill before this evening. He turned the car around, decimating a row of bedraggled lilies, and headed away from the river.

25

Carlo Rizzo was sitting alone in his living room angrily reliving the night before with his family. His brother would pull through, the doctor said, but Rizzo’s family had been on him fiercely, blaming him for Steve’s injury. His sisters had been worst of all, the worthless bitches. And their two-bit husbands hadn’t been much better. They hadn’t been too proud to take the crumbs he’d thrown them when things were going better. Finally, he had stomped out at three in the morning after telling them all to go to hell. He could still see his mother’s face—cried out, stark, pleading.

Now Rizzo heard loud voices out on the front lawn, and he carefully peeked out of the side window and saw Pete standing off Injun and Ruby, who were trying to explain something. Then Rizzo heard the words, “They shot him,” and he hurried to the front door.

As soon as they were in the house, Rizzo turned on them. “Who’s been shot? What the hell is going on?”

Ruby and Injun exchanged glances, and Ruby said: “It’s Gino. Somebody burned him on Caster’s street. Just a few minutes ago. We came right over.” Ruby quickly told Rizzo all that had happened.

“Who was this guy?” Rizzo asked. “Did you recognize him?”

“No,” Ruby said, “but he was a pro, that’s for sure. Gino only bumped his car a little, and he came out shooting. He must have been guarding Caster’s house.”

“Yeah,” said Rizzo, “I’ll bet he was.” He turned to Injun. “Where’s Caster now?”

“When we got out of there, he was home,” Injun said. “At least I think he was. But I doubt if he stuck around for long.”

“You’re really clever,” Rizzo said, “to figure that out all by yourself.” He thought hard for a moment while the two youths eyed him uneasily.

“You’re working for me now,” Rizzo told them.

Ruby and Injun looked at each other again and then both nodded okay. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

“I’ve got a job for you,” Rizzo said. “First we’ve got to get rid of Gino’s car. Pete will give you his car, Injun, and I want you and Ruby to take the Thunderbird and lose it somewhere. Then you both come back here, and I’ll have work for you. Don’t be too long getting back.”

Pete reluctantly handed over his car keys to Injun. With Ruby following in the Thunderbird, the driver’s window rolled down so that the bullet holes didn’t show, they rolled off toward the river to find a place where the big car wouldn’t be found for a while.

All went well until they got to Guilford Avenue. Injun squeezed through on a red-orange signal, but Ruby, under the eye of a traffic cop, chickened out and stopped. He tried to look innocent and hoped that a report wasn’t out yet on Gino’s car. Injun drove on slowly, expecting Ruby to catch up with him in a couple of blocks.

But while he was sitting nervously at the signal trying to keep an eye on Pete’s car through the traffic-filled crossing, Ruby saw Harry and Sandra drive across the intersecting street heading south out of Parker’s Landing. For once in his life, Ruby reacted without hesitation. To the annoyance of a woman driving a Volkswagen bus, he edged into the curbside lane as the light was changing green and turned right to follow Harry’s car.

* * *

Chief Beddell arrived on Elgin Street where Gino’s body still lay in the street. He looked down at the form beneath the olive-drab tarpaulin with no other feeling than weariness. He hadn’t meant to be so right in his prediction of Gino’s fate. After a word with his sergeant confirming that Harry Caster was not in his house, Beddell got back into his unmarked car and drove away.

The old man was having his afternoon nap when Beddell arrived at the Speranza house. He said he’d wait, and Carmen, the daughter, still attractive at thirty-five but going middle-aged around the eyes and mouth, led him into the living room and got him a cup of coffee.

Beddell sat back on the leather sofa and looked around at the expensive furnishings, the big color television set, the well-framed oil paintings on the walls. I should have taken that job he offered years ago, he thought. Maybe I did, he added ruefully to himself, or I wouldn’t be sitting here now.

Carmen sat down on the other end of the sofa and looked at him.

“You’ve never been here before,” she said.

“No,” said Beddell. “This is the first time.” There’d been plenty of invitations at first, but after he’d refused them all without making excuses, the invitations had stopped coming.

“What do you want here?” she asked directly.

“I think I’d better wait for your father.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Carmen said. She started to say something else when Baptiste Speranza appeared in the doorway wearing the clouded face of the newly awakened. His gardening clothes had been replaced by a pair of baggy, soft-gray trousers and a checked woolen shirt.

Beddell stood up automatically as the old man entered the room, and Speranza came toward him with his hand extended. His mouth was smiling, but Beddell knew from his eyes that Speranza sensed that this was no social call.

“Roy,” he said, “it’s good to see you again.”

Beddell took the old hand and shook it. “Hello, Baptiste,” he said. The grip was gentle, but beneath the soft padding Beddell could feel a ghostly reminder of the vise that hand had once been.

“Sit down, sit down,” Speranza urged, still gripping Beddell’s hand. “Carmen,” he said in the same soft voice, but it was definitely a command.

“But, Papa—”

“Carmen,” Speranza repeated, no louder than before. Carmen sighed, and with a glance at Beddell she left the room.

“Carmen’s the only one I can push around these days,” Speranza said after the door closed. He didn’t smile. “Even the little one tells me what to do, and I do it.” Then he smiled. “But, Roy,” the old man said, “I’m glad to see you after all this time. A telephone call this morning and now a visit. “Is it”— Speranza’s face darkened—“still that business about the boy?”

“It’s about Gino, Baptiste,” Beddell started, and he tried to summon up one of those useful phrases employed to avoid handling the naked blade of truth. But he couldn’t this time. “Gino’s dead, Baptiste,” he said. “Somebody shot him to death a little while ago over in Parkland.”

Speranza took the news, absorbed it as rich earth absorbs rain. His eyes lost their contented dullness, becoming not sharp but keen. His face seemed to shed the flaccidness that had crept into it in recent years. Speranza looked slightly ludicrous in the clothes of an old man, like an actor backstage.

“What happened?” he asked quietly.

“We don’t know yet,” Beddell replied. Now he was all policeman. “Gino came in this morning after I talked to you and bailed his two punks out.”

“You let him have them?”

“I didn’t have any choice. Ortiz set bail, and Gino had the money. So he took them with him. A little while later we got a call that there’d been a shooting on Elgin Street where that Caster fellow lives. It was Gino. He didn’t suffer, Baptiste; there was no pain.” Speranza did not rise to this easy bait. Beddell went on. “We don’t know exactly what he went there for. But there was some sort of collision. Gino went for his gun—he died with it in his hand—but the other fellow got his shots in first.”

“This Caster you were telling me about—the bar owner,” Speranza said. “Did he shoot Gino?”

“No,” Beddell said. “Witnesses say definitely not.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“Not yet. The shooting scared him off, and we haven’t been able to locate him yet. But we will.”

“He hired a gun?”

“I don’t know,” Beddell said. “He’s a pretty frightened man.”

“And Rizzo,” Speranza said, “he knows that Gino is dead?”

“He probably does by now.” The situation had changed. Beddell had turned from bearer of bad news to an informant. “The two men with Gino beat it right after the shooting in Gino’s T-bird. Probably it was Bonino and Carelli heading straight for Rizzo’s.”

“Have you seen Rizzo?”

“I came right here.”

“I am grateful, Roy,” the old man said. He laid a heavy hand on Beddell’s arm. “I know you won’t let me do anything for you, but—”

“There’s something you can do for me, Don Baptiste,” Beddell said. He hadn’t often used the tide of respect, and Speranza’s face registered suspicion. “You can do me a big favor by staying out of this. Please, you can’t do anybody any good by getting involved. Leave it to me. It’s my job.”

Speranza smiled gently. “So you’re telling me what to do, too, Roy. You and the little one,” he added without meaning to insult. Speranza stood and offered his hand. Beddell stood, too, and he knew he’d been wasting his time. “You’ve been a good friend, Roy,” Speranza said, taking his hand, “a good friend. And I’m very grateful.”

“I’d have been a better cop if I’d been less of a friend,” Beddell said, and he knew he was speaking the truth. “And probably a better friend, too.”

Speranza wasn’t listening. His ears were tuned to inner thoughts in which Roy Beddell didn’t figure at all. “Thank you, Roy, thank you very much,” he said, drawing Beddell toward the door.

“Baptiste!” the police chief said sharply as they got to the thick door. Speranza raised his eyes to his face, but Beddell saw no recognition there. In vain, he continued: “I have to warn you. Keep out of this. I enforce the law in Parker’s Landing—you don’t. I’ll take care of Caster and Rizzo and the guy who killed Gino. I guarantee you that. If you or any of your people take a hand, I’ll stop you.”

“Goodbye, Roy,” Speranza said, opening the door.

“Goodbye, Baptiste,” Beddell said with resignation, walking down the path toward his car.

Speranza turned back to the large hallway and found Carmen waiting for him at the entrance to the living room. Her face was a worried void.

“We have bad news. Carmen,” Speranza said gently. “Gino is dead. He was shot to death a short while ago. You had better inform the family.” Almost before she could react, he added, “I’ll tell you all about it later. Now, I must lie down for a while. If I fall asleep, wake me when the girl comes home from school.” He walked past his youngest daughter into the back of the house.

26

“I tell you, I don’t have any idea where he went,” Injun said to Rizzo’s unbelieving face. “We were driving out Adelaide to dump the Thunderbird near the river when Ruby got hung up at a red light at Guilford.”

“You told me that,” said Rizzo.

“Yeah, well, I was going slow, but he never caught up with me. So I turned back, but I couldn’t find him.”

“He’s a stupid bastard,” Rizzo said, “and so are you.”

Carelli flushed and started to say something, but then the bell chimed.

“Christ!” said Rizzo. “What now?” Easing over to the side window, he lifted the edge of a thick drape and saw Pete shrugging at him in consternation and Roy Beddell standing at his doorstep.

“It’s Beddell, the Chief of Police,” Rizzo said. “If he followed you here—”

“Nobody followed me back here,” Injun told him sullenly.

“I guess I’ll find out about that in a minute,” Rizzo said as the doorbell sounded again. “You fade out into the kitchen while I see what’s on Beddell’s mind.” When Rizzo opened the door, Beddell was just pushing the button again. “Hello, Chief,” Rizzo said.

“Hello,” said Beddell under careful control. “May I come in?”

“Sure,” Rizzo said, opening the door wide.

Beddell followed Rizzo into the anonymous living room. “Can I get you a drink?” Rizzo asked.

“No,” Beddell said. “This is not a social call.”

“No?” Rizzo said coolly. “Well, sit down anyway.” Rizzo seated himself in a chair and gestured Beddell to the green-tufted sofa. “Now, what can I do for you today, Chief?”

“You can lay off Harry Caster,” Beddell said, “and you can do it starting right now.”

“Chief—” Rizzo began, but Beddell rode over his words.

“Let’s not kid each other, Rizzo,” he said. “It’s no secret that you’re trying to cut in on Caster’s bar. I’m surprised that it’s not in the goddamned newspapers.”

Rizzo said nothing. He sat looking at Beddell with polite interest, but Beddell knew there was something working behind those flat eyes.

“It’s not going to work,” Beddell said. “There’s a lot more involved now than a simple muscle job. You ought to have realized that after what happened to Gino this morning.”

“Gino?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Rizzo,” Beddell said wearily. “Just don’t bother. I’ve just told Baptiste Speranza that his boy was cut down and I don’t need any more hassle.” Beddell looked Rizzo hard in the eye. “And neither do you. You think you’ve got problems with the muscle Caster has hired. Wait’ll you see what you’ve got when Speranza finds out that you put Gino in a position to get snuffed. He’s sure to blame you.”

“Speranza’s a joke,” Rizzo said. All pretense had gone out of his voice. “And you’re wasting my time.”

“I’m not going to waste much more of it, Rizzo, or my own. Gino Speranza was with a couple of punks named Bonino and Carelli when he was killed. Have you seen either of them today?”

“I never heard of them.”

“I’ll bet,” Beddell said. “Do you mind if I look around the house?” Out in the hallway, her ear pressed to the living room door, Angie Rizzo started nervously, but she forced herself to stay at the door, listening. She had never eavesdropped on Carlo before. But then, the Chief of Police had never come to the house before, and Angie felt she had to put some order to the whirl of fears and suspicions in her mind—even if it had to be this way. Now she knew at least part of the situation, and she felt better.

“Not at all, Chief,” Rizzo said. Angie’s hands automatically pushed her away from the door, but she relaxed when her husband’s voice continued, “If you’ve got a search warrant in your pocket.”

“I can get one,” Beddell said, getting up. Out in the hall the telephone began to ring. Then it stopped, and a few moments later, the door to the hallway cracked slightly and Angie Rizzo put her head into the room.

“Carlo,” she said shyly, not looking at Beddell, “it’s for you.”

“Thank you, Angie,” Rizzo said. His wife started to close the door, but Rizzo stopped her. “No, darling, don’t go. I want you to meet someone.” He held out his hand, and Angie obediently came forward to meet it. Rizzo wheeled, holding her hand.

“Chief,” he said as coolly as if they were at a party, “you haven’t met my wife, Angela, have you? Angie, this is Roy Beddell, the Chief of Police.”

“Hello,” said Angie timidly.

“Angie,” Rizzo said, “you keep our guest company while I answer the telephone. I’ll be right back.” He walked through the hall door and closed it behind him. Once he was in the hallway, the polite look left Rizzo’s face. He picked up the telephone. “Hello,” he said impatiently, “this is Charlie Rice.”

“Mr. Rice,” said an excited voice, “it’s me. Ruby.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“In Manhattan. Listen, Mr. Rice—”

“No, you listen, Bonino,” Rizzo said. “You’re crazy. I sent you out to dump a car, and you—”

“But wait,” Ruby started again, “I’ve found Caster. I saw him in a car in Parker’s Landing and followed him. I didn’t have time to tell anybody, and this is the first chance I’ve had to telephone. I didn’t want to lose him, so I—”

“Okay, shut up,” Rizzo snapped. “Where are you right now?”

“On the East Side, Lexington and Sixty-sixth. Caster put his car in a garage, and they’re in a restaurant eating. I can see the door from this phone booth.”

