<code> ONE

We were having dinner in a banyan tree.

Neither of us had ever eaten in a tree before.

More accurately, we hadn’t had dinner at all yet. But our white-turbaned, dark-skinned waiter had just preceded us in near-darkness up the wooden steps leading to the tree house, carrying a huge silver tray laden with roast squab stuffed with wild quail eggs, mangoes and broiled bananas, liqueurs and champagne.

Now he turned on a soft light, placed the tray on a low table before the narrow Persian couch covered voluptuously with soft and colorful pillows, waited while Loana and I sank into the pillows, and said, grinning as if he were going to drink it himself, “Shall I open the champagne?”

“Yes, indeed!” I said. “Open away.”

As he lifted the bottle from its silver ice bucket I looked at Loana, close on my left. It had to be close. The tree house was only about eight feet long and four feet wide, but with all the comforts you seldom find at home — such as Loana.

Gorgeously Polynesian Loana Kaleoha.

With volcanic eyes and breasts.

With lips as hot and red as the devil’s derriere.

With eye-wrecking curves that must have been shaped by a blowtorch.

With me.

Happily with me: Shell Scott.

We were in Don the Beachcomber’s Tree House in the Banyan, in the heart of the International Market Place at Waikiki. I was a bit dizzy, and Loana was part of the reason. But before coming outside and climbing up into the Banyan Tree we had sat at Don the Beachcomber’s Dagger Bar down below and nearby. We’d had Puka Pukas and Nui Nuis and a Cobra’s Fang or two. Then we’d moved to our table in the adjacent Bora Bora Lounge and consumed a Zombie and Skull-and-Bones while I’d cooked the pupu — tender chunks of marinated sirloin speared on bamboo skewers and broiled over glowing charcoal in a miniature hibachi on our table.

All those drinks were more than a little loaded with rum, so we, too, were now more than a little loaded with rum.

“Loana, my sizzling Oahu tomato,” I said, “shall we let the food cool while we have a glug of Mumm’s?”

She smiled, white teeth flashing, devil-red lips parting hotly. “Why not?” Long, darkly curving lashes veiled her black eyes. “It’s either that or we let the champagne get warm.”

“What an unthinkable thought. Cold squab, yes. But who ever heard of hot champagne?”

There was the satisfying thoop of the cork leaving the bottle’s mouth, then the liquid gurgle as our waiter poured two glasses brimful of the bubbling wine. He put the bottle back into the ice next to another quart of the bubbly, stepped to a small record player on my right.

In a moment soft music washed over us, strings singing in the night, the sound of surf breaking on sands, crystal voices singing Polynesian songs that were old when Hawaii was young.

I grinned at Loana, so relaxed my veins seemed to be collapsing, and said, “Here we sit, high over the world.”

“High, anyway.”

“Honey, let’s live here. Far from the madding madness.”

“Far?” She laughed softly. “With a thousand people walking around down there?”

“Far enough. They can’t see us.”

They couldn’t. They were there beneath us, all right, hundreds of citizens, lovers, husbands and wives and kids and tourists, strolling from shop to shop in the Market Place, but they couldn’t see or hear us. We could see them, though, if we wanted to. This little house, lodged securely high in the Banyan Tree, had segmented thatched walls, foot-wide panels of which could be pushed out by hand if you wanted to peek at the citizens. We didn’t want to peek at the citizens.

The waiter coughed gently and when I glanced at him he was holding open a small door in a cabinet beneath the record player.

“The phone, sir,” he said.

“Phone?”

“Yes, sir. If you wish anything else, phone and I will attend to it.”

I thought about that. I rather liked it. “You mean, if we want more champagne or something I just pick up the phone?”

“Yes, sir. As I leave, I must make certain that both gates are locked behind me. I cannot come back up unless you call and ask for me.” He wiggled a key ring in his hand and grinned that champagne-drinking grin again. “In fact, sir, unless you call me … you cannot get out.”

He followed his grin through hanging bamboo beads which were both entrance and exit of the little house, and I heard him going down the wooden steps. There was the click of the gate midway up the stairs, and a minute later I heard the soft clink of a chain. The bottom gate, at ground level, was quite sturdy, I remembered, chained and padlocked.

I glanced at Loana. “You’re trapped. I may tear out the phone.”

“Let’s,” she said.

“We can set up tree-housekeeping. I’ll be the Oahu Tarzan and swing yodeling from limb to limb every day, gathering mangoes and fighting off apes.”

“Good. I’ll bind your wounds and be your … who is it?”

“Jane. Me Tarzan, you Jane. Now there’s a line for you.”

“You still insist that you really do fight apes, Shell?”

“But of course, Jane.” I struck my chest rather severely, and let out a small yowl. “When I must — but tonight, no. And not in trees. Tonight we drink champagne.”

We did. We finished the first glass and I poured a second, thinking somewhat sourly of what Loana had said.

I had told her I was a private detective, and — facetiously — that I fought apes for a living. But in a sense it was true: I seem to run up against many individuals who, in the evolutionary race, appear to have got stuck on the starting blocks. Apelike humans such as Slobbers O’Brien and Danny Ax, Ed Grey, and alliteratively — and accurately — named Biff Boff.

Hoods, one and all. And some of those hoods had been trying to kill me for the last few days. They were still trying, and getting better at it. My home is in Hollywood, and the office of Sheldon Scott, Investigations, is in Los Angeles, so here in Honolulu I was a long way from my balmy Southern California beat; but the apes with guns had caught up with me even here. Right now the cylinder of the short-barreled .38 Colt Special resting in the clamshell holster beneath my gabardine coat held two recently-emptied cartridge cases along with the three live pills still in the chambers.

I had been shot at, slugged, sapped, attacked from numerous directions and generally half-mutilated already; but all that, I told myself, was in the days recently passed and the day here in Honolulu just ending. There would undoubtedly be more of the same tomorrow — but, with any luck, not tonight.

Tonight there were soft music and soft pillows, champagne and squab — and Loana Kaleoha.

One of the reasons I’d come to Hawaii was to check up on Loana, confirm or erase suspicions I’d had about her. But those suspicions had developed before I’d met her, talked to her, and I felt sure now that she couldn’t be the gal I had been trying to find. A gal so gorgeous and exciting couldn’t be mixed up in the ugliness of these past days — kidnaping and murder, violence and threats….

I pushed my mind away from all that. It could keep for an hour. Hell, a man has to eat.

Loana held out her empty glass. “Where were you?” she asked me. “Your eyes had a glazed, far-off look.”

“The glaze is from Puka Pukas and Nui Nuis,” I said. “But I have definitely been too far-off.” I moved closer to her, and she helped by sliding an inch or two toward me.

I could have shut my eyes, I think, and known she was there. I think I could have felt the heat of her. It was as if the blowtorch that might have fashioned her fantastic curves had left most of its heat inside her. It oozed from her sun-browned flesh, flashed from her eyes, burned on her lips.

Loana was a dancer, a Tahitian dancer, and she was much like that dance itself — sensual, exciting, pulse-stirring, savagely beautiful. She was tall, with black hair hanging in a long lustrous loop over one smooth brown shoulder. Thick lashes fringing black eyes, brows like black spurs. But she was soft, too, her curves melting, her voice like the rustle of black lace; and there was a sweetness about her that tugged at your heart while the eyes and mouth, boldly thrusting breasts and hips, tugged at your eyes.

We must have made quite a contrast, quite a pair.

She was dark, smoldering, beautiful, with hair black as the first sin. But I have short-cropped stand-up hair which, at thirty, is so blond and sun-bleached that it’s white, and obtrusively white eyebrows that look bent and pushed down at their ends; a broken — gently broken, I call it — nose; skin tanned almost as dark as Loana’s. She was tall enough, but just the right size next to my six feet, two inches and two hundred and five pounds. I was still wearing the beige gabardine suit I’d worn on the plane, but Loana had on a dark blue holomuu splashed with white plumeria blossoms. Around her neck and caressing her breasts was the lei of small vanda orchids she’d been given earlier in the Bora Bora Lounge. I look about as soft and feminine as the Rock of Gibraltar after a bombing attack, but Loana was the eternal woman, the ultimate in femininity, a Polynesian Eve in a holomuu.

And a holomuu is not to be confused with a muumuu. Ah, no. The muumuu was introduced to these happy islands by a shivering missionary who thought in his goofy way that nudity and semi-nudity, bare flesh, glorious and innocently beautiful bare bodies were — for the birds. The bad birds. The birds which cleverly go around dropping things on missionaries.

It is not now known whether this cat took showers with all his clothes on and his eyes squeezed tightly shut, but he clad those wind-brushed bodies and sun-caressed skins in billowing goonysacks, the muumuu — like an Yves Laurent creation, the original sick sack, a straight-up-and-down shapeless monstrosity which covers a woman up practically to her ears and leaves all beneath it a matter for hopelessly dismal conjecture.

But from it grew — to prove that you can’t keep a good idea down forever — a kind of fitted, clinging garment called a holomuu. Fitted in a fashion to cause welcome fits, to make eyeballs need Band-Aids, to make the graves of wildly twirling missionaries pop open in censored eruptions. Looking at Loana in her holomuu, which seemed merely to emphasize the proud swelling of breasts, the taut flatness of stomach, the eternally provocative thrust of hip and thigh, I could almost forgive that bloody missionary. Almost.

By the time we’d finished our first bottle of champagne, I had forgiven him. For some minutes now Loana and I had been chortling and yipping, guzzling and nuzzling, laughing and talking in such happy abandon that our tree house must have been wobbling on its limbs. I got up once and turned the records over, and it was either the tree or me that was wobbling on its limbs.

But I made it back to the voluptuously-pillowed couch and said to Loana, “Heigh-ho, hey, boy. Give me a tree any old time.”

The conversation was occasionally a bit disjointed, but neither of us seemed to mind. Occasionally we had looked at the food, and now Loana bent over the tray and unwrapped the foil from the little squabs. She touched one with a long finger. Then she looked at me.

“Squab’s getting cold,” she said brightly.

“Isn’t that grand?”

“Grand. Would you like a bite?”

“Yeah. So bite me.”

She bit me. My blood was sizzling in my veins as if it were carbonated. Champagne bubbles were popping in my arteries, silver explosions like bursting flavor buds conspiring with rum to get my plasma loaded.

And then Loana got up, and in the very confined space of our locked-up little room, did a little Tahitian dance for me. Although, truly, there is no such thing as a little Tahitian dance. When she sat down by me again she finished the last swallow of her champagne.

Not once had she said, “It tickles” — bless her — but now she said, “My nose itches.”

“That means you’re going to kiss a fool!” I cried.

“Kiss me, you fool.”

I kissed her. I’m no fool.

“Ah, us fools!” I cried. “My nose itches all over.”

And there we went again. Then I said, “Loana, how would you like to try on a hula skirt?”

“Oh, Shell. Don’t be silly. Where would we get a hula skirt?”

“Who’s silly?” I looked around for the package. Before meeting Loana I had done a small amount of shopping and had purchased two grass skirts to take back to the mainland. I knew I’d brought the package up with me, and suddenly I spotted it, over in the corner by my shoes.

“There it is,” I said, and grabbed it, feverishly tore at the wrappings.

Loana said, but with a smile, “Only women wear grass skirts like those.”

“That was in the old days, my sweet. When Kamehameha was king. These are the new days, the Shell Scott days, the days when everybody wears grass skirts — we’ll fix that missionary.”

I thought: if we stop to think about it, we’ll never do it. Not up in a tree right out in the open air in the middle of Waikiki, not with hundreds of people around all unaware, not with — oh, the hell with it.

I ripped open the package and handed Loana one of the hula skirts, kept the other for myself.

She said, “You mean you bought these and brought them up here? Why, Shell, you planned it!”

“No. Really, no. Honest. I just happened to have a couple with me.” I swallowed. “I mean, I was shopping. Oh, I don’t know — it’s fate, that’s it, fate. It’s like a command. This was meant to be.”

She laughed. “You mean something horrible will happen to us if we don’t put them on?”

“I … well, something horrible may happen to me. Honest Injun. I mean, honest Tahitian … honest. Oh, pour some cold champagne on me, baby. Hit me with the bottle or something.”

“Kiss me, you fool,” she said. “My nose itches.” Then she gurgled throatily, squeezed her black eyes shut and said, “I got it backwards that time, didn’t I?”

“Honey, you got it frontwards.”

And then, all of a sudden, we were getting into those hula skirts. You wouldn’t believe what a scene it was. For one brief moment — actually, one of the last brief moments of sanity left to me, though I couldn’t possibly have anticipated what was going to happen — for that brief moment I thought I must be dreaming it. Imagining it. This couldn’t be … could it?

But it was.

In half a minute Loana, now with the grass skirt low on her hips, and only the delicate petals of vanda orchids upon her brazen breasts, sank back into the massed pillows behind her. It was a sight that seemed to get me drunk and sober me up at the same time. Behind my back the records turned, music poured soft upon us, the sound of surf, the beat of winds, the sighing, sobbing voices.

When Loana spoke again it was different from the words we’d lightly used before, and the words had a different sound.

“Kiss me. Shell,” she said. Her voice rustled like black lace in darkness. “Kiss me….”

</code>

<code> “Got to eat something,” I said. “What will the cook think? By golly, I’ll have a wild quail egg.”

“I’ll have a wild quail egg, too.”

“It sounds a bit odd, when I hear you say it, Loana.”

“I’ll have one anyway.”

We had them. One apiece, that was all. There’s a time for wild quail eggs and a time not for wild quail eggs. I guess I just wasn’t ready for it. The thing was delicious, but I couldn’t get all wrapped up in it somehow.

And I was dizzy. Dizzier than before.

“I think my blood is burning, Loana,” I said. “That’s my trouble — fired blood. It is flaming like oil and the frantic corpuscles are stampeding for exits. Got to get some air. That’s what I need, air.”

I stood up and my legs seemed to be moving independently of each other, as if one leg was all foot. “My head has gone to sleep,” I said. “I — oops!” My foot, or leg that was a foot, had hit a toppled champagne bottle and the bottle went rolling toward the bamboo-bead-draped exit.

Loana sat up straight. “Air?” she said, in a kind of horrified tone.

“What?”

“Air?”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“You said you were going to get some air.”

“Oh, yeah. For my corpuscles. To give me new vim. You know, fresh air. This is all beat up in here. It’s like inhaling exhales.”

“But you can’t go out on a limb like that!”

“Lady, I’ve been out on limbs you wouldn’t believe…. Oh. I see what you mean.”

She threw my grass skirt at me, her aim lousy as gals’ aims always are, and I leaped for it, grabbing and clutching — and staggering. As I gripped it my foot-leg landed on that champagne bottle and I felt myself soaring, sailing through the air.

I know I couldn’t have sailed or soared very far, but it seemed I was a rocket swooshing through space. Then my thigh slammed against something. In the mush which at that moment was my brain, I barely realized that the little things slapping at me were bamboo-curtain beads, and that the smack against my thigh was the wooden railing around the small deck outside the tree-house entrance.

Or, in this case, exit.

There was time for no other even vaguely clear thought, because as the railing collided with my thigh I felt myself going over it, pinwheeling, spinning dizzily, letting out a great shocked sound.

Loana yelled something from behind me, and it seemed way off behind me, but all I could make out was part of a phrase:

” … don’t go…”

I started to tell her I didn’t want to go, but it was too late.

I was going.

There was a wild eternity of sight and sound and banging sensations. I refused to admit that I was falling out of the Banyan Tree, plummeting from on high down into Waikiki, simply refused to admit it — but it didn’t make any difference. That is exactly what I was doing.

I seemed simultaneously to be going in several different directions. My head hit a solid limb and zigzag blotches flashed before my eyes. For one horrible instant there was the dear, even though mercifully brief, sight of people below me somewhere, people casually gadding about, strolling and looking into shop windows. I grabbed frantically at limbs, twigs, even leaves. But they were not fig leaves. Not with my luck.

In the last kaleidoscopic moments of my fall, a hundred, a thousand remembered scenes ripped like successive small explosions through my mind. It is said that in one second a man can dream events it would take him a month to live, and if that was what was happening to me I only wished I was dreaming.

Even while the hard ground rushed up at me, those memory explosions blossomed in my mind. Hollywood … Las Vegas … the nudity of women … the lean hard faces of men … blood spreading over a dead man’s back … the sound and sight of gunshots … and all those lovely lovelies….

</code>

<code> TWO

I had never even heard of a banyan tree when Webley Alden phoned that night to say he was in trouble and to ask me for help.

It was a Thursday night, August thirteenth, and I was at home — the Spartan Apartment Hotel in Hollywood — trying once again to breed Hyphessobrycon innesi. I’ve kept tropical fish for years, bred a dozen varieties, but my several attempts to breed the Neon Tetra, which isn’t really a Tetra but a Characin, have been a story of frustration, failure, defeat. Breeding neons had become a symbol, a goal, a challenge. And this time I was going at the job with grim determination.

The two tropical-fish tanks are at the left of the front door, but I’d set up alongside them a third one, a 20-gallon tank containing neutral, sterile water at 78 degrees, and conditions just right for breeding the vivid little fish. So I thought, anyway. The damned fish didn’t seem to think so.

It was a fine big pair of neons, well conditioned on live daphnia and brine shrimp, the female heavy with spawn, and they had been dancing about in what I hoped was flirtatious fashion for two days now. But nothing had happened. I was about to pour a slug of bourbon into the aquarium, thinking that if they got a little giddy…

And then the phone rang. It was Webley Alden.

Webb, an old friend. He was thirty-eight, a bachelor, wise, witty, lusty, likable, enjoyable to be around. Webb didn’t live in Hollywood, but in the small city of Medina, part of L.A. County and only a short hop outside the L.A. city limits.

Originally a commercial photographer and a good one, he had made several improvements in then-existing camera and developing equipment, and perfected a compact movie projector which could be used for showing both eight-and sixteen-millimeter films; from royalties on his patents he had become a millionaire. His financial interests now ranged from stocks and bonds and real estate to the publication of a most stimulating magazine. He was a gourmet, a connoisseur of wine — and women. Always women. He was a rogue, a rake, a roue. Cultured, gentle, even reserved. But still: a rogue, a rake, a roue.

So, with that background, it was not surprising that the magazine Webb published was: Wow!

Wow! — The Magazine For Red-Blooded Men.

Even white-blooded men, of course, have heard of Wow! by now, and it’s eight to five that half of them surreptitiously peek at it on the newsstands. Possibly no other magazine in the history of publishing had experienced such sudden and soaring success in one year. Several other people besides Webb had money in the magazine, but he was the driving force behind it and that was a large part of the reason for Wow!‘s success. But the main reason was the full-page photos of beautiful women. And the beautiful women did not have many, if any, clothes on. Wow! was not a fashion magazine.

Moreover, there was no question that the biggest single reason for the publication’s sudden and enormous acceptance by the male population of the U.S.A. was a single feature: the three-page, full-color gatefold center in the magazine. For twelve months that large foldout had invariably been a photograph of a lovely woman, nude, and — in whatever pose or posture — facing away from the camera. The feature had come to be called, perhaps a bit indelicately, the “Fanny of the Month” — though it was captioned in the magazine’s pages as “Women With Wow!”

It was not surprising that Webb took every one of those pictures himself. I grinned, thinking about it.

All things considered, I thought Webb was one of the most interesting and congenial men I’d ever met, and I was delighted to hear his voice on the phone. Until he told me what was wrong.

After the helloes, brief this time, he said, “Shell, could you come over right away?”

I glanced at the neons, getting very frisky. “Sure. What’s the matter?”

“It’s something I don’t want to talk about on the phone. But … well, I’ve just come back from Honolulu. Got in a few hours ago. And I — I seem to have misplaced my wife.”

I blinked. “Your wife?” I thought he was pulling my leg. “Since when have you had a wife, Webb?”

“We were married in the Islands this morning, came in by jet. Come over, will you? Ill tell you what I can then. It’s … perhaps it’s nothing, Shell, but I can’t take the chance.”

“On my way,” I said, and hung up.

I grabbed my coat and took off. As I went out I trickled a few drops of Canadian Club in with the neons. Maybe it would work; I’d tried everything else.

It was a hot August, and I had the top down on my Cad, letting the warm wind brush over me while I drove. I slowed down as I neared Webb’s hillside home. I’d had trouble here on a case once, and the local police had since looked upon me with a dim eye. Especially a detective sergeant named Parley, who had given me the uncomfortable impression that he would enjoy shooting me in or out of the line of duty. With any luck I wouldn’t even see a member of the local law, but I pulled the Cad down below the legal speed inside Medina’s city limits, just in case.

Webb lived at 947 Poinsettia Drive, at the highest elevation in Medina, parallel to Azalea Street beyond it. The Drive curved up a steep bill and ran along its top, multilevel houses there having a fine view over the lights of Medina to the spread-out glitter of Los Angeles — when the L.A. lights could be seen through Death’s halitosis: smog. The house was low, hugging the hill’s crest, modern in design.

I parked in front, on Poinsettia, and walked up split-driftwood stone steps to his front door. Webb was waiting there for me. He was tall and very thin, with a mobile, humorous, angular face that warmed with a smile when he saw me and said hello.

We went into his front room and he said, “Something for your hangover, Shell?”

“I don’t have a hangover tonight.”

“We can fix that. Bourbon?”

“Fine, thanks.”

He walked to the bar in a corner. This was a big room, the front wall almost entirely glass to take advantage of the view below. The room was cluttered, with books and magazines in evidence everywhere, some opened flat and others stacked in bunches, a half-full coffee cup on a small table. At other spots were things Webb had picked up at one place or another in the world: a stone Mexican idol in one corner, a Kwan Yin, African masks, a Balinese headdress. Against one wall was a magnificent five-foot-tall wood carving of Pan, arms outstretched. It was new; I hadn’t seen it before. I commented on it, and Webb said he’d just brought the carving back from Hawaii.

The effect of the room, to me, was one of pleasant clutter, but directly ahead, opposite the front door, was Webb’s studio, and it was chaos. The wide double sliding doors were open and I could see into the room. I walked past a low curved divan and glanced into the studio. On the left were Webb’s four-by-five Speed Graphic on its heavy tripod, lights and reflectors, a couple of spotlights on a ceiling beam overhead. Insulated electrical wires lay in disarray on the bare, uncarpeted floor. Boxes of cut film, stacks of negatives and enlargements, cameras, a strobe light, more books and magazines, were in shelves, on tables, even on the wooden floor. Two doors were open in the left wall. One led into Webb’s darkroom; the other, on the right, into a bedroom.

“One of these days I’m going to do something about that mess.” It was Webb, speaking behind me. I turned and took the proffered highball as he went on, “Be a bit like sluicing out the Augean Stables, won’t it? Unfortunately I have no rivers to squirt through it. Naturally that’s why I haven’t done the job.”

“You’ll never do it, Webb. You’re an unreconstructed hobo. You don’t really like living in houses.”

He grinned. “I suppose you’re right. You can’t fold up a house like the Arabs…. Now, there’s an idea. Fold-up houses — square tents, double thicknesses of canvas with insulation built in … prop them up anyplace … use them for rags when you’re tired of them.” He gulped half his drink. “I give you the idea out of the badness of my heart.”

“I’m practically a millionaire. Before extortion.”

“Ah, yes. You refer, of course, to America’s Storm Troopers — the tax men?”

“Of course. But thanks, anyway.”

We walked back to the curved divan, sat facing the view. Webb glanced at the phone a couple of times, as if expecting it to ring. I waited for him. Finally he looked at his watch, finished the highball in his hand and turned to me.

“Well, here it is. I got married this morning in the Islands. After the ceremony there was a small luau, then Mrs. Alden — ” he seemed to savor the words, roll them on his tongue — “and I flew here by jet. Landed at L.A. International at nine p.m. And I … I lost her.”

I didn’t say anything. The lines in his angular face seemed to deepen. After a moment of quiet he said, “She left me to freshen up a bit after the flight. I waited. She never returned. I looked around, paged her, for an hour or so. Finally I decided she’d somehow become … confused. Or couldn’t find me. That perhaps she had come here to my — our home. That was the whole point of flying straight here, to start out in our home. Bride across the threshold and all that. But she wasn’t here when I arrived. So I immediately phoned you.”

He started to drink from his glass, realized it was empty and walked to the bar. “It’s probably nothing at all,” he said. “Some silly thing. But I can’t help worrying, maybe she’s hurt, there could have been an accident….” He came back with his fresh drink, sat down again, waited for me to speak.

I said, “It’s … odd. I can run up to the airport, Webb. Start checking there.”

From the breast pocket of his coat he pulled a folded check, banded it to me. It was made out to me and in the amount of one thousand dollars. I started to protest, but he said, “Don’t be an imbecile. I know you’d do it without a retainer. This check isn’t for your benefit; it’s for mine. If it’s unnecessary for you to spend any money, you can always give it back. That’s just in case…”

I said, “What can you tell me about her? Anyone I know? Do you have a picture of her?”

“Not a picture that would do you much good in this case.” He smiled oddly, glanced at the phone again. “I really don’t know much about her, Shell. I met her when I did a shot of her for the book. She came here to the studio, and I was — well, completely captivated by her then. Last week we met again in Honolulu. I asked her to marry me. She wanted to think it over, next day said yes, and this morning we were married. Civil ceremony, then a little luau afterwards.” He shook his head, frowning. “But there was a peculiar thing. It didn’t impress me then, but now…”

“Peculiar?”

“Well, during the luau I took some movies. She turned away. Didn’t seem to want pictures taken of her. Even asked me to stop — and asked that I please keep the marriage secret. Just for a little while. She suggested we announce our marriage at the Anniversary Party next week.”

He fell silent again. His last remark, about the Anniversary Party, puzzled me. I knew that in a week or so there was to be a party celebrating the just-completed first year of Wow!‘s publication. The magazine’s editorial staff, cameramen and others including all twelve of the lovelies who had been featured in the first twelve issues, were to be present. A handsome “Personality” named Orlando Desmond, on whom Wow! had done a profile recently, was to supervise or “em-cee” the festivities, and Webb would cut a birthday cake or something like that. But why announce the marriage there?

Webb went on, “There was something she had to … arrange, she said. Explanations, something, I don’t know. It seemed a good idea at the time.” He looked at me, his eyes tired. “Possibly she was in some kind of trouble even then, didn’t want to tell me about it.”

“Or maybe she’s at the airport right now, wondering where the devil her new husband is. You say you photographed her here? For the magazine?”

“Yes. The gatefold, you know.”

It fell into place then. “You mean she’s one of the…” I paused. “The ‘Women With Wow’? The big center spread?”

“Yes, you’ve seen it, Shell. It was the one with — “

The phone rang.

Webb’s face underwent an almost remarkable transformation. The lines in his face smoothed, the tired look left his eyes and he smiled broadly. “I knew she’d call … silly of me…”

He was moving across the room, long legs swinging. The phone was on a wooden shelf at the side of a small bookcase against the wall; he grabbed it, said, “Hello?”

Then he was silent for several seconds. His back was toward me, but I saw his shoulders slump. His whole frame seemed to sag. “What?” he said, his voice so soft I could barely hear him. Then his tone strengthened. “Why, you must be — what?” He stopped speaking again.

I got up, walked across the room to stand by him. His face was ashen, mouth open, lips slack. Shock dulled his eyes. He listened, then said rapidly, “Yes. Yes, of course. I will. No, you can be sure — wait, please wait, don’t — “

I heard the click as the other phone was hung up. Webb didn’t move. “What’s the matter?” I asked him.

Slowly he put the phone down, failed to get it in place and it fell clattering to the shelf beneath. He groped for it, dropped it onto the cradle.

“It’s incredible,” he said softly. “Incredible.”

“Webb, what is it? What the hell’s wrong?”

He merely said again, “It’s incredible.” Then he turned the shocked eyes on me. “She’s been … kidnaped.”

</code>

<code> I said, “Webb, for Pete’s sake, be sensible. If she’s actually been snatched you’ve got to call in the local police, at least, let them bring in the FBI — “

“No,” he said almost angrily. “I told you. I’m going to do exactly what they said. If I don’t, they might kill her.”

“But that’s always the threat — “

“When I get her back, Shell. When I get her back. Then I’ll do anything you want me to. But not until then.”

“At least tell me something more about her. You haven’t even told me her name, Webb. What does she look like, where’s she from, how did — “

“No! I don’t want you to do anything, Shell. Can’t you get it through your head? I don’t want you to know, I don’t want you — investigating, stirring things up. That’s precisely what they told me not to do.”

“You say they told you not to?”

“They — he, what difference does it make? It was a man who spoke to me, and he said, ‘we’ve got her,’ so I assumed there were more than one involved. But the rest of it was very clear. He told me exactly what to do and when, amount of ransom money, that if I didn’t follow instructions to the letter she’d be killed; I’d … never see her again.”

His face twisted. We were silent for a while. Then I said casually, “Webb, I won’t argue with you any more. But I still say you can’t handle hoods this way — if that’s what it is. Can you tell me how much the guy on the phone asked for?”

He didn’t bridle at the question, just asked, “Why?”

“If this is a mob thing, professionally pulled off, the asking price would most likely be fat — you’re a likely enough target if they knew you’d just gotten married. But if the amount was only a few thousand, maybe five or ten grand, it could be this isn’t so bad as it looks, just an amateur — “

“The amount was two hundred thousand dollars.” Webb didn’t add anything to that. He didn’t have to.

I said, “How could anybody have known you were married? You said the ceremony was this morning.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps someone in Honolulu … I purchased plane tickets for Mr. and Mrs. Webley Alden, of course. That’s all I can think of.”

“How about those films you took this morning, after the wedding? You bring them back with you?”

“No, I dropped them in the mail over there. They’ll be processed in Honolulu, airmailed here. Shell, I think you’d better leave.”

I got up. “If there’s anything you want me to do — “

“Just do nothing. Promise me that.”

“I think it’s a mistake — “

“I don’t give a damn what you think! It’s my wife they’ve got ….” He let it trail off. “Promise me you’ll do nothing about this, tell no one. Not as long as there’s a chance I can get her back unharmed.”

“Okay, Webb.” I sighed. “You’ve got my word.”

At the door he put a band on my shoulder and said gently, “Ignore anything I might have said … if I barked at you.”

I grinned at him. “Absolutely not. Somehow I’ll get even.”

He smiled. “I had to bark at someone.” But then his features grew slack again. “This was supposed to be…” He hesitated, went on, “…my wedding night.”

</code>

<code> I kept thinking about Webb. And his wife. I wondered if she was alive. I hadn’t wanted to mention it to Webb last night, but I knew of kidnap cases in which the victim was murdered immediately after the snatch. And the ransom, if paid, was thus paid for a corpse.

Whatever had happened in the last day or so to the girl who was now Mrs. Alden, she must have been a lively live one before. Because Webb had told me she was one of the “Women With Wow” featured in his magazine. And they were all live, lithe, lissome and lovely. And, in a way, they were all famous.

Little more than a month after that first issue had hit the stands, an agreement had been made whereby the girls featured in the magazine would appear in Las Vegas at the Algiers, the big hotel-nightclub there run by a hard-boiled hoodlum type named Ed Grey. They were featured in the show, as in the magazine….

My own phrase whispered through my mind again. Hard-boiled hoodlum type?

Grey was that, for sure. I wasn’t certain that he held the controlling interest in the Algiers; most of the Vegas clubs are owned by syndicates. But I did know he owned outright another club called the Pele — in Hawaii. But maybe I was reaching for answers now, straining for them because of my unease, my jitteriness. I was jittery enough.

I grabbed the phone and called Webb.

He answered immediately, after the first ring.

“Shell here, Webb,” I said. “I finally had to give you a call and — “

He interrupted. “It’s all right, Shell.” His voice was brisk and bubbling. “She’s back. Everything’s fine. We’ll have you over for dinner in a few days.”

“Wonderful! Webb, that’s marvelous news. But, look, my friend. Now that she’s … Webb? Webb?”

He’d hung up.

It puzzled me. But then I realized Webb would hardly have much enthusiasm for lengthy phone conversations if his bride had just been carried wiggling over the threshold. I hung up, mixed a drink. But there was a little bubble of worry in me. No matter what Webb was doing, it wasn’t like him merely to say a word or two and hang up without even saying goodbye. It was almost as though somebody else had broken the connection.

It wasn’t like Webb at all. If he hadn’t wanted to talk, he probably wouldn’t have answered the phone in the first place. That bubble swelled in me. Maybe his wife wasn’t really back, and he’d just said that to keep me from thinking there was anything to worry about, or check on. Maybe I was nuts, too.

But I used the phone, called again. The line was busy. I waited five minutes, tried again. Still busy.

That bubble of worry broke and a cold unease settled in my belly and loins. I put on my gun harness, shoved the Colt Special into its clip. Maybe I was nuts; but I was going to find out, one way or the other.

Lights burned brightly in Webb’s house. I parked on Poinsettia, at the foot of the stone steps, got out and stood next to the car. Now that I was here, I was almost ready to think that only my overactive imagination had sent me on the wild drive from my apartment. Webb would really appreciate me, I was thinking, if I barged brightly up to his front door when all he wanted was to be completely incommunicado for a week.

And then I heard the sharp, nerve-slapping sound. It came from above me, from somewhere inside Webb’s house. Unmistakably clear in the quiet night, hard and flat and ugly. A gunshot.

</code>

<code> THREE

I leaped forward, my legs driving me up the stone steps as a second flat slap of sound followed like an echo almost immediately after the first.

“Webb!” I shouted.

My voice, feet slapping on the steps, made a lot of noise; but I wanted to be heard. I shouted Webb’s name again, jumped the last few feet to the front door and slammed into it. The door was locked. There had been no sound except the two rapid shots. I kicked at the door, and the lock gave with a sharp crack. My momentum carried me past the door, into the cluttered front room. Lights blazed in Webb’s studio.

I staggered, caught my balance without slowing, kept racing forward. The light came from photographic bulbs in their reflectors on my left in the studio. Something sprawled on the floor — a body, one arm outflung. Movement wavered on my right as I jumped into the studio, feet sliding, pulling the .38 from under my coat. A man was just going through a door there, slamming it hard. As it crashed shut, motion danced in the corner of my eye, something moving on my left.

I jerked my head toward that blur of movement. She was almost out of sight, passing through the side studio door into the adjacent bedroom. I got barely a glimpse of her, but I saw her for a split second. It was a woman, nude, something trailing from one hand — a length of cloth, maybe a robe.

Before that had time to register, the window in the right wall, next to the door through which the man had gone, shattered with a splintering crash. Simultaneously there was the sound of a gunshot. Something plucked at my sleeve.

I let my legs drop from under me, hit the floor, snapping an unaimed shot at the window. I hit hard, rolling, crashed into a reflector, felt bunched electrical cord against my leg and foot. A length of cord pulled against my ankle and the lights went out. In the sudden blackness I saw a spurt of flame from the window as the man fired again. Prone on the floor, I pointed my Colt at the spot where the fire had blossomed, squeezed the trigger once, and again.

I heard the thud of feet pounding alongside the house, started toward the side door. My leg hit something in the dark and I fell. When I got up there was no sound outside — then a car’s engine caught, roared. I made it to the door and through it as the engine whined, accelerating. When I reached the rear of Webb’s property the sound was faint. Below me on Azalea and a hundred yards to my left, headlights flashed as the car swerved around a bend in the road and out of sight. The shriek of tires skidding on asphalt floated back to me through the still air.

A minute later I was back inside the house. I felt my way through the studio, found the electrical cord I’d kicked loose, fumbled along the wall for the outlet. As my fingers touched it, I heard a noise behind me. It was a scuttling sound, as if a great crab were crawling over the bare floor, claws clacking softly on the wood. Then a sibilant hiss. Hair stirred at the back of my neck and a moist coldness touched my spine as I realized what it was.

It was the man there, not dead, his fingers digging at the wood, clawing, clutching. I pressed the plug into its socket. Lights blazed again. I turned to look at the man. Light came from two portable lamps in their conical reflectors, one still erect on its adjustable steel-tube stand. The other had fallen, lay still burning on the floor. Its beam slanted weirdly over the man’s face.

The man was Webb.

He lay flat, chest pressed against the floor, left arm extended straight above his head, right bent back so that his hand almost touched his shoulder. His face was toward me, stark in the white light, and his eyes were open. Both his hands, the one over his head and the other brushing his right shoulder, moved mechanically, the fingers arching like white spurs, clawlike, scraping against the floor. There was no other motion, no other sound, only the hands and fingers scuttling, as if they possessed a separate life, were independent of the dying body holding them, pulling them with it toward death. Once, twice, once more they scraped against the floor, digging tiny lighter furrows in the dark wood.

Then they stopped, and died.

“Webb,” I said.

I spoke to him, but I knew it was useless. I knew he couldn’t hear me, knew he was dead. But I said, as if he were sitting across from me in his living room, “Webb, old friend. Come on. You’re not going to die. Come on, Webb.”

I touched him, felt for the pulse in his wrist, in his throat, but it was gone. Blood stained the back of his white shirt. Two amoebic rings of red. One for each of the sounds I’d heard, one for each of the shots that had sent bullets into Webb’s back.

I left him where he was, stood up. The one lamp still standing on its base poured bright light over the corner where Webb had taken so many of his pictures. It fell on the carved-wood statue of Pan I’d seen in the front room last night, on the fleshy, grinning lips, the knowing, heavy-lidded eyes.

Behind the figure, hiding the intersection of the walls, was draped a heavy red velvet curtain. Facing the curtain was Webb’s four-by-five Speed Graphic, cable release dangling from its shutter. The cut-film holder was in place at the camera’s back, and on a chair nearby lay one of the holder’s two dark slides. I picked up the plastic slide, slid it back into place and then removed the film holder, held it in my hand as I walked toward the bedroom into which the girl had run.

Just inside the studio, to the right of the bedroom door, was a small table piled high with books, several boxes of Ektachrome cut film, and a stack of four-by-five film holders. I placed the holder I’d taken from the Graphic across those already on the table as I walked into the bedroom. The door leading to a garden in back stood open. On the bed, loosely bunched, were a woman’s clothes. White brassiere and step-ins, a green sarong-type dress. On the carpeted floor beneath them were green high-heeled pumps and a pair of nylon hose. I looked at the dress. The label at its neckline bore the name “Kapiolani Fashions.”

I went into the living room and walked to the phone, intending to call the police. But then I hesitated. This was Medina. Of all the cities in California, it had to be Medina. Two years ago I’d broken a case here, exposed a burglary ring. My local client had lost fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry and furs, and after two months of work I’d wrapped it up. The ring had been composed of two ex-cons who’d done big time for burglary — and three police officers. Three of Medina’s local law. One of the policemen — since convicted and sent to San Quentin — was a young officer named George Farley. He had a brother on the local force, a detective sergeant named Bill Farley. The sergeant had been cleared of any complicity in the crimes himself, but hadn’t had a pleasant time of it.

He had sworn that I’d framed his brother. Maybe he even believed it, unable to accept the fact that his brother was a thief. Two years ago Sergeant Bill Farley had been a homicide cop; I wondered if he still was. One thing I did know: he hated my guts.

I picked up the phone, dialed Operator. But then I heard a siren. The sound increased, nearing Webb’s home. Somebody must have reported hearing gunshots. I hung up, walked to the door as a police radio car stopped in front of the house. As two officers started up the steps another car parked behind the first one.

The two policemen had revolvers in their hands. I stepped back into the room, told them that a man had been killed and his body was in the next room. One of them asked me who I was and what I was doing here. He kept his gun on me.

I said, “I’m Shell Scott. I’m a friend — ” But that was as far as I got.

“Scott,” someone said from the doorway. Just the one word, but it was delivered like one of the least pleasant four-letter words. Two men in plain clothes stood in the doorway now. The man in front was Bill Farley. Five-ten or -eleven, wide, solid, with a thick rubbery face. He stepped into the room, pulling a snub-nosed revolver from a belt holster.

“Scott,” he said again, with a kind of satisfaction.

The officer I’d spoken to told Farley what I’d said and Farley strode heavily into the studio, came back and sent the other plainclothesman in there. Then he waved his revolver at me and said, “Get those hands up, Scott. Over against the wall.”

“Not so fast, Farley — “

“Up with them.” His small eyes looked hot.

I bit back the words that started out, slowly raised my hands. Following Farley’s barked instructions I stood away from the wall, leaned against it while he shook me down. He took my .38 from its shoulder clip, stepped back.

“Empty your pockets,” he said.

I dropped my arms to my sides and looked at him. “Don’t push this too far, Sergeant.”

“Lieutenant. Empty the pockets.”

“You’re wasting a lot of time. About five minutes ago a man shot Webley Alden. I didn’t get a look at his face, but he took off in a car down Azalea. And there was a girl here — “

“You going to do what I told you, Scott?”

“Farley, you damn fool. I got here right after — “

He grinned, took a step toward me, raising his left hand.

I balled my right hand into a fist.

“Shell.” The other plainclothes officer spoke softly from the studio doorway.

I hadn’t taken a look at him after spotting Farley’s face, but now I recognized him. He was another of the men I’d met during that case two years ago, but he and I had hit it off well. He was a pleasant young guy named Dugan, not at all like Farley. I pulled my fist open again. Farley had wanted me to hit him. It was all over his face; he could have had a lot of fun with me then.