“They?” Rizzo asked.

“Caster and some girl. Long black hair. She was with him at the hospital last night. I think she might be related to that Carradino character.”

“How long have they been in the restaurant?”

“Maybe five minutes. I saw they were going in to eat and jumped over here to call you. What do you want me to do?”

Rizzo lowered the receiver to his side and thought for a moment.

“Mr. Rice,” he heard Ruby’s voice thin and metallic.

“I’m here. You stay with Caster wherever he goes and call me whenever he stops for even five minutes.”

“Can I get some lunch? I haven’t had any yet.”

“Sure,” said Rizzo, “if you can keep an eye on Caster at the same time. If you lose him, Bonino, you’ll be sorry.”

“I won’t lose him.”

“Don’t.” Rizzo put the telephone down.

When Rizzo returned to the living room, Beddell noticed that his confidence seemed deeper and less assumed. Something in that telephone call cheered him up, Beddell thought.

“Thank you, dear,” Rizzo said, dismissing his wife.

Obediently, Angie got up and said goodbye to Beddell. “Goodbye, Mrs. Rice,” Beddell said. “I hope Bobby is feeling better soon.”

“Thank you,” said Angie and left the room. Beddell noticed Rizzo’s puzzled expression.

“Your son Bobby,” Beddell said. “Your wife tells me he’s not feeling well enough to play in the football game tonight.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rizzo said. “It’s nothing serious. You know how teenagers are.”

Beddell nodded.

“Now, what were we talking about?” Rizzo asked briskly. “Oh, yes, Gino Speranza. It’s a shame about him. Gino was a nice boy. Not very bright, but always polite to me. I certainly hope you catch the guy that killed him, and I won’t keep you if you want to get back on the job.”

Beddell didn’t respond. There was no point in arresting Rizzo yet. His lawyer would have him out in an hour.

“I will, Rizzo,” Beddell said finally. “I’ll get whoever shot Gino. But I’ll tell you something. You’re riding for a heavy fall. And when it comes, I’m just going to mark another cheap punk off my list.” Rizzo stiffened, then relaxed and smiled.

“Thanks for dropping by, Chief,” he said. “Any time you’re in the neighborhood.”

By this time Beddell was nearly in the hallway. Rizzo followed the policeman and watched the front door close behind him. Through the little window, he watched Beddell get in his car and drive away.

Rizzo found Injun sitting in the back kitchen eating a big dish of lasagna. “I’ve got a job for you,” he told him.

“I’m eating,” Carelli protested.

“Hurry it up,” Rizzo said. “As soon as Ruby calls again, I want you to go someplace.”

“Ruby called?” Injun asked through a mouthful. “Where is that jerk?”

“Manhattan. That jerk has picked up Harry Caster, and when Caster comes to a stop, I’ve got work for you to do.”

* * *

It was a long evening of waiting for Rizzo and Injun. Ruby was just finishing a sandwich he’d bought at a delicatessen on Lexington Avenue when Harry and Sandra came out of the restaurant.

“Where are we going now?” Sandra asked.

“Do you want to meet my big shot brother with the razor-cut hair and the sexy secretary?”

“No.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go,” Harry said, taking her hand. “You’ll love him.”

“I’ll hate him,” Sandra said, squeezing Harry’s stubby fingers.

At the discreet building, Harry led Sandra through the massive doors and confronted the gray-haired receptionist for the second time that week. She showed no sign that she recognized him. To her polite query, Harry said: “Harry Caster to see Mr. Caster.” He felt a bit foolish still holding Sandra’s hand.

“I’m afraid no one is in at the moment, sir,” the receptionist said. “But we’re expecting Mr. Caster this evening. May he telephone you some place?”

“No,” said Harry, “I don’t know where I’ll be. Just tell him I was here and that I’ll call him later.”

Ruby was in a booth on the far side of Madison and Sixty-Sixth, banging on the telephone to get a dial tone, when he saw Harry and Sandra emerge from the building. To his dismay, they turned and started walking directly toward him. They were coming to the telephone booth. As quickly as he could, without actually running. Ruby got out of the booth and started walking west on Sixty-Sixth. He fought the urge to look over his shoulder.

Harry dialed the last number Hoerner had given him, but there was no answer. He listened to the ringing for a long time and then hung up.

“No luck,” he told Sandra. “Nobody’s home today.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. Central Park is only a couple of blocks away. Do you like the park?”

“I heard it was full of muggers.”

“Come on, then,” Harry said, grabbing her hand. “I’ll introduce you to some very nice muggers I know.”

At Fifth Avenue, Ruby turned away from a magazine rack and began to follow Harry and Sandra toward the park.

“Did you have a nice read?” the newsdealer asked him, but Ruby didn’t hear.

27

Baptiste Speranza opened his eyes and knew that Carmen had disobeyed him. It was nearly dark outside, and faintly he heard the new electric carillon of St. Peter in Chains. In vain he listened for the tiny pauses Fred Mapes, the old carillon player, used to make between phrases. Some said the pauses had been due to alcoholic uncertainty, but Speranza didn’t care. They were human; the new machine ground out the sacred music like so much sausage meat.

It was a tiny room Speranza slept in, and sometimes at night he felt like a monk looking at the bare, brown walls. A low, rough-cut Spanish chest in the corner helped to further the illusion. Speranza had lived in this room for over three years now, since shortly after his wife, Rosa, died. In another time and another world, it had been a maid’s room. Gradually, unconsciously, Speranza had made it his, first by napping there. Then he’d stopped climbing the stairs to the room that had been his and his wife’s.

Most of his belongings were still in the big bedroom. The inhabited chests and closets like costumes for a play that would never reopen. Speranza had often urged Carmen to take the room, but it remained empty, dusted daily, cleaned once a week like the rest of the house.

Gino is dead.

The thought came back into his head, and Speranza moved his lips with the words as children do when they read. Dead like Rosa and most of the people he had known. Speranza had been thinking about death a lot lately, but for himself, not for Gino. For Gino, death had been as unthinkable as for the little one. But there it was: Gino was dead. Like so many things in his life these days, that was final, unchangeable. But the fact lay on his chest like a stone; he hadn’t yet learned to wear it.

Speranza knew they’d be waiting for him in the living room, as many of the family as could be hastily gathered. He tried to rouse himself to face them. The sooner he did, the sooner they’d leave him alone. But the stone was heavy, and his bones were heavy, and the flesh on them seemed to weigh him down more than ever. Finally, he pushed his legs over the side of the hard, narrow bed and felt them strike the floor like two heavy sticks.

The noise in the big living room was an emotional buzzing of bees when Speranza opened the door, and for a time none of them noticed him. He’d always known that Rosalie, the oldest, would run to fat, and she had. Ridges of flesh writhed beneath an exclusive tweed suit as she told her little sister Doris for the tenth time: “I just can’t believe it, Dor; I just can’t believe it.”

Doris dutifully patted the great white hand that had been forced upon her and wondered how much the new emerald ring had cost. “We’re all mortal,” she said. “We’re only mortal, Rose. But he was so young, so young.”

In the corner near the big window looking out on Speranza’s garden, the sons-in-law were talking in low, fervent tones about the left knee of the New York Jets’ quarterback.

“It’s like a matchstick,” Lou Altomare, Doris’s penny-pinching husband, was saying. “It’ll snap like this.” He twisted an extended forefinger until it popped loudly.

“Yeah, but,” Bruno Fisher, once Frischetti, said, “don’t forget that it’s the arm that counts.” He grabbed his biceps and gave it a shake. “He don’t throw with his knee.”

On a window seat at the far end of the room, a slim blonde woman not quite thirty years old sat close to Carmen Speranza, talking intently in a voice that couldn’t be heard three feet away. Her clean features claimed a perfection for which a professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University felt a warm glow of accomplishment. In the field, it was quietly gaining a reputation as “Ledbetter’s Nose,” but it was Dominic Speranza’s checkbook that had made it possible.

“I’m sorry Dom isn’t here,” Delia Speranza was telling Carmen. “I called the Dorado Beach Hotel and left the number here for him to call when he gets back to the hotel.”

Sitting on the thick carpet in a corner, two grandsons of prep-school age discussed the curious demise of Uncle Gino in cool accents they hadn’t learned at home. From the garden came the voices of Kathy and the younger grandchildren.

Someone saw Speranza standing in the doorway and sounded the alarm. The family surged toward him, a wall of humanity mouthing various degrees of sympathy. All except Delia. She remained poised in front of the window seat. But her calm, gray, plain-girl’s eyes read Speranza’s face with accuracy and compassion.

The family clung to Speranza, pulling him into the room, but Carmen soon dropped back. She saw in his face a tinge of annoyance at the tumult and probably at being allowed to sleep so long. But all else was concealed behind a mask which frightened her more than anger or grief would have. Then Carmen slipped away to the kitchen. The eating would begin soon. Whether gathering in sorrow or joy, the Speranza family would have to eat.

In the midst of the confusion, the doorbell rang. With carefully learned grace, Delia walked to the front hallway to answer it. She knew who it would be.

“Hello, Abe,” she said as she opened the door.

Abe Montara deserved the nickname—the snake—which wasn’t as unknown to him as many thought. There was something reptilian in his small, bright eyes, in his slim, spring-like body, in his smooth cap of dead-black hair which never seemed to need cutting.

He inspired fear.

Of all the non-family minions, only Abe would come today. The telegrams from friends and foes had already begun to pour in, but this was a family-only gathering. Abe was as close as he could be without being a Speranza, closer than the in-laws. His hooded eyes showed no grief at the death of Gino Speranza.

“Mrs. Speranza,” he said as he stepped into the front hall.

Delia and Montara knew where they stood with each other. He knew that at a word she would leave Dom Speranza and come to him. She knew the word would never be spoken. They both saw the acid humor in the situation.

“How is he?” Montara asked.

“Tight, very tight,” she said. “He’s not showing it, but he’s very hard hit. It’s going to be bad.”

“Can you blame him?”

“Gino was Gino,” she said. “He didn’t learn. If it hadn’t been today, it would have been tomorrow.”

“You’re a hard one, Mrs. Speranza,” he said with the sharp smile which seldom indicated humor and which could disappear like a water snake sliding into a shadow. “I hope you won’t feel that way when it’s my turn.”

“It won’t happen to you, Abe,” she said with certainty.

He dipped his eyes in recognition of the compliment. “I’d better get in there.”

The family was still crowded around old Speranza when Montara stepped down into the room. But when they saw his presence reflected in the old man’s face, the family fell back willingly and then turned to the long table in the dining area which Carmen had just finished stocking.

“Abe,” Speranza said, holding out his hand.

“Don Baptiste.” Montara moved quickly across the room and took the hand. Their eyes met, and there was no need for words of sympathy.

“We must talk,” Speranza said, retaining Montara’s wiry hand in his own. “Come, we’ll go to my room.” The two men left without a word to the others, who had begun to settle into the dining table. Delia and Carmen watched them go. Each wore a different kind of concern on her face.

“Sit,” said Speranza. He indicated the narrow bed still rumpled from his nap.

Montara sat down, marveling at the hardness of the bed and the austerity of this little room where Speranza had chosen to spend the last years of his life. Abe’s own house had the sleek, cold comfort of a new car. No one would call it ascetic.

Speranza sat himself down near the head of the bed and placed his big hands on top of his thighs. Montara had never seen the old man look so bleak.

Speranza broke the silence. “Well, Abe, what are we going to do?”

“I heard just a few minutes ago when I got back from the city,” Montara said. “You’d better fill me in.”

This wasn’t an answer the old man liked. But he restrained his impatience for a time. “I’ll tell you what I know,” he said. Speaking slowly, but with some of the command he’d once had, Speranza told of the visit from Rizzo that Wednesday morning, how he had refused Rizzo’s plea for help, and that apparently this was when Gino got connected with Rizzo. “I never saw Gino again,” he said, “or heard anything until Beddell called this morning.”

“What did you tell Rizzo when you turned him down?”

Speranza raised his eyes to Montara’s. “I told him that you were the only one who could take him off the hook.” The statement was an admission of weakness and a challenge at the same time.

Montara acknowledged this with a shrug and asked, “What about this Caster? Where’s he?”

“I don’t know. Gino was murdered in front of his house. I sent Renzetti over to find out for me. He—” Speranza saw a blank wall rise up in Montara’s face and stopped short.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?” the old man demanded stubbornly.

“You know why not. That block is not only crawling with local cops, but by now the feds have heard that your boy got himself killed. They’re just waiting for you to react. We’ve got enough problems without that.”

“Problems,” the old man said scornfully.

“Yes, problems,” Montara repeated. “Unless you want to go back inside and take a lot of people with you, you’ve got to stay clean. The investigators are going to come to a decision about prosecuting very soon, and it’s not all going to depend on what the accountants say.”

The old man said something obscene in Italian about investigators and accountants.

“I agree,” Montara said, laughing involuntarily. “But there are too many of them. They—”

“This is no laughing matter, Abe,” the old man said gravely. Montara knew he’d gone far wrong. “My son is lying dead, and you’re joking. I want revenge. I want somebody to pay for this. Are you going to help me?”

“Don Baptiste—”

“No, Abe, don’t. Don’t call me ‘Don Baptiste.’ You say it to humor me, to push me back to my garden and leave everything in your hands. Leave it to Abe…Abe knows how. Well, maybe I’ve left everything to Abe too long. If I can’t avenge the death of a son, I’m nobody’s Don. But I will see his death avenged. This is still the Speranza family, Abe, and I’m still the Speranza.”

He looked Montara in the face with eyes which seemed as hard as they’d ever been.

Montara didn’t flinch or look away. Since Speranza had interrupted him, he’d sat quietly listening and watching the old man’s face. In the real sense, Montara was more of a son to Speranza than either Dom or Gino. Although he’d been young at the time, it had largely been Montara who had held the family together during Speranza’s years in prison. At first, he’d relayed orders to the other lieutenants. But when he recognized that Speranza was growing more and more distant and losing contact with the outside, Montara had begun to initiate policy that he pretended was Speranza’s. Finally, the trips to the prison became an empty ritual. And they both knew it.

“Don Baptiste”—there was no cajolery in his voice—“I owe you the respect due a father, but I also owe you the truth.” He saw the old man’s face harden in rejection of the words to come, and Montara purposely put more edge to his voice as if to grind them into that granite exterior. “You’ve been away from the business a long time…”

“I am no businessman,” Speranza burst out angrily.

“…and things have changed. You are the head of the family, and I honor you. We all honor you. But these are difficult times. The feds —the Treasury Department, Customs, even the FBI—have never been tougher. They mean business.”

“Business,” Speranza said, pretending to misunderstand, “always it’s business.”

“That’s why”—Montara tried to soften the words yet give them special emphasis—“I cannot allow you to start an action now. It’s the worst possible time. It’s—”

“You cannot allow.” Speranza said the words totally without inflection, as if by deadening them he could remove the sting. “You cannot allow.”

“I’m sorry,” Montara said. “I didn’t want it to come to this. We can’t risk trouble at this time. Later, in three months maybe, we can move. We can punish those who killed Gino. It will give me great pleasure. But now—”

“You cannot allow me?” Now it was a question, and Montara thought for a long moment before he answered. He knew no other answer.

“No.” He said it with finality. “Don Baptiste…”

“I have nothing more to say to you,” Speranza said, and he swiveled his heavy head to look away from Montara into the corner of the bare room at the shadow of a wardrobe which had been removed years ago.

Montara sat looking at the back of Speranza’s thick neck where the gray hair sloped unevenly over the collar of his shirt. Then he got up silently and left the room.

In the dining room, the family was still eating. The uproar grew as the strong red wine took effect. At a separate table in the corner, the children, with the two prep-school boys as their captive tyrants, drank their watered wine and giggled into their plates.

Abe ignored the tumult at the table except for a glance exchanged with Delia who had been silently watching the door. Rosalie looked up and saw him going away. “Abe,” she cried through a mouth half full of salad, “come have a bite.” But Montara didn’t pause. The door closed quietly behind him.

Carmen, sitting opposite Speranza’s empty chair, started to get up, but Delia put a restraining hand on her arm. “Let me go— please.” Delia slipped away from the table without causing a ripple in the flow of talk and food. Carmen watched her go, with hatred tempered by the knowledge that Delia was right. Papa would never listen to her, but he would listen to Delia, the charmed outsider.

Delia touched the door with her slim knuckles and said, “Papa?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned the knob and entered the dark room. Speranza was sitting as Montara had left him, but the firm old chin seemed to have slipped like an undermined cliff. She sat down beside the old man, her sleek thigh not quite touching his leg. She put a hand on top of his where they lay useless in his lap.

28

After he rejoined the family, Speranza seemed much the same as before: kindly, distracted, saddened, slightly aloof. More family arrived, and Speranza greeted them gently, accepting their sympathy.

But all this time, Speranza was deep within his head trying to come to terms with the shattering insight he’d gained from the talk with Montara. When it came to important things, Speranza had imagined that he withheld some final authority that would be respected. Now he found that he hadn’t, and the knowledge stuck in his throat like a flat, sharp bone.

Speranza worked himself deeper and deeper into a feeling of helplessness and depression until he was responding with only a vacant stare and a mumbled word or two. Thinking that it was grief that preoccupied the old man, Rosalie and Doris stopped by from time to time to pat his brown-spotted hand or touch his lined check. The sons-in-law argued their own diagnoses of the old man’s state under their breath near the bar.

“I tell you,” Lou said, “he’s not drunk. He’s old, and he’s had a hell of a blow. What do you expect?”

“You’re crazy,” Bruno said. “If he’s senile, I’m senile. I wish I was as sharp as that old bastard. Go up and get a whiff of his breath, why don’t you! I bet it’ll knock you over.”

“Five bucks?” Lou asked.

“Make it ten.”

Lou won the bet, but they were both astonished a few minutes later when Speranza came to life and took complete charge of the family gathering. It was as if twenty years had fallen from him. He was everywhere in the room: consoling, joking, teasing the children, drawing forth recollections of events and people that everyone else had forgotten.

“Hey,” Speranza cried, “why is it so quiet? What is this—a wake?” He gave the old booming laugh they knew so well. “Let’s have some music, Rosalie! You and I used to be a great dancing team.” He held out a hand. “Come! Dance a tarantella with me like you used to.”

“Oh no, Papa,” Rosalie laughed, flashing her big black eyes. “I couldn’t.”

But the old man caught her hand and pulled her to a space in the middle of the room made clear by scurrying relations. An old record was started on the hi-fi, and Speranza whirled his heavy daughter around until he made her laugh and throw her head back shamelessly revealing her aging neck.

“What did I tell you,” Bruno whispered. “The old man will put us all in the grave.” He wondered how he could get his ten dollars back.

“Especially Rosa,” Lou said. “She can’t take too much of that.”

From that point, the gathering became a party, the first real party the house had seen in several years. Only Carmen and Delia exchanged worried looks as they moved about serving food and drinks. Both thought the old man was putting on an act. What would happen when the party was over?

But it wasn’t an act. Speranza had simply made up his mind what he would do. And the relief had made him light-hearted. Besides, he loved his family. They would cry at the funeral, but he wanted them to laugh tonight.

The party went on until late, and the last relations had to be practically ejected. But when the time came when he thought they must go, the old man was just as vigorous in getting rid of the family as he had been in making them lively.

“Good, good!” he cried as, unbelievably, Lou Altomare danced Rosa down the front walk toward their big Chrysler trailed by their sleepy and embarrassed children.

Delia was the last guest to leave the quiet house. Kathy had been driven tearfully up the stairs to her room by whispered threats, and Carmen was in the living room beginning to repair the damage from the party. When Delia, her near-black sable coat thrown over her shoulders, came to the door, Speranza took her hands in his. He looked into her eyes silently.

“Papa,” she said softly, “may I stay tonight?”

“No, my darling.” Speranza continued to hold her hands in one of his and touched a lock of her ashen hair with the other. “You must go. But thank you for coming. You are kind to an old man.”

“Papa—”

“Yes?”

“Nothing,” Delia said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Good night. Papa.” She gathered the collar of her coat around her throat and hurried down the front walk, her thin heels tapping like a telegrapher’s key.

Speranza closed the door behind her and switched out the hall light. He walked back into the living room where Carmen was working.

“Carmen. It’s late. Leave all this. Go to bed. Let Ella help you with it in the morning.”

“There’s not much to do, Papa,” Carmen said, emptying another ashtray into a plastic bucket.

“Leave it, I say,” Speranza commanded. “It’s time you were in bed. It’s time everybody was in bed.”

“All right, Papa.” Carmen put down the bucket. “Good night, Papa.” She threw her apron on the back of a chair and walked toward the stairs.

“Carmen,” said Speranza, stopping her.

“Yes, Papa?” Carmen turned and looked at him with anxious eyes.

Speranza walked over to his youngest daughter and put a hand on her arm. “You’re a good girl, Carmen,” he said. “You’ve always been a good girl. Give your papa a good-night kiss.”

Carmen put her dry lips to his chin. “Good night, Papa. I love you.”

“Bless you, Carmen,” Speranza said, and he let her go. He stood watching as she disappeared up the stairs. Then, flicking off the last lamp, Speranza sat down in his big leather chair and listened to the sounds of the house. Finally, he heard Carmen’s footsteps going down to Kathy’s room. Then, a door closed, a few more footsteps, and a final door closed. He sensed that the last light in the house had gone dark.

Speranza walked noiselessly up the stairs to the big room that had been his and his wife’s. He walked to the big desk near the window and snapped on a small, downward-thrust desk lamp. Sitting down, he unlocked the wide central drawer and withdrew several big manila folders and stacked them at the side of the desk. Taking one from the stack, he began to pore over the papers it held. Occasionally, he wrote something with the thick black fountain pen he’d owned for so many years.

Before long, Speranza had been through all of the folders. Shoving them to one side, he drew out a clean sheet of paper and filled the fountain pen. In a large script, he wrote the date at the top of the sheet of paper and then paused to think. Nothing came. He wanted to say something, but nothing came. Crumpling the paper, he threw it into the wastebasket and capped the old pen. Then he squared the folders in the middle of the desktop and placed a rectangular slab of magnifying glass across them diagonally as a paperweight.

He reached down and opened another drawer. From it, Speranza lifted a chamois bag which clanked softly. From the bag he drew a large revolver and a handful of loose bullets. Speranza spun the cylinder and smiled with satisfaction at the smooth action. Then he broke the gun and began to fill the round chambers with fat cartridges. Fixing the safety, he snapped the revolver shut with a gratifying snap and put it into his large trouser pocket. Speranza then relocked the middle drawer, threw the key ring on top of the file folders and killed the light. He sat waiting a moment for his eyes to readjust to the dark and then walked out into the hallway.

Speranza moved down to the room at the end of the hall and opened the door slowly and quietly. At first, the small bed seemed to be unmade but empty. But then Kathy’s slight form became apparent, curved into a U halfway down the thin bed. By morning, she would be down to the footboard.

Speranza stood watching the covered hump that was his favorite grandchild. He mouthed something toward her and then stepped back out of the doorway. Walking swiftly, a man going somewhere, Speranza passed Carmen’s room and moved on down the stairway to the main floor. In the front hallway, he took a jacket at random and transferred the revolver to the jacket pocket. Outside, he silently lifted the garage door and rolled the small sedan, usually Carmen’s automobile, down the driveway to the street and then down the sloping street. He started the engine in second gear, flicked on the headlights, and drove toward a house not many blocks away.

Upstairs in Speranza’s house, Carmen dropped the window curtain and turned back to her bed. She slipped between the still-warm sheets and lay there open-eyed and thinking.

29

Bobby Rice was red-eyed from crying and red-faced with shame. He hadn’t cried in years. He was a big boy for sixteen, heavy in the shoulders and arms but nearly as slight as a child below the waist.

Now Bobby sat on his bed and looked at himself with pity and disgust in the dresser mirror. Beside him was a small bag packed with the necessaries for the night’s football game: a fresh jockstrap, clean woolen socks, his own cleat tightener and four extra cleats, lampblack to cut the glare from the stadium lamps, and a small white hand towel. It was packed as carefully as a doctor’s bag.

At the dinner table a few minutes before, Bobby had refused to eat and had come to the table only after his mother had begged him with tears in her eyes. He didn’t mind not eating. He felt so devoid of hunger that it seemed impossible that he would ever eat again. Bobby stolidly watched his family eat the cheese-and-tomato laden pieces of veal as if they were machines chewing up cardboard. Finally, his father left the table without a glance at him, and Bobby climbed back up the stairs to his room.

He had known for years that there was something funny about his father’s business. Rizzo had tried to keep his affairs secret, but Bobby was a clever boy who had fitted together all the pieces and decided that his father was some kind of crook. At first, when he was nine or ten years old, Bobby was thrilled by this discovery. But as he grew older, he became ashamed of Rizzo’s shady dealings and tried to block out all knowledge of them. If anybody asked, he said his father was a businessman and let it go at that. He often secretly wished that his father would die in an accident. Father Cony urged him to fight these fantasies and to try to understand.

The older he became, the more Bobby cherished the name Rice. When Donald Mofilitt, in the ninth grade, learned his real name and started calling him Rizzo, Bobby caught him behind the boathouse and beat him relentlessly. He was never called anything but Rice after that.

Bobby looked at his watch: seven o’clock. The team would be arriving at the gymnasium, laughing and going to Doc Blundell for their freshly laundered uniforms. Bobby could see his own uniform—tight-fitting golden pants and white jersey with the big, blue “14” on the front and back—laid out like a bullfighter’s suit of lights on the scarred wooden bench.

He could even smell the wonderful odor of the gym, a mixture of ancient sweat, strong liniment from Doc’s blue bottles, a whiff of after-shave lotion and the fresh-bread aroma of the newly laundered jerseys.

Bobby knew that his knees would have been shaking as he stood with the starting team facing Coach Blundell. The coach had a habit of talking directly to the starters and letting the rest of the team eavesdrop. He could hear himself being asked: “Rice, on the R-34 draw, what do you look for if Hokanson doesn’t move his fat ass quick enough to get you some running space?”

“Elliot Carlson on the left flank, Coach,” Bobby answered aloud, “and—” But he couldn’t go on. His throat wouldn’t produce the words his mind was feeding it. He sat there feeling choked and hopeless. He looked at his watch again and knew that the coach would be worried and wondering where he was. Starting players were never late.

Unable to stand the tension, Bobby jumped up and slammed the punching bag hanging in the corner with his right hand. He instinctively spared his passing arm. He felt the punch tingle all the way back to his shoulder. The slight pain felt good. And with that punch, Bobby made up his mind. He would play in the game tonight. To hell with his father. He could still make it if he hurried. And the team would win. He’d worry about facing his father tomorrow. Nothing he could do to him would matter after tonight.

Bobby leaped over to the bed, zipped open his bag and checked the contents. Then he slipped into his leather jacket and opened the window. He felt the sharp needles of the cool evening sting his face. It was a beautiful night for football.

It was a dozen feet from Bobby’s window to the ground, but the drainpipe was strong. Bobby knew that Pete and another of his father’s men were patrolling the house. He had to evade them.

He tied his old Boy Scout rope to the handle of his bag with a slip knot and carefully lowered the bag to the ground just past the dark window of the downstairs spare room. When the bag touched, Bobby flicked the rope and felt it fly free. He drew it up swiftly. Looking around the room for something sturdy, Bobby tied the rope to the leg of his bed and pulled the bed up against the wall under the window. Getting back up the drainpipe would be tough without the rope.

Bobby threw a leg over the windowsill, tested the pipe with half of his weight and found it did not give at all. He began to lower himself, hand over hand, sneaker-shod feet clamped to the pipe, down the side of the house, keeping as flat to the stuccoed wall as he could. The shadow of the house next door made the wall under his window a fathomless black.

Slowly, with an athlete’s control, the boy edged down the pipe and then jumped to the ground into a silent crouch. He tied the rope taut to a strut at the bottom of the drainpipe. He retrieved his bag from the flower bed.