I turned away from him, jamming my teeth together, pulled everything from my pockets and slammed the stuff in a pile on a table. One of the other officers was talking on the phone. Farley took his time looking through my belongings.

I tried once more. “Farley — “

“Lieutenant Farley.”

“Lieutenant — Farley. While you’re giving this marvelous imitation of an idiot, whoever killed Webb is getting clear the hell out of Medina.” I paused, breathing heavily. “Though if he’s got any sense he’ll stay here in town. Where he’s safe.”

Farley grinned, hefted my Colt in one big hand, snapped open the cylinder. He knew better than to throw the cylinder out hard like that. He weighed about two hundred pounds, and he was solid. He looked thick and slow, but very strong. The grin bunched thick buttons of muscle at each side of his mouth, adding to the rubbery, muscular look of his face.

“Just fired,” he said with oily satisfaction. “Three times.” He snapped the cylinder back in with a vicious twist of his wrist.

The palms of my hands were moist. “You want to hear what happened, Farley?”

“I’ll hear it downtown.”

“You’re not taking me in.”

“I’m not?”

“Why, you club-brained, miserable … Farley, your skull must grow in solid clear to the middle. If you — “

“Keep that yap shut.” His face was tanned, but it seemed to get darker, as if black blood were gathering under the rubbery skin. “Open your mouth again and I’ll shut it myself.”

So that’s the way it was going to be. I looked at Farley. “I guess you’ll have it your way, friend. For a while. I’d better use the phone.”

“What for?”

“To call my lawyer.”

“You’ll need one. You can call him from downtown.”

Sure, I thought. One of these days. Before we left I looked back once at Webb’s body. Men were in the room, drawing chalk lines, taking flash pictures, making diagrams and notes. It seemed obscene, somehow. And as we went out and down the stone steps I thought of Webb’s last words to me on the night before this.

It was to have been his wedding night, he’d said. Tonight was more like it, I thought. Tonight his wedding night. And death his bride.

Farley shoved me in the back with the flat of his hand. We went down the steps, into the police car, and drove toward the Medina jail.

</code>

<code> They didn’t learn to love me. But at nine o’clock Saturday morning they let me go. I had the help of a smart and influential attorney, but mainly they just didn’t have anything on me. My story held up, and the bullets in Webb’s back were from another gun than mine. One of the slugs I’d fired at the window had dug into its wooden frame and checked with a test bullet fired from my revolver.

At nine o’clock I had my belongings back, even my .38 Colt Special, and was ready to leave. Farley escorted me to the door. He seemed wide awake, full of energy. He’d enjoyed his turns with me in the back room.

He said, “Advice, Scott. Stay a long way from Medina.”

“You go to hell.”

It bounced off him. “Don’t mess around in this case. It’s a police matter now. I don’t want you fouling it up.”

Farley never swore at me, and it wasn’t even so much what he said; it was the way he said it. As if the words got slimy in his mouth. I said, “Hasn’t it seeped into that solid-bone brain of yours yet that maybe I don’t give a damn what you want?”

“Just stay clear out of this town, Scott. Don’t argue about it. Do it. Keep your nose out. Stick it in, and I’ll slap you in a cell so fast — “

“On what charge? Doing my job?”

“I’ll find a charge.” He grinned, flesh buttons bunching around his mouth. “I’ll find a couple.”

And, undoubtedly, he was the guy to do it. He made me feel as if I’d eaten some underdone vulture, feathers included. I looked at him, at the thick rubbery face and small eyes, and said, “Farley, you really get the prize. All my working life I’ve worked with the police. With guys who get too little money and too much guff, do a big job with little credit. I’ve met hundreds of cops, known dozens well, and liked them all. My best friend in L.A. is the Captain of Homicide. I like cops. I’ve known maybe half a dozen all told that turned my stomach. But, friend, you are the end.” I paused. “And I’ll bet even you know which end I have in mind.”

I thought he was going to hit me. Or, rather, hit at me. But be thought better of it, let his little eyes bore into my face. I turned and went out, the taste of vulture in my mouth.

</code>

<code> The car that had left in such a rush last night could have gone anywhere from here; undoubtedly the killer had been in it. But the girl had been nude, carrying a cloth or robe. Even in a robe she’d have been too conspicuous to get far. So where had she gone? In the car that had raced through the night? Or, more likely, she’d just run, getting away from the violence and gunshots — naturally enough. But to where?

I thought back to the scene in the studio. Camera and lights had been set up as if Webb had been about to take — or had just taken — some shots of the girl. Of his wife, apparently, since on the phone, minutes before, he had told me his wife was back. But the whole situation puzzled me.

Either Webb’s wife had just come home, and he was taking pictures of her; or the girl who’d been present was not his wife. The first of those two possibilities was conceivable, even though it seemed more than a little goofy; but if the model was not his wife, then who in hell had it been? And why in the name of sanity would Webb, under the circumstances, have been taking photos — especially of someone not his wife?

Something else bothered me, too. If Webb had paid the ransom, and his wife had been released, why was he killed?

I stubbed out my cigarette, left the car and walked toward the rear of Webb’s house. I knew what Farley would arrange for me if a report reached him that Shell Scott was still snooping around, but I wouldn’t get answers to all those questions merely by thinking about them, and the hell with Farley. I went in through the same door the killer had used for his sudden exit last night. In the empty studio, chalk lines on the floor marked the spot where Webb’s body had been. I saw the lines that had been traced around his hands and arms, remembered the clawing fingers.

Then I stepped past the chalk lines, stopped before the bedroom door. The clothing was gone now from the bed. But the cluttered table next to me appeared undisturbed. The books and boxes of cut film were still on it. And the stack of four-by-five film holders. The top one was placed at an angle across the others, as I had placed that one last night. Undoubtedly it was the one I’d removed from Webb’s Graphic.

A film holder holds two four-by-five pieces of cut film, one in front and one in back, protected by dark slides which are removed when the film is to be exposed. One of the slides had been out of the holder last night, and I had replaced it myself before taking the holder from the camera. So there was a good chance that one of those films had been exposed. Possibly both of them. If both, once developed, were blank, they would then match my state of mind. But if even one had been exposed, some of the vital answers might well develop along with the picture. In color, at that.

I put the film holder into my coat pocket, turned and walked rapidly toward the side door. As I passed the entrance into the living room the front door opened.

“Hey!” somebody yelled.

I didn’t even look toward him. I jumped to the door, through it, sprinted for the Cad; I was in it and grinding the starter before the man got outside after me. As the engine caught I put the Cad in gear and glanced toward the house. It was a uniformed policeman there, but I couldn’t make out his features. I hoped he couldn’t identify mine. The Cad was moving forward and I slammed the gas pedal to the floorboards.

</code>

<code> I parked opposite the Spartan, got out and angled back across the street, trotting toward the hotel’s entrance — and from somewhere on my left came the gunshot. The slug whipped past my head, glanced from the Cad’s hood behind me and smacked into a tree, the four separate sounds blending into one. I was in a half-run two or three yards from the car and all I did was go instantly into a whole run, left my feet and dived through the air, hit tumbling on grass beyond the curb. I came up next to the Spartan’s wall, gun in my hand.

There were no more shots. I could hear two or three cars moving in the area. One of them came down Rossmore from the east and rolled past. An old lady was driving it, with an air of cautious desperation. A minute later I’d found the hole in a tree across the street, sighted back from it over the furrow on my Cad’s hood. The shot had come from near the intersection of Rossmore and Clinton. Probably from somebody in a car there — a car long gone now. I looked around the intersection but nothing was there. No car, no man — or woman. No cartridge case on the ground.

I had learned one thing, though. When Webb’s killer had taken his first shot at me last night he had been in darkness, but I had been bathed in very bright light. At the time, and since, I’d wondered whether or not he’d gotten a good look at me.

Now I knew.

He had.

</code>

<code> These last fifteen hours or so had really lit me. The kidnaping, Webb’s murder, the unpleasantness with Farley, the miserable Medina can. Webb was dead and twice now I’d damn near been killed myself. Somebody was going to pay if I had to wade through boiling horse manure swarming with heat-resistant piranhas.

I dressed in the bedroom. On the dresser was a folded slip of paper I’d put there last night. It was the thousand-dollar check Webb had made out to me, given me at his home. It wasn’t really mine yet, but I stuck it into my wallet. I’d cash the check — when I earned it.

I used the phone to call a bank in which Webb had kept a large chunk, of his money. I got the manager. He knew me and gave me the information I asked for. Webb had appeared at the bank yesterday morning when it opened, withdrawn one hundred and sixty thousand dollars he’d had on deposit in cash, and cashed bonds in the amount of forty thousand dollars more.

Total: Two hundred thousand dollars. So he’d paid the ransom.

I scrambled some eggs that wound up looking and tasting like liquid yellow latex, and brewed some coffee. I could still see Webb’s fingers, clawing behind my eyes. I forced them away by watching the neons for a while. Nothing. Maybe they weren’t both males; maybe they were both females. Maybe they were fish missionaries. Maybe they weren’t trying.

I took my gun kit into the front room, sat on the big chocolate-brown divan, then cleaned, oiled, and loaded my Colt.

Quite clearly, Webb’s killer was now trying to kill me. I didn’t have the faintest idea who he was. But there did appear to be one way to wind up all the threads: find the girl who’d been at Webb’s last night. Webb had apparently been taking, or about to take, her picture shortly before he was killed. It seemed to me now that the girl must have been Webb’s bride. Logic said he wouldn’t have been focusing the lens of his Graphic on anybody but his bride under the circumstances, and from now on I meant to go ahead under that assumption — and with the hope that she was still alive.

So, assuming that much, and knowing Webb himself had told me his bride was one of the twelve Wow! girls, the rest of it seemed simple: get the names and addresses of those twelve girls and ask each one if she’d married Webb. The one who said yes could give me the rest of the answers. It really did seem like a simple operation.

The editorial offices of Wow! were on Tenth Street in Medina. I phoned them. I got a man with a fluting voice, and when I asked him for the names and addresses of the “Women With Wow” the fluting veered an octave to piccolo. That was simply out of the question, unthinkable, and so on.

I could understand the reaction. Probably eighteen thousand men before me had tried to get those names and addresses, for different reasons. But I said, “Look, I’m Shell Scott. I’m a private detective investigating Webb’s death.”

“Aha!”

“He was a good friend … what in hell do you mean, ‘Aha’?”

“Scott, eh? Lieutenant Farley informed us that you might approach us. He also informed me that if you did — “

“Never mind. I can guess.”

“I shall be forced to inform Lieutenant Farley — “

I hung up while he was still fluting.

Farley was becoming a boil that needed lancing. But there were other ways. More simple ones, in fact. When people get married they put names and addresses on wedding licenses. See, simple.

I put in a long-distance call to the City Hall in Honolulu. A clerk there informed me that marriage records were on file at the Bureau of Health Statistics in the Board of Health Building, and gave me their number. I called it. While waiting for a man at the other end of the line to get the information I’d asked for, a new thought occurred to me. Webb had been killed the day after his marriage, true; but he had been married.

And that meant his wife would inherit well over a million dollars — or, at least, whatever the Storm Troopers left of it after estate and inheritance taxes. Oddly, I hadn’t thought of that angle until now. And it gave me a peculiar prickling sensation along my spine.

Then the man was back on the line. A couple of minutes later I hung up the phone, puzzled. About as puzzled as I get.

There was no record of a Webley Alden being married in Honolulu. No, not on the thirteenth. Nor the twelfth, or eleventh…. I frowned at the phone.

Webb would surely have used his real name. And Webley Alden was his real name — at least it had been during all the years I’d known him. He’d told me himself that he’d been married on Thursday, the thirteenth of August — had, in fact, taken some movies after the ceremony. Movies.

I called the Kodak Company in L.A. They told me that Kodachrome films — which I knew Webb used — mailed in prepaid mailers in Honolulu would have been processed at Kodak Hawaii Limited on Kapiolani Boulevard there. I called Kodak Hawaii Limited in Honolulu; the films had been processed and sent out airmail in the usual fashion. Tomorrow was Sunday; that meant the films would be delivered to Webb’s home in Medina on Monday.

At two p.m. the phone rang. It was Harold at Eagle Photo. I said, “Anything on those films?”

“Was on one, Shell. Just took the print out of the wash water. Other film was unexposed. But one of these is enough. Where’d you get it?”

I felt a quick ripple of excitement. “What was on it, Harold?”

“A babe. Naked babe. Beautiful job, too. Whoever took this one’s a pro.”

“What does the girl look like?”

He laughed. “I don’t know how to describe her.” Whatever he was thinking seemed to amuse him even more and he laughed again. “Come on down and take a look.”

“I’ll be there in three minutes. Or less.”

When I trotted into Eagle Photo Harold was waiting for me. I followed him down into the basement darkroom where he did his work. “There she is,” he said, pointing at the wall. He’d scotch-taped the four-by-five color print against the wall’s dark wood. My eyes fell on it. And clung.

Harold was saying, “It’s still a little damp. Just took it off the dryer. Nice?”

“Nice.”

It was. Looking at the brilliant, sharply focused print, I forgot for a moment why I’d been so anxious to see this. Forgot my hope that it could lead me to Webb’s wife, to the woman who’d been present at the moment of murder last night. Forgot that this was a clue.

It was all of that; but it was more.

It was a fanny.

A marvelous, jaunty, virtually effervescent behind; an undulatory aphrodisiac; a most daring derriere. That, at least, was the center of interest, but after its first impact upon me I noted that there was more to the picture.

The photo was of a woman, nude, her back to the camera. And, beyond her, Pan. Pan, the goat-footed god. It was the carved-wood statue I’d seen in Webb’s living room and later in his studio. The thick, leering lips, the almost real eyes slanted sideways toward the woman’s bare flesh. The projecting arms were outthrust, one at either side of the woman’s slender waist, the hands cupped as if moving to pull her toward him.

I couldn’t tell anything about the woman herself, her face, color of her hair or eyes, nothing about her appearance — except for that vital area, the center of interest. The woman’s body was visible only from a point halfway up her back down to the middle of her thighs. Pan’s head was tilted to one side, as if he were leaning away to peer at her. One shaggy goat foot and cloven hoof was raised in the air, just visible at the bottom of the print. In the background, the red velvet drapery I’d seen in Webb’s studio seemed melting red shadows.

And suddenly I realized this was precisely the kind of photo Webb had used in the magazine, in Wow!, for that three-page spread featured each month. I thought, … ?

What in the hell? On his wedding night? Something was fractured here. But Harry was saying, “Want me to retouch this?” He pointed at the left side of the center of interest, that charming derriere. Four small brown spots there formed an irregular rectangle. Freckles.

“I should say not,” I told him. “That’s the most important part of the picture.”

He goggled at me. “You sick? There’s more important things than freckles.”

“Not in this shot.”

It was true. But that question mark loomed even larger in my mind, and the questions came back. Why would Webb have taken this kind of picture — any kind of picture — on the very night when his blushing bride had been returned to him? Webb had greatly enjoyed his photographic work, sure; he had even been a little eccentric; but not that eccentric. He had not been the kind of guy who would order a martini just to get an olive.

Whatever the reason, this picture, clearly, had been taken by Webb last night, shortly before he’d been killed. So this was the girl I had to find. My other leads to her had so far come to nothing, led me nowhere. And it could be that none of those other leads would pan out, that they would fade away into nothingness. But even if so, all would not be lost. Now I had something solid to go on, something tangible.

Maybe I still didn’t know what the rest of the woman looked like, but I had a start. Not exactly a head-start, but a start.

I knew where to go from here. I had a clue.

I had a picture of her fanny.

All I had to do was — find it.

</code>

<code> FOUR

In the apartment once more, I mixed a drink, then got out my back issues of Wow! Okay, so I’m a subscriber, and go to hell.

In the front room with the very frisky, possibly half-drunk, still childless Neon Tetras, I settled on the big chocolate-brown divan, plopped my color print and twelve issues of Wow! on the highball-glass-scarred, scratched, cigarette-burned, kicked, and fallen-down-over coffee table, lit a cigarette, had a sip of my bourbon-and-water, and began the hunt.

The first issue of Wow!, the September issue, had appeared one year ago. The twelfth issue, August, had only recently disappeared from the stands. In each of those issues the highlight had been the photo of a different girl. For the first three months, September, October and November — or the months of autumn — brunettes had been featured. The following three winter months, black-haired gals. Spring, blondes; and redheads for summer.

It was a rather neat angle. Neater was the fact that in none of the twelve featured shots, though most were full-length photos, was the model’s face in view. Occasionally a half profile, or a face veiled with the model’s hair, but never a recognizable collection of features. It had been Webb’s idea — well-publicized in the magazine’s pages — that exactly one year after each model’s first featured appearance in Wow! the same model would again be featured. But on the second occasion she would be facing the camera instead of turned away from it.

And each of the models was so frankly delectable that hundreds of thousands of guys were waiting in fevers of impatience for the head-on, you might say, shots of September, October, November, and so forth; to get, in a word, the rest of the picture.

And a lot of good that did me. Assuming that the girl in my four-by-five print was Webb’s wife; and knowing he’d told me she was one of the twelve Wow girls, I figured all I’d have to do would be to match my color print with one of the twelve photos in Wow! If the vital area of the color shot matched the same area of June, then June was my gal.

Only it wasn’t that easy. I went through all twelve back issues and there wasn’t a freckle in the lot. And without freckles — well, let’s tell the whole truth: there just isn’t that much difference in the things. Especially in these superb examples, which were all edging toward, if not actually sitting on, perfection. They might vary a shade, a jot here, a tittle there, but hardly enough for positive identification.

The absence of minor blemishes puzzled me until I remembered Harold’s asking me if I wanted the shots “retouched.” Undoubtedly any little flaw would have been retouched on the prints or transparencies before engravings were made for the magazine; and I knew Webb would have done all that work himself, in his home, if it were done at all. But I couldn’t go back to his home for a while, that was sure.

But I wasn’t stumped, hadn’t come to a dead end, so to speak. There was one avenue of investigation yet remaining. The twelve Wow girls themselves.

No, I wasn’t stumped. I just didn’t exactly know how to go about it.

</code>

<code> I told him that the witness to the crime, the girl I’d mentioned in my statements last night, was one of the twelve girls featured in Wow!, and explained how she could be identified by those four vital freckles. Even as I said it, my words got slower, weaker, and sort of limped one after the other. Put into blunt words, to Farley, it sounded most peculiar even in my own ears.

He roared at me for half a minute, then said, “You damned maniac! I guess I’m supposed to go all over California pulling pants down, huh? You’ll have to figure out a better way to make me look like a raving idiot — “

“You figured that out yourself years ago. All you have to do is get a police matron to — “

“Drop it, Scott. If I hear even one word out of you again I swear I’ll lock you up. For vagrancy if I have to. Obstructing justice.” He snorted for a few seconds, then shouted, “For perversion!” He was losing his grip, but after a struggle he controlled himself. He said slowly, heavily, “Scott, where’d you get this idea, anyway? What’re you trying to pull? What’re you really trying to pull?”

I started to tell him, then stopped suddenly. I could not tell Farley about the photo I had. I’d neglected to mention removing the film holder from Webb’s camera last night; and if I now told him I’d sneaked into Webb’s home today and stolen that film from under the eyes of the police…

I said, “It — I just know it, that’s all.”

“Sure. Like you knew Webb was married. His bride kidnaped. Probably a jealous husband shot him. I checked personally with Honolulu — even though I knew you were lying. There’s no record Alden was married there. Believe me, Scott, any more of your games and you’ll play the games in a cell. A padded cell.”

“Webb didn’t actually say he’d been married in Honolulu, Farley, but in the ‘Islands.’ He might have tied the knot on one of the other islands — “

“I told you to drop it, Scott. Listen, I got a call from Wow! saying you’d been bugging them. I warned you — ” He broke it off as if something else had occurred to him. It had. He said slowly, “I also got a report somebody busted into Alden’s place at nine-thirty this morning. Where were you then?”

“Knock it off.”

“You got sprung at nine. It could have been you.”

“Sure. It was me. Of course. I want to go back to your cozy clink. Your big boniness figured it out.”

The heavy sarcasm didn’t quite convince him, but he dropped the subject. I was starting to feel as if walls were closing in on me. When he began chewing my ear again, I hung up.

Well, I’d known it even before the call. But it was a sure thing now. I would get no help, no cooperation, from the Medina law; trouble I would get, no more. Anything that had to be done I’d have to do myself. Okay. So be it.

I turned to the issues of Wow! again. Beneath each featured shot was one name identifying the model. On an adjacent page was further information about the shot, including the full name — or at least professional name — of the girl. Starting with September, the models were: Sue, Jeannette, Eve, Raven, Loana, Dottie, Janie, Alma, Gay, Candy, Pagan, and Charlene.

I checked the info on the adjacent pages of the magazines and started transferring it to a blank piece of paper. When I got through I had a list including the twelve months and twelve names:

</code>

<code> When I’d finished my list, I looked it over. So far that was all I knew about them. Except that one of them had four freckles. The problem now was to find them.

I did know where one of the twelve girls could be found, since I knew that following her month in Wow! each girl spent the succeeding month at the Algiers in Vegas. This was August; thus Miss July would be appearing at the hotel. I checked my list, called the Algiers, asked for Miss Pagan Page. It was too early in the day for any of the showgirls to be present, so I left my name and number, with a request that Miss Page phone me when she came in.

I found one of the names in the L.A. phone book, another in the City Directory. These gals could be scattered all over, I was thinking; there ought to be an easier way … and then a name floated into my thoughts: Orlando Desmond.

If anybody knew where all twelve of the girls were currently, he would know. The Wow! Anniversary Party was, or at least had been, scheduled to come off in about a week, and Desmond was the boy chosen to oversee all the dandy activities. He had been chosen by vote of the twelve Wow girls themselves — which will give you an idea that the instinct Desmond brought out in women was not merely the maternal instinct — and had, therefore, been in touch with all of them during the last few days and weeks getting things lined up for the ball.

Desmond lived in Medina.

So that’s where I was going — back to Medina. I decided to take my color picture along.

On the way out I put some fat, live daphnia into the neons’ tank; nourishment for mama and papa. Or mama and mama. Or papa and papa. Some detective. I peered sourly at them and went down to the Cad.

</code>

<code> He was a “Personality” and actor, but primarily his fame grew from his singing. At least that’s what it was called. Young women squealed and old women slobbered when he went bee-bee-bee — he didn’t go boo-boo-boo — but to me his songs sounded like a small cat being crushed between two dogs. Or maybe I simply have no appreciation for the finer things.

The house was barely inside the Medina city limits, two stories of rock and redwood, striking and attractive. I’d heard there was a protected swimming pool behind the house somewhere — it was rumored that he swam there with lovelies, if not in the raw at least in the medium rare — but the pool wasn’t visible from the front door. Orlando was, half a minute after I rang.

He looked sleepy and tired, and he blinked at me while I told him I was Shell Scott and wanted to talk to him. Finally he said, “Shell Scott? You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. I’d like a little help from you, if you don’t mind.”

His expression said he did mind, but he opened the door wider. “Is it in connection with Webb’s death?”

“Yes. You heard about that?”

“Papers had it this morning. And the police just left here. I got rather tired of being questioned — by the police.”

I didn’t say anything. Desmond led me inside, up a flight of cantilevered steps into a really beautiful living room. In the rear wall huge sliding glass doors opened onto a tiled patio roofed over with bamboo strips, sunlight slanting down through them onto the colored tile. A massive couch squatted next to a modern black fireplace on my right. Beyond the patio, through a lot of big green leaves and fern fronds, light glinted from the surface of a swimming pool.

I told Desmond I liked the room, the whole place in fact, and he thanked me without scowling. He seemed almost pleased, as if his shorts had just stopped pinching. If he wouldn’t sing, we probably wouldn’t actually come to blows.

He was a handsome devil, there was no denying that. About thirty, my age, possibly two or three years older. He was a couple of inches over my six-two, slender but well put-together, tanned the color of mahogany and with thick brown hair waving dizzily over his scalp. He wore a white chenille robe belted loosely around his waist, and open leather sandals.

We sat in comfortable brocaded chairs and he said, “Well, what is it, Scott?”

There was a splash in the pool then, several yards out past the patio’s edge. I squinted that way but caught just a glimpse of black, and what looked like a swinging arm. Or leg. Into my mind, leaping wildly, came those rumors I’d heard about Desmond.

I pulled my eyes back and said, “I understand you’re sort of in charge of the Anniversary Party set for next week. Or is that off now?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not off. The magazine will continue to be published. Without Webb, unfortunately. The decision was made to go ahead with the party, at Mr. Whittaker’s home here. I’ll be there.”

“Then you’ve been in touch with the twelve — twelve stars of the party. Know where to reach them.” He nodded again and I said, “Could you give me their addresses?”

“Well … I could,” he said slowly. “It’s information usually kept quite restricted.”

“All I want to do is ask each of them a question or two. As I said, it’s in connection with Webb’s death. I might get a lot of help from one of them.”

He frowned for a while, then said, “Well, in that case I suppose it’s all right.” He stood up. “Let me get my little black book.”

As he walked out of the room there was another splash from the pool area, but I couldn’t see much through the massed ferns and tropical plantings. In a moment Desmond was back. His little black book was red, and about the size of an L.A. city directory. I got out the list I’d made from Wow!’s pages. Desmond read off the addresses and phone numbers and I jotted them opposite the names of the models.

Then I took the four-by-five color print from my coat pocket, handed it to him and said, “Would you do me a favor and take a look at this?”

He casually glanced at the picture. But then his eyes sort of riveted upon it and after a few seconds he said, “Do you a favor?”

Expectantly I asked, “Do you know who it … she is?”

He shook his head, seeming slightly dazed. Ah, these men, they’re all the same. “No … but I’d like to.” He paused. “What prompted you to ask if I knew her?”

“Well, I think she’s one of the ‘Women With Wow,’ and since you’ve been in … communication with all of them for some time, I thought, oh, one of them might have … dropped a hint.”

That, I decided, was unclear even to me. But Desmond got it. “Ah,” he said. “Ah, no. But possibly I could help you with a few discreet … inquiries.”

“An excellent idea.”

“I presume you want to talk to each of the girls?”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” he smiled finally, “at least I can help you there. Give you a start, that is.” He looked toward the pool and called, “Raven!”

Raven? On my list was Raven McKenna — December.

Right then I discovered something about my thinking. I had by now memorized the list of names and, whenever I thought of one of the gals, into my mind popped the corresponding photo of her which had appeared in Wow! I’ve mentioned that in none of those photos was the girl’s face showing. So, horrible thought though it may be to some, each of those lovely girls was, to me — a fanny. Whenever I thought of one of the names, bang, that’s what flashed into my mind.

How could it have been otherwise? It was all I had to go on. Believe me, friends, it could have happened to anyone. It could have happened to you.

And I remembered December. Ah, how well I remembered December. Raven McKenna was, in the December foldout photo, shown in the act of climbing from a swimming pool. Nude, as all the models were in such shots, she was going up the ladder, and the photographer had obviously been in the water, cooling off and shooting up. Let’s be honest. There are myriad kinds of beauty. Sunsets and sunrises, a schooner on a blue sea with its spinnaker billowing, forests, mountains, all those wonders of Nature. But a shot like December has a natural attraction all its own.

I remember when I first lamped that shot I had thought: if that’s December, there’ll be no winter this year. And now from the pool a clear feminine voice answered: “Yes?”

“Just a second, Scott,” Desmond said. “She’s probably all wet, can’t come in.” He walked out. I sat there, thinking. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Then Desmond called, “Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“Come on out. Might as well talk here at the pool.”

I sprang up and zipped from the living room into the patio, across it and along a path of redwood rounds set in green dichondra, huge philodendron leaves and fern fronds slapping at my arms, and into the cleared area where Orlando Desmond’s swimming pool was. Overhead was a latticed roof, to keep the direct rays of the sun out — or to beep people living above from staring in. The pool was free-form, large, the water clear and sparkling, blue-tinted from the reflection of the pool’s tiled walls.

Desmond sat in one of several deck chairs next to a round metal table, and standing near him, facing me and leaning back against the table, was Raven McKenna.

Let me tell you. We have come far from the day when a sight to drive men into frenzy was a girl with her shoes unlaced. We have come far — and I’ve come farther than most. But the sight of Raven McKenna in a black one-piece swimsuit was enough to make men come unlaced. She was tall, the mass of lustrous hair, heavy with water now from the pool, as black as the back of beyond; with bright lips and sparkling black, eyes, a question in the eyes and the answer on her lips; and she was curved in so many directions she looked sprained.

When Raven McKenna was born and the doctor said, “It’s a girl,” he hadn’t known the half of it. The doctor’s massive understatement had been made, I guessed, about twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, and it had been just long enough.

Desmond waved a hand casually at the girl and said, “Raven, Shell Scott.”

She smiled brilliantly and stepped toward me. The swimsuit she wore was different from most others I’d seen, and looked as if it were made from jersey. Jersey is not like most cloths, not thick and concealing; jersey is usually used for blouses or dresses, not for swimsuits; jersey is thin, soft, clinging; jersey should be used for swimsuits. Even dry that cloth would have molded itself to Raven’s body, but now soaking wet it seemed almost to follow the delicate contours of each pore, to melt into the skin.

Then Desmond finished the introduction. “Scott, Raven McKenna.”

“I remember December,” I said. “I mean, I remember Raven — How do you do, Miss McKenna?”

“Mr. Scott.” She smiled, teeth brilliant in the deep tan of her face. “How do you do? Won’t you sit down? Orlando said you want to talk to me.”

We sat around the metal table. Raven crossed her legs. Both Desmond and Raven waited for me to get on with it. Quite suddenly the type of interrogation I’d previously planned for the Wow girls assumed new and appalling dimensions. It had been much easier with Orlando. I cleared my throat.

“Miss McKenna, do you — ” I stopped. I couldn’t go through with it. Besides, she’d probably deny it anyway. I took another tack. “Can you tell me anything about Webb’s marriage?”

She frowned slightly. “Webb’s what?”

“Marriage. Two days ago, in Hawaii.”

“Married! Webb? Webley Alden?” She seemed to think I was joking.

“Uh-huh.”

“Why, no. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to find the woman he married. Thought I’d start here with you.”

Frowning, she said, “Why in the world me?”

Desmond broke in then. “That why you wanted the addresses of the twelve girls featured in Wow! this past year, Scott?”

“That’s right,” I said. “At least that’s part of it”

“And Raven’s one of the twelve, of course.”

I nodded.

Raven said, “He certainly didn’t marry me.” Suddenly she laughed, looked sideways at Orlando. They exchanged a glance, a private thing that didn’t include me, as if they had a secret I didn’t share. Undoubtedly they had plenty of secrets I didn’t share. Then, still appearing amused, she said, “I assure you, Mr. Scott, it couldn’t have been me.”

“Can you prove it? That, for example, you weren’t in Hawaii two days and more ago?”

“Of course I can prove it — if I have to. I’ve been with Orlando much of the time.” That glance between them again. “Is it so important?”

“Pretty important.”

The eyes stopped flashing and she smiled at me. “Let me know when you want proof.”

I’m not sure what I might have said then, but Desmond interrupted. He was looking at me with dawning comprehension on his handsome face. “Scott,” he said slowly. That photo … I recall now you said it was — one of the twelve, you thought?”

“That’s right.”

“Yes, I see. Well, it’s not … Raven.” He smiled with what I thought unnecessary smugness. “Couldn’t be, old man. I can guarantee it.”

He could, could he? Old man, was I? He was still smirking, sort of dopily, I thought. I felt the faint stirring of an atavistic impulse, the waggling neurons of deeply buried racial memory, a cave-mannish instinct, a faint urge …. A faint urge to hit him right in the mouth.

But he was going on. “Hope that makes your job easier, Scott. And, naturally, if I — learn anything, I’ll let you know, old man.” He was talking down to me now. “On the other hand, if you get to the bottom of this — ah, settle the matter yourself, I’d be interested in knowing what you … what the answer is.”

“Yeah.”

Raven looked from Desmond to me. “What in the world are you two talking about?”

Desmond said abruptly, “Anything else, Scott?”

It was one of the nicest ways he could have said, “Why in hell don’t you blow, bud?”

I said, “Guess that’s all for now. Thanks a lot for the info.”

Raven said to me, “Would you like a swim?”

I grinned. “Well … I didn’t bring my suit,” I said slyly.

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

I got up. Desmond shook my hand and said to call on him if there was anything else he could do. Raven stood up gracefully, walked to the edge of the pool and leaned forward. Then she gave a little jump, and dived in.

When she leaned forward, I, too, gave a little jump. I would have given much at that moment if she hadn’t been wearing the swimsuit. And it’s not what you think. At least, not entirely. Hell, maybe Desmond was lying.

I walked to the patio and out through the house and down to the Cad, thinking that at least I was making a little progress. Now whenever I thought of Raven McKenna, of December, I would see black hair and dark eyes, a black jersey swimsuit and so on. That was progress?

</code>

<code> FIVE

By seven o’clock that night I had covered a lot of ground but seemed no closer to finding my girl.

I’d located nobody at L.A. International Airport who remembered Webley Alden and his bride. I had managed to talk with the stewardess who’d been on the flight Webb and his new wife had taken from Honolulu to L.A.; she vaguely recalled Webb and a woman, but had only the haziest memory of the woman and couldn’t describe her. I’d satisfied myself that there was as yet no trace of the girl at the morgue or in local hospitals. Then, in my apartment, I tried to reach the Wow! girls by phone.

Of the twelve, the only one who lived in the Islands was Loana Kaleoha, so my first call was to her home in Honolulu. I got no answer there; but I did manage to talk with several of the girls. One, Evelyn Jans, had been married for two years, which let her out. I checked further to be certain, and she’d definitely been in Michigan for the last month and a half. She couldn’t possibly have been in Hawaii to marry Webb, so on my list I drew a line through the name of “Eve,” or November.

June’s Candice “Candy” Small was working as a model in a women’s clothing store on Hollywood Boulevard and had been present each working day for the last three weeks, so a line went through her name.

Sue Mayfair, September, lived in Hollywood. I gave her a call and she was home. She sounded very pleasant, said that she disliked the name Sue and asked me to call her Blackie. I didn’t argue; nor did I tell her why I’d called, just that I wanted to talk to her. She asked me to come by and see her. About eight? Fine, I said, about eight.

I’d learned that Miss October, Jeannette Dure, was starting an engagement tonight, Saturday, at the Club Parisienne, a small and intimate spot on Highland Avenue featuring dancing ecdysiasts — strippers — the club being only about a mile from Blackie’s address. The first show would start at nine p. m., so I could see Blackie and then have time to catch Jeannette’s act right afterwards. Little by little, I figured, I’d get there; just keep plugging away, nose to the old grindstone.

There had been no reply to my call to Pagan Page, Miss July, so I phoned the Algiers again and asked for “The Wow Girl,” which was the title each girl carried for the month during which she appeared at the hotel.

After two or three minutes a soft voice said, “hello?”

“Miss Page?”

“No, this is Charlie. Who’s this?”

“Shell Scott. But … Charlie?”

“That’s just a nickname. It’s Charlene. Charlene Lavel.”

“I thought you sounded more like a chick than a Chuck. But I understood Pagan Page was appearing at the Algiers this month.”

“She was, but I had to take over for her.”

I frowned at the phone. “What happened to Pagan?”

“All I know is that I wasn’t supposed to start here until the first of September, but Ed called me and asked if I’d come up a couple weeks early.”

“Ed Grey?”

“Yes. The boss.”

“I know. How long ago was this, Charlie?”

“Last night.”

It was like getting a small electric shock. “Last night, huh?” I said. “Where’s Pagan now?”

“I don’t know. Nobody told me anything, just that I was to start work.”

That was very odd. Each of the girls, I knew, put in a month for five grand, which isn’t hay. I wondered what had happened to Pagan, why she’d suddenly dropped out of the show.

I said to Charlie, “I’ll be in Vegas soon, probably tomorrow night. If you hear any more about Pagan, I’d much appreciate your passing it on to me then.”

“I guess I could. But probably I won’t hear anything. Want me to ask somebody?”

“No. Don’t stick your neck out. It might — and I’m serious — be very dangerous. I’ll talk to you when I get up there. Okay?”

“All right. ‘Bye.”

We hung up. I thought for a while about Ed Grey. He was a hood. But a respectable hood now, his days of personally muscling citizens largely behind him. Today he was tuxedoed, affluent, beaming. He owned — or at least fronted for — the Algiers, and I knew he made a mint from the place. And again I thought of Grey’s club in Hawaii.

I filed it all away to play with later, and got ready to call on Sue Mayfair — Blackie. Before leaving I glanced at the photos of Blackie in the September issues of Wow! Issues, plural, because Blackie had been the first Wow girl, a year ago, and consequently — in line with the policy Webb had inaugurated before his death — had started out the second year, again as September. A year ago she’d been phographed in a green and bosky glade, facing a small silver stream which trickled down a gentle slope. One leg had been outstretched, the toes dipping into the cool-looking stream, her body bent slightly to the side as though to help her keep her balance.

Now, a year later, she graced the three-page foldout in Wow! in the same pose, at the same stream. The picture had been shot from the opposite side of the stream this time, and the front view of Blackie Mayfair was almost enough to get the magazine confiscated by everybody from the local police to the Washington Senators. A strategically placed limb, bearing a few green leaves, barely forestalled official action.

Blackie was a doll. Gorgeously contoured, of course; but also with a cute gamin face showing the start of a merry smile, and fluffy brown hair loosely waved. She looked fresh and healthy, happy and free, as if she belonged in that glade, with Nature’s green around her and the silver stream to bathe in.

I glanced at my watch, then put my four-by-five print into my coat pocket and went down to the Spartan’s lobby. I took my time reaching the Cad, looking around carefully and casing the area. Nobody shot at me this time either. I tromped on the gas and headed for Blackie.

She lived in an apartment building a couple blocks off Sunset Boulevard. I took the elevator to her floor and pressed the buzzer before her apartment. It was just eight p.m.

She opened the door and smiled. “Hi. You must be Shell.”

“That’s me. I appreciate your agreeing to see me.”

“It’s a pleasure. Gee, you’re a big one, aren’t you?” She looked me up and down, then said, “Come on in, Shell.”

Blackie was a little shorter than I’d expected her to be, but she looked — and acted — warm and wonderful. She wore faded blue jeans and a heavy old cotton sweater that had shrunk enough from repeated washings, and was tight against her large breasts and little waist. She looked clean and sparkling, as if from repeated washings, too — but she hadn’t shrunk. Her hair was black, not brown as it had been in the photos I’d seen, cut fairly short but still gently waved. It was a sweet, mischievous face, with plump lips and blue eyes bright as tears.

I went inside. Soft dance music was playing from a hi-fi outfit somewhere, and there was a faintly perfumed scent to the air. Not cloying, but delicate and pleasant. Like the scented air, the living room in which we stood was soft and feminine, a comfortable blue divan with thick cushions, soft-looking chairs, a deep-piled pale blue carpet. Pastel paintings were on two of the walls. In front of the couch was a walnut coffee table, low and narrow.

We sat on the divan and talked for a few minutes, just getting-acquainted conversation. She told me that she was a model, posed for photographs sometimes, often modeled clothing, had worked part-time as a cocktail waitress and had done a little TV. She was waiting for the break, the job that would really get her started. Blackie was easy to talk to, relaxed as the jeans and sweater she wore.

“How was the month at Vegas?” I asked her.

“Algiers? Oh, that was grand. I loved it.” The bright blue eyes danced. “I’ve had a lot of offers since then. One good TV thing may come from it. You ever see the Algiers acts?”

“Strangely enough, no. Not yet.”

“Well, each of the girls who goes there from Wow! has three bits, you know, during the show. Like one of mine was, I was on stage in a beautiful evening gown. Just fabulous! Only it didn’t have anything except the front half to it. And when I turned around and walked off — well, some of the customers just squealed!”

I was becoming infected by her enthusiasm. “I’ll bet they did!” I said enthusiastically.

But then I got a grip on myself and said, “Ah, but the reason I came up here, Blackie, is because of Webley Alden.”

“What about Webb?”

“You didn’t marry him a couple of days ago, did you?”

“Marry him?” She laughed delightedly. “I didn’t many anyone a couple days ago. Why?”

“Somebody shot him twice in the back last night.”

I threw it at her purposely. And as far as I could tell, her shock was genuine. She hadn’t read the newspapers, hadn’t heard about it.

“Gee, Webb,” she said finally. “He was such a nice guy.”

“That he was.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got to have a drink after that. How about you, Shell?”

It was okay by me. She fixed me a bourbon-and-water, a gin-and-tonic for herself. Then she sat down next to me again and said, “I only saw him twice, when he took the pictures for the magazine. But I sure liked him.”

“The last time you saw him then was when he took the latest September shot?”

“Uh-huh.” She grinned. “You’ve seen them?”

“Oh, yes. That first shot was one reason I subscribed to Wow!”

“Oh, you’re sweet!”

It was hard to carry one line of conversation on to its logical conclusion with this gal, but I said, “When did Webb take the September shot? The last one.”

“Two or three months ago. Quite a while.”

“And you’re sure you haven’t seen him since then?”

“Sure I’m sure. Does it make any difference?”