Still crouching, Bobby tried to determine the safest way past his father’s sentries. He started to move toward the fence of the yard next door with his bag in hand when he saw a shadow pass the corner of the front of the house and heard a voice call: “Did you say something, Pete?”

“Naw,” said Pete, “I think it was somebody in the house.”

As the shadow withdrew, Bobby uncurled and stretched for the fence again. He switched his bag to his right hand. Then, with a measured step, Bobby gracefully vaulted over the fence, broke his fall with his right foot and crouched noiselessly to the ground, bag in hand.

Bobby was exposed for only a moment in the bright light of a near-full moon at the top of the fence before slithering back into the darkness. But it was long enough for Alec Hoerner, hidden in the recesses of a screenless porch across the street, to spot him.

Stiff, bored, cold and getting increasingly pissed off, Hoerner had turned his mind inward to other endless nights in Vietnam and on the West Side of Manhattan. Sometimes it seemed as though he had spent half his life in the dark waiting for something violent to happen. Keying himself up to the point where if nothing happened you made something happen. Anything. So long as it resolved the hard, aching knot of tension. Hoerner saw something move swiftly on the right periphery of his vision. Bobby Rice. Suddenly he wasn’t cold or bored. He was a highly trained hunting animal acting on his own. He was alive to the possibilities of the chase.

Alec sat still for a moment and waited for Bobby to appear again. When he didn’t see the boy, Hoerner knew that he’d come out on the side street and that it was time to move fast. This was his chance to strike. Across the street in the bright moonlight, he could see one of the thugs patrolling the front of the house. He knew there was at least one other.

Stepping from the side of the porch into a bed of lovingly planted dahlia bulbs, Hoerner fell flat on his stomach onto the rough concrete driveway and wriggled quickly into the safety of more shadow. Putting a thick tree between himself and Rizzo’s house, he set out in pursuit of Bobby Rice.

30

Injun was cruising slowly down Central Avenue drumming a rhythm on the steering wheel and humming the fill-in melody. On the seat beside him was a bag full of leak-proof containers of Chinese food—dinner for Pete, Ernie and himself. Bored and restless, Injun had volunteered to get the food. Rizzo said all right, but don’t screw around.

He wasn’t exactly screwing around, but Injun was driving very slowly in the curb-side lane watching the flow of kids heading for the football game at the municipal stadium. He’d been too small to play football himself, and he couldn’t see much in the game. Injun was giving special attention to three short-dressed pompon girls practicing a routine and singing as they jogged along in the early dark when he saw Bobby Rice. Bobby was on the other side of the street, moving at a half-trot toward the stadium, and a group of boys were running to keep up with him.

“Bobby,” one of them panted, “are you going to score some touchdowns tonight?”

“I hope so,” said Bobby, looking over his shoulder in hopes of spotting someone in a car who could drive him the rest of the way. He could feel his shirt clinging to his sweaty back under the leather jacket.

“You’re late,” another kid said, spurting ahead and turning around to run backward ahead of Bobby. “It’s only twenty min—” The boy caught his heel and fell, and Bobby had to shift to avoid stepping on him.

“I know,” said Bobby, not tired but worried. “I know.”

Nearly a block behind Bobby, Hoerner was having difficulty keeping up without attracting attention to himself. Hoerner knew he had to grab the kid before Bobby got to the stadium ahead or he might never get another chance at him. He figured that once he had Bobby, and Rizzo knew it, the pressure would come off Harry Caster in a hurry.

“Young bastard!” an old man with a heavily-laden string bag shouted at him after being jostled.

“Get laid,” Hoerner muttered, sidestepping to get around a clot of giggling young girls.

“What’s your hurry?” the boldest of them called to him.

Hoerner had just broken through a string of sidewalk-hogging boys too timid to do anything but mumble soft protests, when Injun braked the car sharply to halt across the street from Bobby Rice.

“Hey, Bobby,” he called out.

For a moment, Bobby thought it was a friend from school, and with a grateful grin he cut through a covey of admirers and ran toward the black car. Halfway across the street, he recognized the driver, saw that Injun was opening the door to get out, and Bobby’s smile turned into a grimace.

“No!” Bobby cried and swiveled to get away from the car and Injun. But then Injun was out of the car and had hold of Bobby with his short but powerful arms. “Let go!” the boy shouted, trying to stiff-arm his way out of Injun’s grasp, but Injun held on and dragged him toward the car.

Still nearly half a block back, Hoerner saw Bobby run into the road toward the waiting car. “Damn!” he said, startling a chemistry teacher and his wife walking in front of him. Alec thought, I’ll lose him sure as hell if he gets into that car. He cut from the sidewalk into the street and began running.

Then he saw the little man from the car grab Bobby and instantly recognized him as one of the punks with Gino Speranza. Hoerner automatically drew his pistol and held it flat against his right thigh.

At nearly the same moment, while grappling with Bobby, Injun saw Hoerner over the boy’s shoulder, saw the flash of the gun as it slid back into darkness. He forgot Bobby, shoving him away with such force that the boy fell sprawling on the cobbled street and lay stunned for a moment. But then Bobby realized he was free, jumped to his feet and sprinted at full tilt toward the lights of the stadium. Injun scrambled back into his car.

Splitting his vision, Hoerner saw the punk go back into the car, but most of his attention was on the shifting back of Bobby Rice as he raced toward the sanctuary ahead. Catching him was out of the question, Hoerner knew, especially after he had been spotted by Rizzo’s man. He knew that within seconds he would have to deal with that danger. But right now he could concentrate only on the fact that he had either to let Bobby go or bring him down. Hoerner made a blind, instinctive decision.

Hoerner dropped to his left knee and brought his gun-carrying arm in front of his body like a short lance. Grasping his right wrist, he aligned the sight of the pistol with Bobby’s shifting back and squeezed the trigger at half-second intervals.

The first bullet hit Bobby on stride and seemed to speed him up rather than slow him. But a split second later his regular gait turned wobbly like that of an exhausted runner. The second bullet increased the staggering and started his fall to the rough-cobbled pavement. The third shot caught Bobby high on the shoulder as he went down, accelerating his plunge and sending him scudding across the cobblestones on his smooth cheek until he shuddered to a stop with his eyes wide open, not in pain but in disappointment.

Still able to move, Bobby threw his right hand out toward the stadium. “Coach!” he cried through a froth of blood. Then Bobby Rice died with the tall arc lights of the stadium reflected in his wide-staring eyes.

When he heard the first shot, Injun was already back in the car about to wheel it around and go after Bobby. But at the sight of Hoerner’s crouching figure, the boy was forgotten. Jabbing the starter button, Injun pushed the gear shift into low and floored the accelerator. As the car peeled out, he flicked the car lights out.

Hoerner noted with clinical satisfaction that he had been right to drop the third shot a shade. He frowned as he saw the fourth shot miss the boy and spark as it shattered against a cobblestone. He didn’t notice a girl farther down the street crumple as a fragment severed her spinal cord.

He thought no more of the boy as he began to recover from his shooting position. Hoerner’s senses were raw to the danger of his exposed situation in the middle of a well-lighted street. He kept his pistol leveled, but so far all attention was on Bobby’s body. Someone urged someone else to call an ambulance, and several boys ran out into the street to kneel over the boy.

“It’s Bobby Rice,” a stunted freshman said in wonder. “He’s been hurt.”

Hoerner was nearly erect and turning to deal with the menace of Injun, but he wasn’t quick enough. A speeding black object became a car, abruptly veering toward him, and Alec raised his pistol to aim.

The hammer was not quite all the way back when the left fender hit Hoerner full on and drove him backward off his feet. The gun flew from his out-flung arm, spun brightly in the air and skidded to a stop next to the curb.

With a grunt of pain, Hoerner felt his pelvis crack and tried to cling to the front of the car as his feet were swept from under him. But as the pelvis bones grated under the assault of the car, a thin, sharp knife shot through his body. With a shrill moan, Hoerner tried to push off the smooth black fender like a gored matador high on the horn of a bull.

He needn’t have bothered. For as Injun fought to get the car back on the other side of the street, Hoerner, still conscious, was hurled backward under the front of an oncoming bus. The crunch as a big wheel passed over his chest brought welcome blackness from the searing pain that rode him to the ground. The back wheel, unchecked by the frightened bus driver, also passed over his body, but the jolt bothered the passengers more than it did Alec Hoerner.

Cutting off a terrified boy in an MG, Injun regained the right side of the street and floored the accelerator again. Switching the lights back on, he jumped a red light and at the next corner braked into a controlled slide which shot the car into a narrow side street.

Rizzo was sitting in the living room trying to figure out his next move when he heard the banging on the door.

“I’ll get it,” he told Angie who was sitting under the lamp knitting a sweater. As Rizzo opened the door, Injun nearly hit him as he lowered his fist. “What do you want?” Rizzo demanded.

“It’s your boy,” Injun gasped. “He’s been shot. Down near the stadium.”

“You’re crazy,” Rizzo said. “Bobby’s in his room.” But he knew Injun was telling the truth. Rizzo turned his head and saw his wife standing in the doorway to the living room. “Angie,” he said, pushing his arm toward the stairs leading to their son’s room, “Bobby…”

“You’d better go, Carlo,” Angie said. Her white face was prepared for the worst.

“I’ll be right back,” Rizzo told her. Pushing Injun out of the door ahead of him, he strode toward his car at the curb. “You guys stay with this house,” he told Pete and Ernie without pausing. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll have your balls.” He said to Injun: “You come with me,” and ran to the car.

Angie Rizzo listened as the car roared down the street. Then she turned and walked up the stairs to the hall in front of Bobby’s room. Biting her lip, she first tried the door and found it locked. Then she knocked feebly and called: “Bobby? Bobby? Are you there, Bobby?” There was no answer, and she’d expected none. She lowered her arm and stood looking at the door.

Just then the telephone rang. Absentmindedly, Angie lifted the upstairs extension from its cradle on the hall table.

“Hello?” she said automatically.

“It’s me—Ruby, Mrs. Rice. I’m down in Greenwich Village. Caster and the girl are still wandering around. I wanted to ask Mr. Rice what I should do next.”

Angie responded without a pause. “Kill them, Ruby. Kill them both.”

“Mrs. Rice?” Ruby said in confusion. “Did you—”

“I said kill them both. Ruby,” Angie said with force. “Hit them. Burn them.” She used the slang awkwardly. “I want them dead.” She put down the telephone.

“Okay, Mrs. Rice,” Ruby said into the dead telephone. He looked across the square to the brightly lit sidewalk cafe where Harry and Sandra were sitting.

31

Hours of wandering and telephoning had passed, and Harry and Sandra sat wearily at a small round plastic table surrounded by tourists.

“Just to cheer us up,” Sandra said, stirring her cooling coffee for the fifth time, “why don’t you try to call your brother again?”

“Again?”

“Yes, and if he’s not there this time, we’ll commit suicide by jumping off a high curb.”

Harry fished a dime from his pocket and dialed Mickey’s number again on a telephone hanging next to the scarred restroom door. He didn’t hope for anything better than the same old recorded message, but to Harry’s surprise he heard the rasping tones of a busy signal. “Hey,” he called to Sandra, “you’re not going to believe this, but somebody seems to be at Mickey’s place. The line is busy.”

“Hurrah,” said Sandra flatly.

Across the square in the shadow of two power poles, Ruby looked anxiously at the couple in the glassed-in enclosure of the restaurant and gripped the carved handle of a .32 automatic in his coat pocket. The safety lock of the pistol was firmly on and had been checked and rechecked a dozen times in the last half hour. The square was busy with casual strollers, and Ruby dared not chance shooting. So he watched and worried.

Harry dialed again. This time the monotonous ring sounded and then was broken and a voice answered.

“Hello?” said a woman warily, and Harry recognized the voice.

“Alison?” he said. “It’s Harry—Harry Caster. Is my brother there?”

“Hello, Harry,” she said. “No, he’s not here right now. I’m expecting him any second, but—”

“I’ve got to see him,” Harry said. “Everything has gone wrong.”

“Things are falling apart here a bit, too,” the secretary said, “but okay, come over and take your chances. But I’m not guaranteeing anything. I’ve got to go now, g’bye.” She hung up the telephone.

“What did he say?” Sandra asked when Harry came back to the table.

“He’s not there,” Harry said, “but his secretary said to come and Mickey will probably be there soon.”

“Let’s go, then,” Sandra said. Harry paid the bill, and they walked out onto the cold sidewalk.

A yellow cab appeared like a shark in clear water, and Harry jammed two fingers into his mouth and let blast a piercing whistle. The taxi swerved to a stop, and they climbed in.

“Sixty-Sixth and Park,” Harry told the driver, a middle-aged black wearing a faded Dodgers cap with the bill turned to the back, and the cab plunged up Sixth Avenue.

This move caught Ruby unaware, and he gaped at the disappearing red tail light of the cab. Recovering, he leapt out into the rough-paved square and looked wildly about for a taxi. It was five minutes before one crept slowly into the square from West Eighth Street, and by that time Ruby was almost frantic. As the cab rolled to a stop, he nearly ripped the door off and threw himself into the back seat.

“Take it easy, fella,” said the driver, half-turning around. “Where to?”

Ruby sat stunned by the question. His soft mouth dropped open.

“Well,” said the driver sharply, “don’t you know where you want to go? You were in a big hurry a minute ago.” He was a little guy with a sharp, drooping nose and hairy ears.

Ruby’s mouth snapped closed. “You shut up and just sit there,” he told the driver savagely. “I’ll tell you where to go when I want to. You open your face again and I’ll put my foot in it.”

“Okay, okay,” said the driver, turning back and snapping the meter onto waiting time.

Caster and that broad could be going any place. Ruby thought in anguish. If he didn’t find them, Rizzo would have his head. Then he knew where they must be heading. They had to be.

“Okay,” he said to the back of the driver’s head, “take me to Sixty-Sixth and Madison, and make it fast. And keep your mouth shut.”

32

When Rizzo and Injun got to Central Avenue, the street was cleared of traffic. Police cars were parked at odd angles in the middle of the street, and officers were directing drivers into side streets.

“What’ll I do?” Injun asked as a tall cop tried to flag them to a stop.