“I’ll be frank, Blackie. I want to know if there’s any chance you could have met Webb in Hawaii during the last week or so. If you could have married him there, come back with him day before yesterday, and been in his house last night.” It did sound a little peculiar at this moment, but I knew it had happened. Somebody had met him and married him, come back to California with him.

Blackie looked at me. “Have you lost your marbles?”

“No.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

So she told me what she could. But the upshot of it was that she couldn’t prove anything. It was just silly, that was all. No, she hadn’t been working for the last couple weeks or so, just taking it easy, lolling around the apartment reading and resting. Waiting for a call.

“It’s been kind of dead,” she said. Then she brightened and smiled. “That’s why I thought I might be glad for you to come up, when you called. I am glad.”

I grinned at her. “So am I.”

Then I took the four-by-five color shot from my coat pocket and put it on the coffee table before her. “Just about the time Webb was shot, Blackie, he took this photo — of somebody. The girl was there when it happened. Whoever killed Webb has been trying to put a few bullets into me, too, so you can guess how important it is for me to find the girl. That one.” I pointed to the picture.

“Trying to shoot you?”

“Yeah.”

After a long pause she took the color print in her hand, looked at it. “Who is it?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m pretty sure she’s one of the Wow girls.”

“Well, I sure don’t know which one.” After a moment she said, “Gee, she’s pretty, isn’t she?”

Then she laughed. It struck me as funny, too, and we laughed together. I pointed out the freckles. Blackie didn’t know anybody with freckles. In a moment she shook her head, passed the photo back to me and I returned it to my coat pocket.

We’d finished our drinks, so without any comment she made a couple more and came back. She was frowning. “Shell, those — freckles. I know how you could find them.”

“You do?”

“Sure. Next Saturday’s the Anniversary Party, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, one of the reasons for the party is that all twelve of us girls are to be there. And they’re going to take a big picture of all of us at once — for the magazine. And all sorts of people are going to be guests.”

“Like who?”

“Well, us girls. Mr. Whittaker — he has money in the magazine and the party’s to be at his home. Orlando Desmond, naturally. Some reporters, lots of people from the magazine, editors and all. And Mr. Grey and people from the Algiers.”

“Why Grey?”

“Well, the girls always go there after their month in the magazine, you know. Besides, he wants to come.”

“Uh-huh. That figures. Who else?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“Sure. That’s how you find the freckles.”

“Do that again.”

“Well, this picture.” She grinned. “You know what Wow! is famous for.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Saturday night, all twelve girls are to be ready and pose for this fabulous picture. We all twelve line up in a row and sort of bend forward — just a little, you know. Away from the camera. Can you imagine?”

“I can see it.”

“And we’ll all be wearing turtleneck sweaters and high-heeled shoes. I almost forgot that.”

“And that’s the best part.” I blinked. “Wait! Say that again.”

“We’ll all twelve be wearing turtleneck sweaters and high-heeled shoes. That’s all. Then they take the picture for the magazine.”

“You … it’ll never be printed.”

“Maybe it will. Even if it isn’t, it ought to make a nice picture.”

Blackie had a pretty good gift for understatement, herself.

Slowly it seeped in. I went over what she’d just said, and over it once again. When the vista finally solidified in my noodle, my senses reeled. I’ll be truthful about it. I could see them there, gleaming in rosy light. Twelve of them spun around in my brain like lemons on a slot machine — only, of course, there were no lemons in this bunch. No, this was a massive jackpot, an unbelievable vista of … I shook my head and it went away. I shook my head again, but it wouldn’t come back.

“Blackie…” I said. “Blackie…”

“Yes?”

“Blackie…”

“What is it, Shell?”

“Blackie…”

“You need another drink, maybe.”

“That’s it. Boy, do I need a drink.”

She brought me a dark bourbon-and-water and I said to her, “Blackie … Ah, this is really going to happen? I mean — well — you know — all the — “

“Yes. I’ve got my costume ready already.”

“Ready already?”

“Yes. In the bedroom.”

Did I detect something sly in the tone she used? I looked at Blackie. She wrinkled her nose — and you can bet that was the only part of her that wrinkled — and smiled mischievously. I had detected something.

“Well,” I said, “that’s swell. Yes, that’s … swell.”

“I really don’t know about it,” she said. “I mean, I said I’d do it — all the girls said they’d do it — dear old Wow! and all, you know, don’t let the magazine down.”

“Well, hardly.”

“But, gee, I get all — you know, when I think about it. Just in front of a camera isn’t so bad, it seems like … like…”

“Like Wow!”

“Yes, but at the party with all those people around — maybe I chewed off more than I can bite.”

“Oh, I don’t — what?”

“It’s something a girl has to get used to. So during the day I try it on a couple times and walk around. Just to get the feel of it.”

I drank some bourbon-and-water which went down like water-and-water. “The turtleneck sweater, you mean? And high-heeled shoes?”

“Uh-huh. I figure if I do it a little at a time then I won’t be so embarrassed Saturday night.”

“That makes sense. Sort of try it out alone first?”

“Yes. Than maybe with just one person looking. Then a couple, if I can find them.”

“Oh, you can find them!”

“Then I’ll be ready for the party.”

“That’s very dear thinking, Blackie. Like wading into the water instead of splashing in all in a frenzy, like. Might keep you from getting all jazzed up and drowning, or is that …?”

“That’s exactly what I thought. So far I’ve just walked around here alone. Now I’m ready to try it with somebody.”

“Blackie…”

“You wouldn’t mind, would you, Shell?”

“Mind?”

“Helping me? I’ve just got to do something to — to overcome my shyness. Get ready for the party, and the — the big push Saturday night.”

“I’ll do anything I can, dear. You can get ready for the — the big push with me, if you’d like. I know what it is to be shy … I think. Why, it’s just like meeting the kids in school, kid, and then you maybe even like school….”

I had to stop, my mind had gone gooey on me. I didn’t know what I was saying.

“Oh, thanks, Shell,” Blackie said. “You’re a real friend.” And with that she jumped up and trotted off into the bedroom.

Before I finished my drink, which was pretty fast, she was back. I’d heard a drawer or two slam, and some soft rustling noises, and then she stuck her head around the door and peeked at me. I peeked at her.

She said, “Close your eyes, will you?”

“Close my eyes? That’s sort of defeating — “

“Just at first. So I can get, oh, into the swing of it.”

“O-h-h-h,” I said, sort of long drawn out.

“Promise?”

“Okay, I promise.”

And I closed my eyes. On a case like this, I was thinking, I suppose something like this was bound to happen. I heard her walking around, but I didn’t peek. I had given my word. And I wanted it back.

After what seemed a long, long time, when she still hadn’t told me I could open my eyes, I said, “Well, hell, you could at least describe it to me.”

“Well, it’s just like I said, Shell. I’ve got on the turtleneck sweater — it’s blue, by the way.”

“Blue.”

“Uh-huh. And high-heeled pumps. They’re blue, too. And that’s all. You know, Shell, it really feels good, too. You can feel the breeze and all.”

“I’ll bet.”

She sighed. “I guess I’m ready now.”

“I guess I’m ready now, too.”

“You can open your eyes.”

They were already halfway up. And then they went the rest of the way, almost with a snap, like defective window shades go and spin about. Blackie had just passed in front of me, going from my right to my left. She walked across the room, clear to the wall, hips swinging in the graceful, sinuous movement as old as woman and as new as I felt.

She started to turn.

Blackie, in tight blue jeans and that old sweater, had been gorgeous, shapely, more woman all by herself than in most complete chorus lines — but now, in her “costume,” she was undulatory adrenalin, an ambulatory coronary. I looked at her as she walked back across the room and past me, hips moving with that infinitely provocative sway and swing, big breasts trembling beneath the sweater.

Twice she walked the length of the room and then as she reached the far wall again I said, “Blackie, I’d better tell you something.”

She turned, her back against the wall, laughing.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

And this time she walked toward me.

</code>

<code> SIX

I made it to the Club Parisienne just in time for the second show.

After leaving Blackie I had almost decided to let the Club Parisienne go hang. At least until tomorrow night. But time was of the essence. With guys shooting at me and getting close, I couldn’t wait for the grand conclusion of my search until the Anniversary Party a week away. I couldn’t lie down on the job at this point.

No, I had to keep plugging ahead, nose to that old grindstone. Work, work, work. Ah, the life of a private eye — it’s rough. But after all, I thought, you’ve got to go sometime, and it’s a wonderful way to die. Hell, it’s a wonderful way to live!

But I was a little worried. Blackie was now positively crossed off my list. But if I kept eliminating girls this way, the girls would eliminate me. Such were the philosophical thoughts dancing in my head as I parked the Cad and started walking the half block to the Club Parisienne. And because of those thoughts I was more preoccupied than I would normally have been.

The memory of that wicked slug snapping past my head this afternoon had almost been shoved clear out of my head. I wasn’t even thinking about guns, or tough guys. So I walked right into them. Later I would wonder how it had happened that they were there, in the alley close by the Club Parisienne. Later — there wasn’t time for that kind of thinking then.

I saw the first guy, lounging against the brick of the building. It didn’t mean anything. Just a guy to me.

I was walking along Highland, and the club was thirty or forty feet ahead. Hot, loud music pulsed inside the Parisienne, loud enough to be dearly heard even here. The gaudy neon sign above the entrance spilled pale colors over the sidewalk, on the man leaning against the building; reached out softly to touch me. I was walking across the alley’s mouth. The man was just past the alley, a cigarette hanging from his lips. The alley’s darkness grew into deeper blackness on my right.

When I was centered before the alley, foot swinging forward in a step, somebody out of sight in the alley’s blackness said sharply, “Scott! Shell Scott.”

I turned to look, peered into the darkness. I felt, more than heard, the man move away from the wall on my left.

I’m an old hand at this business. I have been jumped a time or two, and if I do say so myself, I’ve learned. The hard way, maybe, but I’ve learned. Even on top of all the unarmed defense and judo training and bloody rip-gut fighting I got saturated with in my years as a Marine, I’ve had cons and muscle men and punk hoodlums in my hair, and picked up some new tricks from them. But this time I was as wide open as a Vassar sophomore. My thoughts hadn’t come back from that lotus land where they’d been floating in perfumed pastures — not, at least, as far as a dark alley and a swinging sap.

I stared into the alley. The man moved on my left. I heard him. But dimly, dully. I kept staring too long — almost too long. The sap must have been swinging down, almost against my skull, before I woke up. I moved then, in a hell of a hurry, down and to the side, legs bending and then the muscles tightening hard and tensed to spring. It helped. Not enough to get me out of the way.

The sap landed, slammed the side of my head. My movement had kept the leather-wrapped bat from hitting me solidly, squarely. The blow struck as my skull was moving away from it and I didn’t go out. But it was enough. The muscles in my legs just wouldn’t spring.

I felt my knee hit the cement beneath me. I had no memory of falling, just the sudden sharp pain in my knee. For a moment I couldn’t move. A hand slapped my coat pockets. “Got it,” the guy said softly. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was lifting the sap again. I heard him grunt. And I heard the quick shuffling of feet deeper in the alley.

Sudden alarm sent a current of energy through my body. Somehow I knew — the quiet, swift attack from the side, the quick purposeful movement of those others toward me — that this wasn’t just a beating or mugging. These guys were out to kill me.

It gave me enough strength to fall prone on the cement and roll. The sap came down silently again, but barely slapped my back as I fell. I rolled farther — into the alley. As I came over onto my knees I thudded against the legs of a man. I got one hand against the asphalt below, swung the other balled into a fist up between those legs.

The guy vomited noise, and I rolled again. This time I got onto my feet. Something flashed in the dim light, slashed toward my face. I jerked my head and it scraped my chin. I could see the man before me, not clearly, but well enough to set him up. I slapped my left hand across my body, grabbed the hard object he’d tried to fait me with, yanked up. His arm went into the air.

He was wide open for a split second. It was all the time I needed. I swung in toward him, right hand open, palm up and fingers stiff, driving for the soft, unprotected solar plexus, that vital little spot beneath the inverted V of the ribs. My fingers went in hard. Hard enough.

One soft sound he made, and then he fell. The man I’d first hit with my fist was bent double, staggering along the sidewalk, half trotting. As my eye caught him he went out of sight. I got barely a glimpse of him — past the bulk of the third man, close on my left now. I didn’t see the sap, but that third man must still have had it in his hand. The movement of his body, the dropped shoulder, told me he had it, was slamming it toward me again.

I fell backwards, kicked his kneecap. He slammed down over my other foot. I rolled to my feet, slapping the .38’s butt under my coat as he got to one knee, nipped the gun out. As he started up again, toward me, I moved my right foot out to steady myself, aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger.

The gun cracked, but the shot went past him. When I’d moved my foot it had thumped into the man lying unmoving on the asphalt, jarring me and ruining my aim. I missed, but that was enough for him. He turned and ran. I jumped to the alley’s entrance, but he was almost at a car parked down the street past the Parisienne’s neon sign. I heard the engine roar as he jumped through the car’s already open door.

The staggering guy must have made it to the car, started it, while that third man and I were still scuffling. I leveled my gun at the car, then let it drop as two men came out of the Parisienne’s entrance, weaving drunkenly. The car sped away.

I stepped back into the alley, leaned against its brick wall. Three of them there’d been. Waiting for me. Not a shot had been fired except for the one I’d triggered at the last man. Nobody seemed to have noticed the single sharp sound, half muffled in music from the club. The three who’d been here must have wanted this to be done silently, without attracting attention. It could have been handled that way. If that first blow had landed squarely, the second and third and fourth from the sap or a gun butt would have spilled my brains from the shattered skull case.

And why? Not a sound during the whole time except the scuffling, the grunts, the scrape of feet on asphalt. And the man’s yell when I’d hit him. Then I remembered the two soft words, “Got it.” I felt in my pockets.

The photo was gone. That little four-by-five color photo. I couldn’t figure it. This cold-blooded — and professional — attempt at beating a man to death? For that picture? Maybe. But there was sure more to this than I’d guessed.

I’d got a glimpse of one man’s face, the guy who’d tried to sap me, the one I’d fired at and missed. A stupid face, big loose lips. A big guy. I’d seen that face before and after a few seconds I remembered who he was. Slobbers O’Brien was his name. He was a mugg. I didn’t know who he worked for, but I knew the kind of work he did. Especially now I knew.

The two people who’d come from the Parisienne were passing the alley now, a yard or two from me. One of them stopped, stabbed his mouth with a cigarette and flicked on a lighter. The glow warmed the alley’s mouth. I looked down at the man still near my feet. He didn’t move. Probably he was dead. He had fallen hard on his face, and blood had spilled from his mouth. It lay in a glistening black pool touching his lips. There would be a lot more blood, from his burst aorta, spilled inside him. The lighter flicked out and the two men walked away.

I knelt, felt for the man’s pulse. But he was dead. I grabbed his arms, dragged him far down the alley, dumped him by a trash can. Then in the flickering fire from my lighter I looked at his face. Somewhere in my mind memory stirred. I’d seen those features, too, but I couldn’t place them. I went through his pockets. A sheaf of bills held with a metal clip, that was all. Nothing else, no identification.

I left him there, walked to the front of the club. In the brighter light at the entrance I checked my clothes, couldn’t find any rips, or smears of blood. My bead throbbed painfully, a grinding ache pulsing against my skull.

Inside the club a high-voiced master of ceremonies was saying something in a tone of sheer happiness. Then the music swelled again. I heard some whistles. Slow, draggy music with a heavy beat that’s like a trademark for a certain kind of dance, vibrated in the air.

On my right was a signboard telling some of the exciting things to be seen inside. On my left was one of the exciting things. It was a life-size photo of a lovely girl wearing, as far as I could tell, only a white-fox stole. It covered up enough of her so that you could see only that there was quite a bit of her. Slanting across the front of the photo was the name: Jeannette Dure.

Jeannette. October.

And into my mind, bang, a long-limbed, lissome, lovely lass lying on her side — back to the camera, of course — front to the leaping red flames in an open fireplace. Everything was red, the fire, the highlights in her rusty brown hair, the sheen of her skin, even the shadows of the dusky room were suffused with the reddish glow. It was the kind of item the devil would keep in a separate room of hell — adjoining his own.

I lit a cigarette, dragged the smoke deep, and went inside.

</code>

<code> SEVEN

The Club Parisienne looked about as much like Paris as I look like Whistler’s Mother.

I think it was one of those deals where the new management takes over and keeps the old sign to save on expenses. Though I’d not previously visited the Parisienne, I had heard about it. That’s why I hadn’t visited it.

This had come to be the end of the line for gals who had stripped, and stripped, and stripped, until it just wasn’t worth it any more, whereupon they had taken their sock full of money and retired to a farm someplace with their old G-strings and memories. Once in a while it was even suspected that some of the gals had come back to the Parisienne from the farm. It got so bad that when a girl came out to dance the customers didn’t yell, “Take it off!” but “Keep it on!”

Until about three months ago, that is. Then the management had inaugurated the policy of paying one good gal good money to put on an act which would at least take a customer’s eyes off the ice in his glass. The reason? Nobody was coming to the Club Parisienne any more. So, innovation. Nothing else had changed, the usual gals stomped about and cracked their joints waggishly, but now there was something, not just to listen to, but to see.

Three months ago, I’d heard: good. Two months ago: great. Last month: terrific. And now: Jeannette Dure. Jeannette Dure, the prize of the pack, the pick of the peelers, the peak of the peek. Jeannette Dure — October.

Here, the girls danced on the bar. Here, whatever the girls did, they did it on the bar. The ceiling was low, and when the gals really got wound up they could put their arms over their heads and press their hands on the ceiling for leverage. It was, understandably, a pretty wide bar. It was also U-shaped, and there was a lot of it. But not a stool was empty. And to see what I had come to see, it wouldn’t do to be way off at one of the tables. I found the headwaiter.

Yes, I wanted a seat at the bar; no, I didn’t want to kick some poor devotee of the dance away; yes, I had ten dollars. Lovely, an extra stool squeezed in at the bar would be lovely.

So I sat at the bar between two guys who may not even have known I’d squeezed in, and ordered a drink. The two guys were looking, not at the gal dancing, but at the entrance through which — soon, now, their hopefully bugging gazes told me — Jeannette would sinuously glide.

I could understand why they weren’t watching the current performer. The current performer was about out of current. She had by now taken off all her clothes except for the bare minimum required by law, but even without it this gal would have had the bare minimum required by law. She was acting pretty sporty up there, but she had no visible means of sport; and she didn’t look nude, she just looked bald.

I closed my eyes, gulped some bourbon, thinking: here’s not looking at you, baby; and when I opened them she was gone. Down went the music, on came the happy M. C., on with him and up with the music.

From the draped curtain yards to my left, and onto the bar, came a woman. Jeannette? No, not Jeannette. This was not October. Or if it was, it was October of 1897, which was a bad year to begin with. She sidled around with a sort of “Oh, pfui!” attitude, to the strains of Oriental music. She started out in an Egyptian costume, and she should have left while she was merely behind. This one looked like Big Egypt. I figured her measurements were about 40-30-40, but, unfortunately, not in that order.

It ended. All things pass. It seemed to take a hell of a time, though. And then down with the music, on with the M. C., off with him. And up with the music.

But this time there was a difference.

Even the music had a different beat. It was a slow, sweet melody I’d never heard before. Sweet, but with. a hot gut-bucket rasp barely audible, weaving through it like whispers in a bedroom; the sweetness of sex, the rasp of a voice tight in a soft throat. The curtains parted on my left, and Jeannette was there. Still in shadow, dim, not dearly visible. But the white fox wrap bloomed in the dark.

Then she came on. Slowly, proudly, with a flair and an air of unconcern, almost as if she were alone and these hundreds of hot eyes were not upon her. She strutted, nude flesh gleaming where the white stole didn’t hide it, long brown hair forward over one shoulder, long lovely legs flashing with each strong step.

You wouldn’t think a woman could do what she was doing. Could step out onto a bar — not a stage or dance floor — a bar, ringed with guys breathing beerily through open mouths, lusting for her even now when she’d not completed even a quarter circuit of the track, in a dive, a dump, following the women who’d just been out here before her, and still look like a queen. But she did it. There were no yells, no whistles. The men sat quietly, just looking.

She was beautiful, with high cheekbones and full parted lips, she had a marvelous figure, yes; but she had something more. She had authority, command. And she liked what she was doing. I liked it, too.

She walked once around the bar, moving the white fox over her skin like a caress, as if it gave her a sensual pleasure that thrilled her from head to toes, and in between, especially in between. Then her movements quickened a little, the white wrap moved farther from her body, more daringly. I’d have sworn she had nothing on under the wrap, nothing at all, but I might have been wrong. She never completely got rid of the white fox stile, but at the end it was only a prop, a flailing white blur in the soft lights. Jeannette seemed to tremble, to quiver, more an emotion than a movement, as if a shudder started inside her, reached her flesh, reached all of us watching her.

She was out there quite a while. She was the star, what everyone had come to see. At the end she was motionless for a moment, limp, appearing exhausted. But then she straightened up, the firm breasts thrust forward, light caught the smoothly flaring hips, and she walked off. Unconcerned again, trailing the white fur behind her.

The place started thinning out fast. I’d seen what I’d come to see, and there had been a spotlight on part of Jeannette part of the time. She was in the clear. But I went back and talked to her, to be sure. No, she hadn’t married Webley Alden. No, she hadn’t posed for a picture lately. Of course, I’d already known that. But it was a lovely talk.

I left, after the crowd. Then I crossed Jeannette Dure, October, off my list.

And put her down on another one.

The next morning, Sunday, I woke up, after eight hours of sleep, with that glad-to-be-alive feeling. I wondered why for a bit, then realized it was because I wasn’t dead.

My head hurt, my knee hurt — I hurt in several places. But I was alive and ready to go again. No bullet holes were in me. Today, I thought, to the Algiers. To Charlene Lavel — and Ed Grey. But first I had a chore.

That dead face I’d seen in the alley last night, I had seen somewhere when it was alive, I felt sure. And if the man was, as I also felt sure, a hoodlum of any local note or renown, then his chops should be in the Mugg File down at the LAPD Along with Slobbers O’Brien.

So after a breakfast of coffee and sticky mush, I headed down the Hollywood Freeway toward L.A. and the Los Angeles Police Building. It took me three hours, flipping the big pages of the Mugg Books, looking at the faces. Ugly faces, handsome faces, every kind of faces. And then I saw him. The guy in the alley.

His name was Danny Ax. Twice arrested for homicide, twice acquitted. Arrested on ADW, acquitted. Assault, charges dropped. One bit at San Quentin for shooting a man in the stomach. The man lived. Danny got out in a year and a day. He wouldn’t get out this time.

And then the memory threads tied in their knot. I remembered where I’d seen him, where I’d heard the name. Las Vegas. Supposed to work for Ed Grey.

I’ve always liked the drive from L.A. to Vegas. Through only a few towns after San Bernardino, but a lot of flat, dry desert, much of it on four-lane freeways. Then, like a concrete and neon oasis: Fabulous Las Vegas.

That’s what they call it there. And they’re right. It is fabulous. The town is lousy with hoods, but there are a lot of good, clean people there, too — most of them, in fact. The citizens of the city are like citizens anywhere else, with kids, schools, a whole raft of churches, up in the morning and to bed at night like the rest of us. But the town never sleeps. The clubs stay open, the wheels spinning. All night long the money pours over the tables; the white, powdered breasts spill over the low-cut gowns; the liquor flows over the bars. Old women play slot machines for hours, wearing gloves to protect their withered hands.

But you can’t help getting caught up in the pleasant tension, the telepathy of excitement, the sense of big things doing, something always going on. I don’t gamble much; in a goofy kind of way I like to earn my dough, not win it. But I love to stand at the wheels or crap tables, placing a bet now and then, and drinking in the pulse of the town, smelling it, feeling it at the base of my spine.

I had a little different feeling this time, as I came over the flat desert down the long road that ends in the Strip. A tightness at the base of my skull and in the muscles of my back. There was too little I knew about what was going on. Why the kidnaping … murder … shots at me. And that alley play last night.

The case was getting more complex, not the simple affair it had at first appeared to be. I had by now either talked to by phone or seen nine of the Wow girls. All of them had denied any knowledge of Webb’s marriage. So either the girl I was after was one of the three I’d been unable to contact — Loana Kaleoha, Dorothy Lasswell, Pagan Page — or else one of the nine others was lying. Or…

An odd thought struck me then. Or Webb himself had been lying.

But that didn’t make sense, and I shrugged it off. Maybe Charlene Lavel could tell me a little more. I drove past the Dunes, Sands, Flamingo. Up ahead I could see the top of the Algiers. Ed Grey’s little 500-room hideaway. Where the Wow girls wowed ‘em.

Let me tell you how it happened that the girls went from the pages of Wow! to the stage of the Algiers. It’s a short story of now, of this year, and of Las Vegas today. Las Vegas keeps getting just a little bolder. A little more push of the customer instead of pull. A little more naked. A little harder. And the Algiers is a big part of it.

It started when the Vegas clubs had a little war, sort of friendly. As more and more hotels went up on the Strip, competition for the tourist and gambling money got more intense. The shows in places like the Riviera, Desert Inn, El Rancho Vegas, all the rest, were what pulled the money-spenders into the clubs. The club with the best-pulling show usually pulled in the most gamblers. And that’s where the money is on the Strip, in gambling, from the gamblers.

Soon the club owners were spending so much money for the shows, the top acts, that it would have been difficult for them to pay more without printing it themselves. An agreed-upon price ceiling went out the window fast. Show costs soared. Something else was needed. The next angle was to add something to the show itself.

Came the Stardust Hotel — and the Lido de Paris. The shapely femmes from France.

When the first bare-breasted French lovely cavorted out onto the Stardust stage, U.S. entertainment history was made. Bare breasts, ah … how to fight this? Another club followed with bare-breasted showgirls, then another. It was still good fun, but the novelty was wearing off. It wasn’t an exclusive drawing card any more. What next? Where would it all end?

You guessed it. Ed Grey subscribed to Wow!

When he lamped that first glorious behind beckoning so coyly and yet shockingly from the pages of Wow! a great light went off in his head. It is said that, in the presence of three witnesses, he leaped straight up in the air shouting:

“That’s it! That’s it! Fannies!”

It was thought for a while that Grey would have to be put away, be put under observation — but it was not Ed Grey that was put under observation. No, then it was that he and Webley Alden got their heads together. Came the agreement whereby for five thousand dollars a month the Wow girl would, immediately following her appearance in the magazine, when interest was at its peak, so to speak, grace the stage of Ed Grey’s Algiers.

Well, you know how it worked out. The girls were a huge success. It became necessary to tip headwaiters as much as forty dollars for a good seat. It was a natural. Built-in publicity for both the magazine and Algiers. So far, Grey’s was the only club which featured … well, what Grey’s club featured. But soon, inevitably, others would invade the field. Grey didn’t have a patent on it. So in a few more months the novelty, the exclusiveness, would wear off again.

And, I wondered: what next?

I pulled into the curving drive before the enormous and ornate facade of the Algiers.

I’d been here before, but only as a stop on the Strip, while roaming the town, hitting the bars and clubs. I’d even seen Ed Grey, though we hadn’t met. Always smooth, well-groomed, slim as a dancer, he moved sometimes through the rooms, looking over the house and estimating the take. He was affable, smiling, but he’d never spoken to me. He was going to speak to me this time.

The Algiers was big, not the biggest spot on the Strip, but it had 500 rooms for guests, and offered plenty of entertainment. The big room, for the dinner crowd and main show, was the Arabian Room, which would seat over a thousand people; and there were three smaller cocktail lounges, the Casbah. African Room, and the Oran Bar. The hotel’s facade was modern-Vegas, a lot of rock in shades of brown and beige, vertical yard-wide strips of wood running up and down its face, sand color alternating with charcoal. A bit gaudy. But Las Vegas is a bit gaudy.

It was about seven-thirty p.m. when I parked my Cadillac in front of the Algiers. Five minutes later I had a drink in the Oran Bar, then started looking for a guy named Dutch, one of my friends who worked the Vegas clubs. I knew he was currently here at the Algiers — more important, he had eyes and ears that didn’t miss a thing, plus the inquisitiveness and curiosity of a writer. If there was news to be had, I could get it from Dutch.

The entire center of the Algiers was one huge oval room filled with roulette wheels, dice and blackjack tables, slot machines lining the walls — all the accouterments of easy money the hard way. The Arabian Room and smaller lounges all were reached from the central gambling area. In order to eat or get a drink or see a show, the customers had to pass by and among the wheels and tables on their way in, pass them again on their way out.

And all the long way in and out they listened to the click of the little ivory roulette ball, the cry. “There’s a winner!” the laughter and drunken conversation of sober people, the even louder cries and whoops of drunks, the whir of the slots — the Algiers siren song. But here there were no masts to chain yourself to, and these cats were none so strong as Ulysses.

So a lot of fun was had in the Algiers. But a lot of money was lost here, too. A lot of self-respect. A lot of wives, and husbands. A lot of dreams.

I got a few silver dollars from a redhead at one of the change booths. Her green eyes were heavily ringed with dark pencil, thin painted lines slanting up at their corners to make them look even larger, her dress green velveteen cut very low. Her big green eyes looked tired; her big half-bare breasts looked bored. As if they’d been the life of too many parties, and known too many small deaths of mornings after. She smiled at me and said “Hi,” and I said “Hi,” and walked away.

It started settling in my bones then. This wasn’t going to be a happy trip. The people milled around me, the wheels gleamed in the light, laughter spilled on the air. But I couldn’t shake the feeling.

I wandered around. My silver dollars melted away, foolishly in the slot machines, a bit less foolishly on number seven at roulette. Then I spotted the guy I knew, short, square-faced, happy-go-lucky Dutch. He was dealing at one of the dice tables. I got some five-dollar chips, stepped up to the table near him.

His fingers moved like a magician’s as he stacked chips, pushed two short stacks to a winner, relaxed. He caught my eye then, raised a brow and nodded but didn’t speak.

The stick man, wielding his long L-shaped stick expertly, scooped in the dice, passed them down to a fat man. “They’re coming out,” he said.

The next shooter was fat, but he had a pinched face and a worried expression. He didn’t look like a winner to me. “Twenty dollars they don’t pass,” I said, and dropped four of my chips on the Don’t Pass line.

He rolled a nine. Then five … five … eight … seven,

“Seven a loser,” the stick man said.

Dutch added four more chips to mine. “Buy you a drink?” I said.

“Sure.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve been on third base ten minutes now. Ten more and I get a twenty-minute break. How you been, boy?”

He didn’t expect an answer. I left my money on the Don’t Pass line. The next shooter rolled a four and then a seven. I picked up my eighty bucks, told Dutch I’d be in the Oran Bar, and left.

When Dutch slid onto the black leather stool next to me he’d sloughed off his job like a snake leaving its skin. He was relaxed and grinning. “Out amongst ‘em again. Shell, you old rip?”

“Business, Dutch. I’m about to please Ed Gray like cyanide in his soup. You might get a little poisoned yourself just being seen with me.”

“Ah, nuts to them all. I can always go back to the farm.”

It was a standard phrase of his. Except for his work here on the Strip, the only time he’d been outside the city limits of anyplace was when on his way to another city. But at least he wasn’t worried about talking to me.

So I said, “What’s with Danny Ax and Slobbers O’Brien?”

“What’s with ‘em? I don’t know, chum. They hang around here to fetch and carry for Ed. Bums, both of them. I wish that Ax cat would drop dead.”

“He did. Last night in an alley.”

“Who what?”

“I leaned on him too hard in a soft spot. He was at the moment trying to beat my brains out. Along with Slobbers and another egg. I didn’t catch his name.”

Dutch whistled softly. “Then what in hell are you doin’ here?”

“They do work for Ed Grey? Slobbers too?”

“Yeah. Some work they do.”

“So I’ve got to ask Ed about that.”

“Ask Ed?” He pulled his brows down and looked straight at me. “Scott, if the squirrels around here are smart, they’ll store you away for winter. Don’t let Grey’s looks fool you.”

“They don’t.” I knew what Dutch meant. Grey could be a nasty surprise, like breaking a tooth on a marshmallow. He didn’t look tough, but he was. His boys did jobs for him, but nothing he couldn’t do as well — or better — himself.

I went on, “How about this Pagan Page? I get the word somebody had to replace her. How come?”

“I don’t know. She was here till Friday night.” He thought a minute. “Actually, the night before was her last show. She did the Thursday night shows, and Charlie started Saturday. Nobody did the bits Friday night.”

“No word why she left so all-of-a-sudden?”

He shook his head.

“And you haven’t seen her around, heard anything about her since?”

“Not a whisper. Maybe she and Ed had a beef. Lovers’ quarrel.”

“Lovers? Was it like that?”

“Ed is like that. He likes variety. But he gave her the orchid-and-champagne campaign, pretty trinkets — the lavish Ed Grey act. He’s good at it. It usually works.”

“Did it work with Pagan?”

He rubbed a finger alongside his nose. “You’ve got me. All I know is they spent a lot of time together. But Ed’s always spending a lot of time together — with somebody. Just so it’s not his wife.”

“That’s right, I’d forgotten he was a married man.”

“So has Ed.” Dutch glanced past me. “You mentioned Charlie. There she is. A lot of the gals come in about this time for a drink or two before the first show. It’s at nine.”

It was just eight p.m. now. I looked toward the front of the room. A striking redhead was coming in the door. She was a big girl, naming red hair cut short, a pretty rather than beautiful face. She wore a smoothly-fitting white-nylon cocktail dress with thin rhinestone-beaded straps over her bare shoulders.

She walked past us and down toward the other end of the bar, slid onto a stool. She was Just close enough so I could hear her say, “Fix me a martini, Tom. Dry. No vermouth.”

“Show’s going great,” Dutch said to me.

“So I’ve heard.”

“No kidding, this is the biggest thing that’s hit Vegas yet. If the Arabian Room was twice as big we could fill it. Especially if we had another month like February.”

“What was so special about February?”

“Biggest draw we ever had, that’s all. Even bigger than the month before when that Raven dish was here with Orlando Desmond.”

“Desmond? I heard he did a month or so in the club. He was here when Raven McKenna starred, huh?”

“Yeah. Em-ceed and sang. Sang — he sounds like Little Bo Peep, don’t he?”

“I’m on your side. Tell me more about those big months.”

Raven McKenna was Wow!‘s Miss December, and thus would have appeared here in January. So in February it would have been Miss January. January, bang, a black-haired lovely lying nude on the black lava sands of Hawaii’s Kalapana Beach, face down and a long brush of hair hiding her face. White froth of surf bubbling up her rounded brown calves. Loana Kaleoha.

Dutch was saying, “The McKenna dish was here the fourth month, when the thing was building up. It was great, all right, and the money poured in. Never better since, except for when that Hawaiian honey was here. Kalu — Kala — “

“Loana.”

“Yeah. Oh, brother. I’ve been here a year and a half. I’ve seen them all. But that one is not to be believed.”

“It would be pretty hard to top Raven McKenna, Dutch. Or even Blackie, Sue Mayfair, if you ask me.”

He was nodding vigorously. “True, true. But the prize still goes to Loana.”

“This January show. Anybody notice Desmond?”

“The babes, they all go for him. Even like his singing. He’s a pretty good draw himself — maybe it’s the way he wiggles his lips when those noises come out. But I noticed him. He dropped a lump. Several lumps.”

“At your table?”

“At all the tables. He couldn’t even hit cherries on the nickel slots.”

“He drop much?”

“Many G’s, I hear. Many G’s. One of the big ones.”

“Pin it down.”

“I’d have to guess.”

“So guess.”

“Maybe a hundred thou. Could’ve been more. Like I said, one of the big ones.”

“This was during his M.C. job here, huh?”

“And since, half a dozen times. You know, they get the fever. And they always come back to get even.”

“Did Desmond? Get even, I mean?”

Dutch shrugged. “He must’ve. When they get into Ed for that much, he takes a personal interest — and I guess you know how personal Ed can get.”

“Sometimes he gets so personal he kills you. You know if he put any pressure on Desmond? That kind of pressure?”

“Maybe. Those are always private conversations, chum. But he talked a time or two to Desmond I know, and the boy came out of the office looking scared white.” Dutch swallowed some of his drink. “That’s how come I figure Desmond must have managed to pay off. He’s still around, still pretty. Besides, he got lucky a time or two at the tables after that. Not as lucky as he was unlucky, maybe, but it probably helped.”

“Did any of this happen just recently, Dutch? The last week or so? Even the last few weeks?”

“No. This was all two, three months back. Desmond did a free month here about April or May. Ordinarily he’d have pulled down maybe thirty thousand for a month, but the scuttlebutt is it went to cover his losses.”

“Did you see Webley Alden up here much?”

“Alden?” The brows came down again. “I heard. That’s what’s on your mind, huh?”

“Part of it. A lot of it. Did Webb come around?”

“Few times. Maybe he dropped some lumps, but so what? He uses gold like it’s brass. Did, anyway. He wouldn’t have missed a ton or so. Besides, he was never one of the plungers.”

Dutch glanced at his watch. “Got to go.” He paused. “You’re really going to play it hard with Ed?”

“I’m not going to hug and kiss him.”

Dutch looked at me and said cheerfully, “Well, it’s not so bad, Scott.” He grinned. “After all, you’ve got a whole life behind you.”

I scowled at his retreating back, then walked along the bar and stopped next to the ample redhead. “Hello,” I said. “Charlene Lavel?”

She was cool. “I’m Miss Lavel.”

“I’m Shell Scott. May I buy you a martini? Dry?”

The ice thawed. “Oh, I talked to you on the phone. I thought maybe you’d seen the act last night and — wanted to get to know it better.”

I laughed. “I haven’t seen it, Miss Lavel. But wild hearses couldn’t keep me away tonight. I’ll be ringside.”

“Charlie. Forget that Miss Lavel jazz.” She looked me over and said, “You can buy me that drink, Mr. Scott.”

“Shell.”

We worked into the drinks with casual conversation, then I mentioned Webb. Since talking to me, Charlie had read about his murder, but said she knew nothing of his marriage or anything else, only what the papers had reported. And the news stories had carried only details of the murder and murder scene, not the info I’d given Farley and the Medina police.

Then Charlie said, “I didn’t ask any questions about Pagan, Shell. I got to thinking of what you’d said about it could be dangerous. And just the act I do is danger enough for me.”

I grinned. “When I told you that, I was guessing. But I’m not guessing any more. So don’t ask questions of anybody. It’s enough if you tell me what you know now.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really know anything. Ed called me Friday night. Asked me to fill in for Pagan.”

“He say anything about why she couldn’t finish her month?”

“No. Just that I’d have to be ready the next night. Wanted me for the midnight show Friday, but I couldn’t make it. He also said he’d pay me as much for the two-week fill-in as for the whole month of September. Another five thousand — that was all I needed to hear.”

The rest of it was merely an echo of what I’d already heard from Dutch. No news of Pagan since then. Charlie didn’t much like Ed Grey, but she sure liked ten thousand dollars.

“That Ed’s a little too smooth,” she said. Then she smiled at me. “I like a few rough edges on a man.”

“What’s Grey like? Around you, and the girls, I mean.”

“Slick as oil. I can tell you that much after being up here two days. Never comes right out with anything, not in so many words. But you can’t miss the message. I mean, he doesn’t reach out and grab you. But you always think he’s going to.”

“He’s married, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but I don’t think it bothers him. I guess when they said ‘I do’ he put the ring in her nose. I hear she’s a little mouse. Don’t get me wrong, Ed hasn’t really pulled anything with me. I just know he would if I unlocked the door.” She smiled. “Woman’s intuition maybe.”

I looked at my watch. “I’d better try to get a table for the show, Charlie. I’ve got a hunch…” I stopped. The last thing she’d said stuck in my mind. “What was that about unlocking the door? Figure of speech?”

“No. I guess you wouldn’t know about that.” She finished her Martini. “When the girls from the magazine first started here, the good dressing rooms were all in use — we were something new, you know, in addition to the acts already here. So they fixed up a big beautiful room for us, best of them all. Real star stuff. Next to Ed’s office — I think it was part of his office once. Anyway, there’s a connecting door.” She grinned. “That’s the one I keep locked.”

“Uh-huh.” I wondered how many of the other girls had kept it locked.

I thanked Charlie for her help and said I’d see her later.

“You’ll see me, all right,” she said grinning.

Before nine o’clock I’d asked for Ed Grey a couple of times and been told he wasn’t at the club yet; and I had a table in the Arabian Room. But it was not, as I had so optimistically told Charlie my table would be, at ringside. It was way the hell in back and off to the side. I had a feeling that the show was in Las Vegas and I was sitting in Reno. Bills peeking from my palm had no effect on the captain; there was nothing he could do at this late hour, he said.

I went out to the Cad, in the luggage compartment of which I keep numerous items of equipment useful in my work. The item useful tonight was a small pair of binoculars which folded up into a small box about the size and shape of a cigarette case. I dropped it into my pocket, went back to my table in Reno, and ordered dinner.

Dinner was fair, the service threatening, and the show was great. I finished eating before the first segment of Charlie’s act, and ordered coffee. Then Charlie came on. Her first bit was simple. She merely took off her clothes. Strike the “merely.”

The gimmick was that she started the act wearing street clothes — trim gray business suit and white blouse, high-heeled shoes and nylons, pink underthings — and the action took place in what looked much like a normal well-furnished bedroom. A gal doing a strip, taking off the fancy outfits you see in burlesque clubs, prancing about the stage and emitting high-pitched noises the while, that is one thing. But a luscious, healthy, marvelously stacked gal disrobing in her bedroom, that is another. In effect we were all turned into Peeping People, watching Charlene Lavel take off her clothes in her bedroom. Only, somehow, it was legal.

Came a moment when Charlie was clad only in the briefest of pink step-ins, and it was clear that soon they were going to be step-outs. When she placed her hands at their top, sort of dilly-dallying around with them in horrendously titillating fashion, I got out my little collapsible binoculars.

I felt pretty sure about Charlie already; but what it boiled down to now was freckles. Charlie’s back was to the audience, though it seems doltish to refer to the view Charlie presented as her back, and her hands moved on the pink nylon top of the step-ins.

Down they went, down, down they slid … then just a bit more dilly-dallying … and down, down…. all … the … way down. She stepped from the pink wisp of cloth, stood erect and stretched as if yawning. But you can bet nobody else was yawning. Then she bent forward to pick up the step-ins from the floor.

I was madly twirling the focusing dial on my binoculars. Something was wiggling up there. Zoom, there it was! Just a bit blurred yet, then sharp — and blurred again. Too far! I twirled the knurled dial back. Ah! I had it. Never before had I realized how immensely powerful these little bits of binoculars were. From about four inches away I searched for freckles. Not a one, not a one. Good old Charlie! I mentally cried. I knew she was a good one. No freckles on Charlie.

It seemed suddenly brighter. I thought maybe my eyes had busted, but then I heard a whooping sound from very near. I realized Charlie was no longer in my binoculars and glanced toward the whoop, and wished I was no longer in my binoculars.

Two tables away a fat, lard-faced guy was pointing at me and whooping something. Heads at other tables turned. People looked at me and appeared to be greatly amused.

I snapped my binoculars shut and, since the thing does look a bit like a cigarette case, snatched at it as if plucking cigarettes from it. It was no use. I wasn’t fooling anybody. I looked guilty. I felt guilty. Hell, I was guilty.

An uneasy moment; it got worse. Because of the pointing and such, heads had turned, and one of the heads was at a table next to the wall. Not far from me.

It was a man, smooth-faced, impeccably dressed, sitting with a shapely platinum blonde. Ed Grey. He was lifting a bite of food to his mouth and when his eyes fell on me he got a look as of sudden stabbing pains. As if he’d swallowed the fork.

I dropped the binoculars into my pocket, got up and walked to Grey’s table. On the way I passed the lard-faced guy and said casually, “Were you calling me?”

He didn’t say anything. But I’ll bet it was a long, long time before he whooped. Then Ed Grey was looking up at me. Composed. Pleasant Charming.

“Mr. Scott, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But Danny Ax didn’t tell you.”

He was hard to ruffle, but that ruffled him. His face wrinkled, but he ironed it out. “What do you want, Scott?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“We can’t talk here.”

“I didn’t mean here.”

He looked at his half-empty plate, then threw his napkin on top of it. “Let’s go to my office.”

The platinum blonde spoke querulously, “But, Eddy, you can’t go off and leave — “

“Oh, shut up.”

I grinned at her. “Parting is such sweet sorrow — “

“Knock it off, Scott.” Grey was losing his usual air of affability. That was fine with me.

He stalked off. I turned to follow him as the platinum blonde, still bugging me with her big eyes, said, “What in the hell did you say?”

I waved at her and followed Ed Grey. I wasn’t about to let him talk to one or a dozen of his boys while my back was turned. Another brief act had been concluded and now Charlie was back on stage again, doing something. Even so, I didn’t look. Charlie, after all, would be here for another six weeks. And that was six weeks more than I could be sure of. I kept my eyes on Grey.

He walked through the big main room to the club’s rear, across a hallway, and into a spacious office, dark carpet on the floor, walnut-paneled walls, leather chairs and a small brown desk with a padded swivel chair behind it. On my right was another door, now closed, probably the one leading into the girls’ dressing room.

Grey sat down behind the desk and I took a chair in front of it. Ed Grey was close to six feet tall, maybe an inch less, slim. Straight brown hair lay flat on his head and a neatly trimmed brown mustache adorned his upper lip. His eyes had the hard, shiny and glassy look, of cheap artificial eyes, and were an odd bloodshot brown like curdled Coca-Cola. He wore a dark brown suit and a beige tie. His tie clasp and the too-big links in his shot-forward French cuffs looked like, and probably were, solid gold.

He said, “What do you want?”

“You know what I want. I just came here to talk to you about it.”

“Tell me more.”

“Start with Danny.”

“I don’t know any Danny.”

“Not any more you don’t. Keep sending friends like that to see me and you’ll lose friends fast. If I’m lucky.”

“Lucky.” He sneered. “I’ve heard that word a lot around here.”

“Not from me you haven’t. The Danny is — was — Danny Ax.”

He shrugged. “So?”

“Try Slobbers O’Brien then.”

“I don’t know any … what did you say his name was?”

“You know him. He works for you.”

“The hell he does. You got it wrong this time.”

He spoke vehemently, positively. I wondered if I could be wrong. I said, “Let’s talk about Pagan Page then.”

It was a shot in the dark. It landed. I couldn’t tell if it did any damage, but it stung him a little. He leaned forward sharply, one hand sliding flat on the desktop. Then he settled back in his chair. “Pagan. Now there’s a beautiful girl. Wish she could have finished her month. Supposed to be here all during August, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Why isn’t she?”

“You’ve got me. She didn’t say, just told me she was leaving. Next I knew she was gone. Had to scramble to get Charlie in.” He paused, the hard brown eyes on me. “If you just came here to talk big and tough, I’ve still got time to finish my meal. So — “

That was as far as he got. The door behind me opened and somebody came in fast. I looked around as the man walked up to the desk and leaned over it, saying, “Boss, Willie just told me he seen Shell — “

He turned and lamped me and his mouth dropped open.

Uh-huh. Slobbers O’Brien.

He was called Slobbers largely because his lips were kind of loose on his chops. In fact, they looked as if they were going to fall off. His expression said that he couldn’t get two points on an IQ test without cheating. His head didn’t come to a point, but his neck came to a lump. Slobbers O’Brien who didn’t work for Ed Grey. No, Ed didn’t even know a Slobbers O’Brien.

Slobbers gasped hugely when he saw me. Then he gasped again, much more hugely, as I came out of the chair and landed my right fist in his stomach. As he doubled over, I bounced a high hard one off his cheekbone. He went backward flailing his arms. There was a sharp sound on my right. Grey was digging into a desk drawer.

I jumped around the desk, got next to him as he yanked out a small pistol. I smacked it aside with the back of my left hand, and put everything I had into a right to the side of his head. I was a little off balance, without real leverage when I swung, but it was enough to slam him against the back of his swivel chair and send the chair over with him.

Grey sprawled on the carpet, rolled over slowly, movements not coordinated, as feet thumped in the hallway outside. I swung around as two men came in. They were in a hurry, but there were no guns in sight yet. I yanked out my .38, stepped back to the corner of the room where I could cover them all. I waited. No one spoke. Apparently there weren’t going to be more reinforcements.

So I said to the guy farthest from me, “Shut the door, friend.”

He pushed it closed with his foot. Grey got shakily to his feet, leaned forward with his hands on the desk. A discolored blotch was already showing high on his left cheek. He was going to have a beautiful black eye. Beautiful to me, not Ed Grey. He stared at me, ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

“Let me introduce you to Slobbers O’Brien,” I said to him.

Slobbers was still prone, unconscious.

Grey didn’t say anything. I could see his cheek muscles moving as he shoved his jaws together.

The other men weren’t moving at all. I recognized one of them. A mean, deadly little hoodlum called Wee Willie Wallace. The name was misleading; it sounded harmless. I knew a lot about the history of Wee Willie. He was only about four inches over five feet tall, and scrawny. A little man, but the kind of guy who sends chills up and down your spine.

He was about fifty years old, white and unhealthy-looking, the skin of his face very smooth and an odd ugly white, as if blanched and peeled like an almond. He combed his thin black hair straight back, flat on his small head. The hair looked dirty. He had white flecks like dandruff in his thin eyebrows, and the eyes of a corpse. Willie was a professional killer. Not muscle, not the lead pipe or extortion or clever con for Willie; he was a specialist. He killed people. He liked it.

Wee Willie Wallace was a classic case for Krafft-Ebing or Kinsey, Stekel or Freud. He had little use for women. He detested dirty jokes, pornography, conversations about sex. But he truly enjoyed killing, the act of killing, enjoyed it in a most peculiar way. Stated simply, whenever Willie killed a man he achieved a sexual climax. The blunt phallic bullet penetrating living flesh, ripping arteries and smashing bone, held for Willie the warped intoxication of rape. He’d worked for half a dozen mobs to my knowledge. Now he was working for Ed Grey.

The other man who’d come in with him was a stranger. I kind of wished they were all strangers. And I decided to go. I’d learned all I was going to learn here anyway. At least for now. I waved my gun toward the wall and Wee Willie and the other guy moved over there quietly.

Then, finally, Grey spoke. “Take a good look at this bastard,” he said, and his voice was like ice breaking up in Alaska. “Pass the word around. Next time you see him, no matter where it is, kill him.”

I started wondering how I’d get outside. Once on the road, in the Cad, I’d take my chances. But I wanted out in the open, not cooped up in here with no telling how many more of Grey’s guns handy. I looked around the office. As far as I could tell, the only way Grey could get in touch with people elsewhere in the club was by using the phone on his desk.

So I said to him, “Pull that phone cord loose.”

“You go to hell, punk.”

“Ed,” I said quietly, moving the gun around until it was pointed straight at him. “I’m not like you. I need a very good reason for shooting a guy. You’re not there yet. But you’re very close. The phone, Ed.”

He burned. For a while he didn’t move, just burned and glared at me. Then with a convulsive movement he grabbed the wire, yanked it free. I stepped to the door. “All of you stay in here for a while,” I said.

Then I jumped into the hall, slammed the door shut. And stood there. I even moved a little closer to the door, gun held not quite six feet up its front. It took about two seconds. Then the door was yanked open and Wee Willie Wallace started to leap into the hallway. A snub-nosed .38 revolver was in his hand, but it wasn’t pointed at me. It wasn’t going to point at me.

He stopped so suddenly his feet slipped and he cracked into the doorframe. I had to lower my Colt to get it pointed at his head, but that took no time at all. Willie froze.

He started looking even sicker than usual. He loved killing, yes; but the idea of getting killed, no. When he’d first jumped toward the hallway his lips had been loosely pulled apart, a fleck of saliva on the lower one, and there had been something like a light in his eyes. But the light went out, those eyes actually seemed to die. The eyes of a corpse get a kind of gray film over them, sink into the skull; that’s what seemed to happen to Willie’s eyes. He rolled them sideways in his pasty white face, sideways toward the bore of my gun.

I said, “You want to be with Danny, don’t you?”

He didn’t quite turn green, but he changed color.

“Back in there,” I said. “And stay in there.”

Willie’s breath hissed through tightly pressed lips like gas leaking from a balloon. He backed inside, slammed the door shut.

I put my gun away and strolled through the club. Snatches of conversation floated to my ears. A young guy and girl were sitting at a table. She reached over and hit him lightly on the lips with her fingers. He, agonized: “Hey, you hurt me on the damn mouth.” She, shocked: “Oh! You said a naughty word. I’ll never speak to you again.” He, repentant: “Let’s have another drink, honey.” She: “Oh, what the hell.” And at another table, two men talking, one saying, “Then, just as I started getting hot, I went broke.”

I reached the front door, went through it. The doorman nodded at me, and smiled. I headed for my Cad.

It was just like taking a walk.

</code>

<code> EIGHT

At ten-thirty Monday morning I was driving up Poinsettia in Medina, nearing Webb’s home.

I had found out that mail was delivered in this area at about eleven a.m. In the next delivery the films Webb had taken in Hawaii should arrive — and I meant to get them. At the beginning they hadn’t seemed very important, but now it was likely they could bring a lot more order into what was rapidly becoming compounded confusion.

First, of course, I had to get the films.

There was a lot of water in the street near Webb’s place. A police car was parked at the base of the stone steps. About half a block this side of the house a man and woman stood at the edge of the road. I pulled to a stop and leaned out.

“What’s going on up there?”

The man spoke. “Had a fire last night.” He pointed. “Where Mr. Alden lived.”

“What time was that?”

“Three, four this morning. Quite a bit of excitement for a while. Sirens, fire engines. They got it out before it burned the place down.”

That was all he knew. I thanked him and drove ahead, parked behind the police car. It was empty. I walked up the steps, knocked. A plainclothes officer came to the door and I was happy to see it was Dugan.

He shook his head when he saw me. “Shell, you’re sticking your neck out coming here. Farley thinks you set the fire.”

“He probably thinks I burned Rome. What’s the story?”

He glanced around, then gave me the info. The fire had been incendiary, set by somebody. It had started in the studio and darkroom, consumed almost everything in there and part of the bedroom before firemen arrived and put the blaze out.

I said, “What was destroyed?”

“About all the photographic equipment, files, some statues and stuff Alden picked up one place and another.”

“Including a lot of prints and negatives.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “I read the magazine myself. Hate to think of all those pretty pictures going up in smoke.”

“You’re not alone.”

I hated it more than he did, and for a different reason. I was thinking especially of twelve transparencies and prints from which featured gatefolds had been made.

“I’d like to take a look. Okay?”

Dugan was uneasy. “Farley’s out back somewhere. He sees you, he’ll have a hemorrhage.”

“That wouldn’t drive me wild with grief. But it’ll only take a minute.”

He hesitated.

So I said, “I think I know why the place was torched.”

He frowned. “Yeah? Give, then. Why?”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me out.”

I shrugged. “Four freckles.”

He didn’t believe me.

But he jerked his head, saying, “Make it snappy,” and I went in. I crossed the smoke-darkened and water-stained living room, stopped in the studio. It was a wreck, as was the darkroom. There’d be nothing useful to me here now. I looked at the spot where Webb’s body had lain that night, started to turn away. Then I stopped.

A large chunk of charred wood lay on the blackened floor. It was what the fire had left of that magnificent carved-wood Pan. At first it merely depressed me, but then I felt a little tingle at the back of my neck. I was beginning to get it.

I thanked Dugan for letting me look, and he walked down with me to the police car. That was the moment Farley chose to put in an appearance.

“Hey!” from the top of the steps. “Scott, what the hell are you doing here?”

I said quietly to Dugan, “Thanks for keeping me from slugging that lunkhead the other night. Keep him off me, or so help me I’ll bust him one this time.” I meant it, but even as I finished speaking I changed my mind. The mail truck was in sight two houses down the street. No, I wouldn’t bust Farley one.

He came storming down the steps and stopped in front of me. Grinning, he said, “Well, I told you to stay the hell away from here.”

“Oh, nuts, Farley. You can’t keep me out of Medina. I just heard about the fire — “

“I don’t give a damn what you heard, Scott.” His voice wasn’t raised, and he spoke slowly, but the words came out even more slimily than usual. “If you can’t keep out of my — “

Dugan broke in quietly, “He was just leaving, Bill. I met him at the door and, uh, told him he’d better leave.”

“He probably came back here and lit the place last night. If I could prove it … I knew we should have kept the place staked out.”

He looked at me and said something else, but I didn’t get the words. Looking beyond him, I saw the mail truck pull up before Webb’s mailbox, a few yards to the rear of my Cad. The driver leaned through the truck’s window, pulled the front of the mailbox down, then pushed the incoming mail inside it and closed the box again. I saw some letters or bills. And two square yellow boxes, easy to identify. In them would be two one-hundred-foot rolls of sixteen-millimeter Kodachrome film. Webb in Hawaii. Webb after his wedding.

Farley was still talking, his voice rising a little. “…I could run you in.”

I’d noticed something else, a little strange, I thought. A black Lincoln was parked across the street, less than a block distant and facing away from us. The guy behind the wheel had watched the progress of the mail truck, too, was still looking in this direction. I wasn’t able to make out his features. But I had a hunch if I could get close enough I’d know him.

Farley put his big hand on my arm. I shook it away. “Keep your paws off me. And stop running off at the mouth or run me in. But remember, you had me in that can of yours once and had to let me go. Try that too often and you’ll wind up sergeant again.”

His lips twitched. “Sure. You’ll have my badge. You might even ride me to Q. You’re good at that, punk.”

</code>

<code> Dugan was saying something to Farley again, but I didn’t hear the words. I was wondering how to get those films. The police would check all incoming mail, under the circumstances. Unless I got those movies now, somehow, I wouldn’t get them at all. I walked to the Cad, sat behind the wheel. Then I took my notebook and pen from my pocket, scribbled a fast note, waited till Farley was looking in the opposite direction, and stepped from the Cad again. I walked rapidly to the mailbox, opened it, grabbed the film boxes and stuck them beneath my coat, under my arm.

Farley let out a yell and came running toward me. I had the note extended in my right hand, inside the mailbox, when he grabbed my wrist.

“You bastard,” he said, veins bulging in his forehead. “What’re you doing?”

I didn’t tell him. I wanted him to figure it out for himself. Or, rather, to think he’d figured it out.

He snatched the note from my fingers and looked at it. His face got red. He looked as if he might have that hemorrhage. He crumpled the note in his hand, balled the hand into a large fist, even hauled it back an inch or two.

But then he controlled himself with an obvious effort. “All right, Scott, get out of here,” he said, almost quietly, but his voice sounding as if it were ripping his throat. “You don’t know how lucky you are. Once more, you mess in this again, I’ll fix you myself. One way or another.” He ran his tongue over his lips, but the lips stayed dry. “Beat it.”

I walked to the Cad. He didn’t stop me. The films felt like a scorpion under my arm.

All I had written was: “Dugan — if that bone-brained ass Farley is stupid enough to run me in again, call EXbrook 7-8669. Ask for Dr. Paul Anson. He’s a psychiatrist. Eight to five we can get Farley committed.”

It wasn’t particularly clever. Dr. Anson isn’t even a psychiatrist. But it had worked. Parley hadn’t asked me if I’d taken anything out of the mailbox.

I drove down the street, turned around in a driveway and drove back past Webb’s. Farley glared at me. I grinned at Farley. The black Lincoln was still in the same spot. I slowed as I went by. Two men were in the front seat of the car, but not looking at me. Looking the other way.

I was going fast enough for the tires to skid, and I hit the brakes hard, leaned on the horn. In the middle of the tire-shrieking and horn-blasting I yelled, “Look out!”

Cooperatively, they looked out. Out at me, faces leaping practically apart. The one on this side yelled, “Hey-HAA!” which didn’t really mean a thing, except that he was more than a little startled. His lips damn near flew off his face.

Yep, again. Slobbers O’Brien. The other flying-apart face was on the chap I’d seen with Wee Willie Wallace in Grey’s office last night. I drove on. They didn’t follow me. Probably they were sitting there waiting for their pants to dry out.

</code>

<code> I’d been here yesterday, briefly, to feed the guppies in their ten-gallon tank on top of the bookcase, and now I sprinkled some more dried daphnia on the water’s surface, watched the fish leap and frisk about. Several little baby guppies leaped and frisked with them. Guppies are viviparous, live bearers, breeding all the time. Not like those damned egg-laying neons.

I set up the projector and screen, darkened the office and started the film, settled back in my swivel chair. The first reel was tourist stuff, waving palms, vivid blue sea and white beaches, a fern forest. Expertly done, but not especially interesting to me at this point.

But the last fifty feet of the second reel was interesting. It was the luau and after-the-wedding shots. I ran it three times. The only person I knew or recognized was Webb himself. There was one shot of him, probably taken by his bride, wobbling and clear off center as — for some weird reason — films and snapshots taken by women almost invariably are.

But Webb was waving one arm, laughing, talking and gesticulating energetically, some kind of drink in a pineapple held in his other hand. It made me feel, for a moment, a cool rush of sadness when I saw how very happy he’d looked. But I shook the feeling off and concentrated on the rest of it.

It was easy to pick out, from the action in the films, the man who’d performed the marriage. Webb had said it was a civil ceremony, so the man wouldn’t be a minister, though he held a black Bible; probably he was a justice of the peace or judge. He was tall, even thinner than Webb, black-haired and black-browed, even dressed in a black suit, but nodding and smiling. Half a dozen guests, no more than that. The cooked pig and other food on big leaves. And Webb’s brand new young wife.

There were two brief shots of her. In one her hands were over her face, back to the camera. The other was, again, a shot of her retreating back. She wore a brightly-splashed blue and yellow dress. Not much help.

But at least I knew where to get the help now.

All I had to do was locate one or more of those guests, or the man who’d performed the marriage, in Hawaii. From them I could find out for sure who the girl was, at least what she looked like; they could identify her. I still didn’t know where the marriage had taken place, but I felt sure there’d be records somewhere in the Islands. And, of course, that’s where it had all started. Everything kept pointing back to Hawaii.

The films told me one more thing about the girl Webb had married. Her hair was black.

I took out my list again. Spring, blondes; Summer, redheads; Autumn, brunettes; Winter, black hair. Winter: December, January, February. Raven McKenna, Loana Kaleoha, and Dorothy “Dottie” Lasswell.

I hadn’t seen or talked to Loana or Dottie yet. The phone number and address I had for Dottie were San Francisco numbers, and I had called without success. Now I tried once again and got her. And got the same story I’d received from other Wow girls: she had read about Webb’s death, but it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her; she didn’t know anything about his marriage. Dottie had been working for the last month, she said, at Bimbo’s 365 Club, the theatre-restaurant on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco.

I hung up and tried to get Loana again, in Honolulu, but without any luck. She and Pagan Page were now, of the twelve girls, the only ones I hadn’t talked to. If they, when I did manage to question them, denied knowledge of Webb’s marriage or murder … what then? It would mean that one of the twelve had lied to me. Probably one of the black-haired gals — three out of twelve, I was thinking. But then I remembered Sue Mayfair. Blackie. Blackie?

She was September, Autumn, a brunette. I picked up the phone, dialed her apartment. When she answered I said, “Shell here, Blackie.”

“Oh, hello. Come on over. I’m practicing.”

“You’re — ah. I want to ask you a question.”

“Ask it here.”

“This’ll only take a minute. It … would take longer there. Look, in Wow! you’re pictured as a brunette. How come?”

“I was a brunette then. Any more questions?”

I frowned. Women are so … so simple sometimes, I thought. “Yes,” I said, “but how come your hair’s black now?”

“I dyed it.”

See? Simple. I said, “Why?”

“I need a reason?”

I said, “Goodbye, Blackie,” giving up.

“Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t you coming over?”

“I can’t at the moment.”

“When will I see you?”

“Soon, I hope. But I’ll be out of town for a few days.”

“Where?”

“Hawaii. Not for long, though.”

“Oh, Hawaii! Wish I were going.”

“Come to think of it, so do I. But I’ll give you a call when I get back.”

“Don’t miss the Anniversary Party.”

“Don’t you worry! I’ll be there.” I thought about it and added, “Somehow.”

“And I don’t want you looking at any other women at the party.”

“I … well, now. Under the circumstances, I can hardly … that’s not very — “

“Oh, silly.” She laughed merrily. “I was kidding. Of course you’ll look. That’s the whole idea.”

“Blackie, I have some serious thinking to do…”

“Well, do it. ‘Bye.” She hung up.

Ah, nuts, I thought. You can’t win with these babes. Then I smiled. But it sure is fun losing.

From my desk I got a pen and some sheets of paper. When I’d told Blackie I had some serious thinking to do, I had been serious. That figures. But I intended now to line up everything I knew or had guessed, including what I’d come up with this day, jot down all the salient points of the case and see what they looked like on paper.

Often when you get a problem down in writing it’s easier to put the separate pieces together and get a logical answer. Besides, once it’s written, you don’t have to hold all the pieces in your conscious mind — and on many occasions your subconscious, or unconscious, will dredge up the truth and ease it into your waking thoughts. It’s a technique I’ve often tried; it works. And I like to think that’s why some people call me the Unconscious Detective.

Before beginning I called L.A. International Airport and asked for space on the first flight to Hawaii I could get. A jet was leaving at eight in the morning, and I reserved a seat. Then I started writing.

I began with the information Webb had told me — marriage in Hawaii, to one of the Wow girls, flight home, kidnap and ransom call — added the time of my arrival at his home, and his murder, Friday night. I made a separate note about the big wood carving of Pan he’d brought back with him, used in the photo he’d taken immediately before his murder, the Pan now destroyed by fire. A paragraph covered the photo itself, the freckles, the loss of it in the Parisienne alley when Ed Grey’s hoods had jumped me. I hit all the other high points, then to it all added my list of the twelve names.

I had by now, after personal investigation and for the most convincing reasons, eliminated September’s Blackie, October’s Jeannette, and August’s Charlie. For other reasons I had eliminated Eve and Candy, Janie and Alma. Heavy lines were drawn through all seven of those names. Of the five remaining I had talked to all except Pagan and Loana, and the three I’d talked to had either cleared themselves, or lied. I noted that info after the appropriate names, and after Pagan Page I wrote “Missing from Algiers since the 14th.” The last notation I made was “The girl in the film taken after Webb’s wedding has black hair. Possibly dyed. Nuts.”

I had several ideas, pretty fair conclusions, I thought, and I wrote some of them down. But mainly all I was trying to do now was line up the facts. That I did, and as thoroughly as I could. I studied the whole thing for a while, the picture getting clearer. Then I folded the pages and stuck them into a desk drawer.

Before leaving I glanced through the newspaper. On the second page was a story about the discovery of a man’s body in an alley near the Club Parisienne. Apparently he’d been found too late for the story to get into the paper yesterday morning. With the peculiar logic of newspapers, the two-column cut heading the report was a picture of Jeannette Dure. The excuse was that she had been doing her act a few feet away at about the time the man must have met his death. The implication was that he might have come out of the club for air and died happy. I read on. The dead man was an ex-convict, Daniel Axminster. Police were investigating. There was no mention of Ed Grey. But neither was there mention of Shell Scott, so I came out ahead.

I flipped the pages, but nothing else interested me — until I reached, oddly enough, the movie section. Halfway down a column titled “Hollywood Highlights,” a familiar name caught my eye: Orlando Desmond.

The paragraph stated: “Your reporter has another exclusive for you today!” Needless to say, “Hollywood Highlights” was written by a woman. The paragraph continued: “Orlando Desmond, singing sweetheart of millions, and Raven McKenna, rising Magna starlet and former model, were secretly married in Las Vegas six months ago. Love blossomed between them when both were appearing at Las Vegas’ Hotel Algiers, and immediately after their Algiers engagement they were married in the ‘Little Church on the Strip.’ Following the ceremony, the lovebirds flew to Mexico City for their honeymoon. When surprised by your reporter early this morning — ” I’ll bet they were surprised, I thought — “thin and lovely Raven — ” I had it on good authority that our reporter weighed two hundred and twelve pounds — “said, ‘I’m glad it’s out. Now we can stop pretending.’”

I read that line twice. Then I read on, “Handsome heartthrob Orlando merely said, ‘Give us a break.’ Shed a tear, girls — and boys. That’s Hollywood!”

To nobody in particular I said, “That’s Hollywood!”

Married, huh? No wonder he’d been able to be so “helpful.” I remembered, too, those glances between them, as if they’d had secrets I didn’t share. But it figured. Both of them had been in the same show, and I had a rough idea of what Raven’s act must have looked like. I’d seen part of Charlie’s and, though delightful, she wasn’t really in the same class with Raven McKenna. Besides which, Orlando would have been on the stage with Raven. No wonder “Love blossomed between them.” That’s Hollywood!

I added this new info to my four pages of notes, left the newspaper on my desk, and locked the office.

I drove to Medina.

When Desmond answered the door he looked even more sleepy and tired than he had the last time I’d been here.

He said dully, “Oh, Scott.” As if he wanted to hit me on the head with a beer bottle. “You might as well come in. Everybody else has.” He was wearing a Chinese silk robe, and an air of impending collapse.

In the living room he said, “I suppose it’s about that damned column this morning.”

“Yeah. Just thought I’d check at the source. I’ll be out of here in a minute, Desmond.”

“Good.”

Raven came in from what I guessed was the bedroom. She was wearing a robe, too, shimmering white cloth hanging like a Grecian tunic and held together by a blue cord at her waist. Thin — hah.

“Hello, Mr. Scott.” She smiled wearily. “I’ll bet I can guess why you’re here. Well, it’s all in ‘Hollywood Highlights.’”

“It’s true, then.”

“Of course. I told that prying old bat — ” she smiled stiffly — “that dear reporter, I was glad she’d snooped out the story. And I am. Now we can stop sneaking around, pretending to be just good friends.” She looked at Orlando, her eyes soft.

“I’ll get out of your way,” I said. “But as long as I’m here, you might be able to give me a little help in another direction, Miss McKenna. I mean, Mrs. Desmond.”

“Sure.” She looked at Orlando again. “Mrs. Desmond. It’s about time I heard that.”

I said, “Do you know any of the other girls who were featured in the magazine? And went on to the Algiers?”

“A couple. Why?”

“How about Pagan Page?”

She shook her head, black hair brushing the white of her robe. “No, I never met her.”

I looked at Desmond, and he also shook his head.

“How about the Hawaiian girl? Loana.”

“I met her the night I left. The last night in January. There was a big party at the Algiers, and she was there. She started the next day, you know.”

“Uh-huh. Can you tell me anything else about her? Did she stay in California long?”

“I don’t know any more, Mr. Scott. She was at the party. We said hello, that’s all.” Raven paused. “She’s very beautiful, and seemed awfully nice. But that’s really all I know.”

Desmond had nothing to add. He hadn’t even caught her act. “We … had other things on our minds,” he said. “Did you want to see the girl?”

I nodded.

Raven said, “You’ll have to go to Hawaii.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Desmond said, “I gave you her address there. But she’s working now at the Pele. Just started.”

“Pele? That’s Ed Grey’s club, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“How come she’s at Grey’s place?”

“Why not? Several of the other girls have done shows at the Pele. They’ve all put in a month at the Algiers, you know — most of them jump at the chance for an expense-paid trip to Hawaii. And Loana lives there; her home’s in Honolulu.”

“Makes sense.” It did.

I thanked them and stood up to go, but Desmond said, “The reason I asked, Scott, you’ll be able to meet Loana if you want — and all the rest — at the party next week.”

“I’m afraid I can’t wait that long. But it is still on?”

“Yes. Saturday night at Sy Whittaker’s place here. I can get you in. Should be worth seeing.” He paused then, sort of glowering, looked at Raven. “Damn it, I don’t like the idea of your being there. You know what I mean!”

“You didn’t mind before,” she said.

“That was before!”

“Well, I can’t back out now.” There was a little friction building up, but then Raven laughed merrily, realizing what she’d just said. The expression had been apt.

“Well,” Desmond said shortly, “we’ve got to get back to bed.” His mouth pulled down at the corners. “I mean, we’ve been kept up half the night with this thing.”

“Thanks again. I may take you up on that Saturday invitation. If … I’m around.”

His mouth pulled down again. He glowered at Raven. Then he glowered at me. I left.

The next step, I thought, was Hawaii. It had all started there in the Islands; records would be available for inspection there. Maybe I could locate that judge, or a wedding guest. The Pele, Ed Grey’s nightclub, was near Honolulu.

Besides, Loana was there.

And I was looking forward to meeting Loana.

</code>

<code> NINE

Before turning in that night I stepped down the hall and knocked on Dr. Paul Anson’s door.

Paul is the doctor I’d mentioned in my note which Farley had grabbed. Not a psychiatrist — though well up on things psychiatric — he’s an M.D., a movie-colony doctor. Which is to say his patients number many Hollywood personalities. Which is also why he’s well up on things psychiatric. He’s also a good friend of mine, very lively outside the office.

I heard his footsteps, then the door opened.

“Shell,” he said. “Run out of bourbon again?” He was tall and rangy, with a faint resemblance to John Wayne, which resemblance he did all he could to make less faint.

“Nope,” I said. “Favor.” I had the projector and two reels of film in one hand, screen in the other. “I’m flying to Hawaii in the morning. Would you hang onto these things for me?”

He looked at them. “Ah, feelthy movies. Of course.”

“They are not feelthy movies. They’re clues. Somebody just might blow up my rooms while I’m gone, and these with it.”

“Glad your rooms are down the hall, pal.” He took the stuff from me.

“And would you look in on the neons a time or two?”

“Haven’t those little devils cooperated yet?”

I shook my head sadly. “No. I’ve … done everything I can.”

He laughed. “No mother could have done more. I’ll watch them. And I’ll feed them all for you. Of course, you’ll have to pay. Bring me back a hula skirt.”

“Done.”

“Any nice skirt will do, just so she can hula.”

“Doctor, you ask the damnedest — “

“No, seriously, a real hula skirt. One of those grass things. Little gal I know is going over on the Matsonia next month. Wants to learn to hula first. Crazy.”

“I’ll bring a couple — you can learn with her.”

I left him beaming. Obviously that thought had not occurred to him.

</code>

<code> In the Cloud Room inside the small terminal I had a cup of rich coffee and ordered ham and eggs. When the waitress brought the breakfast to my table, there was a small, delicately colored vanda orchid on my plate. It seemed to start the day right, to say in a friendly way, “Welcome to the Islands.”

I had brought along with me a small photo of Webley Alden, and magazine reproductions of photos of all twelve Wow girls. Some of those twelve shots, which I’d cut from various magazines, weren’t very good, but they were the best I’d been able to get my hands on, and much better than nothing at all. Even the ones — such as Loana’s — in which the faces were veiled by shadows or partly turned from the camera, would be enough for identification, I thought. That is, if I found anyone who had actually seen the girl with Webb, or at the wedding.

I talked to my waitress and others, numerous airline employees, men at the baggage counter and ticket window, showed my pictures. But nobody remembered Webb or any of the girls. I grabbed a cab and headed for a look at the fiftieth state, at the streets of Honolulu, the sands and sea of Waikiki. At people and places, a judge, maybe. And Loana Kaleoha.

The cab driver took me from the airport up Kamehameha Highway and into Dillingham Boulevard, and I began feeling buoyed up and energetic, enjoying the ride. The first really strong impression I got was of the remarkably clean air. Clean, clear, sweet. Lining streets we drove along were lovely bright flowers, trees in blossom, thin-trunked coconut palms with leafy fronds swaying like hula skirts in the wind. The trees and flowers were colorful as guppies, some even as bright and vivid as neons.

And I couldn’t help wishing it wasn’t a case that had brought me here, wasn’t murder and ugliness. That I was here for fun, to lie on warm sands, ride and walk the streets, swim, drink in the bars and clubs. But I got out of the cab on the corner of Queen Street and Punchbowl Street at the civic center in Honolulu, and walked into the Kapuaiwa Building — the Board of Health Building.

The Bureau of Health Statistics was on the first floor. No flowers for me there. A bright young guy with a happy smile gave me all the cooperation I could have hoped for. But no help. There simply wasn’t any record of Webley Alden’s marriage.

I asked him, “What if it was on one of the other islands? Kauai or Hawaii, say. Would the records be on those islands?”

He shook his head. “By now they should be on file here.”

“I know he was married here somewhere. I remember he said it was a civil ceremony. Maybe a justice of the peace — “

He was shaking his head again, smiling. “We have no justices of the peace here. If it was a civil ceremony it could have been performed by a circuit court judge or district court magistrate commissioned to perform marriages.”

I left, puzzled. And a little worried. I knew Webb had been married on August thirteenth. And somewhere here in the Islands. That should have been all I needed to know. I found a phone. In twenty minutes, by calling one hotel after another, I learned where Webb had stayed while here. A Webley Alden had been registered at the Hawaiian Village Hotel for a week, from August sixth through the night of August twelfth. That checked out all right. But it also made it appear that he’d spent all his time in or near Honolulu. I headed for the Hawaiian Village.

The cab drove slowly past the shiny aluminum dome at the entrance to the big pink hotel, along a cool tree-shaded drive into a lavish profusion of tropical planting, trees, brilliant flowers. The driver curved around, let me out at the entrance. Coconut palms seemed everywhere, fronds waving overhead against the blue sky. The beauty of the hotel and grounds was stunning.

So was the beauty of the girl behind the desk. She was dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired, as so many of the women were here. A red hibiscus blossom was behind her right ear. Some members of a convention had just left, a day early, and I had no trouble getting a room. As I signed the registration card an idea started growing.

The girl behind the desk was the one I’d talked to on the phone. I asked her if I could see Mr. Webley Alden’s registration card, and after a few more words she found it, handed it to me. I took Webb’s check from my wallet, put the wallet back. It was the check for a thousand dollars which he’d made out to me — how long ago? Five nights ago now. I compared his signature on it with the one on the registration card. They were the same. And another idea died a-borning.

I jammed the check into my trousers pocket, wondering what was wrong. Something was goofy about all this. I couldn’t pull the threads together. They floated in my mind like cobwebs. And I had the odd feeling that I knew enough now. If I looked at the picture in just the right way I’d see it all.

The pictures, including the one of Webb, didn’t do me any good here, either. I showed them around, asked questions, then followed a bellboy up to my room. I flopped on the bed, pulled the phone over on my chest, and called the Pele. Loana was appearing there nightly now. This would be her fourth night. She wasn’t there at this hour, but I had her home phone number. I tried it out.

She was home, just getting ready to leave, she said. I couldn’t tell much about her on the phone, except that her voice was low and sweet and soft. I told her who I was and mentioned Webley Alden’s name. She asked me how he was.

“He’s dead,” I said. “Didn’t you know?”

“Dead? Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

She sounded subdued, but not greatly shocked; about what I would have expected from someone who had not known him well. I started to tell her he’d been murdered, but decided to let that and the rest of my questions wait until I could see her.

I said, “I’d like very much to talk to you, Miss Kaleoha.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that everyone from the mainland. pronounces my name that way.”

I’d said something vaguely like: Cal-ee-Aha! Her pronunciation was more like: Kah-lay-_Oh-h …_ hah. But with a golden softness in her tone, a fluid whisper, that made it sound like another language entirely. But of course. It was another language entirely.

She added, “Please call me Loana.”

“Loana.” It rolled pleasantly on my tongue. “Could I meet you somewhere today?”

“Well, I…” She hesitated. “I’ve so many things to do this afternoon. Would tonight be all right? At the Pele?”

“Fine.”

“If you’d like. I’ll see that you have a good table. We could talk after one of my shows. I’m on at nine and eleven.”

“Nine okay?”

“Of course. You’ll have a table reserved. Just give your name to Chuck at the door. Nine, then, Mr. Scott.”

I knew that Ed Grey owned the Pele, and it didn’t seem a good idea to let any of the people there know in advance that Shell Scott was going to drop in. Not all, of course, but some of the Pele employees might be like some of the Algiers employees.

So I said, “Would you mind having that table held simply for a friend? I mean, without mentioning my name?”

“Well … all right. Just tell Chuck you’re the man I was expecting.”

“Right. By the way, call me Shell.”

“Till tonight, then, Shell.”

We hung up. I know there’s no explanation of it in physics textbooks, but I’d swear some kind of Loana-electricity came over the wires and through my ear and started recharging my battery. I said, “Whoo!” and headed for downtown Honolulu.

</code>

<code> This one was a circuit court judge who had been described to me as tall and thin, dark-haired, with a rather large beak. It sounded enough like the man I’d seen in Webb’s films that I was hopeful. I hadn’t called on him yet because he lived quite a distance out of town, well up Tantalus Drive in what I’d been told was a realty beautiful residential area. It was inland from the city — or mauka. My driver explained that few Honolulu streets run north-south or east-west, and directions are thus usually expressed as mauka, toward the inland; makai, toward the sea; waikiki, toward Diamond Head; and ewa, toward the Ewa district Northwest of Honolulu. So we headed mauka.

I’d noticed a car following us for a while.

It didn’t mean a thing to me. It was just a brown beat-up old Chevrolet sedan that I’d seen a time or two. Maybe it was because I was so completely out of my element, away from the hard, frantic streets of Los Angeles, but it never occurred to me that there might be a tail on me. Something like that seemed so unlikely here.

Besides, my ham-and-egg orchid had clearly said, “Welcome to Hawaii.”

The drive up Tantalus was beautiful. The farther we went up the mountain, the greener the view became. Trees joined branches overhead, dropping a rain of shadows in pools upon the road. At a curve, where there was a thick carpet of green grass on our right, and a great mass of fernlike trees and drooping plants that looked exotic to me, I asked the driver to stop. Hell, grass looks exotic to me.

I got out, wondering why I’d been pounding cement in smog-smothered Los Angeles when all the time this had been here. I walked over the grass toward the drooping exotic things. The brown Chevy passed my parked cab. In a minute I heard the dash of gears, as if the Chevy were maneuvering, turning around. I fingered the exotic item. The little leaves were soft, smooth. I felt like eating a hunk of it. Man, I was really about to go Hawaiian.

But then I straightened up. This was a fine way for me to be mincing about. Back to work, I thought.

But the work came back to me.

The Chevy was moving fast as it returned down Tantalus Drive. I was halfway across the grass, walking toward the cab, when the other car came level with me. The rear window of the sedan was open and a guy sat in back. Something long and tabular was sticking out of the window. I thought idly that it looked a bit like a long bean-shooter.