“Keep going,” ordered Rizzo, and the cop had to jump out of the way. He followed Rizzo’s car with angry eyes as it drove into the center of the square created by the police.

Lying at an angle on the white center line was a long object covered by a shiny tarpaulin. A swiftly circling red and blue light on top of a nearby squad car flickered across the cracked reflective surface of the tarp. Ignoring Chief Beddell, who stood to one side talking with a subordinate and a slight but athletic man in gym shoes, sweat suit and bulky blue jacket, Rizzo walked toward the covered body on the cobbled street. Injun stayed behind the wheel of the car.

Stopping, Rizzo picked up one corner of the tarp and revealed a foot wearing a dirty-white tennis shoe with diagonal blue and yellow stripes. He knew it was Bobby without looking further, but Rizzo knelt and folded the cover about a third of the way back.

The first adult to reach Bobby, a local veterinarian, had turned him over to feel for a heartbeat. When he found none, he closed the boy’s wide-staring eyes with his thumbs. Now, as Rizzo knelt and looked into his son’s face, he tried to imagine that Bobby was only sleeping. But it was death, not sleep, that Rizzo saw in the young face with its bloody cheek and soft, half-formed mouth hanging open in eternal surprise. Rizzo was dimly aware of the sounds of the football crowd coming from the stadium.

“Hey,” said a sergeant, grabbing Rizzo’s shoulder from behind. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Rizzo shrugged off the policeman’s hand and bent from the waist to kiss his son on the mouth. It was still warm. Then he straightened up, replaced the tarpaulin neatly over Bobby’s face and got to his feet. Ignoring the sergeant, Rizzo walked over to where Beddell and the others were standing.

Beddell was talking with Coach Blundell when Vern Hodges nudged him. He looked up and saw Rizzo coming toward him from his son’s body. Blundell instinctively moved back a step when he saw Rizzo’s face, but Beddell stood his ground.

“Where is he?” Rizzo demanded.

Beddell jerked his chin in the direction of the near curb where a crowd of high-school students stood their ground against a cop hot much older than they were. Another tarp, half on the curb and half on the street, covered a sprawled heap in the gutter behind the policeman. Oblivious of the crowd and the policeman, Rizzo put a toe under the edge of the tarp and kicked it half off of Hoerner’s crushed body.

As hard as he tried, Rizzo couldn’t hate this still body which looked as if life had escaped through its face. It was nothing but a piece of meat. Half-heartedly, he drew back his foot as if to kick Hoerner.

“Look! Look!” kids on the curb were yelling, pointing at Rizzo. Others turned away as they caught sight of Hoerner’s uncovered body. For a moment, the cop refused to pay attention, but then he glanced back and caught sight of Rizzo.

“Hey, mister,” he said, half-turning, “you can’t—” The crowd surged forward behind him to fill the gap. Rizzo turned and walked away, and the cop started to follow until Beddell called him off with a gesture. The young policeman wheeled and chased the gawking crowd back to the sidewalk with his truncheon raised.

As Rizzo approached again, Blundell said huskily, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Rice.” But Rizzo spoke to the Chief of Police.

“Who was he?”

“His name was Hoerner,” Beddell replied. “Alec Hoerner. That’s about all we know so far.”

Rizzo’s eyes showed no interest. “I’ll make the arrangements for my boy,” he said. He walked back to the car where Injun waited hunched low behind the steering wheel.

33

The same gray-haired woman greeted Harry and Sandra at the building on East 66th Street. Harry thought she must be like some enchanted gatekeeper maintained in a state of suspended animation until needed.

“Mr. Caster,” she said routinely as they stepped into the foyer. “Your brother is expecting you.” The receptionist motioned them both to the small elevator.

The door leading to Mickey’s office was half-open, and Harry led Sandra through it. The large room had lost its look of executive serenity. Every surface was covered with business papers. The door to Alison’s apartment was open, and they could hear voices inside.

Harry and Sandra stood quietly in the middle of the office unaware that they were holding hands.

Then Mickey Caster walked through the doorway to the apartment, talking over his shoulder: “Whatever you say, sweet. Just pack them, and I’ll wear them.” He saw Harry and Sandra.

“Hello, kid,” he said. “Sorry everything is such a mess, but we’re in a bit of a hurry. Fix yourself a drink.” He gestured toward the low glass table. “No, don’t. The whiskey is under all that crap. I’m afraid, and if you disturb it we’ll never get out of here.” He put some papers on the edge of a chair and walked over to Sandra who had self-consciously dropped Harry’s hand. Harry introduced them.

“Miss Carradino,” Mickey said, taking her hand, “I’m happy to meet you, but I wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

Sandra nodded. She was conscious of the hard muscularity of Mickey’s small hand. He was less than impeccably groomed at the moment. His expensive jacket was on the bed in the other room, and his fitted shirt was riding up between thin braces. Mickey’s razor-cut hair looked as if it had been buffeted by a costly breeze.

“What the hell is going on?” Harry asked.

“A little trip, Harry,” Mickey said, riffling through a pile of papers. “Going on a little trip in about—” He looked at his thin watch. “Christ, Alison,” he called loudly, “do you know that we’ve got only an hour and forty-five minutes to catch that damned plane?”

“Don’t worry, darling,” Alison said as she walked into the office. “We’ll be out of here in another twenty minutes. You just find those bonds. Hello, Harry,” she said. “I warned you that this wasn’t the best time to call, but it’s good to see you again. Did you get that little matter straightened out?” She looked at Sandra in a cool but not unfriendly way.

“Not exactly,” Harry said. He turned to his brother again. “That’s what I’m here to see you about. Can we talk for just a minute?”

“Got the little bastards,” Mickey exclaimed, putting some papers into a slim attaché case. “Hell, Harry,” he said, looking at his watch again.

“Baby,” he said to Alison, “why don’t you ask Miss Carradino to give you a hand with the final packing while Harry and I have a little chat? But when we’re done, I want you out here with the cases ready to go, right?”

“Right,” answered Alison. She turned to Sandra. “You really can help me,” she said. “I can buy clothes, but I can’t decide which ones to leave behind. You help me be brutal about it.” Sandra followed her into the apartment.

“There’s got to be something to drink around here,” Mickey said, pulling open cupboards with both hands. “Aha.” He pulled out two bell-shaped glasses and a decanter half full of dark liquid. “This ought to be either brandy or furniture polish.” He poured two drinks, downed one and refilled it before giving the other to Harry. “We’re in luck,” he said. “It’s furniture polish and a very good year, too.” Failing to find a place to sit, Mickey leaned against the front of his crowded desk and raised his glass to Harry, who stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. “Here’s to us, Harry,” he said. “Screw the rest of them.” He took another sip and asked: “What’s on your mind, kid?”

Harry held the glass but didn’t drink. The light from surrounding buildings made him feel as though he were in a well-illuminated fishbowl. He didn’t know where to start.

“Mickey.” He hesitated. “Mickey, everything is going wrong. I thought that guy you got for me was only going to scare Rizzo off. He’s going crazy.” He quickly told his brother about Steve Rizzo and the gunning down of Gino that day. “I don’t know what Hoerner or Rizzo is going to do next, but I’m afraid to go home.”

Mickey swished a little brandy around in his mouth and swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s been that kind of week. I think Hoerner has been trying a little too hard. But look, you’ve still got the bar, you’re still alive and so are Hildy and the girls. That’s not so bad. Look at me.”

“Yes, you,” said Harry. “What are you doing? What do you mean you’re going on a trip? A trip where?”

“Harry,” his brother said wearily, “that’s something nobody knows but me and Alison, and it’s better that way. If you don’t know, they can’t make you tell in court.”

“In court? What court?”

“Kid,” Mickey said, “I told you it’s been a rough week for me, too. Only for me it’s been a rough year. And if we don’t get out of here very quickly, the next year—or maybe five—is going to be even rougher. In blunt terms, Harry, Alison and I are doing a midnight flit. In less than an hour and a half, we’re going to disappear.”

“But what about your businesses? And Esther and the kids?”

“My business interests,” Mickey said, “are over there in that fat little satchel on the chair. Take a look.”

Harry twisted the copper hasps, and the leather bag jumped crisply open. It was full of tight bundles of bills, high-denomination bills. The bundle on top looked to be all hundred-dollar bills. “It’s money,” he said stupidly.

“That’s right, Harry boy, you’ll be a success yet. Anybody who can recognize money is well on his way. If you need some, help yourself. But don’t be greedy. It may be some time before I have a regular source of income.”

“I don’t need any,” Harry said, closing the bag and snapping shut the twin locks.

“I didn’t think you would. Harry, you’re a refreshing experience. Better than two weeks at the seashore. And as for Esther, her interests are as well looked after as ever. What is Esther’s has always been Esther’s, and let no one doubt that. She won’t miss me for long, kid, maybe a hot minute.”

Harry didn’t say anything, but he turned his eyes in the direction of the apartment.

“Alison?” Mickey said. “Sure, I’m no fool, Harry. Don’t go all moral on me at this late hour. You’re not exactly alone, yourself. Harry, give me a break. I’ve got enough problems. I know you’re thinking: What about the kids? So am I. And I tell myself that they don’t need me anymore, that they’ll be okay. I’ve got to believe that, so don’t you start confusing the issue.”

Mickey jumped up from the edge of the desk with a fresh burst of energy. “And now, Harry, I’m sorry but I’ve really got to hit it if we’re going to make that plane. Stick around and see us off, but excuse me if I go on with my packing.”

“But, Mickey,” Harry said, “just a second. What am I going to do about Rizzo? Christ, how can I go home?”

“You’ll be okay, kid,” Mickey said. “Hoerner is a tough cookie. He’ll see you through. And I’ll give you your money back.”

“I don’t want my money back. I want the whole thing stopped. Rizzo can have the goddamned bar.”

“Too late for that, Harry. It’s an old story, and sad, but if you buy a ticket you’ve got to ride it to the end.”

“Like you are?” Harry asked sharply.

Harry expected anger, but Mickey looked at him soberly, even fondly. “If you but knew it, kid,” he said, “this is all part of the ride.” He started snatching up papers. “Alison,” he shouted, “where the hell are you and those suitcases?”

Harry stood and watched.

34

Across the street in the dark shadow of a half-basement door, Ruby Bonino crouched and watched the lights go out in Mickey Caster’s office. It was getting colder. For the tenth time. Ruby took the black automatic out of his pocket and checked the cartridge clip and safety. He’d used a gun before, but never alone.

While Ruby’s head was down, the big front door across the street opened, and Harry and Mickey came out, each carrying two large suitcases. Alison and Sandra followed with smaller cases. Alison had the money satchel firmly in hand. Down the street, a darkened limousine turned on its parking lights and began moving silently and smoothly toward the small group on the sidewalk. Ruby lowered his pistol and waited.

“We’ll take you to the airport,” Harry said.

“It’s okay,” said Mickey, “here’s our car and driver.”

The limousine pulled up, and the driver got out and said: “Mr. Kastransky?”

“That’s right,” said Mickey. “Open your trunk for our bags.” The big, hollow-looking driver quickly stowed the bags away, except for the satchel with the money, and got back in the driver’s seat. Alison quickly said goodbye and slid into the limousine. Mickey stood with his hand on the open door.

“Well, kid,” he said, “there’s a lot we could say, but there’s no time to say it. Take care of yourself.”

“You, too, Mickey,” Harry said. “You, too.” He held out his hand.

Mickey put his manicured hand in Harry’s and gave it a strong, expressive squeeze. He winked at Sandra and then ducked swiftly into the big car.

“Go,” he told the driver.

As the elongated Cadillac pulled away from the curb, Ruby once more laid the barrel of his pistol on the cold, wet iron railing. He squeezed the trigger.

Harry felt a quick burning sensation at the side of his neck and then heard two loud cracks which echoed in the nearly empty street. Two small, many-pointed stars appeared in the curtained window behind them. Harry put his hand to his neck. It came away dark with blood which reflected a street light. A third shot cracked, and Harry reacted at last, pulling Sandra down into the doorway out of Ruby’s line of fire.

Several yards down the street, the black limousine rocked to a sharp stop, and the right-hand rear door opened. It remained open for a few seconds, then slammed again, and the big car sprinted to the corner and disappeared.

“You’re bleeding,” Sandra said.

“I know,” said Harry. “Stay down. Where the hell is that doorbell?”

Disgusted at having missed with three shots. Ruby saw lights going on across the street and a terrace door open. He knew that if he was going to finish the job, it would have to be now. He didn’t want to. But then behind him in the half-basement kitchen a light went on, startling Ruby and pushing him up the wrought-iron stairs with the gun in his hand.

“He’s coming,” Sandra cried, trying to burrow under Harry’s arm as she saw Ruby’s big figure appear on the sidewalk.

Where the hell are they, Ruby thought nervously, peering into the darkness inside the doorway of the building opposite. The street wasn’t lit brightly, but he felt as if there were searchlights trained on him. Advancing slowly at an angle, he saw Harry and Sandra crouched in the corner of the entranceway.

“Your gun, Harry, your gun,” Sandra cried. “Do something.”

Ruby brought his gun up. He wasn’t going to miss again.

Harry’s hand gripped the revolver and brought it out with surprising ease. Almost blindly, Harry extended his arm and jerked the trigger as fast as he could.

The deafening noise and echo of the five shots died down, and the stink of gunpowder drove Harry and Sandra out of the doorway. The first thing they saw was the big form of Ruby Bonino lying face down in the middle of the street. His gun lay in the gutter a few paces from his head.

“Harry,” Sandra said, clutching him, “you hit him.”

“Yeah,” said Harry softly, still not believing it.

“Do you think he’s dead?”

“I’m afraid to look.”

Ruby groaned loudly and rolled cumbersomely over onto his side. “Help me,” he said weakly. “My leg.” He was curled over, reaching toward but not touching his blood-soaked leg. “I’m bleeding to death. Call a doctor.”

Looking up at Harry, Ruby started to plead once more and then saw the gun in Harry’s hand. “You shot me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” said Harry lamely.

“You bastard,” Ruby said. “Call a doctor.”

Harry became aware that up and down the street people, most of them in nightclothes, were standing looking silently at them. Unable to look at them, Harry kept his eyes on the man he’d shot. Then he heard his name called softly.

“Mr. Caster.” It was the receptionist of Mickey’s building. She came out onto the sidewalk. “I think you’d better go. Walk east to the corner and circle around to the garage. You’ll be less conspicuous that way.”

“But—” Harry began.

“You’d better,” she insisted, still calmly. “The police are bound to have been called, and I shall call them myself in a moment.”

Like obedient children, Harry and Sandra turned their backs on Ruby and moved to the sidewalk.

“Mr. Caster,” the receptionist said again, and Harry looked at her quizzically. She glanced down at his hand, and Harry realized that he was still holding the pistol. Hurriedly, he jammed it back into his pocket.

It was less than fifty yards to the corner, but to Harry and Sandra it seemed like a mile walked on a high wire. At any second they expected to be hailed from behind or headed off by the police. But neither happened, and once around on Sixty-Seventh Street, they stopped near a huge trash receptacle, and Sandra bound his neck with a handkerchief and arranged his coat and shirt so that a minimum of blood showed. His neck had stopped bleeding, but it felt raw and stung like a bad burn.

“Do I look respectable?” Harry asked.

“Don’t ask for the impossible.”

At the parking garage an incurious attendant brought the rented car sliding down the curving ramp to the exit. “Oh, no,” he said when Harry tried to pay him. “Mr. Caster will take care of it. Mr. Caster always pays for his guests.”

That’s what you think, buddy, Harry said to himself as he started the car.

“Where are we going?” Sandra asked.

“Where do you go when the party is over?” Harry asked. “Home.”

35

Rizzo was silent on the short ride home, and Injun didn’t dare to speak. When they got to the house, Rizzo jumped out of the car and strode inside, leaving Injun to tell the others what had happened.

“Angie,” Rizzo called softly. When he got to the top of the stairs, he knew he had to look no further. The lock on Bobby’s door was smashed, and the open door was splintered in several places.

Rizzo stood in the doorway and felt for the light switch. “Please don’t turn on the light, Carlo,” Angie said. Rizzo edged into the room. He could see her dark silhouette against the side window. As his eyes became accustomed to the dark, Rizzo saw that his wife was sitting on Bobby’s bed with something in her hands. It was Bobby’s hand-muscle builder which he had spent hours squeezing. She was holding it by one red handle, aimlessly twisting and turning it.

“I broke the door open, Carlo,” she said. “With the hatchet. I’m afraid I made an awful mess of it.”

“Angie,” Rizzo said, sitting on the bed beside her, “Bobby—”

“Please don’t say anything, Carlo,” she murmured. “I know. I know. But don’t say it. We’ll talk about it later.”

They sat in dark silence for a while, and then Rizzo spoke again. “I’m sorry, Angie. I can’t tell you how sorry. I never thought…”

“I know. Carlo,” she said, putting her hand on his in the dark. “It’s not your fault.”

They both knew she lied, but the words helped. Rizzo put his arm around his wife’s defeated shoulders.

“I’ve got to go out again, baby,” he said, “for just a little while. I won’t be long.”

“No,” said Angie firmly, “you don’t have to go. It’s okay.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you left. Ruby called from Manhattan. I told him to kill Caster, kill both of them. You don’t have to go, Carlo. It’s all over. Stay with me, please.”

Rizzo was silent. Ruby kill Caster? He wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t. At the same time, he hoped Ruby hadn’t succeeded. He wanted to kill Caster himself. Rizzo got up and put his hand on Angie’s shoulder.

“It’s not that, Angie,” he lied. “It’s something else. I have to go.”

“All right, Carlo,” she said. “Don’t be long; I need you.”

“I won’t, Angie,” he said. Rizzo left her sitting in the darkness behind him. He didn’t hear her start to cry again.

Downstairs, in front of the house, Rizzo spoke briefly with Pete, and a small wooden carton was taken from the garage and placed in the back of his car. After strong words to his men, Rizzo got back into his car and peeled away from the curb.

Several minutes later, Rizzo pulled up at the curb in front of Harry Caster’s house. The house was dark, and he sat in the car staring at it and trying to summon up the intensity of hate he felt for its absent owner. A house was a poor substitute for a man.

Rizzo got out of the car, opened the back door and took two gasoline-filled soda bottles with cotton wicks from the wooden carton on the floor of the car. He carried them carefully to a spot in the middle of Harry’s badly-kept front lawn some fifteen feet in front of the big picture window.

Setting the bottles firmly on either side of his wide-spread legs, Rizzo stood looking into the bottomless depths of the big black window. In one corner, he could see himself and the street lamp behind him reflected as if they were the only things left in the world.

Deliberately, Rizzo reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a pistol, a big .38 with a snub barrel. He half-extended his arm, but at that moment the telephone inside the house began to ring. He let the trigger slack off and stood listening intently, counting thirteen rings before it cut off in mid-ring. When the sound was gone, Rizzo methodically emptied all six chambers into the plate-glass window until all that remained were the corners and a long, cutlass-like shard of glass defying gravity from the upper left corner.

By the third sharp report, lights were going on all over the block, but Rizzo ignored them as he pocketed his hot pistol and knelt to the bottles. With a cigarette lighter, he ignited both wicks and stood again with a bottle in each hand. Rizzo sent the first bottle in a flickering arc toward the gaping window, but the throw was short. The bottle rebounded from the sill to the wet bushes where it guttered ingloriously. Shifting the other bottle to his right hand, Rizzo hurled it.

This one was true to the target. It vanished through the window, struck the far wall with a hollow crack and spread a blanket of flame over the wall and the piano below it.

At the first sign of flames, Rizzo turned without another look and walked back to his car. By that time, several of Harry’s neighbors stood on their porches or front lawns staring at the Caster house and Rizzo. Ignoring them, Rizzo slipped back behind the wheel and started the car.

“Stop him, John,” said Mrs. Barnett from the safety of her porch across the street. But John Barnett, golf club in hand, remained where he was and watched Rizzo’s car speed down Elgin Street and around the corner.

When a car pulled up in front of Rizzo’s house, Pete and Injun were ready. But as an old man wearing a heavy lumber jacket got out of the car, they relaxed. Pete walked to the sidewalk to confront him.

“Evenin’, pop,” he said. “You looking for something?”

“Carlo Rizzo,” he said, not speaking to Pete but through him. “This is where he lives?”

“Maybe,” Pete admitted, “but he’s not home right now. Why don’t you come back some other time?”

“Mrs. Rizzo is here? I have to talk with her.”

Pete took an exaggerated look at his watch. “It’s late, pop,” he said. “Mrs. Rizzo has had a very bad day, so why don’t you…”

The old man said deliberately, “I want to see Mrs. Rizzo, and I want to see her right now.”

Pete wasn’t impressed. “I’ll bet you do,” he said, “but—”

Angela Rizzo’s voice cut in from the front porch. “Let him pass, Pete. I want to talk to him.”

“But Mr. Rice said—”

“I say let Mr. Speranza come in,” she said firmly.

Speranza began to move his bulky body forward, but Pete was still in his way. “I’ll have to frisk you,” Pete told him, looking the old man stubbornly in the eye.

“I am armed,” Speranza told him, returning the look but speaking very softly, “but you won’t search me. If you don’t get out of my way right now, boy, I will kill you.”

Speranza began moving again, and Pete melted out of the way like a phantom. As the old man passed him on the way to the porch, Pete turned back to Injun. He looked closely for signs of derision on Injun’s dark face.

Angie met Speranza on the steps.

“Don Baptiste,” she said, “it was good of you to come.” She reached out for his hands and walked with Speranza into the hallway. “Come, sit down,” she said, leading him toward the dimly lit front room. “Would you like coffee?”

“Angie,” he said, studying her face in the muted yellow light, “something’s happened. You’ve been crying. It’s not about Gino.”

Angela looked puzzled. “No, Papa,” she said. “But then you don’t know. Our Bobby was shot and killed this evening on his way to the football stadium.”

“Your Bobby?” Speranza asked. “But who? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Angie replied. “He shot Bobby down like an animal.” Tears began to streak down her face again.

“My dear,” Speranza said, taking Angie in his big arms and pulling her to him.

“I’m sorry about Gino, Papa,” she said in a muffled voice. “So sorry. I talked with Carmen earlier this evening.”

“I know,” Speranza said. He patted her shoulder lightly.

When Angela had stopped crying, she sat back on the couch and dabbed at her eyes with a small handkerchief. She asked: “Do you know this man Harry Caster, Papa?”

“No,” said Speranza, “but I’m looking for him. That’s why I came here tonight. Where is Carlo?”

“I don’t know, but I think he’s looking for Caster, too. He left quite a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything.” She paused. “Have you, Papa?” she asked anxiously.

“No, Angela,” Speranza said gently, “nothing.”

The telephone in the hallway rang loudly, and Angela jumped back. Her eyes went to Speranza’s face in alarm.

“I’ll answer it if you like,” Speranza offered, and she nodded. “Hello,” she heard Speranza say, and Angela held her breath as she waited. “No,” he said, “Mr. Rice isn’t here. Can I help you?” Angela stopped consciously listening; she was too busy with thoughts of her own.

Then she heard the name Bonino and started listening again. But Speranza was speaking very softly. Angela started to get up, but she heard Speranza say goodbye and put down the telephone.

“What is it?” she asked as Speranza returned to the living room. “Ruby Bonino, one of Gino’s friends, was shot tonight in Manhattan. They found Carlo’s business card in his pocket.”

“My God,” Angela said, putting her hand to her mouth.

“What’s the matter?”

“Ruby was following Caster tonight for Carlo,” she explained. “He called tonight right after we heard—heard about Bobby—and I told him to kill Caster.”

Speranza shook his head. “I must go,” he said, taking Angie’s hand once more. She held on tightly.

“Don’t, Papa,” she said.

“I’m an old man, Angie,” Speranza said, putting his other hand on top of hers. “That boy out front probably thought I’d been dead for years. In a way, I suppose I have been. But I’m not dead tonight. Gino is dead, but I am alive and I must do something. It’s been a long time, but I haven’t forgotten. I am still a man.”

Angie released her grip on his hand. “All right. Papa,” she said meekly, “if you must go.”

“Yes,” Speranza said, stooping to kiss her forehead gently. “If I see Carlo, I will send him home.”

“Carlo’s a man, too,” she said, and she lowered her eyes from his face.

Out front, Pete and Injun were standing in the shadow talking quietly when Speranza came out of the house and got into his car.

“I wonder what that old fart is up to,” Pete said as Speranza drove away.

36

Neither Harry nor Sandra said much on the ride home to Parker’s Landing. The streets of Manhattan were crowded as Harry fought to get to the West Side, but once they got on the Expressway they were virtually alone.

Harry couldn’t help glancing again and again in the rear-view mirror in search of a persistent set of headlights which would mean that the big youth whom he’d shot on Sixty-Sixth Street hadn’t been alone. But every time he spotted a likely shadow, the lights either turned off at an exit or swept by on the left and disappeared in the dimness ahead. On the other side of the Hudson River, the New Jersey palisades were thinly studded with points of light.

“How does your neck feel?” Sandra asked, breaking a long chain of silence.

“It still stings,” Harry said, “but it’s stopped bleeding. I think I’m going to have a very stiff neck in the morning. But I guess I should be grateful that he wasn’t a better shot.”

“You’d better be sure to see a doctor when we get to Parker’s Landing,” Sandra said. “You could get lockjaw or whatever it is people get from gunshot wounds.”

“Gunshot wounds,” Harry said. “What a glamorous expression. I’ve had every other ailment you can think of, but I never thought I’d have a gunshot wound. Even in the Army the worst I got was a sprained ankle.”

Parker’s Landing lay in pre-midnight darkness when Harry slipped off the parkway and into its quiet streets. He quickly threaded his way until they were approaching Sandra’s house. It was the only house on the block still illuminated. Passing the big mansion, Harry pulled around a slight curve in the winding street and stopped the car. He cut the engine and doused the headlights.

Neither of them spoke for a long time, and then Sandra asked: “What are you going to do?”

“Go home, I guess,” Harry said, “and change into something a little less gory.”

“Do you think it’s all over?”

“I don’t know. I suppose that depends on Rizzo. I have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. For all I know, he’s watching us right now.” Harry looked nervously behind the car. “I don’t even know where Hoerner is.”

“But can’t you try going back to Chief Beddell? After the shooting this morning and tonight, he’s got to believe you.”

“He believed me before,” Harry said. “I’m pretty sure of that.”

“Now he’ll have to do something, won’t he?”

“That I don’t know,” Harry said. “I just don’t know. I may try him again. What about you? What are you going to do?”

Sandra smiled wryly. “Go back in there and be the grieving sister. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Will they ask a lot of questions about where you’ve been today?”

“No,” Sandra said. “They’ll think a lot of questions, but they won’t ask them. In my family, grief is an excuse for any amount of eccentricity. When Great-Aunt Rosaria died, my cousin Ethel, the spinster, jumped on her racing bicycle and rode around the block for nearly six hours. Finally, she got a flat tire, wheeled the bicycle home and came into the house as if she’d been out for a walk.”

“I guess you’re safe then,” Harry said. He looked at the luminous dial of his watch without meaning to.

“Harry,” Sandra said, “I don’t want to go in.”

“Where else would you go?”

“With you.”

Harry laughed. “Where’s that? I don’t even know where I’m going, not really. Somewhere out there Rizzo and Hoerner are probably shooting it out, and I feel like I’m about to move into the middle of it. The only reason I came back here was because I didn’t know where else to go. If I was twenty years younger or like Mickey, I’d never have come back at all. You and I would be on a plane to somewhere—anywhere.”

“Let’s do that,” Sandra said quietly and seriously. She was staring straight ahead.

“Sandra,” he said, “I can’t—you know—”

“I know, Harry,” she said. “You don’t have to explain. Even if there weren’t Rizzo and Hoerner, there’s Hildy, the girls, et cetera and et cetera. I always knew the reasons why not. But I wanted to ask just in case. Just for the record, as they say.”