But not even in the flower-smelling state I’d sunk to could I fail to recognize murder when I saw it. Especially when the guy to be murdered was me. Perception was delayed a little, but it came. Awareness didn’t just filter into my brain. It slammed in. It rammed my brain and nerves like a hammer. I dug one foot into the grass, snapped my leg and leaped, diving for the ground. The rifle cracked while I was in the air and the slug whispered past my head. I hit the grass skidding, had the Colt in my hand as I heard the car’s engine-whine sing higher. Another slug spat from the rifle. It hit the grass a foot in front of my face.

The cold burn was all through me, in my gut, chilling my face, pulling at my nerves. I took my time. My glance fell over the hammer of my gun, the sight, touched the car. Gently I squeezed the trigger. Already the Chevy was too far from me, but I thumbed back the hammer for the shade of extra accuracy that would give me, eased my finger down on the trigger again.

The crack of my shots was somehow not loud here, perhaps muffled by the massed growth of shrubbery and trees. Echoes came back to me. The car was gone, fishtailing around a curve a hundred yards away.

I felt fairly sure I hadn’t hit anyone in the car. Might have hit the car itself, but I couldn’t even be certain of that. On my knees, I looked at the brown furrow in the grass. And I shook my head hard. I’d been off guard, for sure. It wouldn’t happen again. Bean-shooter, huh? Well, in a way it was. That bastard had been shooting at me, and he’d been aiming at my bean.

Only then did it filter in. Shooting at me — here? Why shoot at me? Who in Hawaii wanted to kill me? One thing was sure: somebody here did, really did, want to kill me.

I went back to the very frightened cab driver, mumbled an unbelieved explanation. We drove a little farther up Tantalus Drive and I talked to the judge. He wasn’t the one. He was just a tall thin guy with a large beak.

</code>

<code> TEN

Late in the afternoon I took a cab up fashionable Kalakaua Avenue, the main street of Waikiki, to the International Market Place.

The Market Place is not a building, but an open-air area of green grass and curving walks, many shops and booths and clubs. And it is what its name implies: International. Facing it from Kalakaua, I looked at the totem poles on my left, garishly painted, contorted faces carved upon them. Farther left and extending from the Avenue into the grounds was Don the Beachcomber’s Bora Bora Lounge, in which — according to a sign outside it — was the famous Dagger Bar. On my right was the first of many little stores and shops. This one was Polynesian, crammed with idols, wood-carvings, jewelry in glass cases, a model outrigger canoe in the front window. Beyond it, all around and in the Market Place, were other booths and shops, Korean, Japanese, Hawaiian, Philippine, and more.

Directly ahead as I looked in from the Avenue, and about fifty feet away, was a huge banyan tree. Its massive gnarled trunk was centered in the open space between the shops, and its great canopy of leafy limbs formed a roughly oval shape above. Dozens of aerial roots grew from its branches and extended down to the ground below, forming other smaller trunks. Beneath the tree was a small pool, an attractive Japanese-type bridge over it, a plume of water dancing in its center. And there appeared to be something up in the tree. It looked almost like a little house up there. A tree house? In the heart of Waikiki? I walked closer for a better look. This I had to see. At the tree’s base was a painted wooden sign. Beyond the sign there was a wood-and-bamboo gate about two feet wide and four or five feet high. A chain was looped around a post of the gate, a padlock through the chain’s links. And, believe it or not, beyond the gate reed-enclosed wooden steps led clear up into the banyan’s limb to — a tree house. I could see it up there, maybe four feet by eight feet and six or seven feet in height, a peaked roof above the walls. I wondered if somebody lived up there. I read the sign. It said:

TREE HOUSE

</code>

<code> Somehow that sign, the little tree house, gave me the biggest kick I’d had since reaching Hawaii. I didn’t have the faintest idea who Don the Beachcomber was, had never met him, but any guy with the wildness and imagination to build a couple-sized restaurant up in a tree in the heart of Waikiki … well, he got my vote.

That little house made me think of the vanda orchid on my plate this morning, the blazing orange-red poinsettias and delicate plumeria blossoms that were by now familiar to my eyes. And it made me think of Loana. All I knew of Loana was what I’d seen in a couple of photos, heard over the phone, but somehow she seemed part of the vanda orchids and plumerias, and Don the Beachcomber’s Banyan Tree House.

Three minutes later I’d talked to a handsome young guy named Skip inside the entrance of the Bora Bora Lounge and had reserved the Tree House for dinner this evening. It made me feel rather expansive, reserving a whole house — a whole tree for that matter. I paid in advance, just in case Loana went into shock at the sight of me, or couldn’t get away, or wasn’t hungry, or didn’t like tree houses. If I had to, I was going to eat up there in that dandy little house alone — although that thought made me very sad. The young guy asked my name.

And memory sent a bullet swift past my ear.

I said, “Just put it down as me and a friend.”

He put something down, without a blink. He asked me when we’d be ready for dinner — apparently they actually served a marvelous dinner up there — and I told him it would be well after nine p.m., but probably before midnight. He explained that they liked to have everything ready, the squab with a just-right, crisply-golden texture, the pupu marinated, the champagne chilled … until my tongue was hanging out moistly.

By golly, I thought, if Loana can’t make it I’ll eat both meals.

I walked on through the Market Place, soaking up the sights and sounds and smells. Then, in a simple open booth, I saw a man working on a small carving held in his big hand. He scraped the dark wood with a little curved piece of metal. Around him were heads, busts, carved animals, bookends, all kinds of carvings, all of them beautifully done. There was a small head of Pan with features much like those on the big Pan Webb had brought back from Hawaii.

I stopped and talked to the wood-carver. He was wide-shouldered, with strong hands and a strong face. His eyes looked as if they had seen all the secret places of the world, and enjoyed them all. Suddenly I realized that his face was like that face of Pan, as if he’d used his own features as a model. He was the man I’d been looking for here.

“Yes, the Pan,” he said, motionless but with his hands still poised on the small carving. “I sold it to him. Didn’t remember his name.”

“Webley Alden. Six-three or so, thin, thirty-eight years old.”

“Yes.” The wood-carver nodded. “An interesting face. I’m glad he bought the Pan. Him, not somebody else. He wasn’t like most of the others.” He grinned oddly. “That one I didn’t really want to sell. Much of me in that, much of me.”

I thought of the Pan, charred and unrecognizable now. “The man who bought your work is dead,” I said. “He was killed.”

He moved for the first time, put the little carving down. “I’m sorry.” He peered up at me. “Is that why you came here?”

“Yes. When he bought the Pan, was anybody with him?”

“A woman.”

The little shock leaped in my nerves. I showed him my pictures. He recognized Webb easily. But he looked at the others for a long time, then shook his head.

“No. I couldn’t say. I remember … an impression. But not enough to help you.”

“Tell me anything you can. What do you remember?”

He thought. “Tall, fairly tall. Beautiful body. Beautiful. A beautiful woman.” He was silent for a few seconds. “Black hair. I’m not sure of the rest. Dark eyes, maybe. Maybe blue … brown … I’m not sure. But she was beautiful.”

“Could she have been Polynesian? A Hawaiian girl?”

“I’ve no idea now. I don’t recall.”

“If you saw her again, not just a picture. Do you think you’d recognize her?”

“It’s difficult to say. So many pass by here. I might. I might not. I don’t know.”

I thanked him, told him I might talk to him again, and walked on. I was about to stop for a drink and to rest my feet when I remembered the promise I’d made to Dr. Paul Anson. Two hula skirts for Paul. Coming up. After asking at a couple of places I was sent to a small shop loaded with jewelry and sarongs, muumuus and tea-timers. They had some “grass” skirts.

A Japanese girl showed them to me. Somehow I’d expected little thin strips of grass, like weak broom straws, but these were big, long, fat green leaves. And there were a lot of them. You couldn’t see much of anything through this sort of thing.

I asked the girl, “Are they all made like this? I mean, so … un-transparent?”

She didn’t understand.

So I said, “Aren’t there any a little — wispier? With more … of less? Ah, more revealing?”

“Oh. Well, these are what most of the dancers wear.”

“They are?”

“Yes. When they do a hula. They’re made out of ti leaves.”

“That’s the kind I want. Tea leaves.”

“These are ti leaves. From the ti plant.”

Somehow we got it straightened out. There were other, more fragile skirts available elsewhere, but these were all the girl had. I bought two of them and the girl wrapped them neatly. Paul, I figured, could slice them up a little before he gave them to his gal.

</code>

<code> I beamed. Loana had more than kept her word.

The floor of the club was built in tiers, ascending higher the farther the tables were from the dance floor. No matter where customers sat, they would have a good view of the show. Not as good as mine, however. The ceiling was thatched below the wood so that the feeling was of being in a large and luxurious beach shack. Around the walls were spears and clubs, some paintings of island scenes, fish nets and oddly shaped lamps made from shells. Candles, most of them lighted, were on each table. The room was nearly filled, and the soft hum of conversation rose and fell around me.

A waiter wearing a white jacket and small plaited-straw hat handed me a menu. I looked over the list of drinks and, with the feeling that this was not a night for great caution, ordered a Panther’s Blood. I didn’t order any food. Blood would hold me till Banyan time.

My drink arrived in a tall highly polished tube of bamboo. A flower was sticking up out of the top. Even as I looked, the flower wilted. That should have warned me. It didn’t. Gayly I glugged, thirstily, in manly fashion, about half the drink. It went down like a two-hundred-proof transfusion.

I rose two inches off my chair and said, “Hoo-hah!”

I sank back, with the definite impression that I was getting numb all over. The waiter was still standing next to the table. Grinning. He’d watched this happen before. A sadist.

I said, “What’s in this curdled lava?”

“Rum,” he said, “many kinds. Vodka, Cointreau, cognac, a little fresh capsicum — “

“It’s fresh, all right.”

” — gin and vermouth.”

“Uh-huh. After it’s all made, you pour a martini on top. Nothing else in it, huh? No embalming fluid or such?”

He was still grinning. “Only the blood of a freshly-killed panther.”

“You didn’t kill this one; it’s alive. It bit me.”

He walked away, rubbing his palms together like a mad scientist. Maybe he’d made the drink; maybe he was a mad scientist. If anybody wanted something more potent than this, I thought, the waiters would have to go around with big loaded hypodermics, jabbing the customers. There just couldn’t be anything more potent than this.

But there was. I didn’t know it right then, but there was.

Loana.

The lights dimmed. I shoved my drink clear across the table, thinking I was already going blind, but it was showtime. A Polynesian M.C. came onto the floor; a spot fell on him. He talked a little, sang a little. A small girl about five feet tall did a six-foot hula. A Japanese girl sang a song almost entirely through her nose.

And then the M. C. said, “Ladies and gentlemen, malihinis and kamaainas — our lovely Loana.”

She came on. She wore a pale blue holomuu — the clinging, fitted gown which many Hawaiians wear, smooth over breasts and waist and hips, descending gracefully to the floor. The musicians, well to the rear of the floor, played a song I’d never heard before. Soft, lovely, a little sad. This was a Hawaiian dance, a hula, not Tahitian.

The floor was bare, the illumination like bright moonlight. And Loana moved like music. Hips slowly swaying, arms flowing, hands seeming to melt through the air. Her long black hair floated behind her head and brushed her shoulders and I could see her lips move as she silently mouthed the words of the song.

She was that rare thing, an entertainer who not only entertained but captured. She was magic, her movements quicksilver and moonlight, soft as winds, smooth as darkness, as she wove a spell around the audience, around me.

All that from just swinging hips and moving arms, from rippling hands, and fingers? All that, and more. The hula, when expertly done, always has a little of that special Polynesian beauty and charm that is in no other dance; but with Loana it was the true, authentic magic.

My eyes were on her, on her shadowed face and body, but around her I imagined sea and surf at night, sand beneath her bare feet, trade winds in sighing palms. All the dances of all the dark-skinned girls with flashing eyes — from the old, old days on unnamed islands until now — all moved in Loana’s blood, in her hips and hands and eyes.

When she finished the dance she bowed forward slightly, arms extended before her, hands touching. The applause burst and swelled. Loana straightened, dropped her arms, and looked straight at me, smiling.

I nodded, grinned, applauded furiously.

The M.C. came back. There was more. Another song, a guy doing a comic routine. Then a bull-muscled man in a lava lava did a sword dance, sharp knives flashing as he stamped about a fire burning in an open black-metal pot on the floor. The fire still burned there when he left.

And then Loana again. Not the Hawaiian hula this time. This time the Tahitian dance. The tempo of the music quickened, became louder, almost frenzied. With the beat of drums and click-click-click of wood on wood, the drum-like plucking of strings, the gasp of horns. Loana came onto the floor suddenly, almost running, head high, full breasts jutting forward, hips moving, rocking, rocking to the rapid beat.

Her costume wasn’t the same. Now she wore only a narrow printed cloth over her breasts, and two other strips of the same cloth at her hips, one in front and one behind, knotted together at each side. It was low on her hips, dipping below the navel in front, looking as if it must fall from her, slide down her gleaming legs.

Not the graceful hula this time. This time the wild Tahitian orgy of rippling breasts and hips and thighs, the frantic sexual attack, the hot loin-burning, lusty, Tahitian dance designed to stir the senses, fire the blood.

She moved around the floor then paused near the fire, its flames licking redly over her quivering flesh, feet planted in one spot but the rest of her body vibrating, throbbing, the cloth at her hips billowing, rippling, her breasts trembling. She spun around.

And suddenly it was over. As suddenly as it had begun, she was gone.

I didn’t move for about a minute. Then I called the waiter over. He stopped by me, grinning.

“Another Panther’s Blood, please,” I said.

Five minutes later Loana walked along the edge of the dance floor, stopped by my table. “Mr. Scott?”

I stood up and pulled out a chair. “Shell. Please sit down.”

She’d changed into another holomuu, dark blue this time, with splashes of white on it. She sat down and said easily, “What’s that?” she was pointing at my drink.

“Panther’s Blood.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yeah. There should be a sign: Not one to a customer.” She laughed and I added, “I wasn’t going to have another, but after your dances I weakened.”

She smiled. “You liked my dances then.”

I nodded.

Her smile widened. “I noticed that you seemed … sympathetic.”

“I didn’t know you could see me that well.”

“Yes, I was watching you almost all the time.”

“I didn’t realize…”

“Perhaps you weren’t looking at my eyes.”

“Yeah, uh, now that I think back…” Where do you go from there?

But now I looked at her eyes. They were velvet, almost black, like her long thick hair. Hot eyes, but there seemed a smile in them, too, as there was on her warm red lips. We talked for a few minutes, always easily, never any searching for the right word or phrase. There hadn’t been any strain or unease from the moment we’d met. And I liked to listen to her speak. Her voice on the phone had been sweet and low and soft, but it was vibrant, golden now, coming from her lips. She laughed easily, and it was quite a while before I remembered to mention Webb.

When I did, I asked her if she’d seen him when he was here in the Islands.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “He’d just arrived, he told me. I only talked to him for a few minutes — he wanted to make sure I was going to be at the Anniversary Party, that was all. I told him I would.”

“This was when he first got here? That would have been on or around the sixth or seventh?”

“Yes, about then.”

“Did he talk to you here at the club?”

“No, at my home. I’ve only been at the Pele for four nights. I started Saturday.”

“Where were you working before you came here?”

“In the Surf Room at the Trade Winds during June and July.”

“How about from the first of August until you opened here?”

She frowned slightly. “I didn’t work. Just lazed around home and on the beach, a little vacation.”

“You weren’t on the mainland at any time, then?”

“No. Why?”

I grinned. “Well, I guess you couldn’t have married Webb.”

“Married him?” She smiled, puzzled. “Of course not. I’m not married — and I didn’t know he was.”

“He got married on the thirteenth here. Flew home and was killed the night after his arrival.”

She was silent for a moment. “How was he killed?”

“Murdered.”

She drew back a little, as if in revulsion at the word. “Murdered? I thought … an accident or something.”

“No, he was shot.”

I talked to her for another few minutes, but she seemed unable to give me any help. After their meeting, she’d not seen Webb again, or even heard about him until I’d mentioned his name, she told me. I asked her about Ed Grey. She’d met him, and of course knew he owned the Pele, but hadn’t had anything to do with the man during her month at the Algiers or since. She didn’t like him at all, she said. And she didn’t know anything about Pagan Page.

Finally I dropped it, said to her, “You’ll be at the party in Medina next Saturday, then?”

“Yes, I’ll take a couple of days off, fly over and back.” She smiled. “Are you going to be there, Shell?”

“If I possibly can. If I’m not, detour to the Spartan Apartment Hotel and say hello.”

“Spartan?”

“On North Rossmore in Hollywood. That’s where I live.”

“Oh.” It was said with a rising and falling inflection, like the sweep of her long lashes up and down over her dark eyes.

I asked Loana if she wanted a drink, but she said, “Not now. After my next show, if you’re still here.”

“I’ll be here.”

“I don’t have anything to drink while I’m working. After the last show I usually have something before I eat.”

“Dinner! Ah, that reminds me. You haven’t eaten?”

“No. I never eat dinner until after the shows.”

“Then why not have it with me?”

She looked at me for a few seconds, then smiled. “I’d love to. Here?”

“I was thinking of something more — well, like a tree.”

“A what?”

“Tree. There’s the wildest little tree house — “

“Oh,” she laughed. “The Banyan Tree. In the Market Place.”

“That’s it, that’s it. Have you been down — up there?”

“No, but I’ve seen it. Oh, it looks charming! That would be wonderful, Shell.” She reached across the table and put her hand over mine.

The last of my reservations about Loana melted away. We sat and talked until shortly before eleven, when she had to get ready for the show. A couple of times we danced together on the small floor, and the vibrations from both of her previous dances must still have been in the air. In my arms she was as soft and graceful as that Hawaiian hula, but it affected me Tahitian.

Then she left me to get ready. I sat at the table and waited for the show. And thought about Loana. Thought of the beauty of her face and body. Of Loana’s golden voice and velvet eyes.

</code>

<code> So we went to Don the Beachcomber’s and inside. I confirmed our reservations for the tree, said we’d be ready in half an hour. Then we stepped across the room to the Dagger Bar and had a couple of drinks. Loana stuck to a Puka Puka and a Nui Nui, but not me. I started with a Penang Afrididi and followed it with a Cobra’s Fang. No sense at all. Or maybe I had in some weird way a premonition of what was going to happen.

Maybe I had a kind, of feverish feeling that this night was to be different from all the others in my life. Or maybe I just thought if I could handle two Panther’s Bloods I could handle anything. Those two panthers down there seemed to have spied each other and killed themselves. Or possibly I’d drowned them with the Afrididi and Cobra’s Fang. Whatever, I was feeling no pain.

Loana and I sat at the bar and yakked, and grinned at each other, and had a delightful time indeed, then walked into the adjacent Bora Bora Lounge, where our waiter was ready for us at our table. He handed me a beautiful lei made of those delicately colored and delicately scented vanda orchids, and I put it around Loana’s neck. Then she was seated in the “Queen’s Chair” — an oversized rattan chair with huge rounded back extending above her head — and the waiter told me I could prepare the pupu.

“Pupu?”

He nodded, pointed. On the table was a wee charcoal-broiler gadget, about two inches wide and three inches long. Coals, already glowing red, filled the little hibachi’s bottom. Placed inside a tube of bamboo were several bamboo skewers, bits of tender meat already upon them, still in their marinade sauce.

I flopped a couple of the skewers onto the coals, feeling very jazzy, and the waiter said, “What would you like for your complimentary drink?”

“Drink? Free?”

“Yes.”

“I … hadn’t counted on that,” I said, thinking back. I looked at Loana. She grinned happily and shrugged. “Might as well live,” I said to her.

“Might as well,” she said.

“Even if it kills us.”

“I’ll have a zombie,” she said.

“Loana! You do care!”

She laughed. “Even if it kills me.”

“OK,” I said, looking at the drink list, and recklessly ordered. “Bring me a — a Skull and Bones!”

The pupu was done on one side and I turned it over. A tall dark waitress wearing an Indian sari brought our drinks. We had a sip and started on the now-just-right bits of broiled meat. They were delicious. I piled the rest of them on. While finishing them, and more of our drinks, we looked at the little menu listing the dinner we were about to be served in the tree house. It made my mouth water.

I looked at Loana.

She looked at me.

We smacked our lips — she delicately, me boorishly.

“Let’s get up there,” she said.

“Call the waiter, call the waitress, let’s go.”

We gobbled the last of our broiled meat and had another guzzle of the drinks, waving at people. Our waiter zipped over. In another minute we were outside, standing next to a big carved idol lighted by the flame of a Hawaiian torch, under the Banyan Tree.

The white-turbaned waiter unlocked the little gate and went up the stairs first, carrying a big silver tray laden with all that wonderful food, wrapped in foil to keep it warm. Loana followed him, and I — not being stupid — followed Loana. The steps were solid underfoot, and on our right and left walls of thin bamboo formed a semi-screen around us. Below, out in the open air of the Market Place, people strolled about, looked in shops. Several were peering up now, following our progress as best they could.

Halfway up, Loana looked back over her shoulder at me.

“Isn’t this exciting, Shell?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” After all, she was not right behind Loana.

At the top of the steps our waiter stopped on a little deck or landing, held aside strips of bamboo beads, and nodded us inside the little house. I was startled when I followed Loana in. The room was small — but exquisite. Against the far wall, which was not, of course, very far away, sat a low couch. On it were heaped soft pillows, every shade of the rainbow. Before the couch was a low rectangular table, on which our waiter placed the tray of food. The champagne bucket went on the floor. Loana and I sank luxuriously into the pillows, she smiling, me grinning happily.

This, I thought, will be a night to remember.

And the waiter said, “Shall I open the champagne?”

It had been a night to remember, too — until I stepped on that damned champagne bottle.

The damned champagne bottle that sent me staggering, plunging out through the bamboo-bead curtains, clutching the hula skirt Loana had thrown me.

Out, over the rail, and down.

Cracking into limbs and things solid, whooping and grabbing at leaves….

</code>

<code> Lights were flashing behind my eyes from the bangs my head had gotten, white lights and black ones and lots of pretty colored ones. And then smack — into black.

I couldn’t have been out very long. Because there were all sorts of commotion around me when the first faint light filtered back. Those scenes which had just flitted through my mind danced there a brief moment longer, blurred and muddled, then melted into mushy grayness.

They melted away, gone completely.

I got a very queer feeling. Very queer.

Something strange was happening. A bunch of citizens were galloping around me. I didn’t know where I was or anything, and for a moment I thought maybe I was tied to a stake and these were natives racing around the fire, about to toss me in a pot and gobble me up. I had been slammed around so vigorously that, oddly enough, so far there’d been merely sight without sound. Slowly, then all of a sudden, my hearing came back. What had before been only extremely rapid motion became howling pandemonium.

Wow, the noise! It clobbered my eardrums as if they were bongos pounded by wild savages. It was the people — all those citizens — shrieking and yowling and hullabalooing. It was horrendous, horrific, astounding, like an Italian opera — all the notes at once. There were screams and wails and hoarse bellows. Dust was rising.

But I was not. No, I was not rising.

It was then I realized I was sort of waggling limply around on the ground beneath a tree, eyeballing those citizens. Drafts swept over me. I didn’t have any clothes on. I added some notes of my own to that opera, grabbed a green leafy thing that was nearby and hugged it to me as I got to my knees.

What the hell? I thought. And that was all. I couldn’t think of anything else to think. It swept over me clammily that I didn’t know where I was. Didn’t even know what I was.

Then the final, ultimate horror smacked me like a gob of wet spaghetti.

I didn’t even know who I was.

I had lost my marble!

</code>

<code> ELEVEN

That’s what it was, all right.

I had lost my mind.

I was out of my skull.

I had gone cuckoo.

I had milk of amnesia or whatever they call it. Everything got very dear to me then. I could see dearly that everything was as unclear as it could be. But I could also see the citizens plainly now — citizens of someplace. Most likely Africa, I figured. Or the wilds of Afghanistan. Some of the Afghanistanians were coming at me. Most of them were going the other way. Some were jumping up in little hops, or peering at me through wide-fingered hands.

Who am I? I thought.

The queer thing was that I seemed to know practically everything except that one item — and where I was, how I’d got here — but that was an important item. It was as if everything which had ever happened to me had been stored in one little spot in my brain, and that area had been attacked by spot remover.

But I knew those people were — people. That around me were trees and buildings and so on. That I was, in fact, sort of waggling feebly around under a huge tree going “Gah … gah!” as if I’d just been born here. And that I had sure as hell better stop going “Gah!” and simply get going.

What made up my mind conclusively was the realization, which arrived with a great sinking sensation, that maybe I had just been born here. Because I’d been flopping on the ground wearing my birthday suit.

Then I noticed the green leafy thing I was holding against me for protection. Protection for them. It was a hula skirt.

Great Scott! I cried mentally. I’m a girl!

But, no, I wasn’t either a girl. Those guys were running at me, getting close. One of them was another of those things I could remember: a cop. He was wearing a uniform and swinging a little club.

I also remembered what to do when a cop comes at you swinging a little club. I did it. I Jumped up, fastening the grass skirt, speedily but securely, around hips it had not been made to encircle, spun about and ran.

I ran to a wide car-clogged avenue and swung right, the sounds of pursuit behind me like the baying of a famished wolf pack. Feet, I said, whoever’s you are, go like crazy! They were moving wildly, carrying me along like little cheetahs. In the street, brakes squealed and horns honked. On the sidewalk ahead, open-mouthed people faded out of my way. I charged ahead, bare cheetah-feet banging hard concrete, grass skirt slapping my knees, then darted toward a big building on my right. I had to get out of the street, that was sure. Over the entrance it said, “Moana Hotel.”

I raced up the steps, slowed to look back. I shouldn’t have slowed. It looked like a movie of a parade run at triple speed, following me, the leader. That cop wasn’t in front, but he was close behind. With two more cops. I didn’t even stop in the hotel lobby, ran through, out into a courtyard.

Wild yowling and yelling again. Wherever I was, it was the noisiest place you could imagine. I ran through it, dodged tables, zipped around a big tree. Ahead of me: Ocean. At last. Now I knew what to do. I’d drown myself.

I sprinted forward, felt sand under my feet. Sand, then the cool wetness of surf. Faint in the darkness ahead was the pale white foam of breakers. I kept running, then started swimming. Straight out. It was night, dark and almost quiet here, stars sharp above. I swam a long time. Then I looked back. Nobody was near me. Stretching from left to right along the shoreline were big hotels; lights salt-and-peppered the night, many white ones mixed like confetti with red and blue and green and yellow ones.

Right here, old man, I said to myself, you’d better do some thinking. Was I an old man? I hadn’t run like an old man. I dog-paddled a while, and now that I was away from the madness back there, getting my wind back, I started to think. But there wasn’t much to think about. It truly was as if I’d been born under that big tree. Everything before that blurred moment was blank. Life began for me now, this minute. And it didn’t seem, from the life I’d lived so far, that I had much to look forward to.

There wouldn’t be anything to look forward to, however, if I didn’t get out of this ocean. I started swimming again, more slowly this time, angling toward shore so I would hit the beach half a mile or so from the point where I’d left it. When I finally felt the wet sand beneath me, I was exhausted. Whatever banging around I’d had, the flight and long swim, had drained most of my strength from me. My head felt broken. I sprawled on the sand and slept.

When I awoke, it was still dark. I rolled onto my back, looked up at bright stars in the black sky. And I was suddenly awake, without any lingering fog of sleep in my mind. I remembered what had happened — but only from that moment under the tree until now. The grass skirt, tightly knotted at my side, was still around my waist. But there was nothing else, nothing to tell me who I was, where I’d come from, how I’d gotten here. It was an empty, even frightening, awakening. I ached all over, and my head throbbed dully in time to the beat of my heart.

I started walking along the beach. Lights of hotels were burning brightly; voices reached me in the night. For a while I stood in shadow near a group of tables and chairs before a small building. People were talking there, laughing and having fun. Before long I knew I was in Hawaii, in Honolulu, on the beach at Waikiki. I found a path between two buildings, kept walking, keeping to darkened streets as much as possible. I was more than a little conspicuous, and didn’t even know where I was going. But I knew I couldn’t just sit on the beach and wait for the sun to come up. Not in a grass skirt. Not without knowing more, somehow discovering a little more about myself.

Soon after leaving the beach I learned a little more. But I didn’t plan it. It just happened. I had turned into a dimly illuminated section of a street that a sign told me was Monsarrat. A couple of cars passed, kept on going. Then another came by. It was an old brown Chevrolet, moving fast. The driver was leaning out a front window, looking toward me, and as the car went by he yelled, “Hey that’s him!”

Tires skidded on the road as he hit the brakes. The car came to a sudden, swerving stop. Two guys piled out of the rear and the car swung around in a U-turn, raced back the way it had come. Alarm jumped in me. I might even have tried to run, but ahead of me the Chevrolet slid into the curb and stopped. A man jumped out of the front seat; another, the fourth, followed him. The last two stood on the sidewalk facing me. I turned toward them, but twisted my head around for a look. Ten yards away the two men who’d first left the car were trotting toward me. Two in front, two in back. And they sure as hell didn’t act friendly.

The Chevy’s driver called, “Don’t shoot. Keep it quiet. He can’t have a gun on him.” His voice was not loud, but it carried easily past me to the others. And I heard it.

Don’t shoot? I looked around, glanced over the ground. There was nothing near me I could use as a weapon or club. And nobody had to tell me I was going to need one. Across the street, a five-foot-high brick wall extended parallel to the sidewalk before a two-story building. As the men closed in on me I ran toward two of them, then turned suddenly, sprinted across the street and stopped with my back to the brick wall.

One of the men let out a yell, but the others ran after me in silence. The main advantage I’d got by running here was that my back was protected now; but there was another benefit, too. Instead of reaching me all at once, the men were spread out a little by the time they got to me. That was the idea. A guy in a snap-brim hat was in the lead, something held in his upraised hand. Two men were together behind him, and the fourth was barely starting across the street.

The man in front was a big guy, about my size. He jumped toward me, swinging his arm down in a hard swift motion toward my head. I could see small teeth in his open mouth, lips pulled apart and stretched out of shape.

I didn’t duck. I didn’t even reach up to block the descending arm and hand. Instead I stepped forward, keeping my left foot planted on the sidewalk and swinging my right foot ahead and around a little in front of me as my body turned. The move pulled me just enough to my left so that when I bent forward slightly the gun or sap in the man’s hand merely brushed my back, bouncing harmlessly from the skin. Without being aware of it I had, when I’d first moved, thrown my right arm across the front of my body. The hand was open, thumb pulled back from the fingers as far as I could force it, the hard ridge of muscle at the base of my little finger tight and ridged.

As the blow bounced from my back I swung toward the man, arm whipping away from my body, eyes following the dipping motion of his head and neck. The force of his blow bent him forward and I aimed my swinging hand at the base of his skull. It landed hard on his neck, with a smack like a butcher’s cleaver.

He kept going down but I jerked my head toward the other two men, almost on me. There was a little more light here and I could see them clearly enough. The one on my left was about my height but maybe fifty pounds under my weight, with bushy black hair and eyebrows, a big fat spread-out nose and thin lips. Light glanced from the gun in his right hand, a big automatic pistol The other man was short and stocky, with a wide square face. He didn’t hold a gun. A long-bladed knife was in his hand, held low, point forward and up.

The first guy I’d hit was still falling when I spun toward the other two, bringing my right arm back, throwing it forward like a club, hand in an open fist with the knuckles sticking out. The tall skinny guy with the gun was closer. I dropped my right shoulder, digging the toes of my right foot against the cement, drove my hand toward his midsection. I felt the knuckles hit his arm, bounce by and into his stomach. A strangled sound erupted from his mouth. I clubbed him once more, in the face this time, as that blade flashed on my right.

I jerked my body, but not quickly enough. The knife sliced across my chest, bounced from a rib. The stocky man swung back toward me, started the knife ripping toward me again. But the blade’s point was far to my left side. I hit his wrist, forcing it out and up, swung in toward him pivoting on my left foot and felt my hips slam into him. I got my right foot planted on the outside of his own right foot, pointing in the same direction as his, while my right arm went under his left armpit, fingers clutching the back of his coat. I twisted hard to my left, pulling with my left hand, lifting him with my right arm. He flew over my hip, turned in the air and slammed to the street. The fourth man came out of nowhere, hit me, sent me to my knees. He stumbled, sprawled near me.

The man I’d hit in the stomach was on all fours, the pistol on the asphalt a foot from me. I scooped it up, dropped flat and rolled aside, yanked at the trigger. The gun hadn’t been cocked, didn’t fire. I rolled again, got to my knees, the hard asphalt grinding skin from them. But the gun was tight in my right hand. As if I’d done it a thousand times I slapped my left hand over the top of the gun, flipped back the slide and let it snap forward again. In the same motion I jerked the gun’s muzzle toward a man moving near me and squeezed the trigger.

The automatic jumped, the hard blast sounding like a cannon in the quiet. But the gun hadn’t been aimed close to the man. And now I saw he hadn’t been coming toward me. He was sprinting for the car. Another man, still on all fours, was scuttling away, also toward the car. But the guy with the knife was on his feet again. And the knife was still in his fist. He took one fast step toward me, then another.

When he was a yard away, I shot him.

The big Colt was almost touching his breastbone when I pulled the trigger. It was as if I’d braced myself and kicked him with both feet. The impact of the heavy slug stopped his forward movement, spun him, even sent him backward. His arms flapped loosely, knife spinning in the air and slithering over the asphalt. He hit the street, rolled onto his side and hung there for an awful moment, nearly motionless. Then slowly his body turned and he settled face down against the pavement.

I swung toward movement on my right. Across the street, the Chevrolet was moving. I hadn’t even heard the engine start. The car’s right rear door was open and one of the two men who’d run had thrown himself inside. He wasn’t yet all the way in, must have fallen flat on the floor by the rear seat. His feet stuck out past the side of the car, toes pointing downward. As the car leaped from the curb he pulled his legs in, the door slammed shut.

I raised the gun in my hand, squeezed the trigger, heard the bullet smack into the car. I kept pulling the trigger until the slide stop caught the slide, held it open. The gun was empty, but I knew I’d hit the car again. It slid around a corner with tires shrieking.

For seconds longer I stood there in the street. Nearby a light went on in a darkened building. And then impressions began to flood in on me. Street and trees, lights, farther down Monsarrat a car’s headlights glowed as it came this way. Then it turned off. I realized that I was standing in a crouch, knees bent, gun held before me. And that my teeth were jammed so hard together that thin arrows of pain darted in my jaws.

Slowly I straightened up, dropped the empty gun. I looked at the man in the street, at the other man still lying face down near the brick wall. I knew the man I’d shot must be dead. I walked to him, though, touched him. There was a little hole in his chest, an unbelievably big and ragged hole in his back. The bullet had torn clear through him. He’d been dead a split second after that .45-caliber slug had touched him.

I walked to the other man, felt for the pulse in his throat. There was no pulse. His neck was broken. I stood up, dryness in my throat, my skin cold. I raised my hands and looked at them. They were trembling a little. And I felt as if I were trembling the same way inside.

I realized then that I hadn’t been frightened when those four men had come at me. Maybe there hadn’t been time for fright, but I’d known only a sudden alarm, a quickening of attention and perception. Not really fright during those swift just-ended moments. But there was fright now.

It was from not knowing who the men were, why they’d come at me … who I was, and what I was. Not even knowing how I’d been able to live through those moments. Except for the painful but not dangerous knife slash across my chest and side, the skin scraped from my knees, I hadn’t even been hurt. I remembered the ease with which I’d slapped back the automatic’s slide, remembered the edge of my palm cracking against the back of the man’s neck — the man now dead at my feet. It was bad enough to know I had killed two men. But the worst of it was the not knowing….

I shook it all out of my head, stood indecisive for a few more seconds, then bent and grabbed the man at my feet. I dragged him to a gate in the brick wall, and through it into the grounds before the still dark two-story building. Quickly I stripped the clothes from him, pulled off the grass skirt and dressed in the dark suit he’d worn. He’d been big enough; the suit was a pretty good fit, a little tight in the shoulders. The shoes were too small, but I got them on. His snap-brim hat fit well enough. I left him there in his shorts, the grass skirt on the ground near him, then walked to the other man, started going through his clothes. I heard a siren, raised my head. It was getting louder, coming in this direction.

Whatever papers the other man had been carrying were in his clothes, which I wore now. So I dug into the pockets of the man I’d shot, found his wallet and grabbed it. If there was anything else on him, I didn’t have time to look for it

I ran back through the gate in the brick wall, alongside the building and came out on a street named Kaunaoa. I ran to the corner, turned, kept running for a minute or two. Then I slowed, walked normally until I could hail a cab.

The cabbie, driving slowly up Kapahulu Avenue, said, “Where to?”

“I … take me to a hotel. Any hotel.” I thumbed through the two wallets. There were a lot of bills. I said, “Make it a good hotel. Not right downtown, though.”

“Hawaiian Village is pretty far out. Nice place, too.”

“Okay.”

It was after four a.m. when we got there and drove along a gently winding drive to the big, impressive entrance. A few minutes later, registered as John Smith, I was in a sixth-floor room which faced the mountains. I hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob, locked the door and took a look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I wasn’t marked up much; the knife slash on my chest and side was long and painful but wasn’t going to slow me down.

I showered the dried sea salt and blood from my body, then sat in darkness on the cement deck outside my room. The wind off the sea was warm and strong. I thought for a while about what had happened, then crawled into bed.

</code>

<code> Then I remembered.

Honolulu, Hawaii. Me, “John Smith,” about half a day old now. And, considering the kind of muggs who seemed to be after me, not likely to get much older.

I showered and dressed, then at eleven a.m. called room service and had orange juice, a pot of coffee, and two of the local newspapers sent up. I had the juice, poured coffee and started looking through the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser. I didn’t have to look far; both papers had the story front-paged. They were about me, I was sure. It wasn’t the kind of thing that would happen twice on the same night.

But there was no name in the stories. I learned that a man had jumped or fallen from Don the Beachcomber’s Tree House in the Banyan, at the International Market Place, and disappeared by fleeing into the ocean. There was a possibility that he had drowned. It was not known who the man was, since he’d given no name to the waiter who had taken his reservation for the tree house dinner. A fairly good description of the man had been obtained, however, from the waiter — and other witnesses to the event.

The waiter had also been able to supply police with the name of the woman who, presumably, had been dining in the Banyan Tree at the time of the accident. Her name was Loana Kaleoha, and she was a dancer now at the Pele. When police investigated, however, she had not been found in the tree house. A waiter stated that during the excitement she had phoned him to be let out of the house, and had disappeared; she’d been carrying something in her arms, perhaps a man’s coat, he said. The police had so far been unable to find Miss Kaleoha at home.

There was little more to the stories. One of them said the police had some of the man’s clothing at the Honolulu Police Station. A detective named Robert Wang was on the case. There was no indication that the police knew anything about the man besides the fact that he’d toppled indelicately out of a tree, or that they had any interest in him other than the desire to ask him a few pointed questions.

What, then, had sent those four characters after me last night? I hadn’t carefully checked the clothing I’d taken from the dead man, or the wallets, so I looked over the stuff I’d placed on the dresser. Besides the two wallets, there was only a pocket comb, gummed up with hair and dandruff and dirt, a ring of keys, cigarettes, and some small change. I dropped the comb into the wastebasket and examined the wallets.

They had belonged to men named, according to the driver’s licenses, Gordon Vennor and James Bowen, the former thirty-two years old, the latter forty-one. Vennor had been the guy with the knife, Bowen the first man who’d reached me there against the wall — the first man who’d died. The licenses also gave me their addresses, both in Honolulu. Nothing else in the clothing or wallets was of help to me — except the money.

The two men hadn’t been going hungry. One wallet held well over three hundred dollars, the other almost two hundred and eighty. With the small change, I now had a little more than six hundred clams. Maybe some day I’d pay back their heirs, but right now I didn’t feel guilty about using the cash.

I had a number of bruises, scrapes and aches, and my head felt pretty well battered, but aside from the physical discomfort I felt fairly good. I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I was a big guy, with short white hair and angled white eyebrows looming over gray eyes, darkly tanned face, my nose a little bent. Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five years old. There were some swellings on my face and forehead, a bruise on my left cheekbone, but they seemed to fit the face somehow.

The white eyebrows stood out like beacons against the deep tan of my face. I doused them with dregs of coffee from the pot until they had an odd brownish color, then put on the snap-brim hat. It helped. Not much. I looked up Loana Kaleoha in the phone directory, called her number. There was no answer. I left the room, went down to the lobby and out to the hotel’s entrance. Nobody paid more than casual attention to me. I climbed into a cab.

An hour later I’d checked on both Gordon Vennor and James Bowen. Both had lived alone in sleazy hotels, each in one cluttered and dirty room. The rooms didn’t tell me any more than I’d already learned from the stuff in their wallets. There was still no answer when I called Loana again.

So I went back to the cab and told the driver to take me to jail.

</code>

<code> TWELVE

The Honolulu Police Station was a big cream-colored building at the corner of Bethel and Merchant Streets. I stood across the street, looking at the carved wooden doors of the entrance at 842 Bethel, wondering how to go about this.