“Sandra,” Harry said, wanting to touch her, “aside from all that, you wouldn’t want to be with me. Not for long. I’m only what you saw when you walked into that waiting room: a middle-aged nobody who’s spent most of his life selling people something they’d be better off without. If Rizzo lets me, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life doing the same thing. You know you want more than that.”

“What I want,” Sandra said, “is not really the question here. What I can get is. I’m not complaining, Harry, I’m just sorry. And now I’d better go. But first I’m going to tell you something.” Sandra faced Harry in the near dark. Her face was shapes and shades of gray. “You’re not the funny little man you think you are, Harry. You’re much more, and you’ve proved it in a crazy way by standing up to Rizzo. You never should have done it, but in a queer way I’m glad you did. You’re a man, Harry, and that’s a lot.”

Sandra cracked the door open on her side. “You know where I live. I’ll be there for some time, not exactly waiting for you, but all the same I’ll be there.” She leaned over and lightly kissed Harry’s mouth. “Try to stay out of the way of bullets, hey?”

“Yeah,” said Harry softly. He watched her until she disappeared around the curve of the street.

* * *

When Harry drove onto his block he knew something was wrong. The acrid smell of fire defeated by water invaded the car. And he knew instinctively whose house had burned. Harry pulled up and parked in front of his house. He saw that it hadn’t literally burned down. The house still stood, but the front of it gaped at him like an empty eye socket. Harry got out of the car and leaned against it, surveying the havoc.

The front yard looked as if the burning house had vomited the contents of the living room out toward the sidewalk. He recognized the charred remnants of the hi-fi, the sodden hulk of the sofa, still smoldering slightly, and the piano listing among the rose beds like a sinking aircraft carrier.

Before Harry could go on with the inventory of the remains, a figure detached itself from the darkness of the side porch and walked toward him. It was a fireman, complete with long-billed helmet, rubber coat and fire ax. Like the house, the fireman seemed to smolder still, and as he crossed the lawn his high rubber boots squeaked. “You Mr. Caster?” the fireman asked.

“That’s right.”

“My name’s Coogan, Parker’s Landing Fire Department. Had a pretty nasty conflagration for a while here tonight.”

“So I see,” Harry said. “What’s the damage?”

“Living room gutted, smoke and water damage on the rest of the ground floor, suspected deterioration of first-floor beams and chance of collapse.”

Almost idly, Harry asked: “Okay if I go in and take a look?”

“Sorry,” Coogan said, “no one is allowed on the damaged premises until arson investigators complete their work in the morning.”

“Arson,” Harry said.

“Suspected arson,” the fireman corrected. “There is a strong suspicion that the fire may have been initiated by a type of fire bomb—what is popularly known as a Molotov cocktail.”

“Oh.”

“With this sort of suspicion, we can’t allow anyone in your home—not even you—until investigations are completed. That’s why I’m here, as well as to deal with any fires which may rekindle.”

“All right,” Harry said. “Thanks very much.”

“Any time,” said the fireman.

As Harry turned to go back to his car, the fireman spoke again: “You been away from Parker’s Landing this evening, Mr. Caster?”

“Yes, I’ve been in the city. Why?”

“It’s been one hell of a night. A local boy got shot and killed this evening on Central Avenue. On his way to play in the football game. Bobby Rice, the quarterback, it was. Some fella shot him three times in the back and then got run down and crushed by a bus. You never saw such a mess in all your life.”

Harry couldn’t react with surprise, so he just said: “It sounds like it.”

“Sure was,” said the fireman. “And the boy’s father was really broken up, so I heard. A terrible thing. He was dead before anybody got to him.”

“The guy who shot him,” Harry asked, “who was he?”

“A stranger,” Coogan said. “Nobody I ever saw before. I didn’t catch the name exactly, but it was Harney or something like that. I don’t know what he’d want to shoot a boy like Bobby Rice for. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Harry agreed. “No sense at all. But then a lot of things don’t make sense.”

“You’re right there,” said Coogan. “Good night now.”

“So long,” said Harry.

Harry got back into his car wearily like a gypsy being pushed on yet another time. The dried blood on his shirt and undershirt was scratchy, and the slight wound on his neck still bothered him. He sat for a moment wondering why one of the peaceful, darkened houses wasn’t his. Then he turned the key to start the engine.

Baptiste Speranza wheeled the car stiffly around the corner. It had been years since he’d driven. He was so intent on what he was doing that for some time he didn’t notice the red-and-blue light flashing behind the car. It took a long blast of the horn to get his attention and make him pull over to the side of the road.

What a nuisance, Speranza told himself as he shut off the engine. He slipped the big gun from his pocket to the seat beside his thick thigh and began to fumble in his wallet for a long-invalid driving license. Rolling down the window, Speranza looked up at the policeman who’d parked behind him and walked up.

“Officer,” he started to say, and then he recognized Beddell. “So, it’s you, Roy.”

“Yes, Baptiste,” Beddell said, looking down at the old man. “What do you want?”

“You know,” Beddell said.

“Carmen called you,” Speranza said almost petulantly. “I should have known.”

“No, she didn’t,” Beddell said. “Nobody called me. I wasn’t looking for you—didn’t even know you were out. I’m looking for Carlo Rizzo. He burned out Caster’s house a little while ago.”

“Caster killed Rizzo’s boy,” Speranza said. “And my Gino.”

“That’s not the point,” Beddell said. “What I’m saying is that it all has to stop right now. Where’s Rizzo?”

“Have you tried his house?” Speranza asked. “He might be there.”

“I was just there, but Rizzo wasn’t. He had three punks staked out at the house, but now they’re on the way to the lockup.”

“You left Angela without protection?” Speranza asked anxiously. “Roy—”

“My men are there,” Beddell said. “She’s protected. There will be no more killings—on either side—in Parker’s Landing.”

“My Gino is dead,” Speranza said.

“I don’t care. Gino was asking to be killed. If you want to blame someone for his death, blame me. I should never have let him have those two hoods this morning. Or blame yourself, Baptiste, if you want to.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” Beddell said. “You bought me a long time ago. I had a debt to you that I could pay only by staying bought. That’s why I didn’t take the situation in hand on Tuesday as I should have. Then there would have been no killings at all.”

The old man said nothing.

Beddell continued: “I was wrong to think I could sell only a little bit of my soul. I’m taking it back right now.”

Speranza looked up into the policeman’s face. “Roy,” he said softly but forcefully, “maybe you’re right. But if you want to buy your soul back, get in that car of yours and leave me alone tonight. I’ll never ask anything more of you.”

“I’m sorry, Baptiste,” Beddell said. “I can’t pay the debt, so I’m canceling it. You’ll have to accept that fact. Now, I want you to give me your gun and go home, or, so help me, I’ll take you into the station.”

“Arrest me? What for?”

“It doesn’t matter. You know I’ll find a charge and make it stick.”

“You’ll be ruined if you do.”

“I’m ruined already,” Beddell said undramatically. “I’m just trying to stop the rot from spreading. Baptiste, give me that gun.” He gave his revolver a little hitch in its holster. “I don’t want to have to take it from you.”

“You’ll have to, Roy,” Speranza said calmly, and he leaned forward to start the car.

Beddell cleared his gun from its holster and leveled it at Speranza. The old man leaned back from the steering wheel and laid his hand lightly at the side of his thigh. He looked up again at Beddell.

“You’d shoot me, Roy?” he asked. His eyes lowered to the gun in the policeman’s hand.

“I’ll shoot you if I have to, Baptiste,” Beddell said evenly. “Give me that gun.” He held out his left hand.

Only then did Speranza understand that Beddell really meant what he said. Without further thought or hesitation, he swept his gun up from the car seat and brought it across his chest. He pulled the trigger and then pulled it again.

Beddell saw the stiff motion in plenty of time. Almost in slow motion, he saw the gun in Speranza’s hand travel up from his thigh and turn until he could see the darkness of its large barrel.

It was then that Beddell should have pulled the trigger. It was the last thing his brain told him. Even he couldn’t have said why he didn’t.

Beddell rocked back at the first shot, but he felt no pain, only a numbing sickness. He stared at Speranza and then down at the gun in his own hand. He didn’t hear the second shot.

Speranza watched his old friend fighting the rising flame. He knew the feeling and he knew it wouldn’t last. He watched Beddell rock back and come forward with a creeping red stain spreading across the taut front of his gabardine shirt.

“Baptiste,” Beddell said, leaning stiff-kneed against the car door.

“I’m sorry, Roy,” Speranza said. “I didn’t want to.”

“Baptiste,” Beddell repeated. Then he slumped forward, momentarily filling the window with his bloody torso. Then he rolled off to the right, grabbing the rear door handle of the car. His body twisted and he fell face up alongside the car with an arm propped up toward Speranza. His face was as blank as a burned-out light bulb.

Speranza looked down at the dead policeman and then at the bloody smear at the bottom of the window. His face showed no expression except fatigue. Dropping the gun on the seat beside him, Speranza leaned forward and started the car’s engine. He raised his eyes to the street ahead and started to press down on the accelerator. But something stopped him. He switched off the engine and doused the car lights. It was dim in the little pocket holding the two cars. Speranza let both hands drop from the wheel into his lap.

A sleepy milkman found the two men exactly like that two hours later and called the police.

37

Harry let himself into the darkened Lamplighter by the front door and slipped behind the bar without bothering to turn on the lights. The only illumination was from a blue-lit globe advertising a mixer. Reaching blindly for the whiskeys, he grasped the neck of a bottle and poured two inches into a highball glass. He raised the glass to his lips.

“Enjoy your drink, Caster,” said a voice from the darkness. “It’s the last one you’ll have.” Carlo Rizzo came out of a booth with a pistol pointed over the bar at the middle of Harry’s body.

“Hello, Rizzo,” Harry heard himself say. He was surprised at the calmness of his voice. “I thought I’d be seeing you someplace.” He took a drink from the glass.

At the first taste, Harry shuddered convulsively and had to fight the urge to gag. He spat the rich, fruity liquor into the stainless steel sink and poured the rest of the drink after it.

“What’s the matter?” Rizzo asked sarcastically.

“I got the wrong bottle,” Harry said. “It was a peach liqueur. Do you mind if I find some Scotch?”

“Go ahead,” said Rizzo. The easy voice didn’t go at all with the gun he was holding. Harry shook his head to try to bring back reality. It didn’t help. Switching on a small lamp, he located a bottle of expensive Scotch and reached out for it.

“Only the bottle,” cautioned Rizzo. “Don’t try anything.”

“Only the bottle, Rizzo,” Harry said, showing him the richly crested label. “Do you want a drink? It’s on the house,” he added with heavy irony.

“Pour it out.”

Harry poured two heavy drinks and carefully set the bottle down. Then he looked up at Rizzo and really saw him for the first time since he’d spoken.

Rizzo was as sharply dressed as ever. But there was something markedly different about him. Before, Rizzo had been confident that he could ward off disaster. Now that confidence had been worn through like a cheap veneer. But with Rizzo, the veneer had been ripped rather than worn, and something naked and ugly showed through.

They drank. Rizzo drank carefully, keeping his pistol aimed at the middle of Harry’s body. “You’re going to die, Caster,” he said.

Harry didn’t answer. He thought of the revolver in his coat pocket with one shell left in the cylinder.

“You don’t seem to care very much,” Rizzo said. “Or are you just playing it cool? It won’t do you any good.”

“I’m not playing it cool, Rizzo. I’m scared of dying. But so much has happened that I haven’t any emotions left. If you’re going to kill me, kill me. I won’t put on a show for you.”

Rizzo thought this over, but he wasn’t ready yet to kill Harry Caster.

“You know what that goon of yours did to my boy tonight?” he asked. “Did you tell him to do that? Did you?”

“I know,” said Harry, “but I didn’t tell Hoerner to kill your son, Rizzo. I didn’t even know where he was tonight. Hoerner must have gone crazy.”

“Hoerner,” Rizzo said. “Yes, that’s the name—Hoerner. Where did you get ahold of such a guy, Caster? To shoot a boy like that?”

“Where did you get the men who beat Marco Carradino to death?” Harry asked boldly, not caring about Rizzo’s reaction. “I’m sorry your boy was killed, Rizzo, but I don’t see a lot of difference.”

“You don’t,” said Rizzo.

“No.”

Rizzo thought this over for a few moments. “You’d feel different if it was your son. You don’t have a son, do you, Caster?”

“I did once,” Harry said, “a long time ago. He died when he was fourteen months old.”

Again Rizzo was silent. “You can tell me something else,” he said. “How did you come to hire a gunsel like this Hoerner? I mean, what made you decide to fight me?”

“You didn’t think I would?”

“No,” said Rizzo. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Do you mind if I pour us another drink?” Harry asked. “I could use one.”

“Go ahead,” Rizzo said. He still pointed the gun at Harry, but the hand holding it rested on the bar in front of him.

Harry poured two more stiff drinks and then returned the bottle to the service counter below the bar. He picked up his glass with his left hand. As he drank and Rizzo drank, Harry stealthily took the revolver out of his pocket, the move hidden from Rizzo by the high bar. As he put his glass down on the bar with a clink, Harry laid the revolver softly on a towel in the shadow of the bar.

“No,” Rizzo said, “I really didn’t think you had it in you. Who would have thought a two-bit guy like you would fight it out just to keep a crummy joint like this?”

“It’s all I’ve got, Rizzo,” Harry said. “What would you have done in my place?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I would have fought, too. I’d have blown your head off if you’d tried to muscle in on my rackets.” Rizzo laughed bitterly. “You want to know something really funny, Caster?”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t even need your lousy joint now. I don’t need it. Do you know who Abe Montara is?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Well,” Rizzo said, “Abe’s the guy who squeezed me so hard that I came on to you. He was very mad at me for a couple of small reasons. But when he hears what happened tonight—that Bobby was killed—he’s not going to be mad at me anymore. He’s going to give me my piece of the action back, Caster. And maybe a bit more. What do you think of that?”

“It’s crazy,” Harry said.

“Yeah, it’s crazy. But Abe Montara’s got a heart—he’s a snake with a heart—and he’s going to forgive Carlo Rizzo. And Carlo Rizzo is going to be a good boy from now on.” His laugh could have etched glass. “A very good boy. Pour us another drink, Caster.” Harry did, and when he put the bottle back down below the bar, he let his hand fall on the butt of the revolver.

“Drink,” ordered Rizzo. “Drink to my good luck. I’m a very lucky guy.”

Harry drank silently. His other hand remained on the pistol grip. Rizzo let his gun hand relax, and the pistol lay canted on the bar. “You know something else, Caster?” he said.

“No.”

“I’m not going to kill you.” Rizzo looked at his pistol and then returned it to the holster between his arm and his chest. “Not tonight. I’m going to give you your life, Caster. Do you know why?”

Harry shook his head. He didn’t trust his voice.

“Because it’s not enough,” Rizzo said. “I kill you, and you’re gone. I can’t reach you anymore. No, Harry, I want you alive. I want you to think about how you got my boy killed tonight. Think about it good. And think about me, Harry, still around. And this.” He gave the gun in its holster a thump with his knuckles. “Imagine me behind you with a gun wherever you go. Because I might be.”

Rizzo pivoted a little unsteadily and started walking along the bar toward the front door of the Lamplighter.

“Rizzo!”

Rizzo turned with a sour smile on his face and found Harry Caster pointing a revolver at him from behind the bar. Harry held the gun well out from his body at shoulder height as if he were taking target practice.

Rizzo’s hand jerked, and his fingers splayed in anticipation of a gun butt.

“Don’t,” warned Harry deliberately, “or I’ll kill you.”

“I believe you,” said Rizzo. He let his hand drop to his side. From where Harry stood, Rizzo was perfectly framed in the Lamplighter’s glass door.

“So?” said Rizzo.

“I listened to you, Rizzo,” Harry said. “Now, you listen to me. I didn’t start all this; you did. I fought you, and now I’m sorry that I did. Nobody won a damned thing. But I want you to know that I’ll do it again if you don’t leave me and mine alone. You’re not the only one who can use a gun. You’d better think about that. Now get out of here, Rizzo. Go home to your wife.”

Rizzo said nothing, only raised his eyebrows and walked out of the bar onto the sidewalk.

Harry waited until the sound of Rizzo’s car died out in the street. Then he put his pistol back on the service counter. Ducking under the bar, he followed Rizzo’s path out of the door, locked it behind him and got into the rented car. Starting the car, Harry made a wide U-turn on Parker Street and headed north to the Expressway and Hildy.

THE END

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THE WORD: when lifetime criminal Joe Dixon is released from Folsom Prison, he vows never to return - but with no skills and no prospects, Joe turns to the best grift of all: the word of God.

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The Word: An Excerpt

When lifetime petty criminal Joe Dixon is released from Folsom Prison again, he vows never to return. To support himself on the outside with few actual skills and no prospects, Joe turns to the oldest grift of all: spreading the gospel. Mail-order ministry license in hand, Joe rents a ramshackle storefront, calling his new church “The Word.”

Much to his surprise, Joe finds that the local community takes an intense interest in his little undertaking. But with the neighborhood cops paying him regular visits, the local media snooping around, and a burgeoning flock who desperately needs his guidance, Joe's scheme might not be working quite as planned...

1

As he covered the glittery mauve walls of the failed dance studio with a thick coat of purest, cheapest white, Joe Dixon reckoned that he had just about a month to save his butt. He had paid a month’s rent. A deposit on the electricity, gallons of whitewash, brushes and junk furniture took most of the rest of the thousand bucks from Mulligan. He was left with enough to eat for a month, if he didn’t go crazy at McDonald’s.

Back in Folsom, while starting a three-to-five stretch for the world’s least successful bank robbery, it had occurred to Joe that as criminals went, he was crap. Over more than fifteen years, scam after scam had earned him ever-lengthening stays in prison. Each stretch, Joe had attempted to learn a new and successful criminal trade. It finally occurred to him that if these experts were any good, they’d be out on the street living high. There had to be a better investment for his cigarettes.

A couple of days later, a trusty librarian had handed Joe a Bible instead of the biography he’d expected and wouldn’t listen to reason. ‘You just read that,’ the trusty insisted. ‘It’s the real thing — the King James Version.’

That didn’t mean much to Joe, but out of sheer boredom he opened the battered black-leather cover and started turning the pages. It could have been worse—a Jackie Collins. Joe hadn’t had a Bible in his hands since he’d briefly tried to sell stolen Bibles door-to-door ten years earlier. He began to recognize bits, and that lured him on. He didn’t have much else to do.

The payoff came quickly. A few days later, the fox-faced young sociology graduate doing prisoner assessment gestured him to a chair, paged through a file between puke-colored covers and then looked at him sharply. ‘You a good Christian, Joe?’ he asked suddenly.

‘So-so,’ Joe answered. He wasn’t much good at lying either.

‘That’s not what I hear,’ said the counselor. ‘I hear you’ve been reading the Bible pretty steadily.’ He prided himself on his intelligence network. The trustees mostly told him what he wanted to hear.

Joe shrugged noncommittally. ‘It’s something to read,’ he said, sticking to a semi-truthful tack but willing to switch if something better came up.

The counselor looked back down at the file. ‘It doesn’t look here as if you are much of a hard guy, Joe,’ he said.

‘No,’ Joe admitted as if this were a grievous fault.

‘That’s good, because I’ve got a job for you that wouldn’t suit a hard guy.’

Joe’s eyebrows said: Oh? His mouth said nothing.

‘That’s right. You see, Joe, the chaplain here needs another assistant, and I think it could be you.’ He looked down again. ‘You’re a Baptist?’

‘That’s right,’ Joe said, beginning to get with the program.

‘What kind?’

‘Ordinary kind,’ said Joe, taking no chances.

‘That’s good, too,’ said the counselor. ‘The last guy we tried was hard-shell, fire and brimstone, strict Sabbatarian.’ He frowned. ‘Reverend Perkins found him a little too…’

Joe knew that he wouldn’t be too. Not at all.

He got the job. A week later, still reading the Bible, Joe was reporting for work in the chaplain’s office.

As Joe opened the door, the chaplain’s number one assistant, a grizzled old con with a brush-like crew-cut, looked up at him skeptically. A nameplate on the desk read F. X. Reilly. Behind Reilly, the door indicated: THE CHAPLAIN IS IN.

‘You Dixon?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Sit down, ‘Reilly said. Before Joe hit the wood, Reilly asked. ‘You’ve come to work for the chaplain?’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s wrong,’ Reilly said. ‘You’ve come to work for me. I work for the chaplain. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ Joe said.

‘Cigarette?’ Reilly asked.

‘Don’t use them,’ Joe said.

‘Even better,’ Reilly said. ‘I’m a heavy smoker.’ He opened a desk drawer to indicate where any surplus cigarettes could be dropped. ‘Bear that in mind.’

‘I will.’

‘You and I are going to get along,’ Reilly said. This was more order than prediction. ‘Now, Reverend Perkins is in there’—he jerked his thumb at the door— ‘and he’ll fill you in on your duties. Listen very carefully and then come out here and I’ll sum them up in three words. Any idea what these are?’

‘Anything you say?’ said Joe, who was a quick learner.

‘You and I are going to get along,’ Reilly repeated. ‘Now go talk to The Man.’

2

The Reverend Perkins was a nice little guy who would have been an Army chaplain if he’d passed the physical. Failing that, he sat in his office, read his Bible, signed letters and did whatever Reilly told him. Joe did the same. Neither the prisoners nor the warden had any cause for complaint. The wise-guy cons had to work overtime to come up with a religious urge that Reilly could not accommodate. He had a thick book, Religions of the World. If he couldn’t find it there, Reilly had a wide network of ecclesiastical connections at the end of the telephone line. Even the Holy office at the Vatican was not beyond his reach, and he knew three archbishops by their first names.

Occasionally, an assistant warden complained about the chaplain’s phone bill. The Reverend Perkins (Reilly) would point out that Folsom had not had a religious riot, or even protest, in years. That pretty well shut up the warden’s office. The Reverend Perkins had become a respected figure in California penal circles. Reilly was thinking about getting him promoted.

Mainly, Joe shotgunned convict crews setting up and breaking down arrangements for religious ceremonies. In a rare jocular moment, Reilly called him ‘God’s corporal.’ Aside from that, Joe was expected to sit in his chair in the corner of Reilly’s office and read his Bible. Reilly superintended Joe’s biblical education with sharp and searching questions. F.X. Reilly would have been an excellent principal of a seminary if God hadn’t made him a bank robber.

Recognizing a good deal, Joe didn’t make waves. Then, one drowsy Wednesday afternoon after about nine months, Reilly decided to let Joe in on The Plan.

‘Joe,’ he began conversationally, ‘what did Christ say to his disciples about the lilies of the field?’

‘They toil not, neither do they spin,’ Joe said without even looking up from his reading.

‘Good boy,’ Reilly said. ‘And those lilies made out fine. You ever wonder why I make you read the Bible all the time?’

‘It looks good?’

‘Of course it looks good,’ Reilly said impatiently. ‘A chaplain’s second assistant devoutly plowing through the Good Book. Everybody loves that, and so will the Parole Board. But there’s more to it than that.’

‘Yeah?’ said Joe, still reading.

‘Yeah,’ said Reilly. ‘Joe, shut that damned book and listen carefully.’

‘I’m listening,’ said Joe, looking up.

‘How would you like,’ Reilly asked, ‘to be like those lilies and never work again? A big house, good clothes, the best car that money can buy, the best-looking woman around—in short, to live off the fat of the land?’

‘In other words,’ said Joe, ‘live the Life of Reilly?’

‘Don’t be a smartass, Joe,’ Reilly said. ‘I’m serious. How does that sound?

‘How do you think?’ Joe said seriously. ‘Great. What’s the scam?’

‘No scam,’ Reilly said earnestly. ‘Strictly legit.’

‘Go on,’ Joe said.

‘All right,’ Reilly said, ‘but keep your trap shut. No wisecracks.’

‘Promise.’

‘Okay,’ Reilly said, looking at Joe with intensity. ‘I’m only letting you in on this because I’m too old to start a new racket—life. With any luck, they’ll carry me out of Folsom in a box.’ Reilly was a lifer under California’s ‘three strikes’ law due to the unfortunate fact that most people considered bank robbery a felony.

‘But, Joe,’ he continued, ‘you’re young enough to pull it off. How old are you—thirty-two or three?’

‘Thirty-four in October,’ Joe said. ‘If I get parole first shot, I’ll be nearly thirty-five when I get out.’

‘You’ll get it,’ Reilly said. ‘With God and me on your side, it’s a cinch.’

‘And Perkins?

‘What God and I want, Perkins rubberstamps. Now, listen.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Good. Now, can we agree that even atheists—when the cops are knocking down the door—give a fleeting thought to the supernatural?’

‘I suppose,’ Joe said.

‘Okay,’ continued Reilly, ‘and these are the hard cases. The world is full of people whose spiritual hankerings can be activated without the threat of immediate arrest. The world—especially California—is full of loonies looking for a snug haven in the bosom of Abraham. You accept my thesis: there are people out there with unfulfilled religious yearnings.’

Joe just nodded.

‘You’re learning,’ Reilly said. ‘Okay, I have another theory: The richer people are, the greater their guilt and hence the greater their religious need.’

Joe nodded again. He saw no point in arguing.

‘Okay,’ Reilly said, ‘since we’re in a state of perfect understanding, I’ll cut to the gist. As soon as God and I arrange for the Parole Board to spring you from this joint, you are going to set up as a Man of God.’

‘Start a religion?’ said Joe doubtfully.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Reilly snapped. ‘I said set up as a Man of God. There’s a big difference, most of it to do with the law. I’ll give you the essentials, in a nutshell. You got any money on the outside, Joe?

‘Some,’ Joe said. ‘A guy called Mulligan is holding a thousand bucks for me.’

‘That’s all?’ Reilly was disappointed. ‘God and I will have to work a bit harder,’ he said, ‘and you will have to start at the bottom of the market. But I still think you can do it. Now, what do you do first?’

‘I have no idea,’ Joe said.

‘Of course you haven’t,’ Reilly said. ‘I just wanted to make sure that you knew that. First thing you do is get your hands on that money. Is that a problem?’

‘Not if Mulligan wants to keep walking without a limp,’ Joe said.

Reilly was going to point out that this was hardly the language of a Man of God, but decided to plunge on. ‘Then you find the right location—details later—rent an empty storefront…you got me so far?’

‘So far I can handle it.’

‘Okay, then you go to some junk shop and buy a small table and two chairs.’

Joe nodded.

‘Then, put one chair behind the table, one in front, your Bible on the table and your butt on the chair behind the table.’

Joe waited for more, but Reilly just sat there as if he had imparted the secret of the philosopher’s stone.

‘That’s it?’ Joe said at last.

‘That’s it,’ Reilly said. ‘You sit there reading until the first sucker—prospect—comes through the door. Then, another will come. And another. Within three months, you’ll have a regular flock and be bringing in small money. In six months, your overheads will be covered. And within a year, you’ll never have to graft—legal or illegal—again in your whole life. You’ll be a bona fide spiritual leader with your faithful parishioners competing to satisfy all your needs and desires.’

‘If you say so,’ Joe said warily.

‘I say so,’ Reilly said with satisfaction, ‘and I even have a name for your—I won’t say church—organization.’

‘And that is?’ Joe prompted him, as he knew Reilly expected him to do.

‘The Word,’ Reilly said proudly.

‘The Word?’

‘The Word,’ Reilly said with finality.

Buy The Word on Amazon at watchfirepress.com/theword

About the Author

Charles Alverson’s writing career has spanned over five decades, during which he has written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and HELP! Magazine. Alverson has written ten novels, two children’s books, and helped co-write the screenplays for Terry Gilliam’s cult films Jabberwocky and Brazil.

Alverson currently lives in Serbia, where he has resided with his wife since 1994.

Download Alverson’s anthology of short fiction Ryan’s Way & Other Short Stories when you sign up for his free author newsletter at watchfirepress.com/alverson.