Farther down the block were a Surplus Center, George’s Diner, a bondsman’s office. Directly across from me was the Traffic Court. Behind me on Merchant doors opened into what were apparently small offices, and over a door only a few feet away was a sign, “Detective Division.” I remembered the name of Detective Robert Wang had been mentioned in the newspaper reports. So I took a deep breath, and went through the door beneath the sign, “Detective Division.”

On my left another door led into a fairly spacious room in which several men were standing and sitting behind a long L-shaped counter. I went in, leaned against the counter and waited for somebody to walk over and put the arm on me.

Nothing happened. Finally a man in a business suit stepped up and asked me what I wanted.

“Bob here?”

“Which Bob?”

“Wang.”

He called to a guy across the room and the guy walked over. Wang was short, with wide shoulders, an Oriental officer with smooth skin and light brown eyes.

He looked at me and said, “Do I know you?”

“You might have seen me around the office, Bob,” I said breezily. “Advertiser.” Hell, maybe he had. Practically anything I told him might be true.

“Uh,” he said, not very happily. “Another reporter. New man, aren’t you?”

I grinned. “Brand new.”

“What’s it this time?”

“Human interest stuff. Follow-up on the Banyan Tree story. Find the guy yet?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But we’ll get him.”

He sounded so grim about it that I said, “I — we weren’t even sure at the Advertiser that you’d still be looking for the guy. He didn’t do anything so terrible, did he?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It could be a homicide case now.”

“Huh?”

“Couple men killed last night out on Monsarrat. Lieutenant dropped the case in my lap. We want to talk to that tree guy about it.”

Something must have happened to my face. I wasn’t certain it showed, but it sure felt like it from inside.

Wang said, “What’s the matter?”

“Uh, nothing. I thought it was just a novelty story. What makes you think he could have had anything to do with the killings?”

“This character ran from the Market Place wearing a ti-leaf skirt. Next to one of the dead men was — a ti-leaf skirt. And the dead man was stripped. Looks pretty clear, wouldn’t you say? The killer’s probably wearing the dead man’s clothing right now.”

This time I knew a sort of creeping sickness must have been showing on my face. I swallowed and said, “Makes sense. Or maybe he just came along, saw the guy, and traded outfits…” The expression on Wang’s face stopped me. I could feel perspiration on my forehead, at the back of my neck. “No, I guess not,” I added lamely. I wanted out of here now, and fast, but I couldn’t turn and run. So I said, “You make the guy yet?”

“Not yet. You know how eye-witnesses are. We’ve got about seventeen different descriptions so far. The gal he was up in the tree with could give us a description of him. A good description.”

“This Loana?”

“Uh-huh. But we haven’t located her yet. Maybe she’s with the guy.” He paused. “No matter, I’ll have the works on him before the day’s over.”

“Oh? Anything … in it for me — us?”

He thought about it. “Don’t know why not. Come on.”

I glanced back at the door leading to the outer world, then followed him across the room, into a small office. He sat behind a desk, pulled the center drawer open and took out a slip of paper. “Found the guy’s trousers up in the tree house,” he said. “Nothing else, no coat, shirt, nothing. The girl wasn’t there either by the time we checked, and we haven’t been able to talk to her, so we’re not sure what happened.”

Wang kept looking at me curiously, as if trying to remember where he might have seen me somewhere before. Pretty quick he was likely to match my chops with one of the descriptions of the escaped killer I was asking him about. It gave me a singularly nauseous feeling.

Finally he went on, “I figure he’s either a guy named Shell Scott, or Webley Alden, or a thief. One of the boys says Scott’s an L.A. private detective. Don’t know who Alden is.”

I looked at the paper. It was a check made out to a Shell Scott and signed Webley Alden. Printed on the check was Alden’s name and an address in Medina, California.

“How’s that again?” I asked Wang.

“Some change, a handkerchief, and this check were the only things we found in his pants. Either he made out the check himself, or it was made out to him, or he stole the thing.” He grinned at his quip, if that’s what it was.

Then his grin went away slowly, and he peered some more at me, finally asked, “Advertiser, you said?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Uh … Smith.”

“Smith? Pretty common name.” He sounded suspicious.

Probably I should have chosen something else, but it was too late now. He sure looked suspicious. So I said, “Yes. Well … it’s my first name.”

“Smith’s your first name?”

“Yes. Smith — Brown. My parents had a sense of humor. A lousy sense of humor. Smith Brown. Ah…”

He didn’t say anything.

“Well, thank you,” I said. “Thanks a lot. Detective Robert Wang, isn’t it? W-a-n-g? Want to be sure and spell your name right. I’m very careful about names — after what happened to me. W-a-n-g, right?”

“Yes. And Robert is R-o-b-e-r-t.”

We had lost some of our rapport.

I thanked him again, for me and the Honolulu Advertiser, and got out of there. On the street I resisted the almost overpowering impulse to run, walked a fast block and flagged a cab. I didn’t breathe normally until miles were between me and the Honolulu Police Station. And even then it was a struggle, because I felt pretty sure Detective Wang was about now calling the Advertiser and asking for Smith Brown.

It was going to be kind of painful for him.

</code>

<code> I felt that Loana Kaleoha was the quick and easy answer to all this, but I’d been unable to get in touch with her. So, I had dinner in the Ale Ale Kai room on the Hawaiian Village’s grounds — ambrosial mahi mahi sprinkled with crunchy macadamia nuts — while beady-eyed little birds peered at me from nearby chairs and tables in the open-air room. Then I found a phone and called Loana’s number again. Again, no answer.

I called the Pele and asked if she was there. She wasn’t, I was told, and nobody knew if she would be present for the floor show later this evening, since nobody had been able to get in touch with her. Maybe yes; maybe no.

Half an hour later a taxi deposited me at the club. It was out past Diamond Head, a big tropical-looking spot near the sea. I walked over a narrow bridge and inside. On my left was a long dimly-lighted bar. A bamboo wall separated the bar from the main dining area of the Pele. The dining room contained a lot of tables, most of them occupied, candles providing flickering illumination. Beyond the small dance floor a combo was playing soft, lilting music while three or four couples hugged each other rhythmically.

I went back to the bar, obviously a popular spot. It was crammed, people massed at small tables, bubbles of conversation popping in the air like champagne corks. There were a couple of empty seats at the bar and I slid onto a stool.

The bartender mopped the bar’s surface with a white towel and said, “Yes, sir. What would you like?”

The question jarred me. I didn’t know what I liked. That cold, brain-chilling feeling started creeping up from the back of my skull again, like an icicle boring into my brain, but I pushed my thoughts away from that and said, “Same as his,” jerking my thumb at a highball before the man next to me.

“Bourbon-and-soda,” he said and swiftly fixed one for me. I asked the bartender, “Miss Kaleoha show up yet?”

“You got me. I been too busy to do anything but mix drinks.” He walked toward an impatient customer.

Unthinking, I shoved the woven-reed hat back on my head, then remembered the white hair, straightened the hat. I finished my drink, pushed through happy people and found a pay phone in a booth outside the club, made the call to Loana’s number and again got no answer.

Wondering where I went from here, I headed back toward the bar, walking through the dining area next to tables crowded with the jolly people. And something caught my eye.

I was passing by a table at which a woman sat alone, and she moved so suddenly that I turned my head toward her. She had jerked back in her chair, as if I’d startled her, and when I looked down at her face her eyes were wide.

She let her breath out in a soft sigh, then said, “What … what are you doing here?”

She’d recognized me — from somewhere. My pulse speeded up. I took a good look at her. She was gorgeous. Those eyes, still wide, were dark, almost black under black brows, and her lips were red as wine. She was seated, but I guessed she was fairly tall, and I didn’t have to guess about the astounding figure. She had all the curves men dream about and some new ones for better dreams. Her skin was brown, either naturally or from a lot of sun, and the neckline of her electric-blue dress, cut low, revealed the creamy smoothness of high breasts pushing against the cloth.

I said, “Do you know me?”

“Do I … what did you say?”

“Do you know me?”

She didn’t answer for a while, looking up at me, the lovely face perplexed. Then she said, “Of course I know you. What’s — what’s the matter with you?”

I swallowed. My pulse was pounding now. There was a highball glass in front of the girl, another one, half-empty, in front of the seat opposite her. I said, “May I sit down?”

She nodded and I took the chair across from her and said, “This may sound a little crazy, but I’d very much like for you to tell me who I am.”

Her mouth sagged slightly. “You mean you don’t know?”

“No. I told you it would sound crazy. I — well, I fell out of a tree, and something … happened to my head. Or in it. I can’t remember anything about myself.”

She shook her head slowly, picked up her drink and swallowed half of it. Then she turned those flashing dark eyes on me again and said, “I know you fell out of a tree. The whole island knows it. But — you really can’t remember a thing?”

“Lots of things. Practically everything, I guess, unless it concerns me. And I’ve got a hunch I’m either Webley Alden or Shell Scott. But it’s only a hunch so far.”

Her face was still puzzled. “Why do you say that?”

I told her about the check found in my pocket and added Wang’s quip, “Or maybe I’m a thief. Maybe I stole the check.” She was no more amused than I had been when I’d heard it. I said, “Will you for Pete’s sake tell me who I am?”

She still seemed almost unbelieving. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Hell, yes. I mean, lady, you don’t know how serious.”

“And you really don’t know who I am?”

“No.”

“Darling, I’m Loana.”

For as much as two or three seconds it didn’t penetrate. When it did, though, I felt enormously buoyed up and at the same time let down a little. Loana Kaleoha — the woman I’d been trying to find. But also the lovely I’d been in the Banyan Tree with.

I looked at her beautiful face, the thick black hair, the astounding figure, and I thought: what in hell is the use of doing anything at all if you can’t remember the first thing about it? And then, dismally, it dawned on me that maybe I would never remember anything of my past — because if I had forgotten someone as lovely as this dark-skinned, dark-eyed, Incredibly fashioned tomato, then I was practically beyond hope.

I sighed and said, “Loana, the suspense is killing me. Who am I?”

“Why, darling,” she said smiling. “You’re Webley Alden.”

</code>

<code> THIRTEEN

Boy, did I feel relieved!

Now I was getting someplace. I knew who I was. This was a dandy start, and from here maybe I could dig out the rest of it.

“Loana,” I said, “I could hug you and kiss you for telling me that. In fact, even if you hadn’t told me that.”

She smiled.

I smiled.

After smiling a while I said, “You were up … I was up … we were up in the tree? Both of us? Together?”

She nodded, still smiling.

“What — how did I happen to pop out of the thing?”

“Well, you … weren’t running away.”

That figured. I wouldn’t have been. Not from her. I said, “I knew it. I was pretty sure it wasn’t anything like that. But tell me more. What did I tell you about myself? What kind of person am I — is Webley Alden?”

Webley Alden. I rolled it around in what was left of my mind, which I hoped had been rather more to begin with, and it gathered no moss. Nothing stuck to it. Usually, I thought, amnesia cases on learning some new fact about themselves should find other, related facts, seeping into memory. But nothing seeped. I was a special case, I guessed.

Loana said, “You didn’t really tell me very much. We — we weren’t talking much about things like … that.”

The husky, pointed way she said it stuck me right in the gizzard. “What … were we talking about … doing … tell me, tell me.”

She chuckled softly. “Oh, please!”

I groaned inwardly. And even a little outwardly. “Well, never mind for now. Tell me more about me, then, Loana. I must have told you something.”

“Well, you’re a millionaire — “

“Ah!”

“And you live in California.”

“Medina, yes.” I shook my head. “It’s not coming back to me, though. I just saw the name on my check.”

Right then another thought clanked in my head. Why had I made out a thousand-dollar check to the other guy, to Shell Scott? I didn’t know yet — but at least I was a millionaire. Not bad. I was glad I’d made something of my life.

Then, frowning, I said to Loana, “I’ve learned a little about me in the last few hours. And some of it I don’t know whether I like or not. So do you know if I made my fortune — honestly?”

“Oh, yes. You invented something to do with photography and made a lot of money. Right now you publish a magazine.”

“A magazine?”

“Called Wow!”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. That’s how we met. I posed for one of the photographs. You even took the picture.” She seemed to be enjoying herself.

I blinked. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember. What kind of picture was it?”

If I published a magazine called — of all things! — Wow!, then I could imagine the kind of picture.

She seemed to think about it for a bit then said, “It was on the big island — Hawaii — the black sand beach there, Kalapana Beach. I lay face down on the sand as surf rippled up around my legs. Of course I didn’t have any clothes on — “

“No clothes on — “

“…and it was in color. Three pages of the magazine. The gatefold in the center.”

She said something else but I didn’t hear her.

I stood up, saying half to myself, “What a life! Oh, what a life I must have led!” I beat myself about the head, thinking: come back, come back. But nothing came back. Finally I stopped beating myself about the head and sat down. “Tell me some more. Lots more.”

“That’s about all there is, darling.” Darling. Two or three times she’d called me that. There was something between us, all right. A table for one thing, and I wished it wasn’t between us. Even if I didn’t know what had gone on up there, I wished we were back in that damned tree. It would almost be worth falling out again.

I said, “Surely there’s more you can tell me. Anything at all. It might jiggle my memory. Any little thing…”

She wasn’t listening. The black eyes were wide once more and she was looking up at somebody standing alongside the table. I followed her glance. A man was standing next to the table, looking at Loana. Then his face turned toward me and his mouth sprang open.

This one I’d seen before. So recently that I could remember him easily. Tall and skinny, with a big spread-out nose and bushy black eyebrows and hair. And one black eye. I’d given him the black eye, and undoubtedly his gut was still very tender. The tall thin bastard who’d reached me, second of the four, last night on Monsarrat.

His mouth was open, thin lips stretching so that I could see the crooked, stained bottom row of his teeth. I aimed at those teeth as I came out of the chair. The reaction was automatic. The last time I’d seen him he’d been swinging at me, then running, and I just picked it up where we’d left off.

My legs snapped me up like springs and my left arm came around in a tight loop with my balled fist at the end of it. My knuckles landed squarely on his mouth and I felt the skin over some knuckles split. But that was just a little thing, and what happened to his mouth was a big thing. It made a big noise, too, like a plank breaking. He sailed back in the air, smacked into a table.

Voices rose, crescendoing. My hat had fallen off, exposing my white hair, when I’d swung at him, and on my right in the midst of moving people a man pointed at me and yelled something. I didn’t catch the words, but I got the message. I grabbed the hat, pulled it onto my head again, straightened up. And another familiar face nearby in the crowd tugged at my eye. It was the fourth man, the one who’d driven the car away last night.

I started for him, then stopped.

There was a hell of a lot of noise. The bartender was out from behind the bar, coming toward me. Two waiters were converging on me from another direction, and there was that fourth man, plus plain drunks who might decide to join in the fray.

Behind my eyes floated Detective Robert Wang’s face. And the cream-colored Honolulu Police Station. And electric chairs, gas chambers, firing squads.

I hesitated. I was tired of running.

But even if I knew my name now I still didn’t know much else — including what I might have done to get the tough boys after me. And I did know for certain that Wang wanted to talk to me about two dead men. Especially now that he would have spoken to somebody at the Advertiser.

The guy I’d hit was flat on his back a few feet away. One foot wiggled feebly. I hesitated, but then both my feet wiggled feebly, and then I gave them their head, if you can give feet their head. Anyway, I ran.

I went past the bar and out through the entrance of the Pole, sprinted to my right along a darkened walk lined with trees and shrubs. The walk curved and I curved with it, came out onto some grass. There was no parade behind me as there’d been before, just the usual yelling. Beyond the grass I ran onto the sands of a beach, skirted some beach seats and umbrellas and kept running. Several blocks away I puffed into a street and slowed to a walk. Apparently I’d made it. But I had a hunch it wouldn’t be for long. Oahu was getting a little small for me.

</code>

<code> Especially here, on Oahu, I wouldn’t last. What with Detective Wang undoubtedly snorting after me now, accompanied by numerous other snorting policemen, and no telling how many guys with guns eager to use those guns to produce great ugly holes in me, Oahu was not merely hot but erupting.

For an almost superstitious moment I was appalled by the picture I’d drawn. Surely, whatever I was, I couldn’t have gotten myself into such a stupendous predicament as this alone; surely evil Fates of some low type must have experimented with me, weaving the threads of my days into a lumpy Gordian knot.

Well, nuts to them. I wasn’t exactly going to run away from trouble; I was merely going to get clear the hell away from here. If I could. But I needed a goal; not just a place to get away from, but a place to go. After all, my biggest purpose here had been to find Loana Kaleoha and talk to her. That I had done, and apparently there was no more of real value she could tell me. So, away, away! But where away?

Well, what did I have to work with, what did I know?

Into my mind came the picture of that thousand-dollar check. I remembered the address on it: 947 Poinsettia Drive, Medina, California. And I remembered, too, Wang’s reference to Shell Scott as a Los Angeles private detective. Why had I given — or planned to give — that much money to Shell Scott? To a detective. Maybe I was in trouble.

I laughed sourly at that. Maybe I was in trouble?

I tried to line it all up in my mushy mind, find the best and quickest way of getting to the bottom of whatever situation I was fouled up in. It seemed to come out clearly enough.

I lived in Medina, near Los Angeles. Scott was a Los Angeles private detective. If I had hired or even meant to hire him because of trouble I was in, then certainly I would have told him all about the trouble.

I felt better after I’d figured the thing out. Rather pleased with myself, in fact. I knew how to get the answers, knew what I had to do. It was simple. It was as plain as the nose on my face.

I had to find Shell Scott.

</code>

<code> FOURTEEN

The Pan-Am Clipper Rambler came in over Catalina Island and soon I could see the California coastline ahead, strings of lights webbing the darkness beyond. It was nearly eight p.m. Thursday night, the twentieth of August.

After coming to my decision last night on the beach I had decided simply to take the first plane for L.A. I’d been able to get a seat on a prop job leaving Honolulu Airport at eight a.m., and I had waited till the last minute, then — as John Smith again — walked casually but briskly aboard. There was one slightly disturbing event.

As I’d gone through the gate, two men leaning against the chain-wire fence bordering the field had stared at me in what I thought strenuous fashion. I didn’t recognize either of them, but I wouldn’t forget them. The contrast between the two men was almost ludicrous: a very good-looking big guy, tall and strong and with abundant brown hair; and a very bad-looking little guy, short and weak and with prematurely gone hair. From the top of the flight stairs I’d looked back to see the little bald man trotting toward the terminal. Maybe it hadn’t meant anything.

We pulled in low over the coastline, the pilot turned north, and soon I could see the lights of L.A. International Airport below. The plane dropped down, landed easily. I followed the other passengers out of the plane, and across the field, walked down the cement ramp to the baggage area. I didn’t have any baggage, so I went straight through to the street outside the terminal, started looking for a taxi. Something hard nudged my back, but I thought someone had accidentally planted an elbow over my kidney.

I took a couple more steps down the street, and the nudge got uncomfortable. A big guy loomed on my right, eyes level with mine. Another was on my left; he clamped his hand tight around my biceps. There had to be a third guy, too. The one with his elbow in my back. A .38-or .45-caliber elbow, undoubtedly. I stopped. The gun dug into my spine.

A voice said, “Keep moving. And don’t get cute. I could blast you right here and get away with it.” The voice was high, hard and rasping.

I looked over my shoulder. He was quite a ways down, a very short guy. He held a coat looped over his arm, and the gun was out of sight beneath the coat. The expression on his smooth white face said that he would be glad to shoot me. He looked as if he might have barely strength enough to do it. He was not only little but scrawny, the face pale and doughy, as if blood was a thin tide in him, and the tide was out. His odd, washed-out eyes gave me a creepy feeling. But the gun was solid in my back, so I turned and took a step forward along the walk.

The guy on my left was probably not a genius. His mouth was open, and his lips hung down from his teeth in distressing fashion. Looking at me, with his flappy lips wiggling, he said, “Ha, ha.”

The other egg still had my arm tight in his fingers. It burned hell out of me, but I kept walking. In a few more seconds I was in the back of a black Lincoln sedan with the loose-lipped character and the third man. The little bloodless guy held his gun on me while the others wrapped my wrists and ankles with adhesive tape. The little guy got behind the wheel and started the car, drove out of the airport and south for a few blocks, then off onto a darker street.

The loose-lipped guy on my left had a leather-wrapped sap in his big right hand, a partly-empty fifth of bourbon in his left. He tilted the bottle up, gulped a large shot from it and wheezed mightily, lips flopping about in unbelievably gruesome fashion. Then he passed the bottle to the egg on my left and said to him, “Want a snort, Biff?”

“Don’t mind if I do, Slobbers. If you left any. Which you prob’ly din’t.”

The guy called Biff took the bottle and guzzled at it. Apparently the man on my left, with the indelicate lips, was Slobbers. Biff was a large fat-faced egg with big eyes and wispy hair. His shoulders were so wide he had to lean forward so there’d be room for Slobbers and me on the back seat.

Slobbers said to me, “Where’s the films of the weddin’ in Hawaiya?”

“What films? What wedding?”

Splat! It was Biff, on my right, swinging his sap. Not hard, but painfully. “So where’s them films?” he asked.

“I already…” I stopped. These muggs were touchy. If you didn’t answer right, they touched you with a bat. And that can make you batty. So I said, “Let’s discuss this sensibly … gentlemen. Like … gentlemen. And gentlemen don’t sit around swatting each other on the head, do they?”

Swat! This time it was the loose-lipped sapper, Slobbers. Nothing worked with these guys. Through the horrible ache in my head I heard Slobbers saying, “That was for fun. And for the one you hung on me in Ed’s office.”

I said, “I don’t know what in hell you guys are talking about.” I looked at the man on my left and said, “And as far as I know, I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t sap me again. He let out a great yok and said to Biff, “Get him. Get him. Who do you think you’re kiddin’, jerk? Who in hell do you think you are?”

“That one I can answer. I am Webley Alden.”

He let out another yok, and this time the driver and Biff joined in the hilarity. When Slobbers stopped chortling he said, “Alden! That’s a good one. Pal, I almost got to hand it to you, almost. And I believe I will.” He raised his sap.

“Wait! You can pound me unconscious, but all I can tell you is what I know. I am Webley Alden, the millionaire playboy. Actually, I don’t remember anything about — “

“Hold it, pal.” Slobbers wasn’t amused now. “I don’t know what you’re pullin’, but it ain’t goin’ to work. Just tell us where them films is, and the negative of that picture Alden took the night he was killed.”

I looked at him. Then at Biff. “The night he was … killed?” I said slowly. “You don’t mean tonight, do you?”

There was silence for several seconds. Both men in back with me looked puzzled. Biff said finally, “Hey, you think he’s outa his skull?”

“Maybe he’s pullin’ somethin’.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s a … a trap.”

“But … how could it be? We got him, don’t we?”

“I dunno. I hear this bastard is tricky.”

“You heard right, Biff. He’s up to somethin’.”

Biff said, “Hey, Willie. That paper still up there?”

Willie spoke. “Yeah, here on the seat.” He passed a newspaper back to us. Biff held the front page before my eyes and turned on the dome light. In the lower right-hand corner was a story headed, “Last Rites Held For Local Millionaire.”

I read the story. It described the funeral, on the day just past, of Webley Alden. I thought about it. Not very long, though. Either they’d buried the wrong guy, or…

I said, “Is this on the level?”

“Come off it, Scott. It’s all on the level except for you, jerk. And you better start leveling fast.”

“Scott?” Something began to wobble gently in my skull.

“Would you mean — Shell Scott?”

“Who in hell else would I mean?” Slobbers leaned over and peered at my face. “Are you tryin’ to tell me you don’t know you’re Shell Scott? The private eye?”

I sighed. So that’s who I was. Shell Scott, private eye. Some detective. I had set out to find Scott, traveled twenty-two hundred miles to find him. Well, by golly, I’d found him!

I said, “Listen, I fell out of a tree and banged my head; I don’t remember anything about myself. Including you apes.”

Slobbers said, “Amnesia? Is that like … like…”

“It’s when guys lose their remembering of things,” Biff said. “And it’s baloney. He just don’t want to talk about nothin’. Pret-ty tricky.”

Slobbers leaned toward me again. “Let’s try you out on Pagan Page. What for were you askin’ around about that broad? Why her, Scott?”

“As far as I know, I never heard of any Pagan Page.”

Silence again. The car was off the main highway, now on a lonely road with little traffic and few lights. Biff and Slobbers passed the bottle back and forth a time or two, then Biff dropped it onto the floorboards, empty. It rolled up against my foot as he said, “Let’s work the bum over. Maybe that’ll make him talk.”

I said, primarily to change the subject, “Talk about what? Which of you brilliant characters thought of this dopiness?”

“Why, this was Ed’s idea, pally.”

“Ed?”

“You still gonna claim you don’t know Ed Grey? Or us?”

“That’s right.”

“Lemme introduce myself,” he said, grinning nastily. “I am Biff Boff.”

“Nobody is called Biff Boff.”

He leaned closer to me. “I am called Biff Boff.” When he said it that way, I believed him. He went on, “And that there is Slobbers O’Brien. Drivin’ is Wee Willie Wallace. It don’t ring no bell in your head?”

“There are some bells ringing up there, but that’s not one of them.”

Slobbers chuckled. “Scott, we know you is supposed to be a regular ball of fire. Well, we is goin’ to put the fire out.”

Biff chuckled this time. “I’ve heard tell sometimes you get a crash on the head and lose your noodles. Well, sometimes another crash on the head brings them back.” He laughed. “Let’s help Scott get his noodles back.”

I knew he was joking, but Biff gave me a crash on the head anyway. Slobbers did his bit from the other side. Before you could say lickety-split I could remember lots of things, but they were all previous blows on the head. And then … nothing.

I came back from somewhere. Time passed. I lay there gathering my weakness together. I seemed to be huddled on the floorboards. Up above me Biff and Slobbers were talking.

Slobbers said, his voice slurred from the liquor, “What you think he was pullin’ with the yak? Think he’s stirry?”

“No tellin’. Maybe he don’t know nothin’ about Pagan. There ain’t no way he could know about her ridin’ the earie when the boss was talkin’ on the phone them times, is they? He couldn’t have been around too, could he?”

“Don’t seem likely, Biff. But he has to know about them films — we seen him lift them. Maybe we oughta quit foolin’ around and plug him. Willie’s plain dyin’ to plug him.”

“Yeah, he ain’t killed nobody in a long time. He really needs to kill somebody. But if we dump Scott outa the car we could make it look like a accident.”

“Maybe it already is,” Slobbers said. “I could sure use another drink.”

And then I remembered that fifth they’d been guzzling from. I’d felt it roll up against my foot earlier. Something was lumpy under my thigh now, but I hadn’t even noticed it before. My hands were taped in front of me, and slowly I moved them toward the thing caught under my leg. It took about two minutes, but then I had the fingers of both hands around the neck of that whisky bottle. I felt dizzy still, and full of aches, but stronger. Judging by the motion of the car we were moving fast. That suited me. I waited.

Biff said, “The bastard may be just restin’ down there.”

“Let’s haul him up here and slap him around a little, get him woke up.”

I felt hands under my arms, pulling me upward. I held myself limp until my rear end touched the seat and their fingers loosened a bit. I could feel the sudden thump of my heart, the prickling chillness sweep over my skin. I opened my eyes, tensed my muscles and shoved both legs back against the seat, pressing my feet hard against the floorboards.

The two men let out yells as I pulled from their grip and half fell, half jumped forward. I brought the bottle up, fingers clamped tight around its neck. Willie started to jerk his head around as his partners yelled, but he never made it all the way. As his head turned I was swinging both arms as hard as I could. The bottle glittered in the faint light, then crashed explosively against his hairline.

He didn’t let out a sound. The bottle broke, sharp fragments flying through the air. “Willie” fell forward and the horn blasted briefly as his head slammed into it, then he toppled sideways. Our car veered sharply to the right. Something spun me around. My taped ankles bent. I couldn’t keep my legs under me and went down, knees hitting the seat. Biff had his left hand outstretched, right hand holding the sap upraised. I was facing him now. He swung the sap down toward my head. Because I was already falling, the club missed my skull, thudded against my right shoulder.

Pain ran down my arm, swelled in my wrist and fingers. But I didn’t drop the jagged stub of the bottle. The force of Biff’s blow bent him toward me. I brought my hands up fast, slammed the jagged glass toward his face like a short, ugly spear. It hit his neck.

I felt the slivered shards drive into his throat, felt the resistance of thick muscle and fragile bone. Felt the muscle and bone give way. The bottle stub went clear in. My hands stopped against his skin, the glass spear buried deep in his throat. The blood came out so fast it warmed my hands before I could jerk them away.

He let out a soft sound. Just a little sound, a lot of blood.

On my right Slobbers reached for me, empty hand outstretched. I managed to grab one of his thick wrists, twisted, felt my slippery fingers slide over his skin. The car was veering sharply, tires skidding. Slobbers swung his other hand and it cracked against the side of my face. But then we hit.

With the jarring impact was the sound of fenders and hood buckling, the shrill scream of metal sliding on metal, the crash and shock as we slammed into something, lurched, swung halfway around. My back banged into the rear of the front seat and my head snapped against it too, seeming to split open and fill with the wild crunching and grating noises around us. Slobbers’ body hit the seat ahead of him, his nose banging into its top.

I felt the car tilting over, too far over. It crashed down on its side, the side nearest my feet. My body lurched in the air, my legs hit something. I saw Slobbers’ body jerk near me, his head cracking against the doorframe.

Suddenly the car stopped moving. Everything was blurred before my eyes, but I was conscious. The car was on its side, Slobbers beneath me. I heard one of the car’s wheels turning slowly with a low grinding noise. A piece of glass fell tinkling to the street.

I managed to pull my legs around in front of me. Then I bit at the tape on my wrists, got an edge of it caught between my teeth, started ripping it free. In less than a minute I had the tape off wrists and ankles, felt quickly over my body. Nothing was broken, but I’d picked up a couple more sore spots. Biff had bled enormously. But he wasn’t bleeding now. He was dead. In the dim light I could see the butt of a gun in a belt holster at his side. I grabbed the gun, a Colt .45 automatic, stuck it into my hip pocket and tried to stand. I made it, and with my feet on Slobbers’ unconscious form reached the door above me and forced it open. I waited a while, dizziness blurring perception, then hoisted myself up to the doorframe, swung my legs outside.

We had skidded into one of a row of eucalyptus trees off the right side of the road, bounced around and slammed over on the edge of the asphalt. The Lincoln’s hood was crumpled back and slanting up into the air. I dropped to the ground, the impact jarring my head. Pain lanced through my right shoulder where Biff’s sap had struck it. I took a few shaky steps toward the trees, then started trotting forward into the darkness.

</code>

<code> Now I found a pay phone booth and flipped open the phone book. Under “S” I found what I was after: “Scott, Sheldon, Spartan Apartment Hotel,” the address on N. Rossmore and a phone number. There was also an office number and address in Los Angeles listed. I jotted both down, and caught a cab.

I walked up the Spartan’s cement steps and into the lobby, stopped at the desk. A young man behind it grinned at me, then frowned.

“What happened to you, Shell? You look like you lost a fight.”

“I won.”

He reached into a pigeonhole behind him and pulled out a key, handed it to me. It was for apartment number 212. I walked up the stairs, down a hall and stopped before 212; it was as if I’d never seen that door before. I put the key in the lock, turned it, then stepped inside.

On my left were three aquariums, brightly colored tropical fish cavorting in them. On the wall at my right was a yard-square painting of a sensationally shaped nude tomato. There were hassocks scattered on the yellow-gold carpet, a low coffee table before a squat brown divan, a deep leather chair nearby. The place looked comfortable, casual, pleasant.

I stood inside the door for several seconds, hoping something in the room would start a faint stirring of memory. But nothing happened. It gave me a queer, disoriented feeling. And then I heard a soft sound in the room farthest from me.

This was the living room. I could see into a kitchenette ahead of me and on my left. Beyond it a door was open before what was obviously the bedroom. I could see a black carpet, a low bed. The soft sound came again. I walked forward.

As I reached the bedroom door a girl came out through it. We almost bumped into each other. She saw me and started to jump aside, her mouth pulling open in the beginning of a scream.

“Hold it!” I yelped. “It’s me — Shell. Relax, it’s all right.”

“Shell!” she gasped. Her lovely face was pale with sudden shock. “You — frightened me. I…” She stopped, breathing heavily.

I was almost as startled as she was. “What in blazes are you doing here?” It was Loana.

That’s who it was. My Loana Kaleoha.

She put one hand to her throat, moistened her red lips. “Shell … darling. You’ve got your memory back!”

</code>

<code> FIFTEEN

“I’m afraid not,” I said. How did you get here? What are you doing here?”

Color slowly came back into Loana’s beautiful face. She frowned slightly. “What do you mean, you’re afraid not?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t got my memory back. Not yet.”

“But you’re … here. In your apartment.”

“I know I’m Shell Scott, but only because somebody told me. Hit me with the first clue, so to speak. The rest of it’s still…” I stopped. “Yeah, and I remember you told me I was Webley Alden.”

The hand slowly came down from her throat, brushing the high, Jutting breasts. She wore a pale blue blouse and dark blue skirt, a cloth belt tight around her small waist. Her black hair was gathered in a thick mass at the back of her neck.

“I know I told you that, Shell. But there at the Pele it was all so … strange, and sudden. I honestly thought you were fooling with me somehow. Well, I — ” she shrugged — “I just went along with the gag. What I thought was a gag, anyway.”

“Loana, I had never been more serious than when I asked you to tell me who I was.”

She smiled. “Maybe you knew that, Shell. I didn’t. We’d been … together not long before, you know. And everything had been, well, fun and pleasant. I’d never met anybody who’d actually forgotten everything like that. I thought you were just being crazy.” She smiled, the white teeth gleaming, dark eyes starting to smoke a little. At least they seemed to smoke a little. “You’re kind of crazy, you know. And you left in a hurry. You do remember that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” It was true that Loana hadn’t had much chance to make explanations once I started socking guys there in the Pele. And right after that I’d taken off, running like a fiend. Rather nasty suspicions had started swelling up in me a minute ago; but now the swelling was going down.

I said, “Who was that mugg I slugged there in the bar?”

“I don’t know. All of a sudden you jumped up and hit him. There was a lot of noise, and people ran out after you. It didn’t seem like a good place to stay, and I left.”

I sighed. “I didn’t mention it, Loana, but I am glad to see you. How about a drink? I could use one.” I found some fifths of bourbon, and Coca-Cola in the kitchenette refrigerator. That was all right with Loana so I made two bourbon-and-Cokes and took them to the divan, sat next to her.

We sipped our drinks and I said, “How come you’re here?”

“I…” She hesitated. I didn’t know whether it was from confusion, or embarrassment, or because of some other reason. Finally she said, “I had to come to Los Angeles. The Anniversary Party is tomorrow night. And I just wanted to see you. I — I thought you wanted to see me, too.”

“I did, I do. My home is your home, stay as long as you like … what Anniversary Party?”

“Why, Wow!‘s.” She bit her lip. “That’s right. I keep forgetting you — ” she smiled beautifully — “keep forgetting. Never mind, that’s a long story, too. But I had to be here. All the Wow girls are supposed to be at the party tomorrow and that naturally includes me.” She paused. “I wanted to see you again. And of course I knew where you lived, so I came up here.” She smiled at me warmly. Perhaps even hotly.

“And a grand idea that was,” I said, moving closer to her on the divan. She slid a little sideways, an act which didn’t seem to match her smile. I said, “Loana, this is Shell, remember? The fellow you came clear up here to see.”

“I remember.” She glanced at my clothes. “You look as if you had a bad night.”

She’d hit it on the head that time. I was wrinkled and crumpled, I had to get cleaned up a bit, present a more dashing appearance. Right now I looked dashing enough, but as if I’d been dashed from cliffs upon rocks.

But Loana was still smiling warmly — or hotly — so I said, “I am about to take the fastest shower in the history of plumbing. Don’t even move — I’ll be right back. Just sit there and think wild thoughts. Okay?”

She chuckled. “All right, Shell.”

I raced around in two or three directions, but found the shower speedily. While hot and then cold streams of water beat against my skin I wondered what had happened to the men I’d left in that wrecked Lincoln last night. Biff was dead, for sure. But probably both Willie and dim-witted O’Brien were very much alive. From that episode had come several bits I could check on, but the start toward clarity could come from Loana now that we both knew I wasn’t playing some kind of game. Of course, the way she’d smiled, maybe she was ready for games.

In the bedroom I chose a neatly checked brown sharkskin suit from clothing in the closet. The gun I’d taken from Biff was still in the pocket of my beat-up trousers, and I put the .45 on my dresser. I noticed then that the bedroom wasn’t very tidy. The bedclothes were in disarray, bureau drawers were open, and their contents jumbled. The place was quite a mess. It kind of disappointed me in me. I had assumed that I was neat.

I dressed with great rapidity, then pranced beaming into the living room. “Loana, my sweet,” I said. “How’s that for speed? And I’m now as good as new … Loana?”

She was gone.

</code>

<code> In two of them were a couple dozen varieties of colorful little tropical fish. The third tank contained only two fish, but they were the most vivid and striking of the lot, with a brilliant red streak extending from about the middle of the body back to the transparent tail, and bordering the red above and extending forward into the eye, an almost electrically luminous blue-green line. They were beautiful.

There was a box of fish food handy — Salmon Meal was printed on it — and I sprinkled some in the water, watched the fish for a couple of minutes. Then I noticed something in the feathery green grass — like stuff on the tank’s bottom. I had to lean close and squint in order to find it again. Some little bits of colorless things were in the grass. Once in a while one waggled a bit. They were so tiny I could barely see them. Some kind of wee bug, I supposed.

</code>

<code> I went in, dosed the door behind me. The office had obviously been searched. At my right was a bookcase, an aquarium containing more bright little fish on its top. But most of the books were out of the case, in a jumbled pile on the carpet. Drawers were open in filing cabinets against the far wall. Papers were strewn on the mahogany desk and its drawers were open too.

There didn’t appear to have been any vandalism, or wreckage for the sake of wreckage. No papers torn up or leaves ripped from books. Somebody who knew what he was looking for had gone over everything in the place. Either he hadn’t found what he was after, or he’d found it at the very last. Because when a guy finds what he’s searching for, he stops searching. And nothing had been missed in here.

I fed the fish some Powdered Shrimp that was on the bookcase, then sat down behind my desk. My desk. This was my office. I was a detective — presumably capable of solving problems. Well, I sure as hell had some problems. Maybe I didn’t know much about them, and everything prior to the Banyan Tree episode was blank; but I remembered all that had happened since then. It was a start.

I rummaged through the desk, found a pencil and blank sheet of paper. At first I merely listed the names of the people I’d run into or heard about during the nearly three days and nights since my flight from the Market Place in Waikiki. I played around with names for a few minutes, not getting anywhere, then I wrote down, “Webley Alden.”

And something happened. In the cells of my brain, in my consciousness — or maybe only in the subconscious part of me, something stirred. It was a weird, not-quite-frightening sensation, as though an immaterial, intangible breath whispered over some minute convolution of my brain.

I waited. But that was all. Only the indescribable awareness, the knowledge that something had happened — or almost happened. I sat in the chair unmoving, straining mentally to grip whatever it was, but that was all of it, and it was gone. As sometimes a name will hang on the edge of thought, never quite dropping into consciousness, and then even the almost-awareness of it will disappear.

I relaxed, slumped against the back of my chair. Not until then did I realize I had been holding my body rigid, the muscles taut, and that I was bathed with perspiration. It had soaked through my shirt, and the white cloth felt cold and a little clammy against my skin.

I lit a cigarette, smoked half of it, then went back to what I’d been doing. Soon the sheet of paper was filled and I rummaged through the stuff on my desk looking for more. Beneath some typewritten pages were several sheets folded in half and I unfolded them, glanced at the first one. There was pen-and-ink writing on it. The name “Webley Alden” jumped out at me from the top of the page.

Seeing it then, after what had just happened, gave me a physical shock. I started to read. Slowly excitement built up in me. I glanced from the four pages in my hand to the sheet on which I had just been writing. The handwriting was the same, my own. The conclusion seemed inescapable that on these four pages I had, days ago, done precisely what I’d been doing for the past few minutes: jotting down facts, salient points, thoughts and conclusions about a case. Obviously it had been written before the Banyan Tree, and — the most important item — it looked like the same case.

When I’d read all four pages I was sure of it. There were many of the same names, plus others which meant nothing to me now. There was mention of Webley Alden, of Hawaii and his marriage. Ed Grey’s name was there, and I learned as if for the first time that he ran the Algiers in Las Vegas and owned the Pele in Honolulu. And more, a lot more.

And I got up and walked around the desk shaking my aching head. What in hell kind of affair had I gotten myself into? Man, I thought, no matter what else might have gone on during those dear dead days, they must then have been dear indeed and not at all dead. Fannies? Freckles? Wow Girls? Blackie, Raven, Jeannette, Charlie?

I sat down, read through the notes again, then tried to line it all up in my mind: The Before part, or as much of it as I’d just read; the After part, which I’d lived and remembered; with the Banyan Tree in the middle. For more than an hour I sat at my desk, making a brief note once in a while, but mainly just running the threads through my mind, trying to sew the separate parts together. The ashtray was filled with cigarettes, and I was a little tired when I finally stood up and stretched, but I felt very good indeed.

Because I thought I knew the answers now. Enough of them, anyway. And I knew what to do in order to get the rest of them. It wasn’t going to be easy. And it would be dangerous; perhaps fatal. But, if nothing else, I knew it would be interesting.

I felt charged up, exhilarated. Hell, I thought, I might get killed, but it was worth a try.

Who lives forever?

</code>

<code> SIXTEEN

Back at the Spartan Apartment Hotel, I was trotting up the stairs to my rooms when a tall, sort of rangy guy on the way down slapped me on the shoulder.

“Aloha, Shell,” he said cheerfully. “Glad to see you back. And where are my hula skirts?”

I blinked at him. “Your what?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot the damn things.”

Slowly I said, “My friend, I forgot a hell of a lot more than that.”

We spent a minute talking on the stairs, then walked up to his apartment — only a couple of doors from my own — and went over it some more there. I found out he was Dr. Paul Anson, a very good friend of mine. I told him most of what had happened to me in these last three days, and it was quiet for a minute or two after I’d finished.

Finally I said, “Anyhow, Paul, when I fell out of that miserable tree I was hanging onto a hula skirt. So I must have bought the things for you. As to when and where, well, it has slipped my mind.”

He looked at me, smoking a cigarette, the smoke curling lazily up from his nostrils. “Before that it’s all blank?”

“As if my mind had slipped my mind. You’re the doctor, Paul. Give.”

He stubbed out his cigarette. “Well, I’m not a psychiatrist. But my practice is about half pills, half psychiatry. And for years I’ve been interested in the brain, as you know.” He grinned. “Knew, I mean.”

“So? What put me into this particular pickle? And how come I remember nothing about me — but practically everything else? Does that put me in a class by myself? At the foot of the class, maybe?”

“Not at all. He crossed his long legs, clasped his hands around one knee. “Nothing about the brain surprises me much any more. In spite of the enormous amount of work done on the brain, we still know only a 0 fraction of what there is to know. It’s mostly unexplored territory, ‘Unknown’ on the mental map. Consider: in the average brain there are at least ten billion living cells. Approximately four times the number of people alive on this earth. Somehow — we don’t know how — those cells and groups of cells store information, collate it, receive and transmit messages, allow us to see, feel, act, speak — and remember.”

“You don’t have to ease the blow, Paul.”

He grinned. “Don’t get into a sweat. Amnesia can be caused by brain damage, sure. But also by shock, fever, emotional states, drugs, pressure on the brain, a lot of things.”

“And how many of those items are … reversible?” I lit a cigarette myself, needing it. “This may not be much of a brain, but it’s the only one I have.”

“Not … exactly, Shell. You can throw away much of your brain and never miss it.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say about my brain.”

“Not just your brain.” He chuckled. “Everyone else’s, too. In many cases much of the frontal and temporal lobes of the sub-dominant part of the brain has been surgically removed without apparent loss of any normal function of the patient.”

I looked at him silently for a while. “Aside from the fact that I haven’t any idea what you just said, are you trying in this ghoulish fashion to cheer me up?”

“Well, it’s the truth. Of course I say without ‘apparent’ loss. There may be interference or loss we can’t detect. If so, it’s part of that ‘Unknown’ area I mentioned.” He paused. “You’re right-handed, so the opposite lobe, or left one — the dominant lobe — controls your conscious life.”

“I must have given my left hunk a good smack, then.”

“Something happened to it. But my point is that a good part of everybody’s brain, including yours, is like a spare. If there’s malfunction in the, call it vital half, often the ‘spare’ takes over the job, learns it, performs it as well as the original lobe once did.”

I thought about that. “Sure, fine. If the cells that wiggle my ears go kaput, I can teach the other side of my head to let me wiggle my ears. But memory — I can’t live two or three dozen years over again. How old am I, anyway?”

“Thirty. Well, it’s reasonable to assume your amnesia was caused by a blow. Maybe there’s simply some pressure on the brain, concussion, a small pool or clot of blood against cell groups or nerve pathways, a bone chip pressing. If so, there’s an excellent chance a simple operation will remove the pressure. Presto, welcome back.”

“Or?”

“Face it, Shell.” He was sober. “If there’s true brain damage, cells destroyed, that’s it. After we’re about a year old we don’t grow any new brain cells; and the brain can’t repair itself like skin or bone.” He dragged on a new cigarette, not looking at me. Then he added, “But don’t forget that’s the worst angle of them all. Could be this is merely due, in whole or part, to emotional, or psychological if you like, stress or trauma, conversion hysteria. Could be a lot of things.”

“Yeah. But how come all that’s missing is the thirty years of Shell Scott? And all the rest is — or seems to be anyhow — still up there.”

“That’s the easiest part. Often people who haven’t been in an accident of any kind are found wandering around in a strange, to them, city. They don’t know who they are, where they came from — like you. But the rest is intact, they eat, talk, know how to read and so forth. Consider: all the words you can speak are stored in a little area of the brain called Broca’s Convolution. A separate bit of the brain stores all the words you hear. Another all the words you read, and so on. If you learn to read, write, speak, and understand the spoken words of a foreign language, four separate areas of the brain store each of those separate segments of your knowledge, or experience. If the brain cells governing your ability to read that foreign language were destroyed or damaged or even anesthetized, and only those cells, you could still speak that language, write it, and understand it when it was spoken. Similarly, there’s a little area of the brain which is developed by each of your ten fingers, by the whole hand, the arm — and so on. O. K. to here?”

“I guess so.”

“Consider it all from the opposite angle, then, the one important to you. A brain surgeon knows the area of the brain which controls, for example, movement of your right foot. If because of brain damage you became unable to use your right foot, the surgeon — simply because of his knowledge, even before examining you — could come close to pinpointing the area in your left hemisphere where the damage must have occurred. That’s half the battle. The rest is to repair the damage.”

“Interesting. But this repair bit … even if he knows where the trouble is, he has to — get inside there.”

“Of course — if the damage is organic.”

“So he’s got to sort of hack away and haul things about and … oh-h.” It sounded perfectly ghastly.

Paul laughed. “It’s not quite like blasting, my friend.”

“Well, what is it like, then?” I really wanted to know. I could see fang-toothed saws whirring, hammers falling, crowbars prying at my giant brain. But I told myself it couldn’t be that bad, probably it was very delicate stuff.

“Well, X-rays of the skull at first,” Paul said. That didn’t sound bad. “Spinal tap, electroencephalogram — or brain-wave — chart, possibly a pneumo-encephalogram or arterogram, and after that — “

“Stop!”

“What?”

“Don’t tell me any more. That’s — that’s murder!”

He shook his head, smiling. He could smile. “You have the usual layman’s misunderstanding of technical terms — “

“Horror is the word. They all sound like diseases.”

“Shell, sit down. That’s better. Relax. Sit down. Now, it’s very simple. A pneumo-encephalogram is simply a means by which brain shadows of the cavities and sulci can be made to show up in X-rays. We merely take out a little spinal fluid — “

“No, we don’t.”

— “and in its place inject air into the spine. It’s extremely interesting. The air goes up the spinal column into the brain and all in and around the … Shell … are you ill?”

“No, I feel … swell.”

“I thought I was making you feel better. After all, you asked me.”

“Yeah, I haven’t got a lick of sense.”

“Look, Shell, from your description of the way you’ve acted these past days, I’d guess that at least part of your trouble, maybe even most of it, is — well, psychic rather than physical. So it really may not be so bad. Dr. Bohrmann at the County Hospital is a good friend of mine, and he’s one of the best brain men in the country.” Paul stood up. “He can give you all the answers, and I’d say Bohrmann’s the man for you to see. I’ll give him a ring now and get you over there — “

“Hold it.”

He swung his head toward me. “What’s the matter?”

“Not this instant, pal. I’ve got a few things to do before we start parting my head.”

He started to reply, then stopped, frowning. After a long silence he said, “I know you too well to argue if you’ve made up your mind to do some damn fool thing. But, Shell, I must strongly advise you to get medical attention right away. There might be arteries or veins blocked, pinched — cells not fed die, you know. And there’s the possibility that another blow on the head could really ruin you.”

“Ha! Another blow on the head. It’s been tried already, by experts. And it didn’t kill me. Not quite.”

Paul started to speak again but I held up a hand. “Really, my friend. I couldn’t let the skull-sawing and whatnot get started just now. I’d be laid up for days, probably weeks or more. And numerous guys who desire to kill me would most likely find me. No, after I get through the next day or two, then you may wheel me straight into Dr. Frankenstein’s if you want — which is what I think you have in mind. Anyway, forget it for now.”

I was serious. And for the reasons I’d given him. But I was also thinking of all those crazy things he’d said. If ever I had considered checking into a hospital before my job was done, I considered it no longer.

Paul opened his mouth, shut it. “Well, it’s your funeral. But I recall saying the same thing to you before this.” He sighed. “What next, then?”

I started telling him what I planned to do, and when I mentioned the films referred to in the four pages of notes I’d so recently read, Paul said, “Films? Shell, before you left for Hawaii you asked me to hang onto two reels of film for you. They, the projector and screen, are in my closet.”

I gawked at him, then grinned. “What,” I asked, “are we waiting for?”

With the projector and screen set up, Paul switched out the lights and I started running the films. The last reel showed scenes after the wedding in Hawaii. Paul pointed out Webley Alden and I thought that he looked very happy. His bride’s face was never visible. But, looking at the faces which were visible in the pictures, I saw one I recognized.

Recognized?

It jarred me. Either one of those cell groups Paul had talked about was sparking normally, or the face belonged to somebody I had met since the Banyan Tree.

Another look gave me the answer; cells were not sparking. The man who’d caught my eye was in a black suit, and obviously had officiated at the ceremony; the Bible in his hand was a prop. Tall and thin, with black hair and brows, with a large beak on him. A kind of spread-out, fleshy nose.

I’d seen him twice, very recently. The first time had been in the darkness of Monsarrat in Waikiki. And again in the Pele when I’d slugged him for the second time. Then he’d had a mashed mouth and a couple of other lumps on his chops. But it was, unquestionably, the same guy.

Before leaving I asked Paul if he knew anything about the photograph Webley Alden had taken the night he was killed. It was referred to in my notes, and the goons at L.A. International had asked me about it, but I had no idea where it was now.

Neither did Paul, but he did know I had most of my photographic work done by a man named Harold at Eagle Photo Supply a few blocks up Rossmore. I called Harold, got him at the camera shop, and asked him about it. The way he reacted, the picture stood out in his mind like a beacon. He still had the transparency and I told him to make a big enlargement from it, at least life size, larger if he could manage it. Harold said he would have the job done by morning.

It was as simple as that.

If only, I thought, the rest of it could be that simple.

But next on the agenda was Las Vegas. The Algiers. And Ed Grey.

</code>

<code> I took a cab down U. S. Highway 91 to a small cocktail lounge called Cosmo’s, just past the Algiers and on the opposite side of the Strip. In the lounge I found a pay phone and called the Algiers, asked for Dutch. My notes had mentioned my getting helpful information from “Dutch,” and from “Charlie,” one of the Wow girls.

Dutch was voluble and pleasant on the phone. I asked him to meet me here, without broadcasting news of my presence, and he said he had a break soon. I had a highball and waited. After he arrived and found me at the bar it took me another five minutes to explain my situation and convince him I was serious.

I wound it up, “Anyway, that’s it. So it would help if you’d tell me what you told me when I was here before.”

He looked at me curiously, brows pulled down, shaking his head. But then he started in. When he’d finished I said, “Ed Grey was kind of hot for Pagan, huh?”

“Hell, he’s hot for women — which is why that dressing room’s next to his office, I’ll give odds. But Ed even gave Pagan a ring. I mentioned the trinkets and such last time.”

“Engagement ring?”

“No, just a ring. Ornamental thing. Snake chewing on its tail — expensive enough. Big diamonds for eyes.”

“Did Pagan wear the thing?”

“Sure, after he gave it to her she was never without it. Real proud of it, said it cost sixteen hundred bucks.” He laughed. “She actually went down to Mason’s here, where Ed bought the thing, and checked up. No glass for Pagan.”

“You don’t have any idea where she is?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Like I said, haven’t seen her since two nights before Charlie took over the act.”

We finished our drinks and Dutch left briefly, returned with Charlie. She had a lot of thick red hair, and there was a lot of Charlie, but it was in the places where a lot was enough. She sat between Dutch and me and ordered a dry martini, told me her story, in the meantime ordering another martini.

I asked her, “Ed phoned you to replace Pagan on the night of the fourteenth? You’re sure?”

“Sure. Friday night. Next day I started, and that was Saturday, the fifteenth.”

“What time of night did he call?”

“Around eight p.m. Maybe a few minutes after. I’d just turned in. Early for a change.”

“And the last show always starts at midnight? Seven nights a week?” She nodded. Friday the fourteenth was the night Webley Alden had been killed. There wasn’t much else Charlie could tell me, and in a few minutes she went back to the Algiers.

I told Dutch I wanted to talk to the switchboard operator in the Algiers, find out if any long-distance calls had come in on the night of the fourteenth for Ed Grey. He said he’d get them for me.

When I protested that it could get him in trouble if Grey found out, he said, “It’s okay. I know the lass on the switchboard.” Dutch grinned. “Quite well. Besides, nuts to ‘em. I can always go back to the farm.” He slid off the stool. “I’ll give you a call here with the info.”

“Okay, Dutch. But tell the lass to describe a big white-haired guy — me — if Grey asks her who got nosy. One other thing. When Grey leaves the Algiers, does he drive his own car?”

“Yeah, new tan Imperial sedan.”

“Where does he park it?”

“In front of the club. Just past the loading strip outside the entrance.”

He left. A few minutes later his call came for me. “Two long-distance calls to Ed that night, Shell,” he said. “One from Chicago at six-forty p.m. The other from Medina, California at seven-fifty-two p.m.”

“Medina, huh?”

“Right. No others, though.”

“One of those was enough. Thanks, Dutch.”

I hung up with a very satisfied feeling, looked in the phone book’s yellow pages, found “Mason’s Jewelers,” and phoned. There was no answer at the store, but I got David Mason, the owner, at his home. I described the ring Ed Grey had bought for Pagan Page, explained it had been purchased sometime during the early part of August, and that I wanted one just like it.

“Would you describe the ring again?”

“Serpent with its tail in its mouth, diamonds for eyes. I think it cost sixteen hundred dollars.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve one identical with it. Perhaps two. I can check tomorrow.”

“It has to be tonight. And all I want is the setting.”

“The setting? Tonight? Do you really expect me to drive all the way downtown at this hour, and open the store, merely to sell you the setting?”

“I hope you will. It’s important.”

He didn’t say anything, just sort of grumbled.

I said, “What’s the ring worth — without the stones?”

“Very little. Perhaps a hundred dollars at most.”

I didn’t have sixteen hundred, but this I could handle. “I’ll pay two hundred for the setting,” I said.

He grumbled some more, but finally said he’d do it.

</code>

<code> Dutch had told me Ed Grey was usually in his office at this hour, and when the doorman stepped up to my car I said, “Ed in his office now? Ed Grey?”

“I guess so. Probably.”

“Would you deliver a package to him for me?” I held up the small ring box. In it was the setting I’d bought from Mr. Mason. Around it was a five-dollar bill.

The guy looked at the five. “Sure thing,” he said.

I gave him the five. “One condition. Deliver it at exactly twelve o’clock. Exactly. OK?”

“I guess so. Sure. Just so it ain’t a bomb or something.”

I grinned. That’s what I hoped it was. I took a last look at it myself. On the way here I’d stopped and rubbed the setting in soft earth alongside the road, then put it back into the ring box. The band was about an eighth of an inch thick, intricately worked with scales over the snake’s body, narrow tail disappearing into the open mouth. The diamond eyes, of course, were gone; and I had made sure no dirt remained in the spaces where they had been. The scales and snake’s mouth had retained a lot of dirt, though.

I closed the box, handed it to the man. The tan Imperial was parked a few yards ahead of me. I drove past it, and back to Cosmo’s. From there I called the Algiers at three minutes before midnight. When he answered I said, “Hang onto something, Ed.”

“What?”

“I’ve got bad news for you.”

“You what? Who is this?”

“Shell Scott. But that’s only part of the bad news.”

“Scott?” He was silent, digesting it. Then he said, as if it wasn’t digested, “What in hell do you want?”

“You, Ed. You in a sweat. You on a slab.”

“Why, you bastard. I’ve had enough — “

“Guess what, Ed? I found Pagan’s body.”

He didn’t say anything. For quite a while he didn’t say anything. When he spoke, though, his voice was hard and level. “I always thought you were nuts, Scott. Now I know it. Make some sense or get off the line.”

“Try it like this, then. I got a hunch Pagan might be dead when I began wondering why you threw so much weight at me even before we met. From right after Webley Alden was killed, in fact, until now.”

“You’re full of horse manure.”

“Keep listening. Webb was killed around seven-thirty on the night of the fourteenth. Twenty minutes or so later you got a call from Medina. Pagan disappeared that night, too — odd coincidence. Nobody’s seen her since — another odd coincidence. You knew an hour before she was due to go on at nine p.m. that she wouldn’t be going on at all. Now how did you know that, Ed? Suddenly there’s no more coincidence. And that’s the odd part.”

“She just didn’t show. She wasn’t around.”

“She could have shown at nine. Nine-thirty. Even midnight for the last show — she wasn’t the first act on. You knew she wasn’t going to show, Ed.”

He told me again what I was full of, and he’d gone beyond horse manure. But he sounded a little shaky. And he was still listening.

I looked at my watch. It was a minute till midnight. I said, “There was plenty of reason for me to start checking, talking to people, looking for Pagan. And finally I found her. I’m not really sure why you killed her — “

“Scott, you’re clear out of — “

“But I can make an educated guess. A couple of your boys let it slip that she was ‘riding the earie’ while you talked on the phone. So, while she wasn’t in on the Medina business, I’d guess she found out about it — probably listening from her adjoining dressing room while you talked to Medina by phone on the night Webb was killed. Even if she didn’t get it all right then, she could easily have put it together when the news of Webb’s murder hit the papers next day.”

“Pagan’s as alive as you are, jerk. More alive, probably.” He laughed. “And she’s sure as hell going to live longer.”

“I told you I found her body. It wasn’t easy, but I made sure it was Pagan Page. Tell me, Ed. Did she try a little blackmail? Or were you just playing it safe?”

He laughed shortly. “Scott, I have to hand it to you. You might even be making a little sense if Pagan was dead. But she’s not — at least not so far as I know. We had a little … argument, and she took off in a huff. Messed up the show for one night, but that’s all.”

He sounded fairly convincing; maybe I’d overplayed my hand. But he hadn’t denied getting the call from Medina. And he was still listening. It was twelve p.m. on the nose.

So I said, “Ed, knock it off. I told you I found her body. It wasn’t pleasant — not after all this time. But I brought back a souvenir for you. Took it off her finger.”

“You — what?” He sounded shocked.

Faintly in the receiver I could hear somebody rap on Grey’s door. I said, “That should be it. Little present from Pagan and me to you.”

He didn’t say anything, but the phone clattered as it went down on his desktop. There were soft sounds in my ear, the mumble of voices, then Grey was back on the phone.

“Scott … we got to talk. Scott, you there?”

“I’m here. So let’s talk.”

“I’ll meet you someplace. I…” He stopped. When he spoke again, his voice was stronger. “What kind of con is this?” It had shaken him, obviously, but he was already pulling himself together. He said angrily, “This is some kind of jerky trick. I gave this ring to Pagan, sure. Or … one like it. This probably isn’t even the one she had.”

“I took the eyes out, Ed. No point in giving them back to you. And Pagan doesn’t need them now.”

He laughed again. “What are you trying to pull, Scott?”

Gently, I hung up.

Then I went out of Cosmo’s, started the Ford, pulled into U. S. 91, and drove slowly toward the Algiers, heading for desert beyond the hotel. Well, I thought, maybe Ed would buy it. And maybe I hadn’t had anything to sell.

I drove slowly up the highway. The Algiers was on my left, set back about fifty feet from the street, and as I passed opposite the entrance doors a man came through them in a hurry. He stopped, spoke briefly to the doorman, then ran to the tan Imperial and jumped in. The car started with a shriek of rubber, leaped forward in the curving drive.

I stepped on the gas, grinning. I had hoped to get Ed Grey wondering; but he wasn’t just wondering, he was coming unglued. Relief poured into me like plasma. I was a block south of the club when Grey’s tan sedan skidded into Highway 91 behind me.

I kept a block or two ahead of the Imperial, watching it in my rearview mirror. I raced by the Sands, Flamingo, Dunes, Tropicana and Hacienda, then past some gas stations and into darkness of the desert beyond. By then I was going over seventy miles an hour, but once out of the Strip’s traffic Grey’s car gained rapidly on me. I let him pass.

Only four or five miles from the Algiers, Grey swung skidding off the highway into a narrow dirt road. I slowed, gave him plenty of time, then doused the Ford’s lights and turned after him. Far ahead I could see the flare of his taillights as he braked suddenly, then the car swung left and out of sight.

There was a quarter-moon, barely enough illumination for me to see the road ahead, a lighter path on the earth. In the darkness I took the .45 and flashlight from the glove compartment, put the flashlight on the seat alongside me, cocked the gun and placed it next to the flashlight. I could feel the slow build-up of tension in my muscles, a not unpleasant tightness starting to pull at the back of my neck.

I made the left turn in the road, soon saw light gleam dully on something ahead. Then the shadowy outline of the sedan was visible, and I stopped, got out of the Ford and walked the rest of the way to the other car. It was the Imperial. Clearly in the night came sounds from somewhere on my right.

I walked toward them, gun in my right hand, flashlight in my left. My foot hit a small stone, sent it scuttling over the ground. I stopped. Grey wasn’t far from me now. I could hear the grating sound of something driven into earth, the sharp click of one stone striking another. And then the smell hit me.

The smell of death is acrid, sweetly sickening. It has an unmistakable fetid sweetness, cloying, like nothing else. As if scented air were decaying, turning into corruption. It hangs over battlefields in war, lies trapped within graves in peace. And it was here around Ed Grey and me, filling the space between us. I walked forward through the pungent stench, moving slowly, placing my feet carefully. Then I saw him, hunched over, close to the ground, pawing.

I lifted the gun, aimed it at him, finger barely touching the trigger. I held the flashlight before me but out from my body, then flicked it on. The brilliant beam washed over him, seeming to hold him transfixed for a moment. He was bent, a small collapsible shovel gripped in his hands, its blade half buried in loose earth turned at his feet.

Then his shocked white face snapped toward me. His mouth formed a taut grimace. He lifted the small shovel quickly, started to straighten up.

“Hold it, Grey!” I said.

He took one step nearer, hurled the shovel with all his strength. It pinwheeled toward me, blade catching the light. I ducked, jumped to the side. Almost in time. The shovel’s handle slammed against my left forearm, numbing the muscles momentarily, and the flashlight fell against a rock, winked out. I heard the sound of Grey’s running feet.

As I started after him a gun cracked. Bright blooms of flame darted toward me. The bullets were wide by several feet. I dropped to one knee, snapped a shot toward the place where Grey had been; waited, listening. Then I heard the engine of his car roar, the crunch of tires on earth.

His headlights were out, but the taillights flared red in the night. As he swung around in a tight half circle I aimed ahead of the red lights, fired three times. The car gained speed, then the headlights leaped down the dirt road and the Imperial raced after them.

I let him go. I found a lighter in my pocket, snapped it on and looked at my watch. It was eighteen minutes after midnight. In twenty-seven minutes a plane would be leaving Las Vegas for L.A.; I meant to be on that plane, if I could make it. Very soon a large portion of the hoods in Vegas would be looking for me. And would know where to look. Getting my hands on Grey wasn’t, at the moment, the important thing. The important thing was done.

I found the shovel, walked to the spot where Grey had been standing. In a few seconds I’d scraped away the last inch or two of earth. In another half minute I’d bared part of the arm. What had once been an arm. Now it was purple-blotched, dark and discolored. Once it had been smooth and firm and warm, and she had been beautiful.

It was pretty bad. I tried not to breathe, but I had to look. Holding the burning lighter so its flame illumined her arm, I bent close. On the puffy, bloated hand, nearly buried in the swollen finger, almost as if it were alive and tightening upon her dead flesh, the metal serpent coiled. Its diamond eyes glittered brightly in the flame.

</code>

<code> SEVENTEEN

I got up late the next afternoon in my apartment, showered and shaved and looked with a dim eye upon my numerous bruises and cuts and bumps. It was truly a splendid array.

But none of it really bothered me except the almost constant ache in my head. It felt as if either my brain was growing or my skull was shrinking. For a moment I amused myself with the thought of a brain growing, and growing, popping out of its skull and slithering over the landscape, striking down evil citizens with rays of pure noodles, growing and growing….

But then the thought of Shell Scott, Giant Brain, struck me as perhaps a bit unlikely, especially since I now had much less than I’d started out with. So I dressed and forced myself to eat a hearty breakfast, then went into the living room.

I’d made it in time to the plane at McCarran Field the night before and there’d been no trouble with gunmen there or on landing at L.A. International. I had rented a Chrysler, driven home. Now, despite the bruises and aches, I was rested and refreshed, ready for the final act tonight. Because tonight was Saturday night, the Anniversary Party, the wrap-up, the unveiling.

I grinned to myself, thinking that it would be an unveiling in more ways than one. And just in case I got killed, I figured I might as well go out in style. With a flair, so to speak. And the Anniversary Party, from what I knew of it, sure seemed like the place where anything might happen.

But I needed information, help. I had to trust somebody. I dug up all my notes and went over them again. One Blackie, the notes told me, was Sue Mayfair, and after her name was a Hollywood telephone number. The notes told me, too, that Blackie was a doll, a delight. Just how good a friend she might be the notes didn’t quite say, but it seemed reasonably sure that she was, if nothing else, not included among my enemies. That was good; I didn’t want an enemy helping me.

So I called Sue Mayfair. She seemed pleased to hear from me and said, yes, she’d been in the Whittaker house, where the party was to be held, once before at a small cocktail party. And she would be glad to help me any way she could. It was a rather odd conversation. Once she asked, sort of giggling, if she should wear her “costume,” but I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. However, she said, sure, she’d be happy if I came over to see her in half an hour.

I hung up, found a bottle of glue in a drawer and dropped it into my coat pocket. Then I made sure I had the .45 automatic, went through the first twelve issues of Wow! and tore out the featured gatefolds, and was on my way.

I stopped at Eagle Photo. Harold had the enlargement already framed and wired for me. It was four feet by five feet, ready to hang on a wall. And was in a word: splendid.

The lovely lines of the woman’s nude body were soft and flowing, the flesh almost melting against the harsher outlines of the carved-wood Pan beyond her. The hands of Pan reached out as if about to enclose the wonderfully shapely form, draw it to him, upon him. One hairy leg was raised, the goat foot gleaming, and on Pan’s dark face was an expression of complete and delighted lechery, the eyes wide and knowing, the thick lips twisted in a lascivious smile.

I gave Harold a check with my thanks, put the big enlargement in the back of my rented Chrysler, and drove to a sporting goods store where I bought a box of .45-caliber cartridges. I filled the automatic’s magazine, dropped the gun in my coat pocket, then drove on, with some anticipation, to see Blackie.

</code>

<code> Now she had another sip of her drink and said, “Well, you look and talk the same, Shell. Ill bet you haven’t changed a bit.” She grinned. “I hope. So what’s next?”

“I mean to be an uninvited guest at the Anniversary Party tonight. But several characters present there will want to shoot me on sight.”

“Shoot you? With bullets?”

“Bullets, bows and arrows, blowguns, anything they can get their hands on.” I paused. “So, as I mentioned a bit earlier, anybody who helps me in any way could buy a large hunk of trouble if it got noised around.”

“I told you to forget that. Where do I come in?”

“Well, these characters will probably have a hunch I might try to show up at the party. A couple of the boys could even be on guard outside, that sort of thing. And I imagine once the party starts all the doors will be locked.”

“You can bet on that.” She grinned again. “I know you don’t remember all I told you before, but do you know what’s supposed to happen at the party tonight? The pictures and all?”

“Yes. That is, I wrote down the salient points and have … mulled it over mentally. I know there’s to be a photo or two taken of all the girls featured in the first twelve issues of Wow! Ah, like the individual shots, but … all at once.”

She laughed. “Yes. In high-heeled shoes and turtleneck sweaters. And nothing else. Did you write that down?”

“No … I merely indicated that … ah … hoo! That’s how they’ll do it, huh?”

“Yes. That’s the costume well all wear.” Her eyes were merry.

“Costume? Didn’t you ask me … hoo!” I finished my drink. My mind was wandering down paths which led into freeways which could make a shambles of an already half-shot mind like mine.

Blackie slid close on the couch, took the empty glass from my hand and said, “I’ll fix us another drink, all right?”

“Yeah, fine. But I have to have a dear head tonight … hah. Clear head. Sure, fix another drink.”

She walked toward the bar and I said, “One other item, Blackie. There’s a big photograph, twenty square feet of it, that I’d like to have on the wall when the party gets going. But I have to fix it a little first. Okay if I bring it up?”

It was all right with Blackie, so I went down to the car and got the enlargement, my gatefolds from Wow!, and the glue. Blackie had fresh drinks ready when I got back.

I showed her the big framed photo.

“Boy!” she said. “That’s a good one. Who is it, do you know yet?”

“That’s what I’ll tell you, and everybody else, tonight.” I explained that my idea was to paste — on the reverse side of the framed enlargement — the twelve gatefolds from Wow! Since the magazine itself, and the Wow girls, were what the party was all about in the first place, the collection of twelve photos hanging on the wall should not strike a jarring note, but instead should seem a natural part of the surroundings.

“A sort of homey touch, hey?” said Blackie.

“That’s the idea. Assuming I can sneak this big thing into the house — and assuming nobody turns the thing over and peeks at the enlargement on the other side.”

“Very good,” she said. “There’s a madness to your method.”

“Yes, there’s … Well, I’d better start pasting.”

“Let’s both paste.”

It didn’t take long, but it was sure fun. You just never know how much fun your work can be unless you plunge right into it. Blackie and I both got down on the floor, and snipped and arranged and pasted, and I decided it would have been great fun to be on the floor with Blackie even if we’d had nothing to paste. A couple of times she nudged me in the ribs with her elbow and said something wild. That’s the way it went.

Then we sat on the couch and talked. Blackie told me the party would be at a big home in Medina owned by Mr. Whittaker, he having a chunk of money in Wow! The giddiness was to begin at eight p.m. in what old Whittaker, with remarkable bluntness, called his “Booze Room,” and from there would progress on into the living room for talking, drinking, smoking, and no telling. Including taking the pix for Wow! And just possibly some private collections.

Blackie described the “fat old mansion” for me. She would unlock a side door if she-could, so I could sneak in and skulk about, and with luck hang my picture in the living room. She told me the library was next to the living room, where tonight I wagered there would be lots of living, and if all went well I could get in there before the gang showed up. It sort of amused me to think that I might get killed in — a library. Not that I don’t read; I read many things. Besides Wow!

I looked at my watch. It was almost seven-thirty p.m. “Time I left,” I said.

“Gee, I wish it wasn’t so late, Shell.”

“I wish it was about three in the afternoon — tomorrow.”

“If we had time … I’ll bet we could kill a couple more hours here.”

“I’ll bet we could slaughter them.”

“Shell, you don’t remember anything at all about being up here before, do you?”

“No. Worse luck. Nothing … at all.”

She had put her hand on my leg, an inch or two above the knee. It’s funny about hands. They can do all sorts of things, such as slap you on the back, or sock you on the jaw, or wave goodbye. Blackie was sort of waving, but it was not goodbye. The sensation of her gently waggling fingers was not quite like that of a functional soldering iron, but there was pretty near enough heat being generated to fuse pants and leg together.

She said, “Maybe after the party we could get together again up here. We can figure out something to do, I’ll bet.”

“I’ll bet.”

“That’s what we’ll do then.” She grinned. “You’re fun, Shell. You haven’t changed. You’re more fun than a barrel of monkeyers.”

“Well, I … Would you say that again a little more — “

“So don’t get yourself shot or bow-and-arrowed or anything.”

“Don’t you worry.” I paused. “For Pete’s sake, don’t mention me to anybody at Whittaker’s. That would get me boiled in oil.”

“I won’t.”

We made it to her front door. Blackie was going to the ball in her own car, and as I went out she said, “Remember now. Don’t you get shot and spoil our little party.”

It occurred to me that if I got shot, it would spoil much more than our little party. Depending, of course, on where I got shot.

But I grinned at her and said, “Blackie, I wouldn’t think of it,” and left.

I had been waiting for half an hour in the bushes outside the two-story Whittaker house in Medina. Now I took the Colt .45 from my pocket, worked a cartridge into the barrel chamber, pushed up the safety lock and dropped the cocked gun into my pocket again. The big enlargement lay flat on grass a few feet from me. A rectangular swimming pool was at this side of the house, about thirty feet from where I crouched.

Blackie had been one of the first girls to arrive. But in the last half hour I’d heard numerous other cars drive up and even managed to see some of the arriving guests. The only women to be present were the Wow girls; all the other guests would be men.

Among them I had spotted a face which, though I’d gotten only a quick glance at it last night in the beam of my flash, I easily recognized. Ed Grey. With him had been another guy easily recognizable, big Slobbers O’Brien. Close on their heels had come two other men I didn’t know, but who had the hard dark look of unpleasant people.

By now all the guests were probably inside. All but the uninvited guest: me. It was night, eight-thirty p.m., and time for me to get started.

Carrying the big picture I walked to the pool, past it, reached the door. Blackie had done her Job and the door opened noiselessly. I shut it behind me, waited. From another part of the house I could hear faint conversation and occasional laughter. Unless there’d been a change in plans, the whole gang would now be in the “Booze Room,” which I understood to be a luxurious room complete with two bars, hi-fi, comfortable furniture — everything needed for serious, or light, drinking.

From the Booze Room the guests, suitably lubricated, would ooze to the huge living room. The girls would change, in one of the adjacent bedrooms, into their “costumes” and then the fun — that is, the photographic session, would begin. And probably everybody would sing, “Happy Birthday to Wow!” or do something equally exciting.

I walked forward. Sounds of merriment got a little louder but I didn’t see anybody. After a minute or so I found the living room. Cameras, lights and reflectors were already there against one wall, but the room was empty of people.

Directly ahead of me was a bare wall of highly polished dark wood. At its left and right ends were heavy doors, both closed. The room’s right wall was almost entirely glass, the big windows affording a view of the swimming pool outside. In the middle of the opposite wall, on my left, sliding doors were open before the library. I could see in their shelves hundreds of books that nobody was going to read tonight.

Several feet beyond those sliding doors, about half the distance to that bare wall, hung a large painting. It was almost the same size as the collection I carried, but not nearly as interesting, since it was an old oil painting of some dead fish and stuffed ducks. I replaced the fish and ducks with my framed collection. When I stepped back, the sight of all those Women With Wow at once, was almost overpowering. I left the oil painting on the floor beneath it, went into the library, closed the sliding doors and looked around.

The shelves held at least four or five thousand books, the furniture was deep and comfortable in appearance. A cool breeze came in through two open windows overlooking a group of glossy-leaved philodendrons. There was the faint scent of tobacco smoke in the library. But the room was empty now, quiet. I went back to the sliding doors, opened them a half inch, and waited.

About ten minutes after I got into position, the first of the guests started coming in. Soon there were twenty or so milling about, others arriving, all of them with highballs or cocktails. I saw Ed Grey clearly through my half-inch crack in the door. Somebody had obviously given him a beautiful shiner, not quite concealed now by makeup. It pleased me. Slobbers showed up, plus the two guys I’d seen follow him inside the house. There were several other men present, some of them undoubtedly from the Wow! staff, a professional photographer or two and several amateurs.

A man with a notebook in his hand, probably a reporter, waved across the room and called, “Hey, Desmond. Couple questions?”

A tall, broad-shouldered guy, good-looking and with a bunch of wavy brown hair, walked to the man who’d called. That would be Orlando Desmond, Raven McKenna’s husband. I recognized him; it figured. The two men spoke. Orlando threw back his head and laughed, rolling his eyes around the room, possibly to note the effect on the lovelies of his big white beautiful teeth.

It looked as if everybody was present now, and it was quite a crowd. Tall men, short men, thick and thin men, reporters, photographers, hoodlums. All of those, plus.

Plus: ten of the most gorgeous gals a man could hope to see in a long and energetic life. Ten Women With Wow, ten lusty, busty, beautiful, almost outrageously shapely tomatoes, young and juicy, vibrant and healthy, exquisitely gowned, exquisitely fashioned. Blondes and brunettes, redheads, and gals with jet-black hair. All were in cocktail dresses, and the dresses all looked like the kind which are never thrown on but are sometimes thrown off. Several black ones, an electric blue, one in vivid orange, a purple and a green and a beige, one white and one lavender.

Cigarettes came away red-stained from red-stained lips, ripe mouths caressed the rims of crystal glasses, white teeth flashed in laughter. It was beautiful, wonderful. I was miserable. I wanted to be out there, flitting like a bee from flower to flower, like a wasp, like a hawk, like crazy. Like me. But here I stood — in the library. Here I stood, peeking out at it all.

The room buzzed, conversation rose and fell, white breasts flirted with the necklines of colorful dresses, flesh rippled smoothly under silk, nylon, jersey, as the lovelies walked in the room. Hors d’oeuvres were passed around on silver trays. More drinks arrived. I perspired.

Man, I thought, none of those babes had better waltz in here. No, sirree. Even if it was worth it, that could ruin everything. But nobody came near the library, except passing by to get a drink or an hors d’oeuvre or a woman.

Ten lovelies — out of twelve Women With Wow. Which meant that two were missing. One of those missing, of course, was Pagan Page.

A short, globular man I assumed was Mr. Whittaker called for attention and said a few words of welcome to the assemblage, then introduced Orlando Desmond. Desmond made a short speech in which he spoke of the tragic death of Webley Alden and said many flowery things about Webb as the real heart of Wow! He went on to compliment the girls who had so successfully raised the circulation of the magazine and the male population of the USA., and stopped just short of singing a song.

Applause. Then more drinks were passed around. One of the lovelies before my peeking eye now was Blackie. She walked casually toward the library doors. For a moment she scared me a bit; I thought she was going to come right in. But she paused a couple of feet away and opened her handbag, took out lipstick and a small mirror. While dabbing her lips she said softly, “All right?”

I whispered through the crack, “Yeah. But it’s miserable in here.”

She smiled slightly. “I know. You want to be out here with — me.”

“That’s … close enough. How’s it look?”

“Two of the girls aren’t here yet.”

“I can guess. Pagan Page and Loana Kaleoha.”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Never mind now. When does the photographic culmination commence?”

“Soon. They aren’t going to wait any longer.”

She started to turn away — and I thought of something. Something important, which I had neglected to mention earlier. “Honey, hold it a minute,” I said.

She stopped, pulled a Kleenex from her bag, dabbed at her lips. A couple of the men across the room were looking at her. One of them was Ed Grey. I started perspiring again, for a different reason. There were several very rough boys here, perhaps even one or two more outside, and this thing might get entirely out of hand. If it did, cops would be a necessity; even if it didn’t, once my bit was finished I would want numerous policemen handy to take over.

So I said to Blackie, “When I spring out of here, the first chance you get, call the cops, will you? If anybody notices you, it will seem a natural thing to be doing.”

“All right. We’re only two or three miles from the Medina Police Station. They should get here quickly. Besides, I know Lieutenant Farley. Not well, and I don’t like him much, but he’ll know I’m serious and hurry out.” She moved her mouth around as if checking the lip job while she talked.

“Farley?” It didn’t mean anything to me. “Okay, just so some friendly cops get here in a hurry.”

She walked back into the roomful of people. I felt better now. I’d have four or five minutes alone, at least, but that much I wanted and could handle. And after that, if all went well, I would be joined by police officers eager to help me gather in the crooks.

Something was going on out there. Ah, the girls were leaving. All ten of them. Going to put on their costumes.

I sure wished I had one of those drinks the guys out there were swilling so happily. I’d have given much for one puff of a cigarette. But I kept my eye glued to the crack in my doors.

From where I stood, I could look straight at the big windows in the far wall, beyond which was the pool. The entrance to the living room was on my right, the bare wall on my left. Left of center in the room, cameras were being set in place. Apparently the girls, when they returned, would be posed down there with that bare wall as a background. They’d gone out through the door at the right end of that wall, and would presumably come back through it. Fortunately, since I could see that part of the room without opening my doors any wider.

Just for a moment, then, I sort of withdrew from myself and looked upon all this as if I were outside, floating about in the air somewhere like that cat in A Christmas Carol, and peering down upon all this from my lofty eminence. And I thought: is it really happening? Is this true life? Can this no kidding be happening to me? Have I split completely, flipped, snapped? Or is this real? Are these people really people?

But then I snapped back. And I knew these people were really people. I knew more than that: these girls were really girls. Because the first one was back with us.

The first of The Ten, perhaps the one ready first, perhaps the most daring — no matter, she was back. A blonde. A stupendous blonde. And she was ready for her picture. Everybody else in the joint was also ready for her picture. She wore — you know it, friends — high-heeled shoes and a turtleneck sweater.

The sweater was pink, not that anybody gave a hoot. She paused in the doorway, not at all ill at ease, and a kind of soft fluting sound quivered in the room, a sort of sighing ululation like the flutter of wild parakeet wings. Then the blonde walked from my right to left along that far wall — and out of sight.

Well, pfui, I said to myself. I peered through the crack and about the room. All the men assembled here had by now sort of come to attention and stampeded closer to that wall on my left, and thus nobody was either in front of my doors or to my right. So, since I was pretty well addled anyway, I slowly slid one of the doors wide open.

The library was dark, and while I stood behind the other door it was doubtful that anybody would see me even if they looked this way. It was even more doubtful that anybody would look this way. And now I could see everything, except for big male backs which sometimes blocked my view.

Out came a black-haired lovely, then a redhead, another redhead, then Blackie, another blonde, a brunette. It was like madness. Soon there were ten of them there, all ten of them lined up in a row. And it was not a solemn parade. There was much laughing and giggling and hootling and wiggling. And all of it was grand, especially the wiggling.

A couple of the girls asked for drinks to sort of “keep their spirits up” and four guys sprang forward with everything from straight shots to martinis.

I’ll admit it, I sort of got lost in the moment. It was pretty interesting. But all of a sudden it was picture time. Somebody up front was acting as a kind of director — it was Orlando Desmond, I noted — and at a word from him all the girls turned to face the wall. Lights were moved, cameras on tripods were adjusted. The moment was almost upon me.

I took the cocked .45 from my pocket, thumbed down the safety and stepped from the library, then moved toward the activity. Nobody noticed me. Six or seven feet away was the back of the nearest man. Beyond him were several other guys, and before the wall: girls. Nobody noticed me. I walked up behind the group, then stepped onto a chair so I could size up the situation, make sure I knew where everybody was. Still, nobody noticed me.

“Okay, now,” Desmond yelled. “Lean over a little more, girls. Just … a little … that’s it. That’s perfect.”

It was pretty near perfect, there was no denying that. Probably not even in the days I had forgotten, I thought, had there been anything quite like this. To say the girls looked cute in their little outfits would be to do them a monstrous injustice, but it would be difficult to find the exactly right words for the vista there arrayed.

Guys near me were letting out small yips and toots, and I could hear some of their enthusiastic comments. A few feet away on my right stood Slobbers O’Brien and an apelike individual. Slobbers seemed to shake as he pointed at something. “She got a sort of built-in built-out, don’t she?” he asked wonderingly.

I could have looked in dictionaries for a hundred years without finding those words. But Slobbers, of all people, had said it. The apelike individual alongside him, gazing strenuously, replied in a soft thrumming voice, “Yeah … makes you want more than one, don’t it?” Next to him another mugg said hoarsely, “I wouldn’t mind sittin’ on that one myself!” And then Slobbers again: “She really do look like she’s cavin’ in outwards.”

There was more of the same. And all of their comments, all and more, were justified, more than justified. This was truly an almost unbelievable sight, a magnificent vista, an epochal moment in the history of vision. On the male faces near me were expressions of dopey, lip-smacking rapture, as if all five senses were being gaily diddled at once — as though, from each rounded square inch visible yonder, floated perfumed music that gently tickled their taste buds. This was an assembly line for bloodshot eyes, the anatomical Alps, the Forward Look in Behinds. Soon we would all need novocain shot in our eyeballs — but it was the perfect moment for me.

The cameras were ready and the girls were ready and I was ready, and as the flashbulbs flared I jumped down from my chair, forced my way through the men and leaped toward the wall on my left. I reached it, spun around. On my left now were the girls, just becoming aware of my presence. On my right, the men, all the other guests — including several hard faces.

Rapidly I scanned the Forward Look in Behinds. There it was. Four freckles. I’d found the one I wanted. Third from the left. I pointed at it.

“There!” I shouted.

I had meant to cry, “She killed Webley Alden.” Or, “That’s the villainess.” Or something roughly similar. But I got all excited. Hell, anybody would have got all excited. The silence was stunning.

And in the silence I stood there, gun in my right hand, left arm flung out dramatically, rigid index finger extended and waggling a little.

And I yelled at the top of my lungs: “There’s the fanny that did it!”

</code>

<code> EIGHTEEN

It wasn’t what I’d meant to say at all.

But it sure caused some commotion. Gals squealed and sprang about, flung their arms this way and that way, and their lovely faces took on hosts of strange expressions.

Everybody was shocked. Even I was shocked. But I stood my ground. I aimed my finger, waved my gun. And I pointed smack dab at lovely Loana Kaleoha.

Loana. Who, of course, was Raven McKenna. Or, rather, Mrs. Orlando Desmond. Webley Alden’s wife — though naturally they were never married. Any more than she’d been kidnaped. It was really very simple.

There were some more screams from the Wow girls and a sudden shout from a couple of the men. One man — a tough-looking bruiser who’d followed Slobbers and Ed Grey inside — jumped toward me. I aimed the .45 at his feet and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in my hand and the blast as it tore a hole in carpet and floor seemed to compress the air in the room, slam it against our eardrums.

A lot of these people had never even heard a gun go off before, certainly not this close to them. The sound of it here, now, was enough to freeze them solid. And the men who had often heard guns go off, guys like Grey and Slobbers, knew the next one could go off at them. So, all in all, the effect was magical.

Every bit of movement stopped. Girls who’d started to run, girls throwing arms and legs about, girls standing straight and girls bent forward, girls stooping and springing — guys, too — all froze. It was as if liquid oxygen had been poured over the whole gang of us, and it was a sight never to be forgotten, like a photograph of a people-explosion, a wildly cuckoo instant of time trapped and momentarily petrified.

While it lasted I said, “Stay where you are. All of you.” My voice sounded flat in the silence.

There was a little thaw then, a little motion. But not sudden, and not vigorous; it just melted a little around the edges. I centered my gun on Ed Grey’s chest and said, “You, get over there in the corner. You and all your pals — including Desmond.” They hesitated and I said, very softly, “Move.”

They moved. Ed Grey, Desmond, Slobbers, and the two other hard guys. They formed a little bunch in the corner, near the door through which the girls had gone out and returned. That put them farther from me, and I made all of them lace their hands behind their necks, then had the remaining men, including the reporters and photographers, gather in a second group several feet to their right in front of the big windows.

I stood with my back to the library, near the big framed picture I had hung on the wall, facing Ed Grey and the bunch he was in. Trouble, if it came, would be from that bunch, I figured; but I could keep an eye on the other men easily enough, too. We made quite a crowd. Counting me, there were twenty-nine people in the room. Ten girls, eighteen men — and me. The girls were all in a ragged line on my left now, their faces startled and shocked.

I said to them, “Relax, ladies. You’ve nothing to be afraid of. At least, nine of you don’t.” I caught Raven’s eye. “But you, sweetheart, have had it. The party’s over.”

She looked straight back at me, black eyes burning, but didn’t speak. Seconds passed in silence. When somebody did speak it turned out to be short, globular Whittaker.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he said. “This is … outrageous.”

His voice wasn’t very strong, and it cracked on “outrageous,” but I had to give him credit for the try. I said, “The meaning is simple, Mr. Whittaker. You’re all gathered here to celebrate the magazine’s first anniversary — and to pay tribute to the late Webley Alden. Desmond over there even made a nice little speech about Webb, almost a eulogy — like Brutus praising Caesar. Because Desmond is the guy who murdered Webb.”

That unfroze a lot of tongues. I let the babble die down and said, “That’s right. Desmond put the bullets into Webb’s back, but Raven McKenna set it up for hubby. That’s why I’m here now.” I paused. “And there was a lot of help from Ed Grey, after the fact. Including the murder of Pagan Page.”

Grey spoke then, his voice shaking with anger. “Scott, you won’t get away with this. I warn you — “

“I’d just as soon let you have one in the guts right now, Ed.” I pointed the gun in .45-caliber emphasis of my words. “Not just for Pagan, either. Add your hoods from the Algiers who worked me over, tried to kill me here. Your hoods from the Pele who tried the same thing in Hawaii — the same ones, undoubtedly, who helped set up Webb over there.”

He didn’t say anything more.

I looked at Raven. “Some of this only you and Orlando and those muggs — ” I nodded toward the group Desmond was in — “will understand. But everybody here will get the message before I’m through. Enough of it. And that’s the idea.” I paused. “Start at the beginning, Raven. Months ago Webb took some photos of you for the magazine and fell a little. Then he met you in Hawaii, fell the rest of the way, and popped the question.”

She interrupted. “This is idiotic. You can’t expect — “

“Knock it off.” I looked at her, at the thick black hair and full red lips, the black eyes burning into mine. After a moment I went on, “Married to Orlando, secretly, you couldn’t marry Webb even if you’d wanted to. But you must have mentioned the proposal to Orlando — and Orlando came up with his bright idea.”

“Shell, this is crazy,” Raven said rapidly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Webb wasn’t ever married. We all know that. He was a bachelor — “

“Sure, that’s the point, sweetheart. You did marry Webb in the Islands, but the judge was a phony, one of Ed Grey’s hoods — probably from the Pele; when I slugged him there he’d undoubtedly come back to finish his drink with you, at your table. So, the judge was a phony, the marriage a fake. Why a fake marriage? And on the very day the ‘bride’ was kidnaped? Only one answer makes sense: there was no kidnaping, you just walked out of the airport and joined Orlando. Which explains why it was so neat and easy. Why the fake kidnaping? Well, what did you get out of it? That’s easy, too: two hundred thousand clams.”

While I spoke, Blackie had been edging toward the door on my left. I caught her eye, nodded slightly. She slipped through the doorway and out of sight.

Orlando Desmond spoke for the first time, and his voice did not sound like his singing voice. It sounded even worse. Taut, strained, shredded by fear and tension. “It’s not true, Scott. None of it. You’re lying. I — “

“It won’t work, Desmond.” His face was pale, but his eyes stayed on me as I talked. “You had your bright idea: fake the marriage, fake the kidnaping, get the ransom money. You must have needed the money badly. I’d say it was to keep from getting killed, yourself. I heard Ed Grey just might kill you if you welshed, didn’t pay off the pile you owed him. Even if he didn’t knock you off, he would sure have changed your appearance.”

“You’re crazy. The whole thing’s crazy. You’re making a fool of yourself.” He licked his lips, his eyes empty.

I went right on, “The fake marriage, the whole con, was out of your line, Desmond. So you turned to the logical hoodlum — the one to whom you owed the money, the guy who’d have an interest in the con’s success. Ed Grey. Grey, with crooks on his payroll here and in Hawaii. And, obviously, Ed went along. Where did I miss, Desmond? Come on, here’s your chance to make a bigger fool of me. But don’t forget there’s more — the films, that photo of your wife, a lot more.” I grinned at him. “Including this: You know damned well I saw you, and a little bald-headed mugg, Thursday morning at the airport in Honolulu. You sure saw me — and let Grey’s boys here know I was on my way. I didn’t recognize you then, no. But I can recognize you now as the guy who was at the airport. And you are Orlando Desmond, aren’t you? The guy, undoubtedly, who took that first shot at me outside the Spartan? Well, Desmond?”

He licked his dry lips, turned toward Ed Grey as if for help. But there wasn’t any help coming from that direction. Orlando stared at me. His face looked crumpled.

The nine girls still in the room, now that Blackie was gone, stood at my left or leaned against the wall. Things had settled down enough for the moment so that I could actually enjoy the astounding sight they presented. Their original shock had faded into mild tension, or in some cases a curious interest. Of the nine, the only ones I recognized now were Charlie from the Algiers and Raven McKenna herself. Raven, whom I’d been calling Loana ever since that night in the Pele when, with her brain working at peak efficiency, she had conned me — almost enough. Now I realized she had probably been waiting there in the hope of spotting the real Loana. And I wondered about the real Loana Kaleoha, whom I couldn’t remember at all. I wondered if they had found her, and killed her.

I pulled my eyes away from the girls, said to nobody in particular, “It all went as planned, up to a point. But after the ransom was paid, Webb had to be killed. Otherwise he would, inevitably, have learned of the con. Especially since Raven wasn’t about to establish a happy home with him — not to mention how Orlando would have felt about such goings-on. No, Webb had to go.”

One of the toughs had unclasped his hands, started to move his fingers down the lapel of his coat. I didn’t say anything. But I shifted the .45 to his chest and waited to see what he’d do. He did what I figured he would. He swallowed audibly, and laced his hands tightly behind his neck again.

Blackie slid around the door in the corner, looked at me and nodded. So the law was on its way. I figured I’d have just time enough to wrap this up before help arrived. I went on, “If it had gone as planned, it would really have been a beautiful caper. Con Webb into marriage, fake the kidnaping, get the ransom money, kill Webb. No loose ends; nobody would ever have known Webb had been married, his wife snatched — there would simply have been a dead man, with no clues to who killed him or why. Just one thing went wrong.”

I turned to Raven. “Naturally you insisted that Webb keep the marriage and everything about it secret. But Webb, in a sweat, did tell me a little. Because he did, I showed up at his home that Friday night, too late to stop his murder, but in time to scare the killers off. Before they could remove all evidence that they’d been there — including the photo Webb took of his ‘wife’ just before he died.”

Raven’s eyes widened, slowly returned to normal. I backed to the wall, stood next to the big framed array of the twelve Wow girls, put my hand on its base. Raven looked puzzled, and a little frightened.

“This picture, Raven,” I said, and turned it over.

As the big enlargement became visible there was a sudden murmur of words from the others present. Raven stared at the enlargement, and her black eyes seemed to get dull, as if the bright film of moisture on them had dried.

“Yeah,” I said. “Minutes, or maybe seconds, before he was murdered, Webb took this photo of the girl who was then with him. The girl he obviously thought his wife. And it is, unquestionably, Raven, a picture of you. Clearly, when he was murdered, you were there.”

“This is preposterous.” Her voice was shaky.

“It’s your picture, isn’t it?”

Under the circumstances, she didn’t have a chance in hell of denying that it was. She said, “Well, I … if I’d had any idea Webb was going to be … killed, I’d have been miles from his home. Your own words prove — “

“Try the rest of it, Raven. If, during the time you and Orlando were waiting for Webb to pay off, he hadn’t talked to anyone, you could kill him and be sure nobody would ever know of your almost clever con. If he had spilled, though, you had to know about it, know who he’d talked to. Besides, Orlando wouldn’t have cared to barge in on Webb with a gun unless he knew Webb was alone at the time. It adds up to this: you could be safe in the act of killing Webb, and afterward, only by checking on both those angles before you killed him. And who could most easily get those answers from Webb himself? Why, the loving bride. In fact, under the circumstances, Webb would have been suspicious of anybody else showing up at that time; but he was expecting his wife’s return. He’d already paid the ransom to get her back. And the killer — Orlando, remember — would hardly have walked into Webb’s house and shot him while Webb was taking pictures of a girl. Not unless he meant to kill the girl, too. Which he didn’t. Naturally. The girl was you, Raven.”

Her big dark eyes were still on the enlargement. Her voice trembled as she said, “No, I … that picture was taken months ago.”

“The hell it was. Webb got back from Hawaii only the day before. As you damn well know, he bought that carved-wood Pan in Hawaii, brought it back with him.” I jerked a thumb. “It’s there in the photo, proof Webb took this shot after getting back home. On that last night, in the last minutes he lived. That’s why the Pan had to be destroyed, in a fire, along with Webb’s files and negatives — and along with me, if you could manage it. That Pan added another reason why you and your pals were in such a sweat to get the print and negative from me.” I paused, thinking of the mess in my office and apartment.

Marks of fear streaked Raven’s lovely face. She worried her lip. Then suddenly she said, “All right. All right, Shell. I was there that night. I just didn’t want to … get involved. And it wasn’t Orlando who shot Webb. I don’t know who it was. When it happened, I was shocked, horrified, and ran — “

“Nuts, sweetheart. Why don’t you call me Webley again, just to make it perfect? Or tell me you’re Loana?”

I’d started to tighten up during the last minute or so. I kept straining to hear that siren, but there’d been no sound of an approaching police car. It didn’t worry me much yet. Things had gone along so well here that I had become increasingly confident of a happy outcome as time passed. Perhaps too confident. Maybe I should have known it was too good to last.

I heard a sound — behind me.

A soft sound, hardly noticeable. I started to turn.

The voice was high, flat, rasping. “Don’t do it. Drop the heater, Scott.”

I recognized the voice. I’d heard it at L.A. International Airport when he’d had a gun shoved into my back. Willie. Wee Willie Wallace. I knew nobody had come through the main door on my right. But the voice was behind me. About where those sliding doors before the library were. He must have been outside, spotted me through the big living-room windows, and come in through the library. I should have thought of those open library windows … but I hadn’t.

No more than two or three seconds had passed since Willie had told me drop the gun. I hesitated. If I didn’t drop it, Willie would almost surely shoot me in the back. And if he did, even in front of all these people, he would probably get away with it. The claim could always be made, even after what I’d said here, that I had leaped into a private party, run amuck, yelled wildly. Hell, it was true enough. Leave out my reasons and killing me could almost be made to appear euthanasia.

The voice behind me was different this time, even higher in pitch, more twisted, more on edge. “You’re askin’ for it, Scott. Drop it.”

Sweat was oozing from me, but still I hesitated. I couldn’t try to turn suddenly, snap a shot at him. The second I moved he would — inevitably, simply using good sense — let me have it. Even if by a fluke I hit him, by then Ed Grey and his boys would be blasting away. And I knew, if they got me, they could still get away with it, keep in the clear. Without me there was no real proof of what had happened; without me around they could still cover the rest of it up, literally get away with murder.

But I knew, too, what would happen if I dropped the gun. If I did, I knew I would soon be hauled off into the weeds somewhere and become weed fertilizer.

Maybe it was that thought, depressing in the extreme, that decided me. Or maybe it was that I’d just come too far, been through too much, to quit now.

I said one word.

“No.”

</code>

<code> NINETEEN

At moments of extreme tension or emotion a man holds his breath, stops thinking. There’s activity within the brain, thoughts whirl in it, but none of it is on purpose. It just happens.

My lungs were laboring before I realized I was holding my breath, must have been holding it, except for that one word, since I’d heard the first sound at my back. Thoughts spun in my mind and it seemed a long time before I became aware of what I was thinking. I was wondering what it would feel like.

“What?” The voice behind me was soft. Surprised.

Slowly I let out my breath. “You heard me, Willie. If you pull that trigger, you’d better use the next bullet to plug the hole in your head.”

“What’s that?” He sounded unbelieving.

He knew as much as I did. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to toss my gun away and let these bastards kill me — either here, or out in the weeds. And that, soon, I was either going to get shot or start shooting.

But there wasn’t a dry inch of clothing on me. I was sweating like a fat Eskimo at the equator. I knew I couldn’t make any sudden move; but I couldn’t just stand here, either. The thing was balanced now, right on the edge. I didn’t know how well-balanced Willie was himself, but I knew it wouldn’t take much for him to push it over.

My gun, squarely on Ed Grey’s belly, still held him and the others around him unmoving. By rolling my eyes I could see all their faces, the other group of men farther to my right, some of the girls against the wall. All were completely motionless and the faces were pulled into odd tight shapes, strain showing in all of them. My own face probably looked like a death mask. It felt like one.

“You want to get it? Are you crazy?” The voice was coming back to normal now. Getting tight and hard. Getting, in a word, ready.

I rolled my eyes to my right, slowly, just a little. There wasn’t a chance I could see Willie without turning my head halfway around, but I looked in the big windows fronting the pool, hunting for his reflection. And I found it. He was standing squarely in front of the library doors, right hand extended. I could tell there was a gun in it, but not what kind of gun. My mouth was very dry.

Willie said, “Nobody can say you didn’t ask for it.”

The words sent an unexpected shiver along my back. They came out soft and almost sensual. Warm words now, a kind of breathless whisper. It was the way another man might have spoken to a woman in bed.

I forced words from my dry throat, and my voice sounded different, unlike my own, the words pinched. But I spat them out. “Hold it, Willie. You won’t make it. You don’t know it, you bastard. But you’ve got a lot more to lose than I have.”

The shot hadn’t come yet, but involuntarily I was bending, pushing my spine forward, slightly arching my back. As I spoke I slowly turned my head, forcing it around toward Willie. It would have been easier to lift a truck. “I’ll lose less than four days, Willie. You’ll lose all your life.”

It was true. And I think, because it was true, because I meant it, the message — even if not its entire meaning — got through to him. I’d turned my head around far enough to see him. In a corner of my eye I could still glimpse Grey and Desmond, the other group of men, but not the girls. My gun stayed on Ed Grey and the men around him. Their hands were still behind their necks and they hadn’t moved.

The tightness building in me had drawn muscle and nerve all through my body until now it was actually painful. I could feel the tight bunch of muscle at the base of my skull, something like a hard ridge along the length of my spine. And I held the gun so tight it was beginning to tremble a little. I strained my ears for the sound of a siren, but there was nothing.

Willie was about twelve feet away, feet spread apart, gun thrust before him. The gun was a short-barreled .38. That helped a little. But not much.

I said softly, “You know how long a man can live with a .38 slug in him. This is a Colt .45 in my hand, Willie. And I’ll use it. If you try it, the first one of your pills better not be off an inch. You’d better not give me any time at all.” My voice was soft as a whisper, but he heard me. And he understood me. It did me good to see Willie’s pale, pasty face. He looked puzzled, but he also looked hesitant, nervous. Maybe even a little afraid. Just a little.

I said, my voice rising, punching the words at him, “Yeah, all your life, chump. Maybe there’s another life after this one, but we don’t know, do we? I know how we can find out, though. It’s up to you, Willie. We can find out together.”

He didn’t say a word. But he hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. His face was a little twisted.

I kept it going. “With you and the rest here, I won’t have a prayer. You can get me, make sure I go. But I’ll make damned sure you go along. I’ll take you with me, Willie.”

His dead-looking eyes wavered. They flicked toward Grey, then back to me. And right then I knew I had him. It burned through me suddenly, like fire, like a slow explosion. He’d waited too long.

He’d been fine when he had the initiative, a gun on my back, when I couldn’t see him. But I could see him now, knew exactly where he stood. I knew now that if he shot me and I lived long enough to pull a trigger I’d live long enough to kill him. He knew it, too.

It seemed to start in his eyes, spread over his face. He was afraid. It was crazy. Willie had a gun on my back, his finger touching the trigger, but he was afraid. He wanted to pull that trigger. He wanted very much to kill me. And he would if I pushed him, jerked toward him or moved my gun. That would force him, make up his mind. But he couldn’t make the decision himself — knowing what the decision would mean.

So we stood there. For seconds that seemed like hours.

Seconds during which something grew. There was a weird quality in the room. An unreal but perceptible feeling, sensation, breath of — something. Thoughts have a real force, an impact tangible at times. And all of us in the room had been in a state of extreme tension for long minutes now. Thirty of us. In each the nerves growing more taut, pulling tighter and tighter, as if stretched on a delicate rack. Shock, fear, anger, near panic in some.

You could feel it. Like a strange fog, unseen but felt, chill on your face. You could smell it. Delicately sharp, add, like the smell of an angry mob. It oozed through the air, touched us all, affected us all. Everything had an unreal quality, stiff and still. But it couldn’t last. Something had to happen soon. And anything could happen.

Then I heard the siren.

Close … getting closer. The sound increased, nearing the house, nearing the room. It whined high and then growled low as the car started slowing to a stop.

Willie’s face changed, the lips pulled out and down. As the siren growled in front of the house he jerked his head a little toward it. The barrel of his gun moved away from me. Only inches, but away.

And I thought: now.

I swung my right leg hard, around and behind me, let it pull my body after it, legs bending into a crouch, the .45 slashing through the air toward him.

As I moved, Willie jerked the .38 in his hand, yanked it back and pulled the trigger. The gun cracked and the bullet slapped my thigh, but immediately after that my .45 blasted and the heavy slug caught him in the breastbone. I didn’t look to see what it would do to him. I knew what it would do to him. Before he started to fall I jerked around, slammed my gun down on the men around Ed Grey.

Grey’s hand was at his hip. Slobbers O’Brien had a gun already out, just clearing his coat. I almost shot him. I stopped the Colt on his belly and my finger was tight on the trigger when he made a short hissing sound, sucking air into his throat. He let go of the gun in a hurry. It thudded on the carpeted floor.

I tried to watch all of them at once. Behind me I had heard car doors slamming. That would be the police. I could hear the sound of men running outside. Nobody had spoken. One of the girls slumped back against the wall, her face pale. Nobody else moved.

Except Raven.

When she did move, I was in a strange tight mesh of emotions. Above all there was the almost physical sense of release. I felt with a sudden leaping exhilaration that it was over. Over. End of the line, the case wrapped up, finished. Just a little longer, only seconds now, and that would be the end of it.

But a kind of hangover from that earlier odd, tense and drawn-out moment still gripped me. My brain was almost sluggish, but at the same time I felt crazily like leaping up and clicking my heels or doing a little jog or time step. I felt good, elated, ready for practically anything, almost giddy with the sense of release. Thoughts danced in my head. I wondered what the cops were going to do with all these half-peeled tomatoes. I wondered lots of interesting things.

And right then Raven moved.

She marched toward me, toward the big enlargement on my left, and under any circumstances whatsoever that would have been an interesting thing to see. And as she marched she said flatly, “There’s just one thing wrong with all you’ve said, Shell.”

I heard the front door crash open. Raven reached the enlargement, bent forward, peering up at the photograph. Bent way forward. “Just one thing,” she said. “That’s not my fanny.”

Startled, I looked at the picture, back at Raven.

Hell, it was too her fanny. And she had tricked me with it.

Willie had been distracted by a siren. I had been distracted by another kind of siren. I’ll take my kind. A guy has to have one weakness — and it might as well be a good one.

Make that my epitaph.

Because Raven’s strength held my weakness just long enough. To my right I heard the ugly click of an automatic’s slide snapping forward. I dropped, whirling, flipping the .45 up in my hand. Screams ripped the air around me. I saw blurred movement as people started to scatter. People — but not Ed Grey. He was the man with the gun, and as I pulled my automatic toward him he fired.

The blast banged against the walls of the room and I heard the slug smack wood somewhere behind me, then I squeezed the trigger. The 230-grain bullet thudded into Grey’s chest, shoved him backward. His lips were pulled away from his teeth and he went back a step, one leg outthrust behind him.

He seemed almost unhurt, merely off balance, but then it happened. For half a second he stayed rigid in that awkward pose, but then something cut the strings, everything gave way at once. His features went slack, and he fell, straight down, landing in a heap. He started to roll onto his side, one leg still caught beneath the weight of his body.

There was so much noise, so many screams and such a wild kaleidoscope of movement and color that I had barely noticed the figures charging in from the entrance to the living room. Men pounded over the carpet, coming from my right. The police.

As I looked toward them Orlando Desmond shouted, “Look out, Farley, he’s got a gun!”

In the lead, ahead of several uniformed cops, was one in plain clothes. A thick-bodied, hard-faced man, not pleasant in appearance, looking angry, almost infuriated. He had a gun in his hand.

He shouted at me, “Drop it, Scott, or I’ll — shoot!”

And, immediately after “I’ll — ” shot me.

The slug slammed into or against my skull, but wherever and however it hit, my skull seemed to give off a great clanging sound, like those big round gongs struck with big round gong-strikers. The sound swelled to a great twanging crescendo and hung at its peak momentarily, and the tangible vibrations seemed to waggle me about as in animated cartoons animals banged on the head vibrate in sections and then all at once.

There was only a fraction of a second into which all the gonging and twanging and vibration were crowded, but for that moment of goofy-time everything was bright, crisp and dear. I saw the vibrations, visible in thin pink soup around me, people in motion, colors and bright dots dancing.

And, too, for that split second of eternity, I saw — ten fannies.

I thought: WOW!

They were all racing about, racing past me and away from me and around me. They were everywhere — but still they all seemed to be escaping while at the same time going every which way. Perhaps that is a normal characteristic of fannies escaping — and these were violently escaping — but whatever the reason, it was a grand, a memorable, an almost appalling sight.

And then the blackness.

But I had bare time for the wisp of a thought. A glancing, fading, barely perceptible thought. And it was: if even now a thick bullet was slowly crashing through the convolutions of my brain and this grand sight was to be my last sight on earth, then so be it. I couldn’t kick.

I knew somehow, even without memory of anything but these last few days, that if Shell Scott had to go … this was the way Shell Scott would want to go.

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<code> TWENTY

I don’t know how long it was before I realized I hadn’t died and gone to the Hippy Hunting Ground. I wasn’t very live, either, but at least life still flickered. Whatever time it took was a kind of montage, disconnected sights and sounds and thoughts and smells all jumbled together into a phantasmagoric oneness.

There was the smell of anesthetics. The sound of voices. Pressures and dull pains. Delirium, too. And once something almost beautiful happened. Almost beautiful because it was so ugly.

It was like a living picture painted by Dali with touches of Blake and El Greco. It was a ballet in an open theater, on a green landscape flat and eerie like the Ancient Mariner’s rotting sea. I was at stage center, lights blinding me. In from the wings danced Slobbers O’Brien and Biff Boff in red leotards, pirouetting as gracefully as two elephants tickling each other. Both of them carried huge saps. The huge saps were Wee Willie Wallace and Danny Ax. Slobbers and Biff spun me around, swatting me on the head with the big saps.

Somewhere in the green landscape a thousand-piece orchestra played the Anvil Chorus: Clang … clang … clang-clang clang-clang, and Slobbers said, “Dere playin’ our song!” as he and Biff swatted me with Willie and Danny.

Suddenly Ed Grey appeared, slim and horrible in white tights, performing a magnificent entrechat while carrying a machine gun with which he shot me. Every time one of the bullets hit me I died, then stood there and laughed at him, and another bullet would hit me and I’d die again and laugh, over and over. Others came on stage. Webley Alden, Dutch, lovely girls in high-heeled shoes and turtleneck sweaters, a dancing carved-wood Pan, and more.

And then the worst thing happened, the really shocking part of it all. I was myself, at stage center; but I was also, at the same time, the rest of them, all the rest of them. I was the audience, watching the ballet, I was Ed Grey and Danny Ax and Slobbers and Willie and Biff and the women and Webb, all of them and myself as well. Mercifully, it went away, melted into the green landscape.

Immediately after that, it seemed, I was awake. Alert and aware. Dimly remembered were moments when I had been awake before. I had talked to nurses, doctors — policemen. Even a sergeant named Farley who had some sort of apology to make and who seemed in a state of great unease. And numerous lovelies, I recalled.

Some other things, in talks during those moments of wakefulness, had been made clear. Ed Grey was dead, I knew. But he’d taken an hour or so to die and in that time confessed to killing Pagan. From her dressing room next to Grey’s office she had overheard Grey’s end of the phone conversation when Desmond called him from Hawaii for help in setting up the marriage con; after that Pagan had, at every opportunity, listened on purpose, and had been listening when Desmond phoned Grey on the night he shot Webb. She had foolishly tried to use her information to squeeze money out of Grey. Foolishly because, being Grey, he’d seen no other way out and had killed her. He had strangled Pagan Page. I thought of my ballet, and wondered if they were dancing together, his fingers buried in her throat, her eyes glittering like diamonds.

Somebody had told me, too, that Orlando had indeed been in debt to Grey, to the tune of one hundred and forty thousand dollars. For his help in setting up the marriage con and covering up after the murder, and for trying to eliminate me, Grey demanded the entire amount of the ransom from Orlando, and got it.

The judge turned out to be a judge after all: Manny “The Judge” Mack, who’d picked up his legal knowledge in prison libraries. An old con man named “Doc Wyatt” had given Webb and Raven their medical exams and blood tests, somehow managing not to slaughter them in the process. Ed Grey, through his contacts, had arranged the entire marriage fraud, complete with a genuine marriage certificate which was signed by “Judge” Mack but never filed, so that at every step it had seemed normal and legal. He’d almost earned the money Orlando handed over to him. And a fat lot of good it was going to do him.

There was another hazily remembered scene, too. Soon after my admission to the hospital Dr. Paul Anson had come to see me, and in the first few minutes remarked that he bore glad tidings.

“You’re a father,” he said.

“WHAT!”

“Relax. Sort of. You’re the father of twenty-two — “

“Twenty-_two!_ Oh!”

— “neons.”

“Who is Neons?”

“Fish, you fool. Your fish. You still don’t remember?”

“Of course not. We went through that once before. But I do recall the fish in my apartment. Ah, fish. Oh, boy.”

“Well, you’ve been trying for years to breed neons. And they’ve hatched, or whatever they do. I put the parents back into the community tank, and I’ll keep dropping your infusoria tablets and egg yolk in with the babies till you can take over.”

“Fine and dandy. Grand. Oh, boy. Fish.”

“And I’ll ask Dr. Bohrmann to come over and take a look at you.”

After he left I had lain in a state of near shock, cold skin, pulse weak and thready. When the nurse came in I had been mumbling, “Fish … fish…”

But that had been quite a while ago. Now another nurse came in. She smiled and asked me if I wanted something to eat. Suddenly I realized I was hungry. Soon there was food before me. But I had less strength than I’d thought, and at first I ate so daintily that half the time I missed the bite. But in a few more days I was chewing rare prime ribs with all the old verve. By then it was time for me to leave.

The day I walked down the hospital steps I stopped for a moment, looked around me at my small chunk of world. The sky had never before seemed so limitless and blue, the air so clean and good.

We strolled along, arm in arm, and for a minute or two I let my thoughts wander back over the past month.

It had been a good month, all in all. My neons were thriving, and had good color now. Raven McKenna and Orlando Desmond were in the can, awaiting trial. All the appropriate people were in jail, and the story was out of the headlines now. But that magnificent photo of The Ten had actually made the three-page spread in Wow! Possibly the issue would yet be jerked off the stands, but publishing history had been made.

I’d seen Blackie a time or two, and that had of course been fun. Referring to the night of the Anniversary Party she had said, “Shell, you were so brave!” and I had replied, “You were so squaw!” and we’d let it go at that. Then there’d been interviews with some of the Wow girls, a sort of gathering up of loose ends, and that had been fun.

Life had, in a word, been fun.

But never more fun than now.

Because we were walking in scented dusk through the International Market Place in Waikiki, and the “we” was Loana Kaleoha and me.

The real Loana this time, the genuine article. Gorgeously Polynesian Loana, of the volcanic eyes and breasts and devil-red lips, of an intoxicating sweetness like honey and wine. Loana, of the golden voice and velvet eyes.

She held my arm tight, softly rounded hip brushing mine as we walked past exotic and colorful shops. I had flown in from the mainland today, found Loana at her home. We’d been together for an hour now, and I’d told her much about what had happened since we’d last been here.

Now she said, “I see. But why did Raven say you were Webley Alden?”

“That was after I told her I had amnesia, remember. I had also told her I thought I might be either Shell Scott or Webley Alden. She’d already said she was Loana and, therefore, would naturally be expected to know who I was. The reason she couldn’t tell me I was Shell is simple: that’s who I was.”

Loana’s black brows lowered over the velvet eyes.

“Look,” I said. “I was out of my skull. And Raven didn’t want me back in it. If I’d managed to get to the cops, for example, and said ‘My name’s Scott and I’ve got trouble in my head,’ they’d soon have checked and learned that was the truth, perhaps even gotten me to a doctor for some repair. On the other hand, if I’d gone to the law and said, ‘I’ve lost my mind, but I know one thing: I’m Webley Alden,’ they would probably have netted me and clapped me away forever. It would sure have slowed me down, at least, and from Raven’s point of view anything that slowed me down was good. Anything that helped to keep me from discovering — or re-discovering — the truth about her and her pals was good.”

Loana smiled. “It worked out all right, anyway.”

“Yeah, and the way it worked out proved the rest of it. Once I figured Orlando and Raven as the two who’d set up Webb, all I had to do was go back through everything that had happened — including Raven’s act in the Pele — and fit the two of them in. Some hoods who jumped me outside a club called the Parisienne and grabbed a photo I had, a couple more muggs waiting at Webb’s home for films to arrive from Hawaii because Raven knew they’d be arriving — and so on, all the way down the line. Entering Orlando or Raven, or both, in each case — not Loana — was the only way it all fit. And it wouldn’t fit any other way.”

Loana said, “What ever happened to that big enlargement … of Raven?”

“Oh, I still have it. Sort of a souvenir.” I grinned at her. “I may hang it on my bedroom wall.”

Her eyes flashed. “You’d better not!”

I laughed, then said, “You know, that photo puzzled me from the beginning. I was never able to figure out why Webb, on his wedding night, would have been talking pictures of his bride. Instead of … well, instead of. It seemed goofy, warped even. It just didn’t make sense as long as I tried to figure out why Webb would have done something like that. But it made sense once the night of August fourteenth became, not a normal wedding night, but part of a murder plan, mechanics engineered by the bride. Raven, of course, was responsible for that complication, too. The police got the whole story from her and passed it on to me in the hospital.”

Loana looked at me oddly then. She seemed about to speak, but remained silent. I finished it up, “That night Webb was quite ready to retire with unprecedented speed. But Raven wasn’t about to retire, that not being included in her and Orlando’s plans for Webb’s evening. So, pretending to a shyness she probably hadn’t felt since the age of eleven, she suggested the photographic interlude as a sort of warm-up, a prelude to more fascinating adventures — her purpose being merely to keep Webb otherwise occupied until Orlando could skulk up and shoot him.”

I paused. “It was fiendish. In fact, thinking about it since, I’ve decided it’s the most fiendish murder I ever heard of. Well, if that idea hadn’t worked, our bright little gal would no doubt have thought of something else, but Webb went along with it — although I’d guess he thought it not quite cricket. As an added precaution Raven made sure her face wasn’t in the picture, even though she naturally didn’t expect to leave any film in the camera — a precaution, incidentally, which almost worked. The whole thing worked, up to a point. And it would have worked all the way if I’d arrived at Webb’s five minutes later.”

We walked on to Don the Beachcomber’s Bora Bora Lounge and went inside, sat at the Dagger Bar. Loana ordered a Cherry Blossom and I ordered, after slight hesitation, a Puka Puka.

Loana told me what she’d done on that night when I’d clunked my head. Under the peculiar circumstances, she knew neither of us would want to be identified and questioned if we could possibly avoid it. So, naturally appalled by what was either my clumsiness or stupidity, when I lit out over the landscape she’d gathered up most of my belongings and flown.

Sipping her Cherry Blossom she glanced sideways at me and said, “I went home. I hoped you’d phone, but I certainly didn’t want to talk to anybody else. The next day I noticed two men watching my house. Ugly-looking men. After what you’d told me about gangsters hunting you, it … frightened me.”

“Yeah, while I was coming to and going out in the hospital the police told me what they’d gotten from Grey and the others. Once Raven had told me she was Loana, it wouldn’t have done for me to run into the real Loana, you. So, after another call to Ed Grey, a couple of his tough boys were dispatched from the Pele gang here to grab you. Maybe just to hang onto you … maybe worse.”

She shivered. “They actually started trying to get into the house, and that frightened me. I went out the back door, into my car.”

She said they’d chased her for a mile or so, but knowing the roads well she’d gotten away, and had then spent a few days with friends on the windward side of Oahu. By then I’d made my appearance at the Anniversary Party and she was no longer in danger.

Loana looked at me and said, “You must hate them, Shell. All of them, after what they did.”

“No … not really.” From somewhere came fragments of that goofy dream or delirium I’d had, the weird ballet. “I don’t hate them,” I said. “I … just don’t like the way they dance.”

She didn’t understand, and I didn’t try to explain.

A little later we were outside again in the Market Place. The flame of a Hawaiian torch close by turned the darkness red. Our white-turbaned waiter took out his big key, unlocked the big padlock at the base of the Banyan Tree. People moved around us, colorful lights seemed everywhere. A few yards away traffic purred along Kalakaua Avenue.

Loana put a hand on my arm. I looked down at her. The lovely lustrous hair was long, heavy against her shoulders. She wore a smooth-fitting holomuu, a red hibiscus blossom in her black hair, a lei of vanda orchids around her neck.

“Shell,” she said softly. “You haven’t mentioned anything about it. And I’ve been almost afraid to ask.”

“Ask away.”

“Well, all the things that happened before — before you fell…” She glanced past me, up toward the little tree house. “You keep saying somebody told you this happened or that happened. Or you found out in the hospital. Or you figured it out, it was the way it had to be.” She moistened her lips, looked up at me seriously. “Don’t you … remember?”

I started to speak, but she was going on in a rush, “Don’t you remember being here before, with me … in the tree house and all … Are you still — “

I interrupted her. Our waiter had the gate open, was waiting for us. And I’d given my real name when I’d made reservations for the dinner and champagne — I wasn’t going to fall out of the tree this night.

I said, “They had lots of time in the hospital, Loana, to hack away at me and probe and peer and jiggle things about. And they did.”

“Then do you…”

“Yes, my sweet, my sweet Loana…” I grinned at her. “I remember.”

Her teeth flashed white as she smiled. She looked at me for a moment longer, then turned, walked past the open gate and up the wooden steps.

And I followed Loana, happily, up into the Banyan Tree.

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